City Council - workshop

Morning. Welcome to a Tuesday. Good long work day here. Thank you to staff and council for being here. Thank you, Mr Prescott for being here. We gonna officially recognize a quorum, call ourselves into session, hand it over to either deputy or city manager.

Yes, thank you, Mayor, Council. Yes, we appreciate you all meeting today for our next round of workshop. We do have Councilor Prescott joining us from across the world in Turkey, and so he'll be participating that way. So we've got a presentation for you today, and so I'm going to turn it over to Andrew, and he's got a slideshow. He's going to walk you all through.

Yes, sir. Who's running the slideshow? We may be having a slideshow. Hold on just a second. We lost our slideshow person.

Stand by.

Does she have it plugged in up there? I don't know.

Let's pray.

We're going to work on getting the slides up on the screen, but I'll go ahead and start since you have it on paper in front of you. First, just wanted to cover the key calendar dates coming up. Of course, this afternoon we got on the regular city council agenda, September 8th, setting the maximum tax rate and setting the public hearing. So that is your opportunity to set a ceiling rate, but you can always, when budget adoption time comes on September 22nd, you could do a rate lower than that. So on September 22nd, we'll have first reading of the budget and tax ordinances, followed by second readings and public hearing on September 29th. Next slide is impacts into the tax calculations. So on this next slide, I'm going to show you what we're finding is a continued slowdown in new improvements and growth, which is leading to essentially a flat taxable value compared to prior years. We've also seen a continued increase in exemptions, those tax ceilings, the 65 and up, reducing the previous available tax base, along with continued growth in our TIF and tiers one through three boundaries. And we do also see a more pronounced impact from sales tax dedicated to reducing the property tax rate, which limits how much we can generate through the property tax side of the VATER calculation. So these factor in every year. What's different this year is the lack of significant growth in taxable values, which has really kind of overshadowed the adjustments on the other categories. So on slide three, you get a snapshot of property tax analysis from 2021, 2022 through the proposed 26, 27 tax year. What you can see going back the last few years in 23, for example, we had 1.6 billion in taxable value growth, and then it started to decline the next couple of years slightly to 1.3 billion in growth, 1.2 billion in growth, and then our current year only 417 million in taxable value growth. Then what we're seeing in the calculations for 26-27 is actually a negative 44 million to our taxable values. And then the differences that you can see below there are just the continued TIF increment. So there's 22 million that were new growth and appreciated values in the tier zones. And then a new 205 million tax ceiling for those that are 65 and up. On slide five, this is the built-in city property, or slide four, sorry, built-in city property tax relief since 1990. So basically, going on the last 36 years, there's been a built-in adjustment to our property tax rate based on the citizens of Amarillo back in October 1990 adopted a half-cent sales tax rate. We don't touch on this a lot, but thought it would be beneficial to share what the accompanying rate would be if we did not have the sales tax relief. So we've got 2021, 2022 through the proposed budget. It's gone basically from 17 cents, fluctuated down to 16 cents, 15.4 and 15.7, but what we're seeing is climbing back up to 17.1 cents. So basically, because we have seen increased values in our sales tax collections, that half cent is dedicated solely to reducing the property tax rate. SO WHAT I SHOW YOU BELOW THERE IS THE ADOPTED AND VADER TAX RATE COMPARISONS. ADD IN THE PROPERTY TAX RELIEF RATE AND WHAT YOUR TOTAL TAX FOR CITY TAXES WOULD HAVE BEEN IF NOT FOR THAT BUILT-IN PROPERTY TAX RELIEF. SO FOR 26, 27, IF WE WERE GOING WITH THE VADER TAX RATE, THE ACCOMPANIED TAX RATE WOULD ACTUALLY BE 61.9 CENTS FOR YOUR CITY TAXES. So the proposed would actually be, thanks to the built-in property tax relief, it's a reduction in 27% on your tax rate. Next up is a 2025 tax bill, just to show you in practice what that means. I pulled an example of one that still showed the base taxes owed, so this one's actually a delinquent property taxpayer. But you can see this is what's shown on the tax bill. With the first red arrow, you see a taxes owed to the city of $1,224. And then down below, there's an asterisk. Whether you live in Potter County or Reynold County, there's a reference to additional city sales tax reduced or city ad valorem tax by $447. So this property tax owner, due to the sales tax relief, had 26.75% less than city taxes do. So instead of paying $672 in 2025, they only owed the $1,224. So projecting out, if the council were to approve the Vader 44.7 cents tax rate, they'd pay an additional $47.61 a year, or 3.89% increase, or $3.97 per month. And this is based on a $284,000 taxable value. So again, just referencing a savings of 27.72% based on the new reduction in property tax relief due to sales tax compared to 26.75% in the previous year. Next slide is just to compare where we stand today on tax rates to other local entities. So we've got an Amarillo-Potter tax rate example, an Amarillo-Randall tax rate example, since it depends on which county you live in and what school district. So these are just a couple of scenarios, but they basically go from left to right. You've got your 25, 26 current tax rates. So just going off Potter County, you'll see we make up 20.3% of a tax bill. And then you go down to Randall County with our 43 cent tax rate, 21%, 21.7% of that tax bill. Then as you move to the right, the first one up is the Vader at .44744. It would bring our tax bill staying about the same as per pro rata share of 20.5%. And then in Randall County, it would actually increase to 22.2%. And the reason for this, these are the, have either been adopted by these tax entities or the latest that they are proposing to adopt. Potter County is proposing to increase their tax rate. Amarillo College is increasing their tax rate. Amarillo ISD is coming down a little bit, and then the groundwater district in Potter County is coming down just slightly. And then on the Randall County side, Randall County is staying basically flat. Again, Amarillo College is increasing, Canyon ISD slightly decreasing, and the High Plains Groundwater District is basically staying flat. BUT WITH THE VADER PROPOSED BY THE CITY OF AMARILLO, 44744, THAT WOULD BE IN POTTER COUNTY, THE RESIDENTS WOULD SEE A 6.3 CENT INCREASE AND IN RANDALL COUNTY, A 3.7 CENTS INCREASE. IF THE CITY WERE TO KEEP A FLAT RATE WITH WHAT OUR CURRENT PROPERTY TAX RATE IS, WHICH IS .4307 OR 43 CENTS, THE TAX RATE INCREASE combined in Potter County would be 4.7 cents and in Randall County would be 2 cents. And then if we were to drop it to the city rate being the no new revenue rate of 0.4217, that would be in Potter County at 3.8 cents increase. And then in Randall County, 1.1 cent increase. So basically wanted to share decision the the city council makes is one piece of the pie of the the property tax bill but basically whichever of these choices and you can always pick somewhere in between any property tax owner unless their values decreased is going to see a property tax increase On the next slide is our property tax calculations for both the VADR and the no new revenue. This is just to show you how the calculation works. You've got your net taxable value, your TIF captured values, those are your tax increment reinvestment zones, so you back out those dedicated funds, and then you back out your tax freezes, which gives you a taxable base of a little over 16.6 billion. And then down below, that's what produces your $74 million in collections or $70 million, depending on which rate you choose. And then you also have a calculation that brings back in the frozen taxes from our PRAD certified values, which are not included in the truth in taxation calculation. So we bring that back in. adjust for your collection rate and under evader, that is bringing in 83.4 million and then at the no new revenue rate, it brings in 79.2 collections. And then down below is your split between maintenance and operations and your INS rates. So under the VADR calculation, you've got about 77.32% going to your maintenance and operations. And then under the no new revenue rate, that drops down to about 75.97. So it shows a larger share going towards your INS side of the tax rate. And then you take that down and you have to back out your tiers collections, you back out your 20.9 million in INS, and that's where you end up with your general fund collections under the Vader proposal of a little over 61 million. And then on the no new revenue rate, it drops down to about 57.1 compared to the 25, 26 budget of 60 million. Next slide is a slide of different scenarios. I emailed out about 19 different tax rate scenarios for you. These are just a handful that show you the key impacts as you go down in rate. The top one, of course, is evader rate, fully funds the proposed pay increases, as well as supplementals that were recommended through the budget workshop. And then as you go down in the green, That starts to dip down into the non-pay-related supplementals, which is new employees or new services being proposed by the various departments in the general fund. Then you get to the 4307 current tax rate. That takes away basically all supplementals, the two million in non-pay-related supplementals. It would also reduce police certificate pay, fire certificate pay, and fire reclass to get down to that level. And then as you continue going in the orange is when you start to dip into the civilian compensation phase two implementation for the comp study and the civilian merit fund at the 42471 rate. And then in the red, you get down to the no new revenue rate, which would basically wipe out the non-pay-related supplementals, the majority of the the reclasses, certificate pay, the comp study for civilians, the civilian merit fund, and then you'd still need to take about $246,000 from either the civilian 2% cost of living adjustment or the fire and police 3% raises.

Andrew, just to, I'm sorry. Yes, sir. This is just an option, correct? These are just scenarios. Okay. Yes. So if council says we want X out of the budget, but we don't want to touch pay raises. This gives you the options. Then you've got to go somewhere else to find it. Correct.

Yeah. So basically anything above...

I just want to be clear. It's not that we're saying get rid of the pay raises. That's the option that you're having to get to.

Correct. Just depending on whichever tax rate council decides to give us, we would bring back a budget that fits those calculations. So we just wanted you to have – one of the questions we got was what would you have to cut or adjust depending on which option. So we just wanted to bring those forward. But basically – As long as you're above a .4227, raises are secured. Everything above that, it dips into the compensation study and the civilian merit fund and certificate pays and some of those things. So just allowing for some different options. Then the next slide, just a regroup on where we stood on the budget highlights. We're, of course, proposing additional resources for those potential raises and compensation adjustments as well as additional services with the additional 2 million in either new AMW officers, new custodians, and those sorts of increases. Continued CIP funding dedicated towards street maintenance. We've also got the wastewater treatment facility low-interest loan, additional fleet purchases, fire apparatus equipment, and heavy equipment replacement program. And then we also addressed rising costs in some of our vital areas, commodities, materials, supplies, and software. Next slide is our proposed fee changes that we discussed in our previous meetings.

Andrew, can I ask you a quick question before you move on? Yes, sir. So you just said that a .4427 secures raises, but... Just the 2% COLA and the 3% police and fire. Just a 2%? Did we not talk about a 3%?

We did, but the extra 1% was going to be a merit fund. So that gets cut out starting in the orange highlights.

At point, okay, you brought up a .4427, but that is not on this, correct?

Oh, no, yeah, that's on the other, that's the one I emailed out. So there is 4227, 42170, and 421.

The one with 19 different options.

Yes, 19 different options. Basically, 42471 and up is the orange and above. Yes, sir. As far as proposed fee changes, the current budget does have built-in solid waste-related fees on the residential and commercial side. There's also landfill-related fees. That's the 24% that creates the $1.2 million that would go toward equipment purchases and a new gate attendant.

So that that 1.2 says not factored into the budget. Yes. So that fee increase has nothing to do with anything on the previous pages. Correct. And that fee increase is going to go to equipment and personnel.

Yes, it was going to go to one gate attendant. The rest were going to go toward leasing equipment for the landfill.

I know I sent some text messages, some photos, so I think what we would try to promote through this. Yes, it's a fee increase, but most of these entities. That's been lots of money out there. You know, if I'm hauling a refrigerator out there, I may not notice on that 4 dollar difference. But if that's my business, what I would hope to see is efficiencies. And so, yes, you're charging me more per load on the per ton rate. But if my employee that I pay 25 an hour to spends 30 minutes in the landfill versus an hour and a half, how much of the 1.2 million is going to increase efficiencies in the workflow out there of the landfill? Can we speak to that?

Yeah, we could have Alan come up and touch on that.

And Alan, you don't have to get into depth. It's just a point we need to make in the conversation of are we just raising rates because we can or are we raising rates with the intention to actually hit the bottom line for service and improvements?

I don't expect any significant service improvements there. Right now, we're averaging between 20 and 30 minutes for wait time at the landfill over the past four weeks. It really would be about compliance with our TCEQ permit to ensure we have the equipment to do that efficiently for us, too, so that we can do it with the employees that we have. Now, when we have a landfill that is in compliance, as we do right now, that is a benefit to our customers so that they have more choices of our landfill versus other landfills in the area. It does make life easier for them. also provides for the growth of the landfill in the future so that we're set up for future cell development when that time comes. But I think from where we're at right now, I can't say that it's – and I wouldn't commit to improving, say, wait times or anything like that because I think we're doing very good there right now. But just having a well-functioning landfill that's meeting those permit requirements is beneficial to our customers.

So I would hope that the gate attendant would be beneficial in just directing traffic. I think traffic flow out there would be the number one thing that like when you are running 30 minute wait times in and out of the landfill, I think is because you're directing traffic very well. And then not everybody has been out there, right? So I think if you're a first time user or not a frequent user, having that gate attendant is probably going to help solve a lot of problems.

It would. One other thing, and I appreciate you mentioning that, and it is on the customer service side. What we have right now is you mentioned somebody in a pickup truck bringing a refrigerator. That person versus somebody bringing tons of material are all going to the same place. And so what we could be able to do with the $1.2 million is also install a location at the entrance to the landfill or just past the scales where if you don't have the ability to unload your equipment automatically, you have to hand unload, they can go unload in roll-off containers. And that should help customers who do have to go up to the top of the landfill they don't have to be navigating around smaller vehicles. Or if you're someone like me who just wants to do a weekend project and take some things landfill, I don't have to go up there around those big compactors now. I can stay down there closer to the gate. So there are some things included in that $1.2 million that would provide a significant customer service improvement.

Man, that's well said. I appreciate that. What does the rate look like if you increase this 24%, which sounds like a lot? What does that put us next to our competitors?

It would actually have us below where our competitors are at today. I don't know if they're intending on increasing their rates this year or not, but it would have us just slightly below that. OUR COMPETITORS WITHIN ONE CENT, I BELIEVE. OKAY. THANK YOU. YES, SIR.

APPRECIATE THAT. SORRY, ANDREW, BACK ON TO YOUR PRESENTATION.

SO THE NEXT FEES LISTED UP THERE WERE RELATED TO THE COST RECOVERY WORK THAT WAS DONE BASED ON OUR PRE-BUDGET WORKSHOP. SO YOU GOT VARIOUS DEPARTMENTS THAT CONTRIBUTED, CITY MARSHAL, ANIMAL MANAGEMENT, PLANNING HAD SOME SLIGHT INCREASES TO THEIR SUBMITTAL FEES, ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH, GOLF MADE SOME MAJOR ADJUSTMENTS. the two million supplemental requests some of it's factored in the revenue that's grown here that helps fund some of those increases as well on the next slide continues fire and fire marshal cost recovery and then you get into our utility fund and drainage funds we have water operating at eight percent increase uh sewer operating at eight percent increase and drainage operating at three percent And then we also have debt service rates built in as well. 3% on both the water and sewer side that would go toward the payment owed on the low interest loan for the 60 million wastewater loan from the state. And then 5% proposed for a fee to cover the debt service for a drainage bond that would go toward the two street projects, Osage and Coulter reconstruction and widening. Now on the next slide. This is the breakdown that shows where those dollars would be allocated based on the current proposal with all fees adjusted, VADR rate proposed. You've got a total going toward the personnel side of 5.7 million. You've got 55% allocated for police and fire, and then you've got 45% allocated to civilians, which is the green on the pie chart there. And then I've got it broken out. This is slightly changed based on the additional revenues we accounted for and the VADR rate. I did want to show you how we could allocate some additional certificate pay for police. That's $305,000. There is fire certificate pay adjustment of $258,000 and then fire reclass positions of $100,000. Those are related to reclasses to account for rank structure, because right now we have a significant amount of bump up out of class pay that we're already paying. So this is basically the difference that would just go ahead and pay them at their rates instead of having someone have to bump up and have kind of the payroll situation of tracking hours in a different classification. So this was something that came up in our meet and confer discussions. Once we dove into a little bit further, it wasn't as significant of a cost as we originally thought to do those reclasses.

Freeman, I know we saw the city of Lubbock pushing hard for pay raises, especially on their fire side. And so in those meet and confers, I know we were trying to stretch and do the ask was was far more than I think what you've got represented here. But yes, Give me the 1% amounts because this considers, so say for fire 1.45, that considers the full 3%, correct?

Yes, that is a full 3%.

So is it roughly $500,000 every percent? So if council was to say increase fire to 4%, you know.

Fire for 1%, my initial projections were $365,000.

365. What's 1% on police? $474,000. What's 1% on the rest of the organization?

$711,000.

Man, you're good. Okay. Thank you. Yes, sir.

SO THAT COVERS THE PERSONNEL SIDE OF THE PROPOSAL. THE NEXT SLIDE IS THE REMAINING SUPPLEMENTAL. THERE WERE STILL ABOUT TWO MILLION LEFT. I LOST MY SLIDE SHOW AGAIN. Okay, so this has the $2,092,000 that was remaining to allocate toward increased services, a little bit to police and fire overtime. So you got public safety combined that was seeing about 30% of the amount. General fund software was 29% because that was $600,000 total between HR and finances share of our annual workday subscription. And then you got parks making up the biggest share after that of 19% or 402,000. But really just a variety of areas of need that we tried to divvy up amongst the departments. This includes two AMW animal management officer additions, a new OEM emergency management specialist, a junior supervisor in AACC, code enforcing officers, which are the civilians in city marshal's office, getting them radios for public safety. Let's see here. The golf course supplemental is 357,000 that they would be able to allocate to their other needs. A new building safety electrical inspector, a new facilities building mechanic, two facilities custodians, and then an environmental health technician are the full-time employee additions. Then there's just different supply increases for vector program, janitorial, election supplies, and so forth. SO IT'S 2 MILLION 92 THAT WE ALLOCATE TOWARDS THESE REQUESTS FROM THE ORIGINAL DEPARTMENT REQUESTS OF 19 MILLION. THANK YOU, KRISTEN. Our next slide, we had a request to show the different E&I accounts that are in our CIP proposal. I've got some highlighted in green on there. Those are the ones that, over time, they have historically been funded right off the top as a portion of the property tax rate. So there was a calculation done at the time to fund 2.51 million for Streets E&I. And then Parks E&I is currently down to 922,000. It was actually I believe a little over 2 million, but they've used some of theirs for debt service, which has reduced it to 922,000. The remaining, WHILE HISTORICALLY HAVE BEEN FUNDED WITH ONE-TIME DOLLARS, THEY DO HAVE TO COME AND ASK THROUGH THE PROCESS AND ANNUAL APPROVAL THROUGH COUNCIL TO CREATE THESE ENIs. AMW IS ONE OF THE NEWEST. THE CURRENT BUDGET YEAR IS THE FIRST TIME THEY'VE HAD AN ENI. FACILITIES HAS REGULARLY HAD AN ENI, AND SO HAS TRAFFIC SIGNAL SYSTEMS. AND THEN AIRPORT CAPITAL PROGRAM ENI IS PRETTY MUCH A REGULAR OCCURRING AS WELL. Next slide is the personnel recurring new supplemental requests of the different funds. Just a reminder on those, you got utilities, drainage, IT, airport, fleet, solid waste, and civic center. Some of these are building in the 2% Cola and 1% merit fund those are the personnel increases and then the supplemental was the excess available to continue to either add staff or increase line items in their departments based on the growing expenses that they have in some of their areas. Next up is our one-time cast purchase CIP general fund. This is what you'd consider the year one of the CIP. We had a total request of $54 million, which is actually a little low because part of this list I took from recurring general fund asks, and I tried to shift as much as we could into one-time purchases. So you'll see examples on here of 70 tasers for APD, a five-year contract. I'm just showing a lump sum. We can hopefully get it for cheaper if we're paying it upfront versus a five-year annual lease payment. But that five-year contract would typically be built into the O&M, just recurring expense that would just be paid every year. But since we didn't have the capacity, we're just trying to fund it in one-time dollars. So we have a total of 13.9 million allocated here based on general fund. THE MAJORITY IS 38% GOING TO PUBLIC SAFETY NEEDS. THESE INCLUDE POLICE RADIO ENCRYPTION, TASERS, SWAT NIGHT VISION, A ROOK WITH TRAILER, PUBLIC SAFETY WELLNESS VEHICLES. WE'VE GOT CONTINUED FUNDING OF EMS CARDIAC MONITORS, CONTINUED FUNDING OF APARAS EQUIPMENT PURCHASES FOR THE FIRE DEPARTMENT, A COUPLE OF NEW TRUCKS FOR THE FIRE DEPARTMENT, AND THEN A NEW DRONE FOR THE FIRE MARSHAL'S OFFICE. And then we've got design only and some land acquisition for the fire department of a fire station six rebuild, land acquisition for fire, and then also design costs for the fire training facility multi-purpose classroom out at the airport. And then we also had the combined APD municipal court building master plan needs assessment is in there as well.

Mr. Freeman, can you go back to 14, two slides back? Yes, sir. I probably misheard you. So I understood streets E&I, parks E&I, solid waste E&I, property tax funded.

So solid waste would be rate funded. Streets and parks would have been coming from the tax rate side. And basically, that's been our historic direction from council is to go ahead and shave that right off the top of the property tax rate and build it into the CIP. And then everything else that you see here is basically Some of them appear to be recurring because they get asked for every year, but they're not guaranteed until council approves it.

Sure. The page 16 says one-time CIP general fund. We've got listed the streets E&I and the parks E&I again as one-time fund. Are you just listing them in both categories even though they are covered in the budget?

It's covered until one day a council decides to use that funding somewhere else. So it's not guaranteed per se. If you all had a different use for that $2 million recurring money, it could technically go to something else. But this has just been the historic usage of those funds for debt-paid funding.

Are you recommending that we one-time fund this through CIP this year and you loosen up the – Right now, no.

It is still proposed as one-time from the rate, but it's eating into your recurring –

It's not included in the 13.9 here. It is. It is. But it's also included in the property tax.

Well, it's funded from the property tax, but it's that transfer into a one-time CIP fund to pay for it.

So you're taking whatever that is, $3.4 million, and you're transferring it over to CIP so you can do the projects in a CIP fashion, but you're saying it's coming from the M&O rate.

Yes, exactly. And it's allocated right on the front end. We know as we go through the budget process not to allocate that recurring funding anywhere else because we know – Councils in the past have told us we want X amount for parks and X amount for streets, so basically don't touch that until absolutely necessary. So while it's recurring, the way it showed up is still in a CIP as that year's allocation, and a future council could change it on a year-to-year basis.

Okay. But built into the budget as presented? Correct. Okay. Yes, sir.

Thank you. And then the next biggest category is, of course, that streets at the 2.5 million at 18%, and then parks and rec at 16%, 2.2 million, and then traffic is next at 10% of the allocation. But similar to the 2 million in supplementals, trying to hit as many priorities as we can. A good number going towards traffic arterial signals, pavement markings, and also new traffic signal construction. Parks irrigation pump station and central console system was a really important project for them just to be able to more easily track all their irrigation systems throughout the various parks. We've got IT software built in here, 500,000, that would help get us a few years of software, even though it's only one-time funding, we can make that money stretch instead of having that recurring annual amount. Then on the next slide, we've got the one-time cash CIPs for the other funds, 13 million allocated for utilities, 3 million for solid waste, drainage, 800,000, Civic Center, 1.9, and Airport, 5.7.

So, Mr. Freeman, where does that money come from right now? Is that in existing CIP funds?

Yeah, some of it would be excess that could be rolled at one time. Some of it is rate-based as far as funding it.

So some of this CIP is funded on rates. So let's say solid waste is a good example, right? Right. You increase the rate to be able to go spend $1 million to replace trash cans, as an example, right? Correct. The utilities, that $13 million, is that mainly sewer and water?

Yes, that is sewer and water.

Not to be confused with utility billing, correct? Like this is all infrastructure, $13 million?

Yes, sir.

And those monies aren't from available fund balance. You're saying those are monies that are from where?

A portion could be available fund balance, and a portion would be just from the rate. We've had previous years rate increases that haven't been allocated the debt yet, so some of that could fund ongoing operations, and some of it could be funding CIP.

So some of your proposed rates, you have an 8% increase proposed? that funds one time, even though that would be a continual rate as we push it forward. So you're going to build into that rate CIP one-time funds in perpetuity. Yeah.

That's been the model of go ahead and increase the rate, use it for one time, but when the day comes, either for the wastewater plant project or CREMWA, your rate's already built. You'll just reduce your one time and add it to just ongoing debt payment. A portion of that 8%, I think it's around 5%, is just going to our criminal annual increase this year. We thought we'd have a little bit more for CIP projects, but since they're doing the same thing as us, they're trying to build annual capacity up to that ultimate rate for debt service. This was the first year in that program.

Okay. Okay.

And our next slide is our proposed debt schedule. On the general fund tax rate side of the budget, there is a fire apparatus continuing the program of buying new engines and ladders. There's a $6.2 million purchase proposed. This is the one that we've built the INS rate to basically sustain this rolling model. So it's really just minimal annual adjustments to accommodate the purchases. And then on the street side, we've got $42.5 million for summer maintenance, around $12 million the remainder for two RTL reconstruction projects, which would be Osage and Coulter. And speaking with our bond counsel and financial advisors, we really have the ability, since these are 24-month builds, that we could issue it over two years, and that would allow us to adjust our tax rate to kind of keep it steady instead of seeing a large spike. Right now we're projecting that it'd only be maybe a one cent increase, but once the time came to actually issue the debt, we would have further analysis and know maybe we would propose to do a little less summer maintenance so we can completely keep it flat, or council may decide it's still worth it to go ahead and increase it one penny to accomplish 42.5 million compared to in the past that it might only accomplish 20 million. So that's options, but FORTUNATELY, THAT ONE, WE'LL SHOW IT IN THE CIP, BUT IT WOULD BE A SPRING DEBT ISSUANT, SO THERE WOULD BE MORE TIME TO DISCUSS THE DETAILS ON THAT ONE. AS FAR AS THE UTILITIES FUND FEE IMPACTS FOR THE BUDGET, IT'S RELATED TO THE $60 MILLION TWDB LOAN PROJECT. Drainage Fund, the only proposal is related to the RTL reconstruction projects of Osage and Coulter. So $9.5 million could also be issued over two years to cover that debt service payment. We're not able to do a combined debt issuance. We really have to split it up because streets can't play for drainage and vice versa. So that's why you see it listed twice for basically the same project. And then the last one is our fleet fund, but this is covered by operations and maintenance charges from all the various departments that fund into fleet. So they're going to be purchasing 8.5 million in fleet replacements, no impact to the INS or rates associated with that one. And the last slide to kind of wrap up where we are before getting feedback is our future budget priorities. Of course, continue to address aging infrastructure, whether it's streets, water, sewer facilities, drainage, and other city facilities. WORKING ON PLANS FOR EXPANSION OF CITY SERVICES TO ADDRESS GROWTH, WHETHER THAT'S NEW STAFFING AND PUBLIC SAFETY FOR COVERAGE OF THEIR BEATS IN DIFFERENT AREAS ACROSS TOWN OR IT'S A NEW FIRE STATION. AFTER FIRE STATION 14 IS BUILT, THERE ARE STILL MULTIPLE AREAS THAT COULD USE A FIRE STATION FOR COVERAGE, SO THAT'S PART OF THE MASTER PLAN WE'VE BEEN WORKING ON WITH THE FIRE DEPARTMENT. CONTINUE TO ADDRESS STAFFING, RECRUITMENT, AND RETENTION FOR PUBLIC SAFETY AND ALL CITY PERSONNEL. THAT PUBLIC SAFETY IS A GOOD ONE. THAT'S CONTINUING WITH THE CONVERSATION WITH MEET, CONFER, WHETHER IT'S FIRE OR POLICE AND ADDRESSING FOR WHAT WE CAN DO TO ACCOMMODATE FURTHER INCREASES OR CHANGES TO HOW THE DEPARTMENT OPERATES BASED ON NOW WE KNOW THAT LUBBOCK IS GOING A CERTAIN DIRECTION WITH THEIR SHIFTS AND THE WAY THEY OPERATE, WHICH WILL MAKE IT CHALLENGING ON THE RECRUITMENT OR RETENTION SIDE OF THE FIRE DEPARTMENT IN PARTICULAR. And then continue to maintain current service level citywide as we continue to grow and have the labor market become more competitive. And then that last one on the far right is continue to evaluate if we're hitting the point that we need to go to the voters for a specific request to make either major additions to the public safety areas or other areas of our budget that just aren't able to be accommodated under the VADR 3.5% tax rate collection. And that completes my presentation. We do have a feedback from council slide here. These are just a refresher of the dates. This afternoon we'll be setting that maximum tax rate in the public hearing. September 22nd will be the first reading of the budget and the tax ordinances. And then September 29th will be public hearing and second readings of the budget tax ordinance and the ratification vote by city council. So really the remainder of our time is just to get final input, direction, property tax rate that we can focus on so we're better prepared for that September 22nd meeting with the final version of the budget for y'all.

I would, on page 19, the one thing that I would like to maybe put out for consideration is because this is going to happen one way or another, less dependency on property tax to operate the city. We're either by choice or by force. We're going to be able to do it. But to me, the question is, okay, where are we going? And property tax, unless I'm mistaken, will property tax help us catch up with all these needs?

It'd need to be a significant property tax increase.

It'd have to be a significant property tax, and it's going to have to be one that's approved by voters. That can always be finicky, but putting odds on being able to deal with the aging infrastructure, expanding services, staffing recruitment and retention, the dependence on property taxes to pay for those is going to be a challenge, unless I'm mistaken. So I guess part of what I think we need to look at is, and this is not for today, but just that we put on the list, what other revenue sources can we look at? And to me, sales tax has got to be one that we, you know, I think we just kind of say, okay, we get the sales tax that comes in, whatever happens, happens. But, you know, what do we need to be doing and what can we do? I mean, we're fortunate when I look at other cities that, you know, we've got, you know, we're, I think we're number, when I look at, we're number 12 in the state, we're, we're over the top 20. We're, we're doing pretty good on the sales tax. That's something, but, but what can we do? What can the community to do? Because I think if we're going to look at there, there's no cap on increasing that each year. You know, what strategies can be done? Because I don't see any other way unless you're going to fees, whatever else it may be. But it seems to me that sales tax is something that could benefit from some considerable attention on how we can increase it moving forward.

That's going to be a big question that the state as they discuss it, because I think they keep coming up with plans to reduce the property tax, but they don't come up with what's going to fund it on the alternate side, whether maybe there's a plan for the state to increase their sales tax rate. I've not heard anything being discussed as far as that's concerned.

You know, your sales tax is your only other significant revenue stream that doesn't have, I'll say, kind of a backside. All of your fees have a backside. There's always a balancing of, is this fee more than we need for the cost? Is this fee unreasonable? Who's this fee impacting? Is it a certain segment, or is it all citizens equally? So those fees have a backside that makes them difficult to just increase. But sales tax is the one that doesn't have a backside, necessarily. It's strictly... what our community produces. I've been talking to a few individuals recently, getting out, talking to some individuals about shop local campaigns that they'll be trying to pursue here soon. And of course, we as a city, we encourage that, because if you shop locally, the money stays here. And so I'm looking at ways of seeing how we can participate in that effort to help encourage that effort in our community. But yes, sales tax is the one that doesn't have that backside that other fees and other revenue streams of significance have for us.

Well, and I know we don't know what the state's going to do, but we know they're pushing for less dependence on property tax. But what we don't know in that, in how they're going to make up for that, is how dependent is that city on, you know, what's their budget based on, how much is property tax, you know, based on that. So it's, you know, I don't know if it's going to be equal. Nobody knows. I don't think, like you said, they keep coming up with – proposed solutions, but none of them work. So the greater the city is relying on property taxes, I would have to believe they can't just cut that completely because then that city couldn't function. So, you know, if we're saying, you know, by choice or by force, I don't know that it's great that we continue to reduce our dependence on that when they're already they're gonna do it anyway, but if our piece of the pie that they're gonna give out, whatever that is, increase in sales tax or whatever it is, to maintain our organization, I think it's important as well.

Yeah, the state has a conundrum on their hands because, remember, most cities in the state of Texas are not our size. Most of them do not have the retail or industrial base that we have. So most cities are dependent on property tax. And so the state has to figure out how do they keep those communities afloat. If they were to take property tax away, most small towns don't have the sales tax we do. And so even us, as we see in our budget, it would be a large hole to fill. It could be it's it'd be hard to hurt hard amount, but we could figure out a way But most towns will have that so yeah, the state's got to figure out a way to make those communities whole through this process and And they haven't announced that yet. They keep talking about property tax relief, but they really haven't given us a way forward yet. So again, TML, they'll be busy trying to address those as they occur. As bills come up, we start analyzing them. They start doing the math, and then TML will take action on our and other community's behalf.

Can we go to page seven? So I want to make sure I'm following along. What is the TIF, captured value? What is T-I-F? That's tiers.

Yeah, tax increment financing or tax increment reinvestment zone.

So that's our allocation that goes to those three zones. So it looks to me like when they do that NNR calculation, they remove that amount. I noticed down at the bottom of the page, if you go to the far right over there, you see you have a less. Tears taxes of 1.2 million. So because they take it out up at the top and they don't calculate it, I understand it not to be a deduction in the end. So like essentially what I would ask is. The NNR no new revenue rate is a rate that a municipality shall pass. That will bring in the same amount of revenues as the previous year. On the same taxable values. On the same taxable values, that's right. So you've already taken out the tiers values. Then if you take the 1.2 off the bottom line, you've deducted it twice because we've already pulled it out. So I'd like to double check that, make sure that that's correct. Because in conversating with Mrs. McMurray over at Randall County, she's assured me that that NNR rate would be equal to the NNR rate or I'm sorry, would be equal to the revenues that we'll produce this year.

So those are two different ways of showing the information on this slide. At the top, that's your taxable value of the TIF. At the bottom, that's the amount of taxes that's getting removed.

Yep. And I follow you there.

It's not doubling it up.

Well, I'm not sure, though, because like the taxable value rate sets that rate. So the seventy nine total is everything put back in. So those tax ceilings are added back in plus the NNR rate of seventy million. And it's already factored in. So if you take a 1.2 million line item deduction off the bottom line, you're reducing. So that projection there is 57 million. And I'm curious why it's not 60.5 million.

so i we we met with her late friday after because because i had learned that uh that i think y'all met and so we went over because i was i was concerned that she is she saying something that we weren't aware of but she assured us that no it does not guarantee the same revenue um that's strictly she said she isn't she doesn't do the revenue side of things well she said she sets the she helps us determine the rate but she said that that the new revenues are not necessarily going to be the exact same

So the rate itself should vary in order to produce the same revenues in the calculation.

Well, so if you work your way through Section 1 of the Truth in Taxation form, it starts off with last year's total tax of value, then pulls out all your exemptions, which are your ag, your timberland, Your tiers or we call it TIF in the form, all your homestead, your frozen, it takes those out and it gives you your adjusted value from that point. Again, some people have not qualified for a new exemption they didn't have in last year. It then does the same math on this year's taxable value. And so then it compares that with what that revenue would have been under this current base. And from everything I've seen, sometimes it's more, sometimes it's the same, sometimes it's less. But it all depends on the special mixture of exemptions, homesteads, improvements. It's a mixture of lots of things that ultimately produce that revenue for us.

Right. And then that calculation needs to be accurate in order for us to know that the The tax ceilings were taken out. They were put back in. The tiers was pulled out. It was put back in. Then you get the additional monies of just the new property. Redundant factor of part of that NNR. I would like to discuss the numbers that I'm looking at. I'm looking at a page that she gave you guys. This is what Mrs. McMurray produced. City of Amarillo tax estimates. Now, it's just an estimate, and I'm not trying to hold her or her office accountable for saying this is how much money you'll have. And we also conservatively budget when we start factoring in a 98.5% collection rate. So we're already going to back it down. But if you look at the projection, right, there's another one, you know, the city of Amarillo, all funds, their projections. We estimated in 26 we would bring in $82.3 million. We're estimating in 27, we'll bring in 82.6 million at the NNR rate. That's only a 300, $1,000 increase based on the new taxable values. So basically the no new revenue rate would produce the exact same revenues as the year before, just like it states. So if we take this, her page here shows line 22, which is the very difficult. problem of the $16.7 billion in taxable values, that produces a no new revenue of $70.4 million. Then if you go to the VATER, that produces $74.7 million. That's previous to tax ceilings. If you take the tax ceilings and you add those back in, that's roughly 10.2 million. And you're going to be at the no new revenue rate, you know, 80.6 roughly. And that's the projection. So what we would then do if we could agree, like, yeah, we're looking at bringing in $80 million conservatively for the year on all property tax at the no new revenue rate. Then we would back out our INS side for all of our debt service. That would give us the amount that we would have in the M&O general fund. Follow? So if I could work a math problem with me, Mr. Freeman, tell me where my math is wrong. So if we said $57.1 million was the total of expected M&O on the no new revenue rate. Are you going off her sheet? No, I'm going on your sheet. So back to page seven, that $57.1 million is what you're telling me I would have to work with on M&O.

Oh, on the no new revenue rate? Uh-huh. Okay, I see what you mean.

So no new revenue. You're saying if we pass that after we factor everything and we take out for tears again, we'd end up with 57 million, right? Plus, then we would add back in our debt service. And I believe the debt service has been stated as 20.903. So we take 21 million, add it to 57 million, right? 78 million? versus what our projections are of 82.3 for this year? Where are you getting our projected numbers for this year? From her second worksheet, City of Amarillo Tax Estimates here. Oh, she didn't give us that one. Oh, I'm sorry. Go to City of Amarillo Current Levy. So once again, you've got to take that 82.3 million total and factor in your 98.5% collection rate. And I just want to make sure we're adding it up right. So I'm understanding that the M&O no new revenue rate should be around $60 million. If you go to your budget workbook, You have 61.9 budgeted, is that right, Freeman?

In current budget?

Mm-hmm. And that's your vater, which is, according to what you guys presented last, $700,000 additional from the no new revenue rate, the way I now understand it. There's a $700,000 difference in passing the no new revenue rate from passing the Vader. Right, correct. So you've got 61.9 in your budget workbook at the Vader. You would be projecting in my budget roughly 61.2 at the no new revenue rate.

Based on the new calculation you just ran?

Yeah, I'm just taking the $700,000. So I'm just looking at what you've presented. You guys have presented in the budget.

We were showing $61.3 million. I apologize. So not $61.9. Right.

So $60.5 million, which is right in line with where... I understand we're going to land if you run her numbers. And these are projections. So, you know, Christina McMurray not responsible for what people do and don't pay. And we still need to factor conservatively, right? But there's a $3.5 million difference here, roughly. Let's call it a $3 million difference. 1.2 of it, I believe, is when we're deducting the tiers after it's already been factored in the calculation. So I would say we could look at that 1.2 million, maybe that doesn't need to be a line item deduction.

Just to update you, the tiers is what the state of Amarillo pays into tiers. So that has to be removed from what we'll get as revenue. So we have different entities paying into tiers. The number we show is what we pay into tiers, which reduces what we get for M&O.

Dr. O, right now, I'M JUST TRYING TO RUN THE REVENUE SIDE AND I DON'T WANT TO MUDDY THE WATER WITH EXPENDITURES. SO IN CALCULATING OUR TOTAL REVENUES, LET ME NOT BRING IN EXPENDITURES YET FOR LIKE DEBT SERVICE OR PAYING TIERS OR POLICE AND FIRE.

BUT WE DO HAVE TO BRING IN TIERS BECAUSE WE LOSE THAT REVENUE SINCE WE DON'T WE HAVE TO PAY INTO THE TIERS PROGRAM OURSELVES IN ADDITION TO AMARILLO COLLEGE, THE OTHER ENTITIES THAT PAY INTO TIERS. SO IT'S A REDUCTION ON THE REVENUES AVAILABLE FOR OUR M&O.

OKAY. CAN WE COME BACK TO THAT ONE? BECAUSE I KNOW I'M JUST ASKING THE QUESTION OF DOES THE $1.2 MILLION NEED TO BE A LINE ITEM DEDUCTION? I KNOW YOU'RE ESTABLISHING THAT YOU BELIEVE YES BASED ON THE FACT THAT IT'S AN EXPENDITURE. BUT RIGHT NOW, YOU'RE SHOWING ME MY REVENUES.

IT'S NOT AN EXPENDITURE. IT'S A REDUCTION IN REVENUE.

Okay, so we don't pay into the tiers. The tiers is paid into from the tax assessor? I mean, it gets distributed through the City of Amarillo, or it gets distributed directly to the tiers? It gets distributed by the City of Amarillo, and then we bill the other partners for their share of it. Okay, so if that's the case, it's being deducted in our calculations for our no new revenue rate.

For all our revenue flows, they'll be deducted?

So they capture the amount of tiers value that's increased, they tax that separate, they put it back in. So you're saying it's up in the $79.2 million total? Right there, if you look at your page on page 7 up at the top, total taxes, you're saying $79.2 at the no new revenue rate?

Yes.

Okay. So I'm just asking a question. I don't know whether the 1.2 needs to be paid out as an expenditure from the city. I'm learning here, but then the 70.2 million is still below what I mean, I guess that's probably the percentage, the 98.5%.

One thing I learned meeting with Ms. McMurray and her assistant, Sydney, I think is what her name, I mean, there's a valuable asset there. So all they gave us was this sheet there. It sounds like you have some more information there. Yeah, yeah, I'll hand it to you. Can I look at that? Sure.

So in getting the calculation right, there's another side of this that I would like to ask why Mr. Path goes through that. So on looking at our debt service, the $20.9 million, that's the debt that's paid for all of those items out of the debt fund, right? And so do you guys have the budget where you could pull that up? And I don't know if we could put it on the screen. Yeah, can we get it on the screen? Potentially. Mrs. Coggins? When we get there, I don't have page numbers on mine, but it's back at the very back. So it's like 1,000, page 1,034, somewhere in there. So I want to make sure that the amount that we gave to Randall County, the 20.9 million, is the correct amount. So you guys spoke with bond counsel, so did I, Mr. Adams. I think he gave you the same document he gave me. And so what I did was I just called bond counsel and asked him, you know, what's the total amount we're going to pay you? And he gave me those amounts, but then I had to go through and break them out so that they were broken out like our budget. So you have general obligation bonds that make up the 20.9. And then you have, you know, other debt service from like PIDs and all that. So to make sure I'm looking at the numbers correctly, He broke out his worksheet. So, Grayson, you guys probably saw this one as well. He emailed this to you. And here, I'll jump to the bottom line here. If I look at the amounts, because I just went through and added them up and made sure this was included, that was not. So, there's one item over here, like the second to last page of your budget. Maybe it's third to... And 4th to last page fleet services fund, so the fleet services fund has series 2026 in it for 1.184. and 622 000 those are the debt payments on series 2022b if you look at the previous page those two amounts are also entered in our general obligation bond debt so series 2026 same amount one point 184 and then down there series 2022 b erp monies 622 000 so i'm curious if we've booked them in two different places and miss katrina is there a double payment like do we have to pay that twice no you don't pay it twice you pay for different purposes so you have to add it all together to get the full bond because we had different purposes in that issuer so we split the bond apart

Due to its purpose. So fleet will pay its part. City will pay for the city hall parts. Okay. So it's coded different per the piece. Okay.

So, so what bond council shows.

And they will show a whole issuance, not necessarily per purpose.

Yeah, so bond council doesn't show that in two different areas. And I may just not have asked the right question. So I've got general obligation tax supported debt here that let me double check it and make sure it does not show that fleet.

It should add to the 20.9.

Yeah, so it's not included in his total. So Bond Council's total payment is $19,700,000. We are stating the total payment as 20.9. $1.2 million difference. I was hoping the difference was we've pulled over monies that are getting paid from fleet transfers into our general obligation. So when I asked bond counsel, do those two notes belong here on my general obligation bond debt? He said no, they're excluded in that $19.7 million. Can we get clarification from Bond Council? Maybe it is, like you're saying, Katrina, there's another payment on that series, and it comes from both. You know, a lot like you did City Hall. So City Hall's paid half out of what? Sewer and water half out of go so you see that two point five double right, but it's a five million dollar payment You're telling me this payment is one point one eight four plus one point one eight four for that one note Okay, and if different purpose yeah, and if that's the case then then we I'm good with Moving forward can we get with bond council and check that because that's not what is written on that and he gives our total over there. It says estimated tax supported debt 19.776 and he also has the total of 18.273 previous year. So every number that I'm looking at from you guys adds up with that, but then fleet services was not addressed there. So I just would need to see if there's a fleet services debt. FOR THAT. I HAD ASKED EARLIER FOR THE TRANSFERS IN. IF YOU GO BACK TO WHENEVER WE GET THAT, WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE BUDGET, YOU'VE GOT YOUR TOTAL REVENUES, AND IT SHOWS TRANSFERS 8.013 million estimated, and then in proposed 27, 7.990. Can we get a breakdown on what those transfers are? And the reason being on that, when you pull the PIDs, there's 10 issuances, the solid waste, the golf course, tiers one, fleet, and airport, total tax supported debt, was 4.5 million. And then I noticed we're estimating transfers of 7.9 million. So when I asked Mr. Adams, I just said, is that a good thing to maybe move more money into that account? Because that would give us a higher reserve or an additional fund balance at the end. He said no. He'd rather see it in the general fund account. So I would like to know if the 7.9 is exact amount for debt service and what all that is.

And we have that breakdown for you. Now understand, when we transfer the money to be paid out of Fund 3200, so it's just a transfer in, the water sewer is still responsible for water sewer. Right. It's just moving it to everything to be paid from the exact same place.

And I'm sure the numbers probably add up. I just can't see them. Sure. And then on that, we have a little bit more money. I guess as proposed from what we're paying out, if that was the case.

On the TNT?

Yes. Then the goal would be to treat the NNR rate of, let's say it's 79 million for NNR, less the amount of the 20.9 or the 19.7. Now he shows the 19.7 as general obligation. So can you tell me why we would back off the 20.9 if it is the 19.7 from debt council?

I'm going to have to pull up his worksheet to see what we have versus what he doesn't. I'm believing it's probably the loan that we have with Frost for the City Hall. But I'd have to verify.

Okay. Yeah, and I know I've got the City Hall piece for the 2.5 included in the 19.776. So essentially, Council, what I'm hoping to do here is to just maximize our efforts with The no new revenue rate is just a consideration. But we need to know, is that no new revenue rate going to bring in 60 plus million? Or is that no new revenue rate going to bring in 57 million? There's a $3 million, $3 point something million difference there. And I'm sure if we let these guys work on this before our meeting today at 3, we could put that together and know. Because I think the way you're presenting it to me makes sense if I factor in my expenditure side. But I'm just trying to get revenues. I still haven't landed on the revenues yet. So if I just read what you've produced here, I would feel like if I voted for the no new revenue rate, it's only going to revenue 20.9M for INS and it's only going to revenue 57.1M for me. And then that's going to leave me 4M short in my asks that we've got presented. So if it's not that way it is sixty point five we skip up three million dollars there and then just being hopeful maybe we've got transfers because those are monies that come in and no property taxes or fees then they're being transferred over to the debt service fund and paid out to I. S. But if they're not factored in the 20.9, there's still debts that we have to satisfy. So would love it if there were a couple million dollars that we didn't have to transfer over. So I'd be looking for the exact amounts to line up that total that 7.990685. Is that something we could get before our three o'clock? That's great. On the revenue side, I know we've asked it, but just to summarize it, want to know if tiers is paid, deducted to be factored, and then paid. Like why would it be deducted and then paid? Right. We'll double check that. Okay. Is there anything? I know I got a few confusing looks, so I just want to make sure that I'm not confusing anybody in like those four items that I'm looking for.

All good? I think we're good.

Okay. Super. Council, y'all got anything else? No? Councilman Reed, you good over there? Okay. Mr. Freeman, what else you got to go over?

Nothing else on our end. We are, Grayson stepped out to take a phone call. We were evaluating some numbers too because the way the truth and calculation, truth and taxation calculation works, they don't factor in your frozen taxes. So we're the ones that have to bring that back in based on PRAD values. But we're double checking our numbers split that between O&M and INS because they don't do it for us as part of their rate. So we think that may also be part of the difference in some of the calculations. So I discovered that this morning when I was finalizing my presentation. That's why I was a couple minutes late. So we're double checking that as well that may factor into all of this.

Yeah, essentially, you know, bottom line, it's hard to come in and say, well, we expected to collect $82 million this year in taxes. And that's where we should land, right? And we collect most all of them. Then you look down at your page and It's $80.4 million at the no new revenue rate. So how are we taking that $2 million deduct right off the front end? And it was explained to me, well, that's sales tax calculation. Well, no, that's just on the VADR, right? Then it's, well, these tax ceilings, no, those all come back in separate. And then I think really where you get to it's like, well, it's the tears. Well, that's part of that 80.4Million. We already took that out. In the previous year, so, I mean, you wouldn't have a 2Million dollar deduct in tears or 1.2Million. Down here, right? I mean, we're saying we're going to pay tears the 1.2Million, but what did we pay him last year?

It would have been a little less than that because it grows based on improvements.

Yeah, so it's just the net-net effect of how do we net 2 million difference if, let's say, it was a $100,000 difference payment. I mean, they're the same expenditures year after year. So I really appreciate y'all digging into that and would like to look through that. Councilman?

Where are we on where we're going to finish on sales tax with the latest I know that was something that we were looking at and modifying, but as the budget stands right now, what's our total revenue amount estimated to finish in 25 and 26?

I'll let Justin pull that. We'll find out tomorrow how our last payment looks, so that may factor in with what we bring back to you on the 22nd. But we've got our closest estimate.

Only other thing that I think would be really good to hear today, based on the two differences, there's a $4.3 million difference that everybody agrees with, right? The difference from no new revenue to Vader.

Okay, but I need clarification on this because he, y'all just stated that the difference was 700,000.

That was our original calculation.

Okay, so that is not correct. The correct, what you have here is the difference in general fund collections is 4.3 million between the VADR and the no new revenue rate, correct?

on my scenario spreadsheet, it should be $4.2 million. $4.1 million. Because you have the positive almost $700,000 that you have to deduct first before you start going to the negative.

But to be clear, the difference is $4.1 million. It's not $700,000. Between the two rates.

Between the two rates. Between the two rates as we've currently presented, yes.

So I'm curious, though, like if you flip over to your next page, page eight, you know, you go from the 60.5 VADR rate, which if you go to page eight, like I think if y'all could blow that up, it says it exactly the way I'm saying it. The VADR rate

It's showing a reduction from 61.2 previous year to 60.5 in the proposed.

But you're saying that's the VADR rate, 60.5? Yes. But if you go to our current projections, that's what we're bringing in currently, 60.5. And if there's a $4.1, $4.2 million difference, I should go. from the 60.5 to the 64.5?

Oh, the first columns are proposed 61.2 and your previous budget's the 60.5 for a difference of 679.

Right, so the no new revenue rate is the previous budget. Is what I'm saying. That's the amount that you'd have to charge. Whatever that rate is doesn't matter if it's 42 or 43 cents, but that's the beta rate is how we're showing it. But only revenue we're showing the 57.1. But and that's what I'm saying is the middle column here says 26. budgeted M&O revenues at 43 cents. The no new revenue rate is whatever rate for the same properties in order to produce that same amount of money, 60.5 million. The Vader rate should be 4 point something million on top of that. Can we get, like, Something solid right here on that? Because I think as we run scenarios and you've done a due diligence in breaking down, here's the things you'd have to get rid of, like maybe not. You know, I mean, that no new revenue rate will bring in 60.5 million. Yes, ma'am.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, no, I'm done.

I just wanted to add that when we did the TNT calculations, the rate doesn't necessarily translate into that same revenue level as last year's. It translates into a lower revenue level, and that's what we tried to explain before, that we have other things that come into play. to reduce the revenue level at the new revenue rate, such as the reduced certified values and the differences between the tiers payments, so that factors into getting a lower revenue level than expected.

Why would that rate not be adjusted to, I know the other variables there, right? We understand the other variables, but I think what Mayor's trying to get at is why is that rate not adjusted to revenue the 60.5 like it was last year? And I think that comes down to the definition of the no new revenue. I don't think anybody understands this, and I think we all had a revelation last time of, you know, I guess it can't produce any additional revenue, but it can certainly produce less revenue, I think is what we got to. And I don't know that that is accurate when we talked to Christina that said that that was, it's not accurate.

We're double checking because I really think it's going to come down to our frozen taxes and how that split up between INS and M&O and then also how much we are allocating for our INS rate because the way the 10 cents is calculated was based on 16 million debt service because of excess debt collections. We're still plugging in the 20.9, which would be a few million more. It could be that 3 million that we're collecting on the INS side that's not really part of the rate. So that's what we're triple checking that now. So there may be a good chance that it does come closer to breaking even like we initially thought.

Do we have a calculator that we can put up on the screen? I don't know if we have that. I mean, it's super nice to see the math. So if we just take what... Christina McMurray has to do her job, right? Her job is to take us from 25 billion in total property down to the 20 billion and then back out all of the tax ceilings and everything, do those adjustments to get us to the 16.7 billion. If y'all run that, just run 16.7 billion times 0.421 per hundred. So take two zeros off. of the 16.7 billion and you come up with 70.4 million. That's our actual revenue at the no new revenue rate. Then you add in the tax ceilings on top of that. And that item is 10 plus million dollars. So the no new revenue rate, you're gonna have to really teach us on this. We don't understand how you're getting the 57 million. You only got 20.9 maximum in INS, which, you know, could be 19.7. Let's hope, right?

Mayor, if I could real quick, I've been looking at this, and could we take a break real quick? So I'll regroup the team real quick. And so I want to explore more real quick as a team what she gave you.

I'm good to, if you want, we could adjourn, come back at 1 for a

Yeah, because we have lunches ready right now.

Yeah, I'm good to leave it here and take it up at 3. I know we put it on the agenda for a discussion item. So, I mean, I've listed about four items there and would be greatly helped if we could revisit this during discussion.

Yeah, because I know meeting with her, I mean, what she told us was there's many ways to calculate the revenues. And so she says that's what she was relaying to you all. So I want to sit down with the team real quick and see what she's saying here because this INS thing, we want to look at that.

If there's many ways, then let's look at more than one. If there's many legal ways to do this, to arrive at this number, then we would like options. If there is a way, which is the right way, and this is just what the numbers are, then I think we can see it on her rate calculation. But what I would like to do, we'll have Mrs. McMurray here at 3. That way she can speak to it, and we won't be inferring anything. on her behalf. But that's the number one foundational piece for everything else we're fixing to discuss and give you direction on. And without that $4 million difference, how are we to tell you what to keep and what to let go?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me give us about 30 minutes and I can circle up with you real quick and we can talk.

Love it. Okay. Council, y'all got anything else before we break for lunch? Mr. McWilliams, we are closing this meeting, and then we'll – Did we find out what the sales tax – Current projection is $89 million without the updated September numbers.

So we're tracking it's still going to be right around $90 million. Oh, and say that again. That's your sales tax, right? Sales tax for to date.

Okay.

And we're projecting 3% on top of that.

So when we started the budget, we were at $87.5. And so since then – I mean, if we – If we did not have this extra sales tax, how were we going to make this budget work as it is? Right.

Yeah. Right.

We would have figured out how to do without some things. Okay. Thank you.

Councilman Prescott, I see you. Just want to double check before we adjourn if you had anything you needed.

You're on mute right now.

Yeah, he said thumbs up. Okay, let's go ahead and adjourn the meeting. Thank you for participating. We'll come back here at 1 to begin our afternoon. Thank you. OK. I'd like to recognize the quorum, officially call ourselves to end the order or the session. Mr. City Attorney, to read us in.

I'd be glad to, Mayor. Pursuant to the Tax Open Meetings Act, a closed session of the Amarillo City Council was announced on September the 8th, 2026, at 103 p.m. under the following authorities. Section 551.072, discuss purchase exchange, lease sale, or value of real property. Public discussion of such will not be in the best interest of the city's bargaining position. Section 551.087, discuss commercial financial information received from existing business or business prospect. which the city is negotiating for the location or retention of the facility or for incentives the city is willing to extend or financial information submitted by the same thank you Time is 2.18. The executive session has been concluded. All right.

Ms. Kristen, how you look back there? Good. Mr. City Manager, you got everything you need for today's meeting? Yes, sir. Okay. We're going to go ahead and recognize a quorum in here, reconvene the meeting at 3.02 here, and open everything up. We've successfully completed an exec session. We come to the part in our meeting where we get to pray. We get to give a couple pledges of allegiance. So if you guys wouldn't mind standing to your feet while Shane Wiley comes up to give the invocation. Thank you, sir.

Thank you. Would you pray with me? Father, your word tells us that one thing that you love to say yes to is our request for more wisdom. And so in our proceedings today, would you give us wisdom? Would you not just give us wisdom as serpents, but also help us to be innocent as doves in all that we do and seek to accomplish here? God, we thank you for this opportunity and this chance to come together to conversate and determine what is best for our city. We're thankful for this city that you've given us to live in. May we steward it well. Thank you for Jesus. It's in his name we pray. Amen.

We have one proclamation that we get to present to emergency management of Mr. Max Dunlap and company. Will you come up? We're going to join you downstairs.

Our proclamation today is for National Preparedness Month. Whereas National Preparedness Month serves as a reminder that we all must take action to prepare now and throughout the year for the types of emergencies that could affect us where we live, work, and visit, and whereas emergency preparedness is the responsibility of every citizen to ensure that individuals, families, and our community are prepared for emergencies, and whereas investing in the preparedness of ourselves, our families, and our businesses can reduce the number of casualties and the economic devastation in our community and in our nation, Whereas all citizens of Amarillo are encouraged to participate in the community preparedness and resilience engagement to learn more about emergency preparedness and opportunities to volunteer and develop skills from our community's emergency response, volunteer and faith-based organizations. Now, therefore, we mayor and city council members of the city of Amarillo do hereby proclaim the month of September 2026 as National Preparedness Month in Amarillo, Texas, and encourage all citizens to resolve to be ready by being informed, making a plan, building a kit, and getting involved to make our community more prepared for disasters.

APPRECIATE MAYOR COUNSEL FOR THIS PROCLAMATION. I WISH I COULD HAVE BROUGHT THE WHOLE TEAM TODAY. UNFORTUNATELY WE'RE STILL DOING SOME RECOVERY ACTIVITIES FROM RECENT EVENTS OVER THE LAST YEAR. But it's a very special time of year for every citizen to make it a personal priority in life to protect themselves, their family, and their surroundings. And it is a blessing to serve a team. That is its sole purpose, is doing that, is serving our community every day, day in, day out, 24-7, 365. We literally work underground, so you may, this might be the first time you've seen any of our team. Most likely will be the only time. Usually when you see my face, it's never a positive thing that has happened. So it is a great thing that we get to honor such an amazing team that I get to serve for those who take it their personal responsibility and passion in life to wake up every day and serve you all. So thank you very much.

Three, two, one.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for letting us do that. It's always good to honor that crew. There's a few more of them over there and we always tell them even though we keep them in the basement, we hadn't forgot about them. That's just because it's the easiest place to be safe and prepared, right? So thank you all for letting us do that. We're going to move our agenda items forward here. Do we have any announcements? No? OK. We're going to move into discussion items. We are currently working on item 4.2. We had a meeting this morning at 11. And so with some recalculations, we don't know if it'll be ready as soon as we're done with item 4.1. If it is, we'll take it up. if not then what we we're probably going to do is do public comment and then we'll come back for agenda item 4.2 so staff if you just let us know once we get that ready then it'll cue it item 4.1 chief hover if i could get you to come up here and help us understand maybe some of the controls and capabilities that our city security system has thank you You're going to run it, or you want them to run it?

Is it all part of the same ? Maybe. So good afternoon, Mayor and Council. A few weeks ago, I was asked to provide some information on one of the topic items to purchase Verkata cameras. And there's some questions that came up. And so here we are talking about a presentation So to kind of give you an overview of what the presentation is, because I know there's going to be questions along the way. It's about 17 slides. And it goes into a very, a myriad of different things. One, I'm going to talk about why we use the cameras at the beginning holistically overall. Going to go into four different kinds of cameras that we use. And then I'm going to talk about some discussion items that have happened across the country. And then I'll wrap it up at the end there. So I know you guys are going to have questions throughout that. Just kind of give you the layout of what that presentation looks like. So the whole purpose of what we're trying to do is provide public safety. And the idea behind what we're doing is so we can utilize our resources in the most effective way that we possibly can. And that's how we use this camera systems, all of them together. Now, the four camera systems that I'm going to talk about today, they're each distinctly different, but they are a camera. One's the body-worn camera, an in-car camera, automatic license plate readers, and traffic cameras. Again, while I mentioned they are a sensor and they collect that information, each one of them is distinctly different. And they all have different retention periods. It's like the first one, for instance, body-worn cameras. Amarillo's been using that, I believe, since 2016, 2015, if I can remember correctly. And then the in-car cameras, same vendor, it's Axon, but the system works together. And then the next is the license plate readers, and we'll go into more depth on each one of these, but that, too, is a seven-day retention period, and we have two different systems, Axon and Flock. And then finally, the traffic cameras, and that's really been focused on... It started way back when, when the traffic department started having traffic cameras at different intersections. The police department has continued to add to that. And the system that we use, particularly the camera, is a Verkada camera. And those are just replacing some of the old ones as we move forward. So let's start off with a body-worn camera. Everyone knows what it is for the most part. There's different retention periods based upon how the officer collects that information, meaning when they have an interaction with the community member, that camera gets activated, whether it's the lights that automatically operate that or when they pull their taser, some other things automatically create that thing to go off. And it's a 30-second delay, meaning there's recording 30 seconds constantly beforehand, so it backs up. In that interaction, the officer, let's say, for instance, a traffic stop, They conduct a traffic stop. They do a verbal warning. They're going to click that button or hit the stop button on their in-car camera because both those are together, and they're going to categorize that video. And that video, if it's just a verbal warning, right, gets categorized as basically the lowest thing, and it falls off after 190 days. The reason why for that distinction is because we look at civil service and we look at complaints. And so civil service, the Texas Government Code 143 only allows me to do formal discipline up to that 180 days. That means the whole system has to be done. I have to basically see the complaint, go through the whole thing, and then come up with my decision. So that's the reason why it's set for what it is. It also has a live feed function of it through the body camera as well as our in-car camera. The purpose behind that is really to keep our officers safe. When they're not responding to a call, not responding to the 911, I'm sorry, to a radio, and they're on a call for service, Our people in our ARC, Amarillo Regional Crime Center, can actually look at that camera and see what's happening. Many times what's happening is the officer's not responding because they, well, sometimes they didn't turn the radio on. That's the easy one. The bad one, unfortunately, is they're in the middle of a fight and they can't provide that information at the time and they're not responding on the radio. So the use of a live feed helps us get them the information, the other officers, to get them there faster. And those are looked at every month, meaning there's a random search that our supervisors are required to do every month on each one of those cameras for each one of the employees. So they choose one video from each month and they look at that to see if there's any bad behavior. Now here's the one that everyone's been talking about, our automatic license plate readers. It's important to know and understand where license plate readers even came from. And it gained popularity through our motor vehicle repossession. It's been used for quite some time, but those banks and other companies who want to repossess those cars, they've been using it since the 2000s. I'll show you a picture a little later on in the slide that shows you where these cars, as well as tow trucks, have cameras that are positioned on them. And that's how that information or how that system really got notoriety is because of how effective it was about finding those repossessions. So what's going on now is you have two different companies that we currently use. One is Flock, and we'll go through what each one of them is. But this is a stationary poll. We have 83 of those as well as two mobiles. The retention day is important because it's seven days. I personally reached out to Flock and had our system reduced down to seven days from 30. And I'll go into a little bit of why and then the case law section of the discussion. But that's the main reason why I went to it. It's also only limited, or it is limited, to just Texas Department of Public Safety, as well as our Texas local governments that can, other police departments within the state of Texas, so it's not shared with any federal agency and it's not shared with anyone outside of the state. There's also a random search view, and that's something I'll go back in the back end of it and it'll kind of summarize what I'm talking about. But there is an AI audit, I'm sorry, the random search. That's something recently that I instituted and for the purpose of really narrowing down what the searches are and looking at those searches. So the same principles that we have for the body worn cameras, I wrote the policy just exactly like that. So it's an easy transition for that sergeant to do on a monthly basis to grab one of the searches while they're in there doing the other search and to complete that audit process. That's also being captured on a larger platform, meaning every time a sergeant does one of those audits, they have to fill out a form and we're capturing all of those. And then the AI audits. That's probably one of the biggest things that happened in FLOC recently, not to mention the seven-day retention period. But the AI audits have really come into effect, and that's what you're seeing across the country. What they've done is they backed it up. So about two and a half months ago is when they launched that. And what that is is they're looking for audit trails, meaning they're looking at random or looking at the searches. Did someone search for the same license plate and they do 10 different ways? Did they do it in a short duration of time? Did multiple officers look at the same thing? And so what they found using that AI audit is they actually backed it up a year. So all the searches that have been done over the last year, and that's why you're starting to see a lot more as this hits the media and everyone else that's involved, that's what's happening is you're seeing those AI searches identify those patterns. And then the last one, and we'll talk about this at the end as well, but the data is not sold or shared with either one of these companies, Flock or Axon. I personally have reached out to both the CEOs and spoke with them. Also, on their websites, they both talk about it. And then finally, we actually have a contract with both of these companies that specifically state that the data is ours, and only we share it with who we see fit to share it with. Axon's slightly different because it's a closed system, different from Flock because it was open to basically, if you could leave it wide open, right? Meaning that anyone with a law enforcement purpose, anywhere in the United States, if you left it open, could actually look at whatever reads they wanted to look at. Axon's different. It's a closed system, so it's only our individual officers, our city, are the only ones that can see that. And now Axon, how it's utilized, it's through our in-car cameras. So every one of our in-car cameras have a license plate reader in the data that it's collecting. Very similar. As I mentioned before, I reached out to Axon and got that same statement as well as that contract that's associated with it. They don't have an AI version as far as any audits are concerned, so we have to rely upon a manual audit for every one of those. Now this is what it looks like when an officer does a search. I know it's kind of hard to read. But the main things which you want to look at is where the red stars are. Those are required information to put in. The first one is the offense type. It provides a list of different things such as a misdemeanor, felony, a robbery, aggravated assault, all those things. So the overall reason why it's being searched. And the bar next to it, I'm sorry, offense type. The reason is where it goes into the either the CAD number, that means the call for service number, or the actual report number. And then you can go by going into detail. Do I only have one character or several characters? And then what states am I looking for? And you can see on the advanced side a little more detail. But this is the important part. So when you get the flock read, that's what you get. You get a picture, a picture of the license plate, and then you get the AI that said, hey, we think it reads like this. That's what you see in the small print. It doesn't provide any more details other than that than the date and the location of where the camera is. It doesn't provide any registration information. It doesn't provide who the car belongs to. As you can tell, it's very difficult to see in any kind of car. There's no facial recognition that's attached to this. This is simply a picture. in time at a location. I wanted to show you a slight different view, but this is the Axon AOPR version. And so what I want to show you in the picture on the left-hand side, the left-hand side is what you see when you get an alert, meaning that that license plate's been entered for whatever reason, and that's the alert that you get back. That's very similar to how FLOC's set up. I mean, not quite the same picture, same information. And I put a bad read on there for a reason. So the read as the officer is driving by that is a trailer tag and he sees what the camera picks up is the Texas tag and it provides that number. What you see on the right hand side is the fact that the stolen vehicle is actually out of Arizona. So the state and the states don't match. So one of the requirements that our officers are required to do when they see such information They're required to look at it and verify. Many times an X looks like a K and vice versa. So the officers are required to verify that information before they act upon it. And the right, again, is just another picture of how the Axon ALPR works. Again, the purpose behind this picture is to show you that, yes, this shows the picture of the location, it shows the license plate, and then what the AI picks up is what they think the read is. But again, I go back to both are very similar in the fact that they don't provide any additional information as far as registration, driver, any of that. So the next and final camera I was going to talk about is, well, it's Ricotta, but this is the system that we use. So FUSIS is the name of the video management system that we have. And that bottom right picture is a picture of just that. If you ever had visited the ARC and the Regional Crime Center, you'd see what that looks like on a big map. What that is is just it's ingesting the traffic cameras, it's ingesting the in-car cameras and the body cameras. So you can... scroll in a little bit or zoom in and see different traffic cameras that are there. But what you're seeing on that screen is basically a green little picture of a camera is just that. There's a camera there. The other one is the green car. That's an in-car camera that's moving down the road. And then the weird one with the two little circles on it, the one over the top of the other, that's a body camera. The purpose behind that is to show you what happens in the ARC when a call for service happens. And I'll talk about that in just a second. But as it rolls through, that's what the officers in the ARC are doing is they're understanding. things are during a call for service. And so on the left-hand side, again, I want to go a little bit deeper into what those cameras are. Again, it's a seven-day retention period. This is a traffic camera, right? This is not an ALPR camera, and I'll show you a picture of it in just a second. This is just literally a camera that sits at the intersection. Yes, there are some searching capabilities, but I'll go over that in just a minute. But the audit is, an audit can be performed just like they can the other cameras. And this one specifically, the searching capability can only be done by a very small group of people for the traffic-related cameras. If somebody else wanted to look at one of those cameras, for instance, an officer said, hey, I think this car went through this intersection. It's just like the old-school VHS. You've got to rewind it. That's the only information they're going to get is they'll look at a camera and go, okay, I can pull up this camera. Maybe I see the car. It doesn't necessarily mean there's a license plate around it. It doesn't mean you can see anything other than there's the picture of the intersection, and I've got to rewind to go figure out where something is. So the typical patrol officer doesn't have the capability of doing a detailed search. Only the people in the ARC can. And again, I also reached out to Verkada for the same reasons that I did for Flock and Axon, and they don't sell the information. That information, again, is solidified by a conversation that I had with them, but also in the contract that we have with Verkada itself. This is what the Verkada camera looks like. Up on the right-hand corner is just that. It's a picture of the camera at the intersection, and this is what's considered a four-way. So you've got four different cameras that are in each one of those little hubs, I guess, if you will. And that's what they're viewing is just the intersection itself. On the bottom is what you see is kind of the audit. And the audit, again, I go back into if an officer looks at that camera, it can tell who looked at it. For the live view, it doesn't provide or ask or request a reason. It just... will provide the information. And then the secondary part is we can do a little more detailed search based upon the IP address, where they were, when they looked at it, and all those other particulars. So this is how we use the system overall. And I wanted to use an example of a motor vehicle collision because I think it's probably one of the easiest to talk about. But each one of these steps are involved in any kind of call for service on how the men and women use these systems. So the first is a 911 call that happens. We have a software called Live 911. So people in a car or in this particular case in the ARC can actually hear that Live 911 call happening, the exchange between the dispatcher and the caller. So that person in the ARC can get a little bit of a head start of understanding what's happening. And so as they listen to that, they might hear, okay, I heard a collision, and I heard I think it's in this intersection. So they begin to look for the cameras using that fuses system, as I mentioned, to try to drill in, do I have a camera in the area? What can I see? And then it's really talking about the right size approach. Is it just a fender bender that they've now moved off to the roadway? Well, now we can decrease our response. We can free up other units to go somewhere else. Or is it a rollover? We had an ejection. Now I have someone laying in the middle of the roadway. we can really begin to assess quickly what kind of resources that we need to get there to start helping these individuals faster. And some of the challenges that when you talk about a motor vehicle collision particularly, is it's a secondary collision. As I mentioned before, if you have a roadway has highway speeds now you're concerned about an actual individual laying out on that roadway so the faster ways that we can get an ambulance or a tow truck and assess the situation faster that's what all these cameras are being used for it's about accuracy of information and it's about getting to the place where we know we need to get need to get to in a hurry So this is some of the major concerns that I've found. There's really three, and I'll start off. One is data sharing, right? I mentioned it before, but I think it's worth mentioning again. The information that's provided. A lot of misinformation about FLOC itself or other ALPRs. And as I mentioned before, this first started off with vehicle repossession. So there are absolutely third party entities that are out there such as Motorola, Vigilant and others that have been rolling around with their tow trucks and other things to look for these cars. And the information has been sold and can be purchased. But it's not through Axon and it's not through Flock. But there are other AOPRs that are privately owned that are out there. The retention date period is seven days. This is kind of staying ahead of the curve, and I'll go into that case law for just a second. Well, I'll just go into it now. So everyone wants to talk about how it violates someone's Fourth Amendment. That's the biggest information that I've heard over and over again. Well, there's a recent case out of 2026 right here in the Fifth Circuit, which covers the state of Texas, and I put it up there. It's Porter v. U.S., And the reason why that case is so important recently is because it talks about all three areas that are of concern about constitutional violations. The first one is the use of the system itself, meaning that when someone pulls up an ALPR read and they have information on there, does that give you or the officer enough reasonable suspicion of probable cause to make the traffic stop? And as I mentioned before, if you have a hit, there are steps that the officer must do to verify what that license plate is. If they read it incorrectly, then the officer has to verify and make sure that information is correct before they can act on it. So they said, in this case and many others, that if that information is done and the officer does that check like that, then there's not a constitutional concern. The second part about that is tracking people. It really goes into what a public place is and where these pictures are actually taken. And that same case law with Porter talks about the fact that, yes, these cameras are in a public place and, yes, it's an intermittent identification of a date and time and a location of where this thing happened. It's not a constant. tracking or following. And it's important to know the distinction between the two because there's a case that it's called Carpenter v. U.S. It's a 2018 case. And that case specifically deals with cell phones. And it talks about the officer's use of a cell phone. And it talks about over a 21-day period of a constant monitoring of that. And so that's the one that's been decided by the Supreme Court. Now, in that information, they've talked about or hinted towards these But that was a 2018 case. This is one that was recently decided. I believe it was March or April. I can't remember the date. But it talks about that concern as well. And so looking at trying to forecast some of these challenges that have happened, myself and others have looked at that because some of the information Carter suggests seven days is a more accurate look at it. And I think that's where FLOC got their information from while they made their decision to reduce it. The ACLU has also mentioned that that's a step in the right direction as far as these kinds of cameras and how they're utilized. But those are the main portions of what the case law specifically talks about. One, did the officer use the information correctly? Did they verify? Second one, is it a public place and is it constant monitoring? And the answer is no. And then the third one is the actual searches. Are they done correctly? All those kind of wrapped in one. But I go back to some of the information that's out there as far as the cameras are concerned and the use. Yeah, some of that information is for sale, but it's not the companies that we utilize. Here's one of the biggest challenges that have been brought up, officer misconduct. It specifically states in all of our policies, more specific towards the actual technology side, it's for law enforcement purposes only. Previously, our policy stated that we'll do a one-year audit. Is that enough? I think you've seen no. I don't think it is enough, and that's why I made the decisions that I have. But you're talking about a violation of law. You're talking about a misuse of an item And I can do everything I can to put every parameter in place to identify as soon as possible. But when someone makes the decision to break the law, there's already policies in place for that. And I think what you've seen across the country is you're seeing chiefs and sheriffs act, and they act quickly. They do their investigation, and every one that I've seen resulted in termination and demotion and criminal charges. It's not fun to talk about, but what I can tell you is I think we're taking it serious. And I think you're seeing that there are parameters in place. And when a mistake happens, especially to this gravity, that we handle it. As I mentioned before, these are the policies that I have currently put into place. All ALPRs will be at seven days. That goes effective next week for the flock cameras. I made the decision a few weeks ago. I wanted to give my department a few weeks to adjust before we went to the seven days. And then the requirement of the supervisor to conduct a search on the audit is also something that I enacted. We should do everything that we can to see if we can catch it sooner. And then the requirement for the three days. So that's the AI, right? So when a supervisor receives, which all supervisors, once they log on, it'll show them if there's any flags that are out there. And I've required that a supervisor respond within three days to begin that investigation because some days you might have a day off or there might be some things in between. And then talk about reducing the actual data being shared, making a decision that it's only going to be the state of Texas as far as the flock cameras are concerned. And then the restriction of live view. So I need officers to respond to the scene. I don't need them to be on the camera itself to be looking at something. So I made the decision that only the men and women in the ARC can view the live view, as well as supervisors. I think it's important to also understand what this what this piece of equipment have done this is just flock information so just the last little over 18 months right about 2 years. 251 vehicles have been recovered 915 arrests have been involved with 12 murders all those. ties to the flock information, whether identifying the suspect or locating the suspect. And 44 missing persons. Just last week, we had a 91-year-old woman who had dementia who had health concerns. Again, with the heat-related issues that we have, that we were able to easily and quickly identify where she was to get her and bring her back. And then the 2.7 million, that's a very low, all these are low numbers because we haven't done a very good job of actually tracking how often this stuff is being used. So those are the bare bones minimum. But that 2.7 million is more than just the cars that are being recovered. I could show you some stories that were pushed out before about the vehicle that was here on vacation and they're moving through the area and all the All the toys and things that were taken out of the vehicle that our officers were able to quickly identify the suspect vehicle and where it went and be able to recover that and bring that back to the owners. Overall, why do we use this thing? It's about capabilities. It's about trying to find the most effective way that we can utilize the resources, which is people, the most expensive part. There are controls and there are retention periods in the information that's provided. We do audit trails, supervisor reviews, and other documented policy. I, as the chief, will continue to monitor what case law recommendations have been continually pushed out and how the landscape changes. And the public purpose, you know, the purpose of what we're trying to do is enhance our effectiveness and efficiency while keeping our officers and the community safe as much as we possibly can. And then my overall, one of my overall recommendations is utilizing the advisory board for the digital dignity rights and privacy to further evaluate the concerns that are being brought up by you and this council and our community. I think we started that a few months ago and we just haven't had a second Second committee meeting, I guess. But I think it's important to talk about it because technology is changing. And as your chief, I would love to have direction about what you hope for the city. You know, there are things and techniques that are out there. But if you, the council, don't feel comfortable with certain things, I need to know that so I can begin to plan and what grants that I can go after and what direction that you seek and that you'd like to see here in Amarillo. So here's where the questions.

Questions, counsel.

So in the research that you've done, have you found any court cases, federal court cases, that have said that this is a violation of the Fourth Amendment?

No, sir. The use of any of these cameras? There is one, I believe, out of the Washington state area that's been appealed, but nothing that I have found that suggests that there have been any violations of the Constitution. I think there's 30-plus cases that I've seen at varying different levels across the country. There hasn't been a Supreme Court decision, and who knows how long that will take to reach to that point. But the closest and the highest court that govern us is at Fifth Circuit, and that's the Porter case. As a matter of fact, I think –

In June of this year, 26, Norfolk, Virginia, the federal judge there ruled that the use of these cameras are in violation of the Fourth Amendment. I think that's the most recent. That one will be appealed, but we'll see where that goes as far as the appeals court.

Appreciate the report, Chief. Just a few questions. One, I think that the public is very well aware of. We just had an incident not too long ago, an officer that violated. Looks like you've already changed some policies. With the changed policies, would that have caught this officer sooner? Would it have prevented this from ever happening? I'll elaborate a little bit on that because I know the public knows about this, so let's just talk about it. So what's been done and what would have happened?

Well, I do have to be concerned because there is a criminal investigation still ongoing as well as a civil one as far as any discipline is concerned. But what I can tell you is, yes, the AI audit, as I mentioned before, that FLOC instituted, they did alert on that. well after we have already handled what we handled on our side. So yes, the information was originally provided by one of the concerned citizens about how the officer was utilizing that information. But yes, maybe a week ago, maybe two weeks ago, that was part of one of the AI audits that was generated.

Okay. So you showed us that little form. So does every Every person looks or every officer that looks, does it require a case number, written justification for actually looking at the LPR? You know, make sure there's no historical, they're looking back for historical hits, I guess.

Yes, so the two required fields, one is a reason and then it's followed up with what's the report number.

Okay, and officer identity as well. I mean, I guess that's pretty easy. Correct.

When they're logged onto the system, I mean, presumably they're the ones that are running the search.

Okay. Would it be possible to restrict access to that unless a warrant is issued, or is that too far? Would that even be doable?

Well, when you look at why a warrant's being issued, you're looking at a suspect vehicle. So I go back to utilizing these cameras in, let's say, a hit and run. The offense happens. A license plate is given. The vehicle just left the scene. We want to go talk to that individual. So, yes, I mean, you're talking about having to go do a warrant, right? One, is it constitutionally necessary? I don't believe so. However, if you wanted to do that, then you'd have to go through a judge, you'd have to write up an affidavit, swear to that affidavit, go find the judge, and in this particular case, here in this area, you'd have to go contact the DA, provide that information to the DA, wait for that return,

once that's submitted then you'd go back to the judge to get it signed i mean you're talking weeks so we would lose some of the effectiveness and about with your new guidelines established seven days it's gone correct right so okay just a question so i know it says access limited to texas dps county sheriffs and local law enforcement only do they have complete access to that i mean is it is it also uh restricted the way we're restricting it so do outside law enforcement entities have the ability to look at live feeds? Do they have the ability? In other words, if we put something in place Does that still apply to them?

So the flock camera itself is just a picture. It's just a picture in time. So that same screen is the same screen that every officer receives no matter where they're at. So if they run that search and they hit the whole state, they're only going to get reads from that state. In particular for us, since we've stopped the feeds at seven days, if they were looking for something that was eight days old, It just wouldn't show up. It doesn't exist in the responses. But, yes, somebody from the outside could do an audit or do a search, excuse me, of a license plate, and they could put the whole state or they could pick specific cameras, whatever they want to do, and then, yes, you'd get that response. From us, again, we would only show seven days, but another agency could be at 30. Other agencies such as Dallas have extended that even further, I think up to two years. Wow. Okay.

And would it be possible to put out like a public transparency report that showed cases assisted, you know, even outside agencies request to look at our stuff? I mean, would it be possible to be able to put that out either semiannual? I don't know the duration, but.

Just the use of it and how it's used? Absolutely.

Yeah. I mean, I think that that would be good to put out to the public so that they could see. How are these being used? How often? By whom? What cases they assisted? What outside agencies are looking at this? So that would be something. The analytics are definitely there. We could just put it out there. Yes, sir. It's absolutely possible. Okay. Perfect. Okay. Thank you.

Chief, who has access to FLOC? How many people do? And are there different levels of access?

Within our organization? Yes. Okay, so our sworn officers have access to it within our own organization. There was some individuals that we gave access to and another entity that I stopped. But under our contract right now, it's just the city of Amarillo and it's just sworn police officers. And how many police officers is that currently do you have? I think we're like 12 short. So 300 and we'll call it 60. Okay.

Do you know a ballpark of how many searches are kind of done on average in a month? Or what does that look like with those 300 officers? How many searches are they conducting?

I didn't look for that information. We can absolutely bring it back to you. I would assume depending upon the shift and the officer, not every officer utilizes it. Do they have access to it? Sure. But do they use it? Not everybody uses it. Yeah, I would be way off if I tried to make a guess.

Sure. And why was the – and I know Flock did this, but you're following – or they announced it. I don't know if they've implemented it everywhere. But why was the data retention moved from 30 days to seven days?

Yeah, I go back to that Carpenter case, and one of the information is really about the opinion of what the Supreme Court began to mention. And what they were trying to talk about is limiting that dragnet as the information that they provided. And so anything, they came up with an opinion. And in that opinion, seven days was mentioned.

But why from 30 to seven? I mean, it lessens the opportunity for abuse, I guess, or records are not there as long?

I think what you're trying to reduce is the argument of we're tracking people all the time and we're watching their life patterns.

Okay. Could it be less than seven without dramatically impacting

I think there's always going to be concerned how quickly, and it's not so much the search of the officer, it's when did we recognize the offense occurred? When did we recognize the vehicle was stolen? Or when did those things occur? And that's why seven days, I mean, did somebody go on vacation, they come back, their house is broken into? Or was the vehicle stolen and they just didn't realize it because it sits in a property for so long? It's when the crime was discovered is really seven days is why we came up with the number. It could be reduced. I don't know how effective it would be after that. I know there's some conversations talking about 96 hours as a magic number, but it's really what I went through is a seven-day because somebody goes on vacation and they realize their house was broken into, their car was stolen, and then what was mentioned in that carpenter case is, I think, I can tell you that's where my decision came from. I can't answer for Flockham, so...

Right. In cases across the country, I mean, is it generally have you, has it been people accessing back into weeks ago or do you know in other cases?

Are you talking about the other law enforcement officers? Yes. I think you've seen a pattern across the board. It all seems pretty very, very typical of what the approach has been is some kind of relationship that they're related into and it's a search over time.

And then the audit process. Who reviews the audit logs? How often? What does that process look like?

So the supervisors. So the same time that we're doing it, we've got two different ways now because of the searches are concerned. One is that flag that's produced by the AI that says we have some concerning behavior. We want you to look into it. And Flock has further even stepped out and said they're going to freeze the account until the administrator basically turns it back on after an investigation is done. So the AI audits one way. The other one is the random once a month type search for the supervisor. And to that information, you really have to go, officer, what did you search for? It has to have that conversation that happens because, well, anyone can put anything in there. Unless we're sitting right there over that individual's shoulder, unless we're looking at everything that they do and we have to have some kind of integrity, and that's where the challenge comes in.

And then what is flagging this when it's saying, hey, there's an alert or something going on? What generally is it looking for?

So it's the amount of times one license plate is viewed. So if one license plate is viewed and the officer puts in 10 different reasons, that's one way. Another one is just a sheer number. You've looked at this thing for 10 times in a short period of time, like let's say 96 hours or so. It looks at the amount of times the license plate is looked at and viewed.

So the jurisdictions that we share with are, you said, only in the state of Texas? For FLOC, yes, sir. For FLOC. And is the entire state of Texas gone to the seven-day, or do we share with anyone else other than?

FLOC itself is at 30 days, but they have announced, I think it was yesterday, that they're moving to seven days. Okay.

And then, so kind of how FLOC works. If APD knows a license plate, if it knows my license plate, how much movement can an authorized user reconstruct of someone's movements using the current FLOC network?

You have to describe that a little more. It's basically where the camera is. So if you drive on one portion of town, sometimes never. If you drive in another section of town, there might be two or three in one section of town. So you're going to see that same thing if it's on your course to go to work every day. You might see the same camera. For instance, I live down south, right next to the Market Street. And every time I went to Market Street, it was there. But if I made a right-hand turn, Never would have seen a camera. So really based upon where you are and where you're driving to, it doesn't necessarily pick up everyone's habits all the time. It's did you pass this one location?

But there's multiple cameras that could see. I mean, there's the ability to go and reconstruct. If you're looking at a specific license plate to reconstruct someone's movements.

It can give you a general idea, but it can't necessarily give specifics. You can make some inferences based upon the information that you have, but it doesn't track you to your home, and it doesn't constantly monitor every turn that you make.

But it's not tracking every single movement, but I guess when you're looking for something that's happened, you put a license plate in, and then it can either pop up where that car has been? Correct. Or can it track in real time or close to real time? So if you put, I guess does FLOC have like a hot list or something, if there's someone you're looking out there for?

If you have a stolen vehicle, right, once that goes and registers that thing, it provides an alert.

So if for some reason someone, you're looking for someone and you can put that license plate number in and it's going to, it will give you an alert showing that person is at this intersection and then it could potentially five minutes later show that someone is at another intersection, that same person is at another intersection.

If there's another camera further away, yeah.

Okay. Do we currently use facial recognition or any other kind of biometric? I know there's other types of cameras or things out there. Do we use any of that? Yes. What do we use that for? What other types of cameras do we have and what are we using that for?

So when we have missing persons, for instance, we'll be able to take a picture so we can actually use a picture to input it into, like we have a picture of an unknown person and we have a picture of a person that's known. And we're looking for that individual based upon what we ingest. It's all open records or, I'm sorry, open source information. We're not... collecting any information. It's only on a response that we're looking for an individual, meaning that we're not getting alerts on everybody that says, this person's at this spot, unless we have put that into the system, if that makes sense.

But theoretically, you could use it for that, though.

At the police department, I think, is a good example. We have some cameras that are in the lobby. So if we have a person who's threatening things and threatening us, then yes, we have put that information into that camera. It'll alert us when that person walks inside.

And are there multiple cameras that have that capability across the city or the facial recognition that you talked about?

There are cameras that have it, yes, sir. I don't remember exactly which ones, but it's not associated with Flock and Axon.

Are those on a closed network? Yes, sir. But we have access to them? That's correct. And that, again, if you're looking for someone and you have a picture of their face, If they go by one camera, it would alert you that they were there, and then they could go to another camera with that technology, and it would alert you to that.

Yes, sir.

But you're saying right now we only use that for missing persons?

We have utilized it for murder suspects and other people that are wanted, yes.

Okay. Do any of our existing cameras outside of FLOG have kind of – AI behavioral analysis or other capabilities that maybe are available but maybe not currently activated?

Not behavioral, maybe a distinction between what a car and a bicycle looks like, but nothing. I understand what you're referring to. Yes, there is some technology out there, but no, we don't have it.

And going back to the facial recognition, I mean, is it just generally accepted that those are only being used for specific purposes, or are there policies in place that say this is what it can be used for and this cannot be used for this?

Yes, sir, there is policies in place on how we use it, and it's a very specific group of people that can only ingest that information. Okay.

Who has the authority, I guess, to activate a new capability or substantially change how an existing camera system is used? Me. And are there cameras or technologies that maybe we decided not to use for any specific reason or things that we've been approached with?

I think you always look at what information is available, what kind of different software is available to see, one, is there a cost savings? Is there a different capability that it could or should provide us? So, yeah, there's always a constant. researching of how we best utilize our resources.

Right. And then I don't know, I think Brian has left. I don't know if you can answer this question. But now I'm hearing of homeowners associations purchasing flock cameras or flock systems. Have you heard that as well?

Yeah, they are, and it's a closed system. They don't get our information, but they can elect to share that information with others.

Okay. So there's nothing prohibiting a homeowners association or a public improvement district, I guess, if they wanted to, from purchasing that here in Amarillo? Correct. Okay. All right. Thank you. I appreciate it. Very informative.

Any follow-up questions?

Yes, sir. So the thing that makes these cameras so controversial is the fact that they're cameras and they're taking pictures of motor vehicles, people in crowds and that type of thing. But law enforcement has had access to systems in the past, haven't they, that track people?

Yes, sir.

Right? NCIC, IAFIS, Codex, Index. even though you have to type somebody's name in, a license plate or whatever, it's still a tracking system that we used with the technology that existed at the time, correct?

Looking for criminal justice information, yes, sir.

I know when I started, we had to turn on our microphones when we went into places because we didn't have body cameras at that time so that the dispatcher could hear everything that was going on, right? So that was use of technology at the time. When it was abused, It was up to administration to step in and discipline those that abused it. Absolutely. And we know that those systems were abused in the past, right? Yes, sir. And those people ended up fired and most likely in jail. So this system isn't anything different as the functionality of it. Correct. Is that correct? Yes, sir.

Okay.

Thank you. chief thank you it's good presentation um it's it's a good discussion i think it can get even better and so what i'm hearing you you well what i'm watching you do is i'm watching you answer questions directly and so for that we appreciate it um you know we sit on this side of the table and so we represent the public at large and we need to represent this concern adequately right You know, when I first got elected, I heard Sergeant Hudson say something, you know, at I think it was an APOA meeting. He said, we police at the will of the people. It was the first time I had registered that. I never really thought that. I thought it was just an involuntary trust. that was required of me, so I just have to submit to law enforcement. And when you really kind of get on this side, you see how few of you guys there really are out there right now, how many patrol cars there are, the overlap that doesn't exist like we see in DFW, metro area. And so when you combine sheriffs, APD, maybe a few other law enforcement DPS, we, the people, have a lot to say about this. And so this is new technology and I don't think it needs to be one-sided, right? I think we need to take a minute to look at both sides of it. And so what I would ask is I'd ask for those people that care to listen to maybe start with the conversation in your mind of there's voluntary trust that's given and then there's involuntary trust. And so we're only asking you to help us manage the voluntary trust that we give you. So we, the people, give you the trust of the responsibility to protect and serve and that badge and that gun come with a heavy weight. And so we appreciate that. That's why we call you local heroes. We also understand there's technology that we have to trust you with, you know, in addition to the gun that's on your hip. So I would look at it, anything can be weaponized. Media can be weaponized. Social media can be weaponized. We definitely see that. So data and surveillance cameras can be weaponized. What I'm asking for is not a place to land where we have an elimination of risk. What I'm asking for is for us to work towards a reduction of risk. And that means we've got to be pretty upfront and say, OK, we do have a concern here for the good old boy system. you know if you've been with that other officer for 30 years and maybe he has abused something there and you don't want to turn him in and you're the only guy looking over his shoulder there's a risk there that we're not really mitigating so what i would like to propose is just a few additional steps that i think we could allow for trust on both sides to be given with the hope that we could walk this thing out slowly enough to see where where we really want to go as a population so on my end i take the phone call of we want them all taken down we want every camera taken down okay is that true you want library to not have security cameras like where we don't film the front door the trash trucks you know they have cameras that are on them you know so they can they can help GPS locate all the bulk items. Body cameras, I think, protect me. I like the fact that the police officer is having to record his actions, not just mine, right? And so I would like to take off the table for the discussion, counsel. I don't think I'm looking for a policy that necessarily speaks to dash cams. i think we're pretty comfortable knowing that these patrol cars have cameras in them and that they do have technology and they have had for some time maybe we can revisit that but i don't think that's where the source of the issue is i don't think the body cams are the actual issue i don't think the traffic cameras that detect motion so that when you pull up to it the light turns green i don't think i'm trying to have a 100 page policy manual that gets into that depth. What I think we're trying to do is work together a structure that talks about facial recognition. Who is overseeing and who is doing the audit? How often are the frequencies? And then I would like to be able to voluntarily trust you guys within some guardrails. Right now I think what I'm hearing from citizens is it feels like there's no guardrails. They just heard for the first time two weeks ago that these cameras are all up over town. Well really 2019 is probably the flock camera initiation. And so for seven years you had flock cameras all over main intersections all across town. And then the ARC itself is a great tool that allows us to organize all of that information in order to fight crime more efficiently. It's a force multiplier. So we're not trying to take that away from you, but I think the perception of what the capabilities are inside of the Arc, that you could track and trace me, that you could know where I've been, you know, where I go, all of that, I think that could be eliminated to a great level if we put a few protocols. So let me come up with a few maybe not so great ideas here, right? Maybe these are a little rough and too far, but I'd like to propose them even if it offends, you know, maybe One side of the of the conversation, so. In trying to reduce risk, not eliminate risk. And in trying to have something that is oversight, I would love to have an overwatch committee. I think we could have a committee appointed by the council. law enforcement personnel, retired, maybe reserve, general public. So some good people that I think have served the community, that have the ability to see the data, see the reports, be able to look at that audit. So you've got a policy in place right now that's going to audit the fact that I'm a police officer. I've pulled that same license plate 16 times over the last 12 days. And so you're like, that's not good. We've got a problem here. Well, where does that go? Well, you do the audit, but we don't know you did the audit, right? That overwatch committee would be able to see that. They'd be able to see the corrective action. They'd be more accountable, I would say. And so it does allow for some trust to know that the good old boy system wouldn't be functional in that. So an overwatch committee could be something that's limited to just the way we use these cameras. I'm not saying that this needs to step into narcotics or anything, you know, outside of, like, I'm not saying it goes to the task force. I am just saying that, in general, the way that we do this, and here's why I'd like to do this. You said you want to restrict officers the ability to look at these cameras. I almost want to go the opposite direction. I want to let all the officers look at them, but I also want to let all the citizens look at them. So I look at TxDOT, and if I pull up on the public safety website, if they've got cameras on I-40, I can see those live streams on my tablet or on my phone. And so I'm curious if there would be a way for us to take these intersection cameras and let all of us see what you guys see. Now, we don't need to see what you're doing with it per se. That's more the Overwatch Committee or anybody that would take me up on my offer to go on a tour over there at the Ark. I'll take you through it. Chief can can be there. Personnel will show you what the capabilities really are. I've done this once I've offered it multiple times. It's surprising to me that more people haven't taken me up on that, but I'll speak that out here. We can schedule it. But I would like to be able to toggle those camera views. I don't want it to become predatorial, so I don't need a camera. looking into a park or an intersection that tracks that, you know, so that somebody could watch that live stream and see where that lady likes to jog at 6 a.m. every morning, meaning we would have some protocols in place to where you're not going to be able to tie those together. But outside of that, what it would do is it would give us a great opportunity for we the people to see what you're seeing and what you're not seeing. What I'd like to know is you're not looking in my backyard. I'd like to know that that camera doesn't look across the street into my business, into my shop. I'd like to see that it's pointed down and it's only there. I'd like to see that you can't see me maybe scratch my nose at the light. I would like to know the capabilities I think are there that should eliminate a lot of it. I THINK THAT YOUR POLICY ALONG WITH THE AUDITS ARE REALLY GOOD. I WANT TO CORRECT A FEW THINGS. SEVERAL WEEKS AGO I THINK IT WAS STATED THAT YOU DIDN'T HAVE ANY POLICIES, WE DIDN'T HAVE ANYTHING IN PROTOCOLS. WE DO. YOU'VE IMPROVED UPON THOSE AND YOU'RE GOING TO CONTINUE. I THINK WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE IF COUNCIL WILL SUPPORT ME IN THIS, I'D LIKE TO SEE US TAKE A GOOD STEP FORWARD IN what does it look like if we take that system as it's built out and we do post it to the website and you can see those cameras what does it look like if we put together an overwatch committee that looks at this because i don't want to just shelf this conversation and and say ah well we don't have any concerns let's just move forward i also don't want to just consider we're against it we want them taken down Right I don't know that that's what you want. If you know you're the. The person who's had your child kidnapped right? I do want it to be at that level. So when we take public comment, let's look at both sides of this right? If you're the victim. was that camera system beneficial to you and then how do we prevent you from becoming the victim because that camera system was there both can be rightly balanced but we got to balance it not just throw our hands up get on one side of the teeter-totter or the other i don't know my last comment would be flock i don't know that it has facial recognition capability i think we use an app or not an app i'm sorry an ai software that can match up photos with people and tell us who they are. But that's just based on what we feed that. I don't believe Flock is necessarily using the biometric data as far as like what we're using it for. That's correct. Okay. And then I definitely want to make sure that we just restate for the record as many times as we possibly can. We are not selling or sharing any of this data with anyone and the flock camera system does not feed to their server. It stays in our closed loop. Is that correct?

No, they have a big server that it goes into. However, it's only law enforcement purposes only. No one else can get access to it. They don't sell that access to anyone else.

Okay. Well, then my last My last request would be I would take the flock camera system down if I need to. And I think we are willing to do that if it's needed. I wouldn't want to entertain doing that if we didn't know that we couldn't protect it with what we have. So if there's a way to make sure that that data is not shared sold, then that's good enough. But I am no respecter of companies. So if Verkada is easier to work with, And we can get the same safety protocols out of it. Then I think the, the flock contract is up. When it's up and so I'm just saying that across the board. Our priorities are with our citizens. invalidating their concerns, not in name brand recognition. So camera capabilities matter, but the ability to eliminate the threat of that leaving our closed system would be as important to me as anything. So I would ask that you guys look at that as well. What does that look like if we take a step in that direction to make sure that that's not a key point of concern that somebody can continue To never get comfortable with. So I don't have to say it, but public safety is our number one priority. And we've stood behind this the entire time we've sat up here and served. So we in no way, shape, or form are going to be the council that has to look at you, the citizen, and say, hey, I'm sorry. We took away law enforcement's ability to protect you. So we cannot do that. But at the same time, in the same breath, we don't have to say that we are fully balanced and that we have put in every protective protocol for you, the citizen, that we possibly can with new technology. We have an opportunity here. And, Chief, I'm encouraged with you. I think we should take every bit of this opportunity to put together as much of a risk-proof plan as we can. We have follow-up. No? That's all I have, Councilman.

I appreciate the comments. I mean, there was a word here mentioned earlier, and it's about trust. And I trust the chief. I trust the police department. I've seen them in action. I trust our city staff. I trust this council. What I don't trust is people that I don't know who are going to be up here, who are going to be leading in the future. I don't know whether I can trust them or not. And I think that's the issue people are having. And policy is... You know, what I would really like to look at is a policy about all the cameras we have at the city. I know this was because I think we need to get some clear definition. Technology is moving very fast. And I think it'll be interesting to see what happens to the courts. I don't think the court system is they're probably behind. They're going to catch up. I don't know what they're going to they're going to look at. But good policy is not necessarily just trusting the people in office today. It should protect citizens no matter who is in office tomorrow. And I think that's one of the things that I think is concerning some people about this technology. The issue isn't whether the technology has value. It clearly does. The issue is whether government can be trusted. to police its own use of the technology without independent oversight. And one thing, I mean, I guess I kind of agree. We have audits. We have all types of outside people whose job it is to come in, professionals who are trained to look at these types of things. I've got to believe that there's a third party out there with all this going on that Not only do we check it, but on things of importance like money and on people's privacy, people come in and they check the checkers to make sure, is there anything out there along those lines where we could have a third party? You don't have to answer it. You may not know that. But I think when government has the ability to reconstruct where people have been, safeguards have got to be as tight, and sometimes it may need to include more than an internal policy. It should be independent review, transparency, all these types of things, and not just about, you know, cameras here. You know, I don't know. When I started off this conversation, I was like, you know, I'm not doing anything wrong. What do I have to worry about? But I tell you, some people are really concerned about this. I don't necessarily agree with their opinion, but I'm here to turn the lights off for some reason. uh and uh so i think that that's and and i'm not sure where i do lie on this at the end of the day but i tell you uh governor desantis and i'm seeing you know states and conservative leaders say wait a minute we need to kind of call a time out on this governor desantis says i don't think it's their intent i guess police to do general surveillance but i will tell you if we had all this around the country with with covet happening you absolutely would have saw those turned on people who were outside of lockdown orders in california I'd say they've probably been in New Mexico. And you say, well, that can never happen in Texas. There's a tide turning in this country. And I don't know what it's going to turn to. I just think we need to figure out where we're comfortable with this to provide the privacy. I agree that if somebody's in a public place, maybe they don't have any right to privacy. But I don't think ever anybody thought, wow, they could track all my movements in a public place. And I think that's what's concerning people, not that anything's being done but what could happen in the future. So my request would be let's look at overall policies and if a camera fits the, let's don't design the policies to say we're gonna include this camera, exclude this camera. We should come up with policies that we feel that we're comfortable with and cameras that fall inside that policy, we keep. If there are cameras that fall outside of the policy, we say we no longer are gonna use those cameras across the city. That would be my request.

I definitely hear that request. I think that can be accommodated. And I think that, you know, chief and staff probably have what they need to go out and take that next step. I'd summarize with agreeing with my councilman, never trust the government. I don't think it's a bad way to live your life.

You can trust this one, just not the future one.

No, I wouldn't ask for this one. I'm saying that in the way governance is set up, your last line of defense, in the Constitution, a well-regimented, well-organized militia. Right. And that may be what we used to have. And I love having a well armed society that is still organized. But that overlaps into your local sheriff, your local sheriff, your local police chief is your last line of defense. against a rogue military or any government that doesn't have your best interests at heart. Local matters most, and those people that are closest to you locally that you know are your friends, not your enemies. And I'm not saying we don't have an enemy out there, but if we are going to have a conversation about taking any of the capabilities away from our local chief or our local sheriff, then we need to be sure we can extend that all the way up to 30,000 feet. And so there are other systems in place, and there are plenty of other things that are moving. And I'm not asking for your trust of the government. I am saying we should trust our local law enforcement, and we do. Right. So I greatly appreciate all the headway on this. This is the start of a conversation, not the end of one. Right. So I would ask as we move into public comment, you guys try to be respectful of everybody's time. Three minutes. We're going to have a lot of you and we want to hear from you, Chief. Thank you for being available. I already had one gentleman take me up on my tour. So we'll schedule a tour of the arc and I'll figure out when we can do it in the next couple weeks and I'll invite as many of you guys want to come. And if we hit a capacity limit, then we'll schedule multiple tours. So thank you guys for participating in that. We're not quite ready for item 4.2. We still have a problem that we're working through. And so I do want to do public comment. Ms. City Secretary, are you still over there? Hello. Are you about ready? If you haven't signed up for public comment, we do like to have it for the record. That is important. So here's what I would ask while she's getting ready. If you want to give public comment, please come over and give her your name, address, if you're a citizen in the city limits. But then If you don't do that, you raise your hand at the end, you say, hey, I still want to talk. That's okay, too. We're going to let you talk. We're not trying to skip out on any of this. But before you do that, make your way over there so she can put your name down and we have a record of you. And then sometimes we refer you to staff so they can help you. And so if you would be willing to put a cell phone down, it's always nice so we can contact you afterwards to continue to work alongside you. You're our customer. In public comment, decorum is something that we always have a hard time with. Criticism is welcome, especially of policies, but not of people. And so we'll ask you to separate out your criticism of maybe the city in general to any one particular person. I appreciate that as an individual who's criticized more than his fair share. And so I appreciate you guys for being willing to speak here. At this point, I'm just buying a little time because I don't know that she's quite ready. Okay, we're going to do public comment and then we'll come back for item 4.2. Ms. City Secretary.

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

At this time, I will invite Joseph Rogers as our first speaker.

And Courtney Brown will be on deck. Mr. Rogers, you may begin.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Just some thoughts. The chief made a really good presentation. Some issues, though, I have. Even though he didn't speak about the Fourth Amendment and said it didn't apply, everything we've talked about is about privacy. And there's a current, recent Supreme Court case, Chapley v. U.S., that talks about unreasonable searches, which is Fourth Amendment. That had to do with geofencing, but it does have applicability to cameras, particularly license plate readers. I was rather confused. The chief said that there's a seven-day retention period, but later on, I don't know if you caught this, he said that after seven days, that data doesn't show up. So my question is, is the data destroyed? Or is it kept and it just doesn't come back? Because if the data is kept, that to me is egregious. Most of this data that is caught is caught from people who are innocent and they aren't suspected of any kind of crime. And that data is collected and kept. And apparently, according to the chief, it lives on. It just doesn't show up. If we're gonna have real transparency and really take people's privacy into account and treat it seriously, that data should be destroyed. It should not just not show up in a search. I feel very strongly about this. It seems to me that the city is doing this primarily because the technology allows it to do so. I don't know any other area where you would say, take data from people who we have no interest in otherwise, but just keep it just in case. And that's really what we're talking about. We're taking private information about people's whereabouts, and we're keeping it. without a warrant, without any suspicion at all. And to me, that's antithetical to the United States and to the Fourth Amendment, even though it may not be directly implicated here. The seven day, if you're not deleting the data, the seven day doesn't matter. It could be 30, it could be two years, because the truth of the matter is it lives on in perpetuity. Okay, I'm gonna cut it short. I would really hope that you would think about this from that perspective as well and the fact that you are collecting data and keeping data from people who are not even, are innocent and presumed innocent and probably are innocent. I really hope that you give this a lot of consideration and if there is a committee of citizens, I would love to be involved in whatever way I could. Thank you very much for your time.

After Ms. Brown, we will have Johnson Bilbrey. You can begin.

Good afternoon, Councilman. My name is Courtney Brown. I'm an Amarillo resident, local business owner, and vice president of the Amarillo Reproductive Freedom Alliance. I'm here to stand against the use of flock cameras in Amarillo. I believe we should all be concerned about the government's and those in positions of power ability to track its citizens' movements and violate their constitutional rights. These cameras are used under the guise of protection and security, but after time and time, we have seen police officers used flock cameras to stalk and violate the freedoms and privacy this country was founded on. ARFA has long fought for the constitutional rights of Amarillo citizens' right to privacy, right to interstate travel without government interference, and bodily autonomy. Yet we have seen the escalating rise of a pattern of abuse by law enforcement to violate our rights using a system that tracks the movements of its citizens to schools, to churches, or simply home. We saw an example of this when an abusive ex-boyfriend accused his girlfriend of having an abortion weeks after it allegedly occurred. 83,000 cameras were used across the country to track this woman's movements, even in states where the procedure is legal, using the search, had an abortion, search for female. Should we give up our right to freely travel within this country and give our government the ability to track us simply for being accused of a crime? Now we have another example that hits closer to home. One of our own citizens was stalked by a member of our own police department. How are we to feel safe when an officer illegally searches for one of our neighbors numerous times he deemed a romantic rival? He wasn't a threat, he didn't have a medical emergency, but he was just a member of our community living his life. A badge and an oath to uphold and protect the law does not change the morals of a human intent on doing harm to members of our community. It is our job to look for alternatives to these unconstitutional invasions of our privacy. We can and should protect our community without giving up our freedoms. We should get to know our neighbors, get involved in our neighborhoods, join Facebook groups, join our local congregations, and stay connected to what is happening in our community that keeps us all safe without the constant government surveillance. ARFA will continue to speak out against any and all efforts to violate bodily autonomy, right to privacy, and the right to interstate travel. I thank you for your time.

Johnson Bilbrey is up next, and after Mr. Bilbrey will be Ashlyn Major. No, Bilbrey? Ashlyn? And after Ms. Major will be Tiffany Riles.

Hi, my name is Ash Major and I reside within Amarillo city limits. I am vehemently opposed to the flock cameras because I believe that it infringes upon my rights as a US citizen. Flock is utilized to solve 10% of crimes per their website. I don't think that 10% is a worthy trade off of our individual freedom and liberty to move about without being watched. While I understand there is no general expectation of privacy in public spaces, there is a reasonable expectation every US citizen has to move freely without being watched by one entity. The amount of money we are spending as a city to surveil citizens in order to prosecute crime could be utilized to actually prevent crime, which would not only help our police department, but enrich the lives of Amarillo citizens. Though these numbers have not been publicly disclosed, hello transparency, a simple web search can render approximate numbers, roughly 2,500 per camera annually with an installation fee of around 250 per unit, coming out to over 200K per year just in our city alone. But how could that money be used to care for our citizens and therefore deter crime? outreach, and mediation, allowing trained professionals to step in and conflict resolve before situations escalate. Intervention of individuals that have had violent crime predicated upon them, so they might receive not only physical but mental trauma care to reduce the rate of retaliation cycles, which we're experiencing currently in our youth community. beautification and green spaces that bring pride and stewardship into communities this creates not only social buy-in but gathering crowds that will crowd out illicit activity i'm not just asking you to consider getting rid of the flock cameras i'm asking you to consider buying into our community i'm asking you to use this over 200k not to watch our citizens that have not committed crimes that haven't done anything wrong but to buy into your own community that you're looking to serve i'm asking you to do better i'm asking you to be more creative to be more loving and to be more caring to be stewards of god's word as the ten commandments say outside right we're supposed to be looking out for our brothers not watching them all the time So I'm asking you to do better. I'm not giving you a personal attack. I'm literally up here as a citizen of Amarillo saying, I don't want to be watched whenever I take my kids to the park or to school or run to get groceries. I want to know that my fellow citizens, that my community members are looking out for me as I'm looking out for them, not watching me to make sure I don't commit a crime. Thank you.

After Ms. Riles, we'll have Jillian Knuckles. I am Tiffany Riles and I do live in Amarillo. December 20th, 2024, APD Officer Christian Eder made a search on the Flock Camera System. The reason listed was want. W-A-N-T. That was the reason he listed almost two years ago. 76 other searches for no reasons. other than to track a coworker's boyfriend or ex-boyfriend, not a case number, not a warrant, not suspected of a crime, and the reason Field said want, just because he wanted to. It worked. Nothing in the system stopped him, not once. The more I read about the story, the more comical and absolutely embarrassing it is. Is your goal to make Amarillo the potato factory of Texas? You gave them access, this organization, to know where your wives, your daughters are at all times. You gave them access to know where I am. You trusted them enough for this, but I don't. I don't want them to have access to my location. I don't want them to watch me walking at John Stiff Park. I want to exist as a private citizen, and I think that's a reasonable request. And how would you know if he's just one bad apple when you waited for the victim to self-report? There hasn't been an audit of all searches. That's what I want to be public. You gave reckless authority and too much power to an organization with incompetent and incapable leadership that can't even handle their internal affairs. Get rid of these pervert police cameras and third-party companies you're feeding all of our personal private information to.

Up next is Jillian Knuckles. After Ms. Knuckles, we'll have Ira Purdy. Ira Purdy. Oh, there you are. After Mr. Purdy, we'll have Billy Thomason.

My name is Ira Purdy, and I've lived in Amarillo nearly 60 years. By profession, I've been a social worker. I've worked with families and children, worked extensively with law enforcement, and worked as a medical social worker in providing medical care, and especially in hospice. I had the privilege earlier this year of taking a tour of the ARC. A friend of mine invited me and several others from our church to go and observe how that technology is being used. On the way down to observe, to take the tour, I passed the Walmart at I-40, excuse me, I-27 in Georgia. And as I went by, I noticed there were at least six, maybe seven or eight police cars had pulled in there around the service station, and there were also another car down the block that appeared to be having some sort of problem. After the tour, I said, what was going on this morning at walmart at the service station and they said a fellow stole a pickup in dalhart and drove it here overnight and he decided to get himself some gasoline and when he pulled into walmart they were already following him and they were able to move in quickly arrest him recover the property without incident without any violence i was impressed I was able to observe the drones in operation and look at different parts of the technology as it was working. There was one officer who had his body camera working, and I was impressed because with that camera on the scene, the officer can observe, but the officer can also have backup without even interrupting the conversation. He may be in the process of deescalating the situation, and he doesn't need to take time to call for backup. The camera, the people observing, can make that decision and be bringing support to him and safety to the person that they're interviewing. It's a huge force multiplier, huge. We couldn't hire enough policemen. to do the job that this technology will do. It protects the citizens, it protects the officers, it protects the general public. I'm totally in favor of it and I think that everyone who observes it, the technology in proper use, would be in favor of it, be very supportive of it. I guarantee you as a mental health professional, we don't want to be, we do not want to replace law enforcement. We call on law enforcement every time there's trouble. Thank you very much.

Up next is Billy Thomason after Mr. Thomason will be Cassandra Green. Miss green. Are you here. Let's have chastity Wedgeworth up next and after mid Wedgeworth will have Mike Fisher.

Hello, I am Chasti Wedgworth, and I am a citizen of Amarillo. I am here because I fundamentally disagree with the government's collection of information about innocent citizens through the Flock camera system. And I want to be very clear about what my objection is. I am not asking you to prevent the police from investigating crimes. I am asking why I have to be investigated when I haven't committed one. Every time an ordinary citizen drives past one of these cameras, the system can record identifying information about that vehicle and make that information searchable later all over the country. I have not committed a crime. I have not been accused of a crime. There is no probable cause against me. There is no warrant with my name on it. So why is the government collecting information about where my vehicle has been? We have built something very disturbingly close to minority report. Collect information on everybody first, store it, and figure out later who the government might become interested in. Except these aren't movie characters. These are Amarillo citizens. And this isn't some hypothetical concern about what technology may be capable of someday. The Texas Tribune recently examined approximately 615,000 searches of the DPS block network in a single month. Nearly half of those searches came from outside of Texas. In Johnson County, a deputy used that nationwide network without a warrant to locate a woman that was suspected of attempting to obtain an abortion. She was located. Ultimately, no charges were filed. These cameras mean guilty until proven innocent, and that is not how our legal system works. Today, the justification might be stolen cars. Tomorrow, it may be abortion, cannabis, immigration, political activity, or something that the Texas legislature hasn't even made illegal yet. That's precisely why constitutional protections don't depend upon whether we trust the people that are currently holding the keys. The Fourth Amendment right exists because the government power requires boundaries. I understand that the courts are still determining exactly what those constitutional boundaries fall with mass automated license plate surveillance, but a court hasn't stopped us yet is an extraordinarily low standard for our government. Amarillo can choose a higher one. If APD has a legitimate suspect in a legitimate criminal investigation, then they should investigate them. Get the appropriate legal process and use the tools that are necessary to protect this community. And of course, mass surveillance can solve crimes. So could searching everybody's house without a warrant. We'd probably find drugs, we'd find stolen property, we'd probably solve crimes that we didn't even know happened. But we don't allow the government to do that. That's why constitutional rights exist, to restrict what government may do even when it's convenient for them to violate it. The question isn't whether flock is useful. The question is how much liberty are we willing to surrender in the name of usefulness? If you have a suspect, investigate that suspect. But don't build a searchable history of everybody else just in case one of us becomes interesting later. That's backwards. In America, government investigates suspects. It does not surveil the population in order to find one. I'm going to skip to the end of that because my data is not for sale. My privacy is not for sale. My constitutional rights are not for sale. Public safety matters, and so does liberty. Benjamin Franklin said, those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety.

After Mr. Fisher, we'd like Jeremy Reams to come up.

My name is Mike Fisher. I live in the city limits of Amarillo. many times this council falls back on something along the lines of we only control the city manager well this is your chance this is your chance to set policy because that's really probably one of the main things you do so i'm i'm a fan of the flock cameras if they're used properly It's a great tool. It solved a murder of a guy I went to school with over in Pampa just recently, or found the guy down in Wichita Falls or somewhere in a car that they suspected. Found him very quickly. In the past, when these things have come up and the government has the ability to use things to solve crimes, we didn't just throw them away. We didn't throw away telephones because of wiretapping. We didn't throw away, got a list here. But there's a lot of things that we didn't do away with. GPS is because we could track someone. We didn't ban cars because they were dangerous. We created rules. And this is your chance. I mean, it could be a chance to set a policy that maybe isn't set yet. But I really think that there should be two things. I mean, before that, you know, if somebody followed me to work, worship, political meetings, or where I sleep at night or where my doctor is, that'd be stalking and they'd probably go to jail for it. But that's what these cameras could really do is they could reconstruct your movements and be a stalker. So I think there should be two things, a probable cause time period and then a search warrant time period. So the probable cause period would be from zero, from the time it happened, to a certain number of hours. And they have to enter a probable cause reason, something that fits the terminology of probable cause in that reason. And then they can decide later if they violated that. But then after that time period, it goes from, say it's eight hours, between eight hours and the maximum retention of these systems, You have to get a warrant, because you have to get a warrant to do almost anything, to search my phone, even though I carry it in public. You have to have a warrant to search my person if I'm in public. You have to have a warrant to search my vehicle, even though it's on a public road. So why shouldn't you have to have a search warrant to search where I've been, even if it's in a public place? Thank you.

After Mr. Reams, we will have Trent Rosser.

Good afternoon. My name is Jeremy Reams and I live in the city limits. What tools do we want to take away from law enforcement? I believe the tag readers are just a tool. We want to have anger over, first of all, we're the city of Amarillo. We're not social media. We're not the state. This is Amarillo. So we had one public incident. It's taken care of. Don't take the tools away from law enforcement. If somebody comes into my house and murders someone in my house, and my neighbor across the street gets the tag number and does a 911 call, that number can now go into the system, and every one of those tag cameras across this state knows where that vehicle is going. Don't take them away. It might be your home they come into and cause a crime, and you took the cameras away, and now you can have your crime solved. Don't take them away. It's a tool. Which tool do you want to take away? Let's take the guns away from them. Do we want to do that? Don't take FOC away. We all need it. Technology is technology. He used to be an officer that had to turn on a microphone. That was the technology then. Let's don't take it away. It's going to be our family member that may need a crime solved. And no, we're not gathering information from innocent citizens. It's not what it's for. It's not what it's doing. We all have bad apples in every part of our society, every business, every government. Leave them in Amarillo. It sounds like we've already implemented some guidelines on how to take care of it. If we're going from 30 days to seven days and that information is gone, then when you get off your 14-day cruise and you come home and everything in your house is gone, And your neighbor saw it. Oh, I think back, I remember seeing that car. And I remember seeing them. Well, you came off your cruise and it's too late. They don't have your information anymore because they only had it seven days, not 30. So let's think about that. Don't take tools away from longers.

Trent Rosser is up next and after Mr. Rosser is Toby Hudson.

Hello, my name is Trent Rosser. I live within the city limits of Amarillo. It's been a while since I've been here, guys. Nice seeing you again. There's just a few things. I'm not really for or against the plot camera. I don't know enough about it, but I will say this. Our chief mentioned there was so far 12 murders and 44 missing persons found. Out of 915, that's only 6%. Where's the rest of it going? Are we pulling people over and doing drug busts, illegal search and seizures? Where's the rest of it? That's something to think about. I agree with a lot of people here. I don't think we should have, we should have policies and procedures on keeping people out. Another thing to think about, Technology is here, Gus. That's part of it. And unfortunately, we've got people that live in their mother's basements and do nothing but play on computers and hack things. If this is a server, what's to say somebody in Afghanistan or Pakistan or even over here in Kenya, Texas hacking somebody's computer, they can hack into this as well. What's going to stop them from that? That's all I have on the plot cameras, but I want to also go back to a few other things. The water billing situation. Have we figured that out yet? How about the phone situations have we figured that out yet and the reason I ask that is only speaking on another topic here shortly and I called to ask about that and I was on hold for hours. I call again I was on hold for hours how people will pay their water bill or have a question about the water bill they can get through not came up here today at 2.30. is when I left my house. When I left my house, my wife had been on the phone for an hour and a half waiting to talk to someone in the water department. This is ridiculous. That's one. It's been how long now? Something needs to be done. Something else. What's going on with the stinky fire? Are we brushing that under the rug? What's happening? We need answers. That's y'all's job. So I believe someone said not too long ago that y'all don't have the authority to talk to or not talk. You're not over people in the city hall. Yes, you are. You said you're only over the city manager. No, you're over everybody in city hall. You are the top dogs. We hired you all for a reason. We wanted y'all to do the job. It doesn't matter if y'all have to go above someone's head, below someone's head. Y'all need to get the job done. Find out what's happening with the stinking fire. Find out what's happening with the billing. Find out what's happening with the phone systems. People need to pay their bill. They're getting tired of being disconnected. That's all I have. Thank y'all.

Toby is our last speaker.

Greetings, my name's Toby Hudson. I live in the city, and I'm, for everybody in here, I'm the representative of the Police Officers Association here for Amarillo. I'm gonna talk about these cameras just a little bit, so let's explore what they do. They take pictures. They don't record your routes, your destinations, or you. The softwares associated with the cameras is what's searchable. They read license plate numbers. They don't know who the car belongs to or who's driving it. They don't have any opinions about your destinations or your habits or your intentions. And no one is watching your movements. It is an investigative tool that requires a human to piece together information from other sources. Now how an investigation works. I don't want to reveal a bunch of tricks of the trade, so I'm hoping there's not like a robbery or burglary union rep in here. But when a crime happens, officers start looking for evidence. For 30 years, video evidence has become increasingly more important. It started with expensive security cameras that only wealthy people could afford. Then home security cameras came along, became more prevalent. Now everybody's got a doorbell cam. Officers get suspect descriptions. They spend hours, days, sometimes weeks canvassing neighborhoods to get footage from private security cameras. Up to a few years ago, if they happened to get a suspect vehicle description, they scoured that same footage to obtain a license plate number. After that, days or weeks behind, they still search state and local databases to find an owner or driver for that car. What most law-abiding citizens don't usually understand is that most crooks don't drive a car registered to them. It's their grandma's name, it's in their cousin's name, it's a rental car, it's borrowed from someone in their drug circle. So it still takes days or weeks to track down those people, find out who was in that car on that date at that time committing that crime. So clearing these cases takes a lot of man hours and some luck. Along comes these ALPR camera systems. Now that same suspect vehicle taken from a witness or private camera can be searched by major intersections. We can find out who it's registered to, who's been pulled over in it, who had the last traffic accident in it, when it got impounded and such. If one of those people happens to have a criminal record for theft, drugs, armed robbery, et cetera, we have a pretty good starting point. That's what detectives do. We may still find that car out and about because of these cameras. We may find it out and about committing more crime. If a good cop does his research in a timely fashion, we find that car in minutes, not days or weeks. We're literally catching these suspects wearing the same clothes they committed the burglary or robbery in. The guy that stole your family's stuff or shot your relatives. We're solving it in literally 45 minutes versus two weeks. We had an officer misuse this system. We had rules in place against that misuse. There was an investigation. He was fired. No cover up, no excuses, no tolerance. And no one is more disappointed in that decision to misuse that kind of trust than we are. That's not why we took an oath to do this job. These men and women, they're protectors. They're protectors of your property, of your family, and of your rights. I get the mistrust. Believe me. I've read Georgia was 1984. I understand the fear of constant surveillance, and I just promise you that is not this. I can't emphasize how important this stuff is, so I thank you.

we had a couple more sign up mr chuck little is up next and after mr little is joe west chuck little i live in the city limits amarillo i heard the comment of trust in here and there was talk of naming of oversight committee for these flop cameras There's been a problem with these committees that serve this city, that the same people time and time again are appointed to serve on these committees because people sign up that they want to be on these committees, it goes to the council, they read the names, somebody jumps up, makes a nomination, somebody jumps up and second it, that person's on that committee. even though that person has served on numerous committees time and time again. There's people on a list that volunteer to serve on these committees so that you get input from the whole citizenship of town, but they are overlooked time and time again. So I think we need to do, if we're going to have these committees of oversights for park and rec, flock cameras, sale of water rights, things like that, we need to have a fairer way of getting new people in there so that everybody can have a chance to weigh in on how this city is run. That's the way a democracy is supposed to work. But if we have the same people time and time again Serving on this committee. We're not getting new ideals. We're not getting people's feelings So I think maybe we need to set up these committees a little different That you can only serve on a committee so many times Then you go to the bottom of the list and you don't even get considered for Four years five years, whatever it is but we need to get fresh ideals not the same old thing over and over again and And another thing I have a problem with is people signing non-disclosure agreements. Now, that's not right. It never will be right. I don't care what the situation is. If you have to sign something that I'm never going to talk about this again, that's wrong. And it should be wrong no matter what.

So that's my comments today. Thank you.

Thank you, Chuck. I would give a statement of fact. This council's never signed any non-disclosure agreement. This council's never sold any water rights. Thank you.

Mr. Weiss, you can begin.

Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Joe West and I live in Amarillo. And what we've heard so far is talk about current Flock capabilities and current Verkada camera capabilities. I think we need to look a little bit into the future. Flock is introducing a new AI-powered operating system. They call it OS Investigate. It used to be Project Nightfall. What that does is it takes the flock camera network and it uses, what is it? It uses the network of 120,000 cameras nationwide, matches it with case files, 911 dispatch data, and commercial identity databases, and links movements to names, addresses, and relationships. Let's see. Yeah, it's still in development, but it lets police search for people and vehicles by their movements with no plate, name, or crime needed. And we know this because Flock has been broken into a couple times. Wired is the one that did this, and they got to download 450 files telling us about the capabilities of the future. Let's see. A former cop warns of unrestricted fishing expeditions for crime and says Flock literally tracks people. Same thing with the Verkada cameras. They're introducing AI capabilities that also look for things like bulges, backpacks, purses, stickers, things like that, and identifying features on people. So I bring that up because it's about to get a whole lot worse for y'all when things actually start ramping up. So currently we know of one police officer who made some egregious abuses. I want more. capability for private citizens to help on that digital rights and privacy, or the digital dignity rights and privacy board in order to investigate and we need to give that board actual teeth. We need to be able to give people fines for abusing the system. We need to be able to enforce regulations. We need to be able to have control of this system before it gets out of control in the near future. Thank you.

Mayor, that concludes everybody who signed up.

Real good. I appreciate you guys for coming up and signing in. Do I have anybody else here who'd like to offer public comment? Yes, sir. And Alan, if you don't mind, just state your name for the record. I know you frequent. Thank you.

Alan Feingold, I do live in the city of Amarillo. I intended to speak primarily about the budget. I do think that the city should give us some preliminary indication of what the budget will be, and I would appreciate it very much if the city could print a page or two or three outlining what the budget will be or at least what you folks think it will be. But I have heard so much about the flock cameras that I think I should make a few comments on it. I don't doubt that the flock cameras can be an excellent tool for law enforcement, a very valuable tool under certain circumstances, but I also don't doubt that it can be abused and it can be used to invade privacy, and I think it will take a very considerable study before we can determine where the balance lies. But this is not the only thing that we need to have oversight over regarding law enforcement. I think we really do need a citizens committee on oversight of public safety. I think we need to carefully consider who should go on such a committee. And I think it's long overdue that we have one. No matter how much trust we may wish to have in government or law enforcement, there is always the possibility that law enforcement or government will not do its job on behalf of the citizens, but will instead do a job on behalf of itself. This has been a problem for hundreds, if not thousands of years, And I don't think we've escaped it yet. So I think it really is important that we have a citizen's oversight committee and that you carefully consider this for the near future. Meanwhile, I think we also should consider the fact that Amarillo has a persistently high crime rate. And this has been the case for at least 40 years. We need to do a study of why it is that this crime rate remains so consistently high. And I think it is imperative for the city to provide a budget for this purpose and that you talk to people in law enforcement and outside law enforcement to try to determine how you would do such a study. Thank you.

Do I have anyone else here who would like to offer public comment? Yes, ma'am. This will be our last public commenter for today.

Thank you. My name is Cassie Green. I'm a Randall County resident and sorry that I didn't make the first call. Thank you, Chief, for answering questions and counsel for asking such good questions. I want to highlight a couple of them. I believe it was Don Tips who asked about search warrants. And as a statement of fact, correct me if I'm wrong, the chief answered that there wouldn't be enough time to do that process of a search warrant. And I implore you guys that that would be one of the safeguards that we implement because I think it would help with the unconstitutional, unreasonable search. So I don't know if you need to make a comment on that, but if I understood it correctly, he said there would not be enough time. If this was, If this was already in place, we wouldn't have the situation that we have now, is what I think. Also, Les asked how many searches a month have been obtained, and we couldn't even answer that. So I think that if we can't answer simple questions like that, that there needs to be an absolute moratorium on the FUSAS cameras and the flock cameras, and I don't say flock because of the brand. I'm talking about the functionality. And we do have a committee, and it would be good if you gave us teeth and if you put more citizens on the board. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Green. Ladies and gentlemen, it's 4.55. We're going to take a 15-minute recess. We're going to come back in here and take up item 4.2, discussion on the budget and tax rate. Thank you all for speaking. Thank you for everybody who stuck around during the meeting and those people that are logged back in. We're a little after our 515 callback. So at this time, we'll go ahead and call ourselves back into session. Item 4.2. Dr. O, are you going to take us into this one? I've got your name on this one, but I don't know if you're leading this discussion.

So I believe Grayson may be taking that on.

Okay. Well, we may push this back over to Mr. Path. So, Mr. Path, do you want to walk us into this item and then we can kind of hear from what staff's current status is and then go from there?

Yes. So, Andrew's going to join us in a minute here. So, As with all budget processes, there's always a lot of learning that goes on. Numbers are always identifying things. With this, we had an opportunity to meet with Ms. McMurray last Friday. She helped give us a new perspective of things to look at. As the Mayor pointed out this morning, there is some information that we need to look at today. I'm going to have to get Andrew in here to talk more about the numbers. We've identified some corrections we can make on our no-due revenue and the VATER calculations, but in doing so, we've also identified some data errors on the Potter County side, and so that we need to get with them about, and so through this process, we identified issues with our numbers and with Potter County, and so with this, we need a little bit more time, so we're gonna be asking the council for a budget, a special meeting on Monday, and so we can bring this information back to y'all, so. And here goes Andrew, so he can speak more to what they were talking about back there, so.

I might ask Stephanie, could you pull up the presentation from this morning? We can talk from that.

Thank you.

So here's the property tax calculation we were going over. And some of the issues we were discussing this morning that we spent a little time in this break between the morning workshop and the regular meeting discussing further really comes down to how much we're allocating on the interest and seeking side of the tax rate. Right now you can see under the proposed VADR and the proposed NNR, you see $20,903,000. 295 as the estimate for the debt payment. We believe that is actually going to be a few million lower based on potentially of excess debt collections. The other piece that we're looking at as well that the mayor pointed out, we've got 291 million in TIF captured value up at the top that we're basically removing from our taxable values to calculate what our collections are. SO WE'RE TAKING AWAY THE REVENUE THAT WE'D BE BRINGING IN, BUT TOWARD THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE YOU SEE LESS TIERS TAXES WHERE WE ARE PAYING OUT THE 1.2. SO THAT IS ANOTHER CORRECTION THAT WE'RE UPDATING ON THE FORM. AND THEN THE OTHER ISSUE THAT WE DISCOVERED IS WE WERE WORKING WITH OUR RANDALL COUNTY PARTNERS TO UPDATE OUR VADER CALCULATIONS BASED ON OUR EXCESS DEBT CALCULATIONS. is in speaking with potter county based on their software and how they have it currently in their system they have a little bit extra on the ins side of the collections that is really necessary for our debt service payments so we're going to be working with them over the next couple of days to make sure we get that balance correct because that may be potentially why we're seeing 3 million in excess debt collections because the balance is off on how they're processing it in their payments to us for our tax collections. So we basically have a few different outstanding topics that we're going to try and tackle before Monday to ensure that you all have an accurate voter approved tax rate because our initial A REVIEW WITH RANDALL COUNTY WAS ACTUALLY GOING TO LOWER THE VADER, BUT IF WE REDUCE OUR EXCESS DEBT CALCULATION, IT WILL ACTUALLY INCREASE OUR INS RATE BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE EXCESS TO LOWER IT DOWN. WE BASICALLY CAN'T BUY DOWN OUR RATE BECAUSE OF OUR EXCESS RESERVES. SO WE HAVE A FEW DIFFERENT ISSUES WE'RE STILL TRYING TO HONE IN ON IN PREPARATION FOR A MONDAY MEETING FOR YOU ALL TO HAVE THAT OPPORTUNITY TO SET THE CEILING TAX RATE. AND GIVE YOU MORE IDEA OF HOW MUCH YOU HAVE TO WORK WITH. THE OTHER FACTOR IS OUR NO NEW REVENUE RIGHT NOW SHOWS US GOING FROM 60 MILLION IN THE CURRENT YEAR TO 57. WE'RE POTENTIALLY LOOKING AT A SWING TO AN ADDITIONAL UP TO MAYBE 1 MILLION. SO BRING IT UP TO 61.5 MILLION INSTEAD. IT'S TRENDING BACK IN THE DIRECTION FROM OUR BUDGET WORKSHOP WE ORIGINALLY THOUGHT WE'D SEE IN THE NO NEW REVENUE. IT WAS JUST OUR FROZEN TAXES AND INS INTEREST IN SEEKING CALCULATIONS THAT WERE DISTORTING THE NUMBER A LITTLE BIT ON WHAT WE WERE ACTUALLY BRINGING IN. Clear as mud, I know.

But happy to try and answer questions. Let's try to work through a few of those just one at a time. So Ms. Christina McMurray is here. Very appreciative of you coming over and trying to assist. I know Mr. Warren was contacted over the phone. We appreciate both of our partners. These are not errors for either one of those tax assessors. So they've done exactly what they should do in their role in how they calculate the rate. What we have right now is, I think we have good questions. The question we've been asking as council is, how do we know that, right? We were told, well, there's only $700,000 additional bump. Well, how do we know that? Well, it's a hard calculation. We don't really know. Well, we had to go do some homework, right? And so right now, I think you're seeing staff as well as counsel continue to figure out what we have to know. And we have to know our revenues. There's two sides to every budget, right? There's revenues and there's expenditures. We are only on the revenue side. We want to talk about expenditures, and we'll do that here in a minute. But first, we've got to know what our revenues are. And so I think the best way to figure out a lot of that is by looking back. What did we revenue in 25? What did we revenue projection here in 26? And so Mrs. McMurray has greatly assisted with that. So thank you for taking multiple phone calls from me and from staff. Thanks for a couple different meetings. Councilman Tips was right there with me, and we've dug in. So I feel like we're doing our due diligence. The good news, we're doing our due diligence and we're seeing a $4 million swing. So right now, we've been looking at a budget that's built on $61 million M&O fund, right? And we still have the opportunity to maybe see some more revenues come into there, depending on what happens on INS. So I'm going to speculate a little bit, but it's good news to see that we're not $3.5 million behind the request. We're actually $4 million to the good of where we thought we were when we walked in here today. So I want council to hear that. That would mean if you were to pass the no new revenue rate, just based on these numbers, not even looking at the side of the budget. If there is another million there. You could afford to. APPROVE THE EXPENDITURE SIDE OF THE BUDGET AS PRESENTED. CAN YOU CONFIRM THAT THAT 61.5 WOULD COVER ROUGHLY THE 61.2 THAT YOU'VE GOT IN THE BUDGET?

YES, SIR. THAT'S OUR BELIEF. IT WOULD COVER ALL THE PAY INCREASES THAT WERE PROPOSED AS WELL AS THE 2 MILLION IN RECURRING SUPPLEMENTAL REQUESTS IS WHAT OUR INITIAL FIGURES ARE SHOWING.

Right so so let me ask a few questions on the Potter County side right? So what I'm unclear is the Potter County debt reserve and how that's calculating. So if if I'm looking at what bond Council sent for all of the debt payments, it was 19.773. We had a number plugged in of 20.9. You believe that 19.7 could go down to.

number that you're comfortable stating or you just believe you know it's going to go down and we don't know yet we just know it'll it'll go down not quite sure on the number we initially thought we had a good idea but it's the excess debt reserves that we need to get honed in on now because we were showing well over 3 million in excess if that goes down in half the ins rate may have to make up for it so it's a little too early tell now exactly what that looks like Basically what we're showing currently in the Potter County software is that they've got 72% of a dollar, basically 72% factored in for operation and maintenance and 28% for INS or interest in sinking when it should really be closer to a ratio of 77% O&M and 23% INS. So that's why it's starting to grow that excess debt collections because it's not going into maintenance operations as far as how they track it. We still just collect it all, but what they track it as, that's what's fed into the truth and taxation form.

So you have to have that accurate to know what your true Vader tax rate is. So, Council, here's a couple of things just to check off the list. Tiers, no $1.2 million deduct. So we don't have to start with $61.5 and then take $1.2 million out of that. We don't have an expenditure that's coming out of that. We've got that in the calculation above, correct?

Yeah. So it would actually be an in and out. You bring in the revenue and it puts out the expense to the Tiers Fund.

Great. So we can check that one off. Monday is being discussed, so I don't know if you're hearing it, but what you're being asked to do is come in on Monday, have a special meeting to finalize your tax rate. The reason that that would be needed is if we are going to go towards what would be the VADR, right, the voter approved tax rate, which right now is 44.7. And so if we don't need to do that, I'm going to tell you, we could potentially still take action today. I don't know that there's wisdom in that. And I think we should, we should probably ask council on that what that looks like. But if we just walked in here today at the no new revenue rate, and we knew that's where we were going to be, and we said, staff, go back and run these debt services, double check all this. We've already found some Errors right? We've already found some other things that were plugged in in an area where they're not supposed to be so. I think that it's worth a Monday meeting if we're trying to come back in here and we said, you know, 3% for our personnel is not enough. Like, we need four. And we're looking at police, fire, and civilian as well as our boots on the ground that function this city. So if we're looking at another million and a half dollars, I think it's well worth, I don't even know what that would average. That might average, I don't know, $1,200 per employee annually, $1,500, I don't know. But in putting our money where it's best suited, these are monies that we have once we establish that we have them. The senior citizens, you know, that we could create a fund for and start pulling budget money into that, even if it's a little amount of money, $100,000 year one. That's what we have the opportunity to do if we want to dig through this. What I'm not comfortable in doing is saying, well, you'd have to pass the VATER rate. in order to do all that you might not have to we need these answers however if you were willing to approve a maximum ceiling you can't do that today because we don't know what that is so if any of council wants to look at what is that additional four million dollars do for your organization you've got a four million dollar swing up to the sixty one point five you'd have another four plus million dollar swing potentially up from there if you pass the highest rate that you legally can. I walked into the meeting today hoping that the transfers in and the debt service out was around $3 million. And I don't have those numbers back. It doesn't look optimistic. So I've got to do a little more homework on my side. the budget is still a working budget and we can bring it back if if we want to take action on something that is close to that nnr or we can come in on monday and then i don't want to skip past the the mrs mcmurray part of this if you guys have questions now's the time to go through this and really understand what happened YOU KNOW, HOW DO WE GET HERE, WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? BUT THE GOAL HERE AT THE END OF THIS 30-MINUTE CONVERSATION IS TO KNOW WHERE WE'RE GOING. ARE WE GOING INTO A MONDAY AFTERNOON OR A MONDAY MORNING MEETING? OR ARE WE GOING TO AN NNR RATE AND THEN WE'RE GOING TO BE VERY EFFICIENT STEWARDS OF THOSE MONIES? COUNCIL?

I think we need to wait and get the true figures. I don't think we can decide on a rate today, not knowing the figures. And I just have a question. So we've talked about no new revenue rate that we've been talking about. So does it come out that we're equal, yes?

A little above even. probably around 800,000 to a million above. And a good portion of that is taking out the tiers payment that helps increase that. Without the tiers adjustment, it'd probably be closer to break even.

Right, which is what we've been saying the whole time. Okay, okay. I mean, my opinion is I think we need to wait until we see the new numbers. I think it's good news for everybody up here. I think it's good news for everybody out there that we do have more money than what we thought we had. Uh, and again, thanks to the mayor for pulling that thread and keep pulling it. Um, and I would agree with you on the on the staff and, uh, police and fire that. This is an opportunity that we could take care of, you know, the organization, which I think has been neglected. I mean, I've got all the numbers, you know, thanks to Andrew. Um, on the average salaries of. the city of Amarillo versus the median in Amarillo and we're behind. We did a pay study and we are behind. I think it's time that we took care of the organization, the people that run this. And I think that's all of our job, to just be a good steward of the monies that we have. And part of that is increasing quality services. We always want to increase quality services, but we need to, in order to do that, that includes the staff and that includes being able to pay those guys They're here working their tail off, like Colt said, boots on the ground. So my opinion, I think we need to know the true numbers. I don't want to come up here again for another day, but I think we need to know the true numbers before we move forward.

Well, I don't believe in found money. I mean, I'm totally lost at where we are on this. And if we want to meet on Monday, I'm good with meeting on Monday. I just like to be prepared to present it in a way that I can understand it. Because I'm sorry, I don't know where we're finding this money and we got this money coming in and this money. I mean, are we going to be able to explain it on Monday? Because we haven't seemed to be able to explain it so far. And I don't want people thinking, I mean, let's just don't broadcast that we've got all this found money yet until, I mean, I don't believe we haven't until let's go through and you've got to show me how this is, because if I'm going to have a comfort level with this and determine what we're going to do, everybody's got to have a comfort level. And right now, I don't have any comfort level on this.

And that's why our recommendation would be to meet on Monday to give us the time to work with potter county and reynolds county to get a final truth in taxation what's our deadline on drop dead deadline on i mean i thought we just had to vote on a rate not to exceed correct we just don't know what that rate could be now that we know our excess debt collections is off based on the potter county numbers it may be a 45 cent tax rate as your vader versus a 44 cent tax rate so you could always set something in the 43 cent range and probably be be good that you wouldn't exceed it but we just don't know what the true ceiling is until we finish that calculation with updated potter county scenario

OK, but we feel like we can, I mean, we're not going to come meet Monday and say, oh, wait a minute. I mean, I know you can't predict the future, but it's just getting a little bit frustrating.

Yeah, part of the goal today, So the staff went back to my office. We actually brought Ms. McMurray. We brought her staff with us. So the goal today was to work together before this discussion to bring you a revised Truth in Taxation form. But then we discovered an issue that, unfortunately, those in the room couldn't answer. And we needed Potter County. But unfortunately, time ran out. We couldn't get that done in time. So our goal was to have brought this to you tonight after some quick huddle up. But we ran into an issue that was beyond our ability to answer tonight. And so when is our, what's our deadline? So obviously September 29th is the final drop dead public hearing day. We have a 22nd meeting, so we have to have things to the paper. Uh, Stephanie, can you speak to that?

Yes, we have to have something to the paper by this Thursday, the 10th, and we can send any final edits by the end of business Monday.

So that's why we're having to look at Monday.

So Monday is our... So regardless of what we bring Monday, there will need to be a vote on a ceiling on Monday.

And we can't meet before then because of a certain notice requirement. We have to have three full business days before our next meeting can take place.

Then it doesn't have to be Monday, right?

No, it doesn't even mean Monday because that's the last day that the paper... That's the last day, but we can do it before then. But you can't meet before then because we can't set a meeting. We have to have three full business days notice requirement to have a special meeting. So we could meet Friday.

Under the new TELMA rules that went into effect this last year, you need three full business days, which would be Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. The earliest you could meet is Monday.

So we're not looking at hours. It's not 72 hours anymore.

You can't include the third day. The third day is part of the in-between.

And it has to be before 10 a.m.?

No, I think anytime Monday morning or before noon on Monday would give us time that afternoon.

Preferably morning so that if there are whatever changes we need to make to the notice, our CFO can get those to the newspaper by end of business on Monday.

But we're going to be working with Randall and Potter County prior to Monday to get you more accurate numbers on the truth and taxation form.

So, Councilman Reid, you've been quiet over there. I don't want to have a public meeting and not be able to hear where you're at. Think in this NNR rate, now that we know it's $61.5 million, that looks pretty good. I'm with Les on this one.

I am so lost on the process that we've gone through. And so, I mean, we're forced to have our meeting on Monday, because there's nothing that we can adopt today, because we don't even know what the figures are.

Well, I know Council hasn't been treated well on the presentation of the budget and the understanding of the budget. I feel like we've done an excellent job of questioning, asking questions, and really trying to walk this out. It's unfortunate that we're here, and I get the frustration, but it doesn't change the condition that we're in right and the condition we're in is a good one right we were not four million dollars in the whole we think we think uh... you that you can uh... yeah trust but verify i mean i don't have anything at this point that i don't know

Let's let's come into a Monday. I mean, we can we can take a fresh stab at it. But, you know, show me and maybe you two get it. Apparently, you've been having a lot of discussions that that maybe the rest of us haven't had been able to have. So maybe if we can all have the same discussions together, we can all get up to speed and get a good understanding of this.

I think just being on this side of it, what needs to be shown is where we were with the calculations and why and then Now the real calculations with the information that we have, I think that would bring clarity.

We'll basically bring an update of what's on your slide here. This is where we were, and we'll show you what the true calculation ends up being.

I think just walk through the math. I think we'll answer all the questions, the confusion, I think. Yes, sir.

Everybody available on Monday morning?

I am probably after 9.30. I've got a meeting first thing in the morning, Monday.

10 o'clock, maybe? 10.30? 11? What's best?

11 would probably work best for me.

11's best? Councilman Reed? Can one of you guys text Prescott to see what his availability is?

Yeah, we'll work on that.

Yeah, I'm available. time on Monday morning to make sure we come in with everything right because I mean that is our our d-day right so these transfers in understanding the transfers that are going into that debt fund there was eight million dollars shown on this page but it's listed underneath the transfers in From what you would say is general fund, right? So I'm expecting it to come in from. Entities are funds that are are within general fund. I'm not expecting that 8Million to be funded by hot tax. I'm thinking hot tax sits over on its own side and you can see those as they come into. I believe it's even on a different page. We'd have to look back at it. So here's what I would like. I need that other piece of the puzzle. So if I'm talking to bond council, he's telling me, these are all your general obligation debts, right? And this is how all this works. And this is coming from fleet, but this is coming from its own fund. And so where those monies are ending up in that one debt fund to pay all that, I'm gonna have to have really clear understanding of how those come in. And then I'd like to see the expenditures out. What I'm looking for is if we've funded $4 million through fleet, but our debt surface is 2.4 million, did we leave the balance in the fleet fund? Or did we put it over in debt service and it's actually sitting there? And that is the $1 million that we need in order to take care of whatever's next on the list. So do you think, Mr. Freeman, that that's real clear now that you've seen the paperwork that I'm looking at and you've understood?

Yeah, we can bring that back on Monday. I think we can have that clear. Okay.

Yes, sir. Council, you're only on the revenue side of the budget. you're going to get over on the expenditures. What this council's done very well is we fought pretty hard to make sure that we're tracking down CIP projects, and now they're coming back to you, right? And you're making budget amendments mid-year, budget amendments end of the year. So on the expenditures side, let's come Monday to really figure out these revenues. Let's pass a healthy budget that gets to everything we can. But let's really hold these actuals accountable as we get the actuals in from the end of this current year. Let's agree. Let's do a mid-year budget amendment. Let's come in here and let's do this job right. This is not a once-a-year thing. It doesn't necessarily have to go to personnel. I think we need to push for personnel on the front end. But there's a lot of questions that are being asked of you guys to figure out on Monday. Or, man, by the 29th. Let's make sure we can walk away from this last budget knowing that we really ran it. And I feel like we are tracking that way now. I know there's not a lot of confidence in where these numbers are going to fall, but I believe by Monday at lunch, we will know for sure where our revenues are. And then I hope it's a shorter meeting, and then we can take the next step. Mrs. McMurray, we bothered you and had you come and sit through all of public comment. So we hope you were entertained and you understand the inner workings of the city government even more so. But is there anything that you need to add or would like to say? Or are you good if we don't have any questions? I don't know that we have questions for you anymore. I think it's a comeback. I just don't want to move forward if there was something you needed to add to the conversation.

Hello Christina McMurray Randall County tax assessor for those that don't know me. Mayor, council members. The only thing that I would add in talking with Grayson and Andrew is once we get the numbers that we need, my staff and I can have that calculation done within 30 minutes to an hour. And as long as we have agreement with the city, then the calculation will be in your hands. So that's the only thing I'd like to add.

That's great. Thank you, ma'am. We appreciate you sitting through this meeting and then all the help earlier today and previous week. Council, anything before we schedule a time?

I would think one time there were a couple of things brought up today of some documents and bond council things and things you got. Maybe if we're going to refer to those, maybe if all of us could have a copy of it to look at, because the things that were talked about today that kind of factored into the conversation kind of, I mean, I...

I think that's a great point. So everything that Christina shared is public and can be shared with council. Everything coming from bond council, Mr. Freeman has, he can share that. It was just a projection on debt service payments. Everything else that I'm referencing came out of your budget book. And so all of the other documents are back around a page 1,030 plus.

I've got the budget. It was just those other things that I didn't know what we were talking about.

And then I think if Council has any questions on any of that, getting with staff before Monday morning would be great. Can we say Monday at 11? You comfortable? Yes, sir.

We're still waiting to hear from David, but I think we're comfortable to move forward with that.

Real good. Anything further on item 4.2, gentlemen? Okay, we're going to move forward. Item 4.3, any future agenda requests?

I've got two, Mayor, if I could, please. Sure. One is I would like to get an update on utility billing, maybe at our next meeting. I know we were looking at doing an audit. I don't know where we are, whether we're finished with that. But I do know that I'm getting people that are talking to me, we heard earlier today, of long lines to get in to deal with the bill, those types of things. I'm hearing people that are looking at their August bill, getting some spikes that don't appear normal, even with that. So I just like to kind of get an update where we are, when we're going to get a report back from the company that we paid the money to do that. And then the other thing I'd like to put on the future agenda, this doesn't necessarily have to be on the next one, but I do think we need to have a discussion about Transformation Park. Councilmember Prescott and I kind of visited the park last week, the future location of the day center. the hub, temporary food service location, and kind of what's going on there. And I was able to talk to businesses, not only some that have been mentioned here, but other businesses who have been good neighbors in those particular areas, but are facing some struggles right now. We've had businesses in that area that, you know, they want to be good neighbors, but they've had to invest in various security methods that they didn't have before. But they're not necessarily complaining. They want to be good neighbors. But they're concerned about safety as well. These are warehouses. This is basically an industrial district. There's one company that has three or four warehouses. There are people moving equipment all the time through there. But I do think in looking at what's going on in that area, when the hub moves across the street and the day center, we've got the potential of some things that I think we need to get ahead of and talk about that. And what I'd like to discuss is maybe Can we get the stakeholders together to make sure that we are prepared for what's going to happen next in that area, in the day center area and Transformation Park when the day center opens? And to me, that would be, I think we need to get everybody to the table. So that'd be, you know, there are a lot of stakeholders in that area, community services, Transformation Park, day center, public safety, as well as the business owners in those areas. uh the ones i talked to you know they're not complaining they realize the mission they want to be supportive of it but i think we're going to have some challenges down there if we wait and see just what happens organically maybe at the end of the day i don't know what we'll be able to do but i do think it's something that we need to be talking about sooner rather than later particularly before the day center opens so if we could if we could maybe get a good discussion on that doesn't have to be at the next meeting but as soon as we can get that

Councilman, how much time do we have on that? When's that day center come online?

Do you know? Don't know the answer to that. Was it pretty far along?

I think it's around November is what they're shooting for to finish construction. I don't think community development is going to move in until January, February.

So city management, can we get through budget and all of this stuff before we put these additional agenda items on? Does that give you time to get what you're looking for, but also get through?

Two things. I'd already tasked managing director Riddlesberger with working towards a presentation for that to come here pretty soon. And also I've been in communication with Chris Eckert on Nugent Consulting. He's almost done with his audit for utility billing, and so I'm going to check with him again tomorrow and see if he can't come to our next council meeting so he can speak directly to the audit. And then our staff can speak about the wait times and those kind of things on top of that. So I'm going to try to work both of those here pretty quick.

Yeah. Real good. Any other future agenda requests? okay we're going to move ourselves forward we have successfully accomplished section 5 public comment we will now move on to section 6 the consent agenda council is there anything listed in this consent agenda that you need pulled off for further detail would request a motion on section six I move to approve the consent agenda as presented. Second. I have a motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Let's move into our non-consent agenda, Section 7. We will... Take up item 7.1 here. Take no action on that. We've put that down as an action item based on our discussion, which we have now moved to Monday at 11 for anybody who's cluing back in. We will live stream all that via posted meeting, open to the public. Feel free to come. 11 o'clock Monday here in the chambers or log on and you can watch. No action on 7.1. Item 7.2 takes up one of our first of many, many public hearings by everybody's favorite presenter, Brady Kendrick. How you doing, sir?

Good. Good evening, Mayor and Council. We'll start with 7.2, public hearing and consideration of Ordinance 8258. THIS IS THE CONSIDER THE REZONING OF A 4.56 ACRE PORTION OF BLOCK ONE WASHINGTON INDUSTRIAL TRACKS EDITION. THIS IS IN THE CITY OF AMARILLO IN RANDALL COUNTY, TEXAS IN THE VIZINITY OF SOUTHWEST 47th AVENUE IN WASHINGTON STREET. The applicant is Geospatial Data Inc. for Collins Families Properties LLC, and they are proposing the rezone from Light Industrial District to Plan Development District 413 for a manufactured home park subdivision with reduced lot width and area minimums. And they are proposing this change in zoning to develop this property with 44 lots for manufactured homes. Because the property does not meet those minimum lot standards and widths, that's the reason for the request for a plan development. Regarding the City Plan 2045 place type, it is manufacturing and logistics for this property. And this is located south of 46th Avenue along the west side of the BNSF Railway in an industrial district as it's currently zoned. It is noted that the city's zoning ordinance does allow for manufactured home parks and manufactured home subdivisions by right in light industrial zoning. And I'll go over a few of the differences that the applicant's proposing versus the typical standards. Typically, minimum space or lot size for a manufactured home park is 3,500 square feet. a manufactured home park sub or manufactured home subdivision would be 5 000 square feet the smallest proposed lot in this development is 3 421 square feet regarding minimum widths parks do not have a minimum width subdivisions have a 50 foot width minimum and the proposal for this is 26 feet And then just a couple other key differences, typically manufactured home parks require that 8% of the park area be dedicated to a park area or open space for the residents. And there are minimum storage facility and common area requirements as well. while the manufactured home subdivisions have that 50 by 100, 5,000 square foot lot requirement that's more typical of a residential subdivision. In examining the applicant's proposal, the design is more in line with the density and lot size typically seen within a manufactured home park than that of a subdivision. However, the applicant is of the belief that the proposed lots, the space size is adequate for the homes and associated yard space reach. The applicant does believe that this is an appropriate infill project for the area, given that the light industrial zoning does allow for manufactured home parks and subdivisions by right. While the proposal does find itself somewhere between a park and a subdivision in terms of development standards and lack of amenities, The developer has stated that given the site constraints posed by the size of the property and also the fact that there's a strip of property owned by another individual located on the north side of the property that prevents them from accessing 46th Avenue, this was, in their opinion, the best design that tried to balance all the needs and elements of an infill project. THE PLANNING AND ZONING COMMISSION DID CONSIDER THIS ITEM IN THE PUBLIC HEARING AND THE COMMISSIONERS DID HAVE A NUMBER OF THOUGHTS TO NOTE ON THIS REQUEST. I'LL NOTE UP FRONT THE VOTE WAS 4-2 ON THIS ITEM TO RECOMMEND APPROVAL. FOR THE TWO COMMISSIONERS THAT HAD CONCERNS AND VOTED AGAINST THE REQUEST THESE WERE THEIR PRIMARY CONCERNS. The proposal would allow a hybrid type land use, a mix of a manufactured home subdivision and park in an industrial area that typically would not be allowed by right. Allowing such in an industrially zoned area could result in land use compatibility issues. The second point was the proposal would promote a more transient type character for the neighborhood in which people would move in and out constantly, which could result in a neighborhood without true character given the lack of typical amenities or characteristics that the standard regulations for manufactured home parks and subdivisions would promote and require. The proposal, given it is a mix of a manufactured home park and subdivision, lacks typical requirements and characteristics the code would promote, which would lead to a less desirable product for the residents that could put pressure on other parts of the city from residents potentially seeking those amenities elsewhere versus within their own neighborhood. And lastly, the request goes against City Plan Vision 2045, which is the guiding document for land use recommendations within the City of Amarillo, which should be taken into consideration unless special conditions exist that require additional consideration. City plan recommends preservation of light industrial uses that provide local jobs by introducing a new and dense residential product into this area as part of a planned development. Residential uses would be encroaching into an established commercial and industrial area. While the zoning and land use transitions can balance these encroachments near industrial areas, such is not present or proposed in this situation in the opinion of those two commissioners. And a key goal of city plans recommendations that apply to this situation is reducing adjacencies to incompatible uses and protecting against harm that incompatibilities may cause. Now for the four commissioners that voted in favor of the request, they identified the key reasons as recommendation of approval to the council. The project represents an opportunity for infill development within the city. THE LOCATION OF THE PROPERTY AND THE OPINION OF THESE COMMISSIONERS REPRESENTS A TRANSITION IN ZONING AND DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN THE SINGLE FAMILY NEIGHBORHOOD TO THE NORTH AND THE INDUSTRIAL AREAS NEARBY. THE DEPARTURE FROM THE ZONING ORDINANCE STANDARDS FOR MANUFACTURED HOME PARK SUBDIVISIONS IS APPROPRIATE. AND THE LOT SIZE AND LOCATION OF THE TRACK MAKE THE DEVELOPMENT STANDARDS REQUESTED UNIQUE TO THIS SPECIFIC SITUATION AND LOCATION WHILE TRYING TO BALANCE THE NEEDS OF MEETING THE CODE AND EXECUTING ON AN INFILL PROJECT WITHIN THE CITY. REGARDING PUBLIC COMMENT ON THIS ITEM, THERE WERE FIVE CALLS THAT HAVE BEEN RECEIVED BY STAFF. ONE WAS A GENERAL ANQUIRY AND FOUR WERE IN OPPOSITION TO THE REQUEST. AND THOSE INCLUDED REPRESENTATIVES OF BOTH RESIDENTS OF THE SUBDIVISION TO THE NORTH AND AN INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY OWNER NEARBY. THE CONCERNS EXPRESSED BY THE FOUR CALLERS INCLUDED POTENTIAL IMPACT OF PROPERTY VALUES, CONCERNS ABOUT AN INCREASE IN CRIME, INCREASES IN TRAFFIC AND THE DEVELOPMENT TYPE NOT BEING COMPATIBLE WITH THE EXISTING DEVELOPMENT IN THE AREA. With that, as I previously mentioned, the Planning and Zoning Commission recommended approval of this item with a 4-2 vote to you all. And with that, I can take questions, and we also have representatives from the developer here as well.

Questions, Council? You had a 4-2 vote on this? That's correct. Council, while y'all think about it, we could go ahead and open a public hearing, unless you have any further questions for Brady or either of the representatives. Maybe Mr. Davis back there, if you've got any.

So what's the neighborhood to the north there on the other side of 46?

I don't recall the specific name of the subdivision. I just plotted off the top of my head.

Okay, but it's just your traditional...

Yes, it's a traditionally constructed R3 neighborhood, I believe is the zoning, but it's your traditional single family detached homes across 46 to the north there.

Yeah. And then you use the term called infill development. And then that's, I mean, generally, what is infill development? What does that look like? Does this fall into the type of infill development that we're looking for?

So infill development essentially utilizing parcels within the city that potentially have infrastructure nearby that could be easily tied into and could represent opportunities for growth within the city that utilize existing infrastructure without putting an additional strain on having to construct more. Now there's two components to looking at appropriate infill development. There's kind of that infrastructure aspect of it and also looking at zoning and development characteristics in the area. Now, in this case, there are streets and infrastructure nearby, but in the planning, some of the commissioners, though, had the concern about this being appropriate from the zoning and development characteristics in the area. The two that voted against the item had concerns that maybe introducing this into an industrial area may not be the most compatible use in the world, so. Okay, thank you. No problem.

Council, anything else for Mr. Kendrick? Okay, thank you, sir. At this time, I'll open a public hearing. Do I have anyone who'd like to speak for or against this item? Yes, sir. If you don't mind to, would you like to speak first? Go ahead and come on up. You can go first. That's good. Sure, tell me your first and last name again for the record so we get it down. Okay, go right ahead.

You mentioned a business call. How many businesses called about this?

Only one.

Okay, were they for or against on this one?

The person that we heard from that stated they were a business said they had concerns about the compatibility, so they voiced a comment in opposition that we heard from.

Okay, that was me and I did not voice that. I was inquiring about is if the buffer zone, as you said, went into our area, which I don't mind that. I don't mind anyone putting anything up. My concern is we talked about in the past, my lot is directly south, if you can see there. We talked in the past about expanding our warehouse. That is the land that we have. If we move this to a residential, are we going to have to do this all over again to expand our warehouse when we do? Now, you did say this was a buffer zone.

So if you want to expand your warehouse, assuming that the use is allowed in light industrial district, you would just have to go through the typical site plan process, but a rezoning would not be required if you're just simply expanding your existing business in the area.

So we wouldn't have to go worry about the the residents there at that area and the zoning of your property is not changing.

So if you're proposing just an expansion of your existing business, you'd be able to do that.

And I could have that in writing because, like I said, it's showing it right there. It shows, even though it's not in yellow, it's in the gray area.

So what the gray area on the map is, that's the 200-foot notice area that the state requires us to mail notices to. So that's not changing your zoning or land use designation. That's just graphically showing the people that would have gotten the notices in the mail. So we just do that to be helpful with the notices. Okay. Next question is how many trailer homes will be there? 44. 44.

And the only entrance and exit from that is going to be on 47th, correct?

There will be one off of 47th, and also the applicant is going to construct. Polk Street is actually dedicated next to this property on the east, but it's not constructed. They're also going to construct Polk Street so it ties in between 46th and 47th. They will also have an entrance off of that newly constructed segment of Polk Street that they are going to build.

Okay. uh last question uh will they also be responsible for the trash uh that ends up in that area and the reason i say this is i've had to pay people to come and pick up trash off the streets because the city was going to find us will this be a joint effort are we still going to be responsible for everything

The property owners within the development will be responsible for maintaining their properties in proper order regarding trash.

Because I watched them mow yesterday and dump a bunch of trash in the street.

Yeah, the property owners within the subdivision will have to follow the municipal code just like anybody else. Okay. Mm-hmm.

So let me thank you for speaking to that. Good questions. If you do have a littering issue, like we probably try to connect you to our Marshall's office so they can get in front of that. That way we're enforcing those laws. So thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Kendrick. I believe we're good with you as well. Do I have the property owner here? Is that correct, sir? Yes, sir. Yeah, if you don't mind, give us your name for the record. Colby Collins.

How are you, sir?

Good to see you, sir.

Likewise. Any questions or concerns that I can answer? I'm happy to.

You know, I think if you had something just to speak in general for this, we probably would like to know what the general market conditions are that you're seeing for this type of affordable housing.

Before I answer that, may I answer his question here? Sure. We've also had a homeless problem on this land that we were able to take care of. We've also had a littering issue. people constantly just taking dump trailers over there and just dumping on this land. So we think that by filling this area in, we're going to get rid of a lot of the homeless issue that's in just these local vacant areas. So we do think that that will help and help your company as well. Great. From the standpoint of the smaller lots, I know Brady really is in on the under 3,500 square foot lots. Two of the 44 are under 3,500 square foot. The majority of the lots are over 4,000 square foot. 10 minutes on cash and Dustin they will be over 3500 and we can address that issue. The 26 foot, I don't know if any of you are aware of our project over on Northwest 9th over on the boulevard. We built, they were on 25 foot lots. We built 18 homes over there. The PNZ, the two people that were against it, they want the 8% green space if we were to do the mobile home subdivision or mobile home park. The mobile home subdivision, we're actually doing a bigger lot than what the mobile home park would be. We're providing a private yard. 45 by 26 will be the typical backside yard. I mean, swing set, trampoline, dog run, they'll have their own private yard rather than a shared space. I don't think 44 homes want a shared park. It's only 8% of 4.5 acres. It'll be really small. So I think given that personal area, it'll be way more admirable. Also, if we did go the mobile home park route, Can't sell individually we can actually offer low income housing here that's for sale and they can own their own land and home and fits in with the gables area. I believe the gables average home is between 80 and maybe a 100,000 110,000 so we can be competitive in that and we're not bringing in any used. Manufacturing will be brand new. Brand new homes. What's your market rate over there?

So you're 1,000, 1,200-square-foot home maybe?

1,200-square-foot. We're going to bring in a four-bed, two-bath Clayton product.

What do you expect to be able to sell those to individuals for?

With land, I think we could sell them for about $119,000. Wow, okay. It'll be extremely affordable. It'll be very hard to compete with, try to get it anywhere else. We're bringing manufactured homes into the southwest area for a better school district. We own Paradise Hills over on Northeast 32nd and Grant. And a lot of our clients out there, they want in that Caprock area, South Lawn area, kind of away from the north side. Some love it. Some hate it. And we think we can offer that product at a competitive rate.

Real good. Mr. Collins, thank you for the additional information.

Yes, sir. Quick question. So these are going to be available for purchase, correct? Yes, sir. If someone purchased it, can they sublet it?

We're not going to have an HOA.

No, I'm saying if I buy it, do I have to live there or could I say, you know what, I want to buy five of these and I'm going to rent them out?

I don't think that we're going to be in charge of that. If they were to buy a lot and then rent it out, I don't think there's anything that we could do. nor do I want to really be in charge of.

I understand. I'm just trying to get an idea of what the nature of the, I guess that was one of the concerns maybe the board had, is just what the nature of this is. So you own an existing facility in, I mean, an existing something similar?

It's an over-home subdivision.

And what is the nature of that? Is that transient, or is there a lot of change, or who owns that? I own 165 homes out there, and then I lease out 115 lots.

So we vary from rent, Section 8 housing, and people have their own homes and just rent a lot from us. Okay. All right. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Good questions. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Mr. Davis.

Yeah, I can just hear for the technical side of things so I can answer any questions about the subdivision itself, about the extension of streets, water, sewer, paving, drainage, those types of things, if anybody has any questions.

Any engineering questions, Councilor? Thank you, sir. Appreciate you, Justin. Thank you. Council, item 7. Well, I'm sorry.

I'd like to, can I ask one thing? Yes. The council. I really, you know, when we get something from a board, and I've got some, I think I need a little bit more knowledge on this. I would like to maybe, if it's not going to cause a problem, maybe have two more weeks on this. I'd like to talk to some of the board members and kind of hear those that voted to support it, those didn't, what their concerns were. I'd kind of like to go out and I haven't had a chance to take a look at the area as well as the one they've got, you know, maybe before we take a vote on this. So I'd ask if it would be possible, could we have two more weeks, and then I'll be prepared at that time to kind of do my due. I'd just like to learn more about kind of what the thoughts were on both sides of the planning and zoning.

So I do believe, like, it's always good due diligence. Like, take your time, but then let me see here. IF IN THE WAY OF WE WANT TO LISTEN TO THE BOARD, AND THEY MAY HAVE HAD SOME CONCERNS, BUT THIS IS A PLANNED DEVELOPMENT. IT MEETS ALL OF THE REQUIREMENTS It's designed the owners that are around it. We heard from the only owner who had a dispute or a worry. So I want to make sure we're not tabling an item to come back two weeks later to have another public hearing potentially that we could have taken action on here today. So I want to make sure you don't have any concerns with Anything other than just the board?

No, I mean, I just I mean, to be honest with that, when I think of infield development, this is not I do have concerns of what, you know, is this is this neighborhood going to be good for that area? I'd like to see what's across the street. I'd like to I just like to kind of, you know, before I vote one way or another. to be able to look at. I may have some more questions for them. So, again, I mean, we can have another public hearing. I don't know if anybody is. But I would like to have a little, I didn't know that this particular one was going to be on the agenda item for today. And this is the first reading, right? Right.

So we're going to have a second swap.

We'll have a second reading. But in the way of holding a public hearing, we haven't closed the public hearing yet. If we close the public hearing, and council wants to take a little bit more time. If I bring it back for action at a later date, what happens there, Mr. Attorney?

you would have already handled the public hearing. So that part would be completed. But if you don't pass anything today, then you'll still need another reading.

So if we passed it today, there'd still be come up for a second reading to give additional time, but then we have to take action again in that second reading, correct? You would. So this technically wouldn't hold anything up if we don't table it. We can move it forward, but then be able to give additional time for people to do research or whatever. And if you were against it, you still I'd be willing to do that. Thank you.

I think that's good because a lot of times these public hearings move pretty quickly and I appreciate the additional counsel from legal. So. we want to make sure everybody hears the the public hearing i'm fixing to close um i saw mr wasser is that right so let me do one thing here uh i'm not opening it up for discussion for multiple like a debate style setting i have an individual who's unique he's the only one that called and he's the only adjacent property owner so i'm going to call him back up and just ask did you have a further concern so yes i've got i've got a good answer for your question about the neighborhood

I do run the business on the south side. I also live two blocks on the north side. It's a great neighborhood. I would not mind having a mobile home park there. I live at 4300 South Jackson, 4321 to be exact. It's a great neighborhood. Lots of people, people walk their dogs. I wouldn't have an issue with mobile home park there. Okay. So that's just to answer your question there. All right. Thank you. Mr. Wasser.

Thank you, sir. At this time, I'm going to close the public hearing. And item 7.2 is before you for the first reading and vote.

Let's see. I would move to adopt ordinance number 8258 as presented. Second.

You got a motion and a second any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you for everybody who's here. Right now we'll move into our second public hearing item 7.3. Is Miss Kimberly running this one? All right, Ms. Kimberly, would you mind coming up here? We're fixing to run through, I don't know how many PIDs. These are our public improvement districts, and they need to come forward for us to just approve what these PID associations have already approved. So afternoon, Ms. Kimberly, how are you?

Great. Good afternoon, Mayor, Councilman. 2026 27 public improvement district 5 year service plans and assessments. Public improvement districts kids are becoming more prevalent across the Amarillo area. The city currently has 10 active pits and more coming in the year of 2000 27. A public improvement district kid is a designated geographic area where property owners pay special assessment to fund public improvements and services within that area. Improvements include not limited to landscaping includes irrigation parks, pedestrian sidewalks, monuments, specialty gliding and fountains. This is the location of the kids. Around the Amarillo area. There is one that's not on there and that's just because. It just became a kid back in July. The Greenways kid. The advisory board approved the 2627 budget and five year service plan on June 23rd, 2026. The assessments increased by 3%. They are done by 120% of B lot, which is kind of confusing. B lot is 9.45 per lot, so then it would just be 120% over that for the assessments on the As. D lot is 150% of the B lots. Commercial is 2,751 per acre. The assessment totals for the greenways was $1,104,021. The expense total was $1,026,937. The current assessment revenue is adequate to cover maintenance costs.

All right. Thank you, Mrs. Dillard. Gentlemen, you're familiar with these PIDs, so I think we're comfortable if Ms. Kimberly moves us along all of these. We have to take them up one at a time because we have public hearings, but I'm going to attempt to move us through. I think there's nine or more of these. So, Ms. Kimberly, I don't want you to have to go back and tell us what a PID is every time. No. Feel free to abbreviate that. Just hit the budget with us. We need to see those numbers.

Sounds great.

All right. At this time, I'm going to open a public hearing on item 7.3. Do I have anyone who would like to speak for or against this item? Seeing no one, I'll close the public hearing and request a motion.

I move to adopt ordinance number 8259 as presented.

Second motion and a second all in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion passes item 7.4.

Heritage Hills. The advisory board. Met and approved the budget on for the 2627 year. In service plan on June 9th, 2026. The assessments are at 8 cents per square foot. which there's no change. Assessment total is $659,664. The expense total is $669,932. The current assessment revenue is adequate to cover the maintenance cost.

Thank you, ma'am. At this time, we will open a public hearing on item 7.4. Do I have anyone who would like to speak for or against this item? Seeing no one, we'll close the public hearing and request a motion.

I move to adopt ordinance number 8260 as presented.

Second. Motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Ms. Kimberly, item 7.5.

This is the Pinnacle Public Improvement District. The advisory met and approved the 2026-27 budget and five-year service plan on June 15, 2026. The assessments are at $0.14 a square foot, which is a 3% increase. Assessment total is $171,632. The expense total is $191,824. The current assessment revenue is adequate to cover the maintenance costs. OK. Item 7.5.

With no questions, we will open a public hearing. Do I have anyone who would like to speak for or against this item? Seeing no one, I'll close the public hearing and request a motion. I move to adopt ordinance number 8261 as presented. Second. Motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Item 7.6, ma'am.

This is the Point West Public Improvement District. The Advisory Board met and approved the 2026-27 budget and five-year service plan on June 29, 2026. The assessments, the total costs, are divided between the property owners according to percentage of property owned within the PID. Assessments total $70,000. Expense total $94,930. The current assessment revenue is adequate to cover maintenance costs.

At this time, I'll open a public hearing on item 7-6. Do I have anyone who would like to speak for or against this item? Seeing no one, we'll close the public hearing and entertain a motion.

I move to adopt ordinance number 8262 as presented. Second.

Motion and a second from place to all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Miss Kimberly, item 7-7.

This is the Quail Creek Public Improvement District. The advisory board met and approved the 2026-27 budget and five-year service plan on June 11, 2026. The assessments in... increased from $450 to $550 a lot. The assessment total is $15,950. The expense total is $14,674. The current assessment revenue is adequate to cover the maintenance cost.

Real good, ma'am. Thank you for that. At this time, I'll open a public hearing. Do I have anyone who would like to speak for or against this item? Seeing no one, we'll close the public hearing. Entertain a motion.

I move to adopt ordinance number 8263 as presented.

Second. Motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Item 7.8, ma'am.

This is the town square public improvement district. The advisory board met and approved the 2026-27 budget and five year service plan on June 22nd, 2026. The assessment stayed the same at 11 cents per square foot. The assessment total was 271,374. The expense total is 553,277. The current assessment revenue is adequate to cover the maintenance costs.

Thank you, ma'am. At this time, we'll open a public hearing on item 7.8. Do I have anyone who would like to speak for or against this item? Seeing no one, we'll close the public hearing and request a motion.

I move to adopt ordinance number 8264 as presented. Second.

Motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Ms. Kimberly, you again.

This is the Tetbury Public Improvement District. The advisory board met and approved the 26-27 budget and five-year service plan on June 10, 2026. The assessments increased from $1,200 per lot to $2,000 per lot. Assessment total is $48,000. Expense total is $34,719. The current assessment revenue is adequate to cover the maintenance cost.

Thank you, ma'am. At this time, we'll open a public hearing on 7-9. Do I have anyone who'd like to speak for or against this item? Seeing no one, we'll close the public hearing and request a motion.

I move to adopt ordinance number 8265 as presented.

Second. Motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Ms. Dillard, 7-10.

This is the vineyards public improvement district. The advisory board met and approved the 2026-27 budget and five-year service plan on June 24th, 2026. The assessments are 250 per lot. No change since last year. Assessment total is $114,750. Expense, the maintenance is $45,468. Developers reimbursement $350,000. and the debt service is $46,000. Expense total is $441,468. The current assessment revenue is adequate to cover the maintenance cost.

Council, any questions on this one? It's a little different. Okay. At this time, we'll open a public hearing on item 710. Do I have anyone who would like to speak for or against this item? Yes, ma'am. Please come forward. And when you get up here, if you don't mind giving us your first and last name, let us know you reside in this pit, please.

My name's Martha Paulsay, and I reside in the city. I live in the vineyards. that's not what i pay i right now i'm paying less than that a year and i don't want it to go up y'all offer us really nothing the only thing i'll do is our streets the owner of the subdivision does the christmas decorating does the landscaping we just have regular street lights we have no fountain no park we have nothing except our houses and our lots out there I don't want it to go up to $250. It will be an increase for me, and I don't see that. The only thing y'all have done is our streets, which is fine. That's all we need. Tommy takes care of everything else. I don't understand why it needs to go up any.

Sure. So let's go back a slide, if our secretary can go back. Let's dig into this one just a little bit. So what is not written down up there is a reimbursement to the developer.

Right now I have that on my note. You have that on yours? Yes.

Can we get that amount?

It's 350,000. 350,000? Yes.

So that goes to Tommy because Tommy's taken care of stuff?

Yes, so I want to make sure we're not conflating maybe like what your tax dollars that you're paying are paying for. So your streets are not, unless we have a unique situation, these streets are maintenance through your tax dollars, property taxes. Your PID fee that you pay voluntarily to live in that neighborhood pays for if there's tree trimming, landscaping, maybe you've got fencing around, if there was a gate, which I know there's not, but anything that's a public amenity that's unique to that neighborhood. So in that PID set up, what is your current fee?

Oh, like $100 a year.

Okay. And then, Ms. Kimberly, can you tell us, they met and they approved it to go up to $250 per lot?

No, it stayed the same. It was $250 last year also.

So you should be paying $250 a year.

Is it lot size or what? Because that's not what I heard. No, it's just. Well, something's wrong there.

So your neighborhood, you have to be in that neighborhood to sit on that board. And you guys vote. And you tell us. We're ministerial. So we're not directing any of this. We are a fiduciary, more or less. And so we're issuing the payments that you guys, your representatives, are telling us. What we would ask is, you know, if if this is being represented that it's no change to you, I think maybe you and a couple of those board members, you could go back through and see what where your payments are going. You could get confirmation that Tommy is being reimbursed for all the services that he's providing and that he's providing documentation for him. But then for us, we'd like to take action on this. We don't want to take action against you. And so, like, I don't know that that where you're at factually matches where we are. So I would just try to refer you back to that PID board, but then only with the understanding of if we take action on this, what we are taking action on is no change. We don't believe that we're raising anything at all.

Right. And because that's like even the letter that got sent to us, it was like, really?

Yeah, it's not what we pay. I do know a couple years ago it was cheaper than the $250.

Oh, yeah, because when I first moved in there 10 years ago, it was like $75.

Yes, but it's gone up since then.

Yeah, so I don't know. But I will check with them because that's not what I paid.

if you're paying less than what the the fee is supposed to be they may have under billed you but i think that you know the debt service is being satisfied we are confirming through staff that all the monies are being spent on that property your neighborhood and and you're satisfied with conditions i think you're you were expressing a dissatisfaction with the city providing additional services we actually don't

Yeah, because that's the way it was explained to me when I bought the house, was that we are paying this so that y'all take care of certain things in our subdivision.

Understood. Yeah. And so you're correct. That is a fee that you're paying that contractors are taking care of in your subdivision. And we, the COA, do pay those fees out so that the monies are paid in to an organization and paid out. That way you don't end up with contractors unpaid at the end of the year, essentially.

Okay.

Hey, thank you for speaking.

Sure.

Hope that helps.

Martha, may I get the spelling of your last name real quick up here at the front? Right here where my hand is raised. Right here. I just need the spelling of your last name for the minute.

Do I have anybody else who would like to give? Yes, ma'am. Would you mind coming forward? Thank you.

Hello, Roxanne McGill, and I'm a resident of the New Yorks. First time I've ever been to a city council meeting.

Welcome.

Very interesting. But I do have one concern. Now, Tommy did have a brief meeting, poorly advertised in my opinion, last fall and said that he was looking for a $400,000 bond which would raise this PID to $250,000 per lot. and it would include a park and some landscaping. The south end of our entrance off of Hastings has no landscaping or anything, it's just a weed bed. So what I was wondering is how do I know that has he itemized everything that he's gonna accomplish and that we can follow and know that. I'm new to living in a neighborhood and I find communication horrible. I don't even know who's on the board. I don't even know how to contact the board. I wasn't given any information when I moved there. So I'm just curious to find out more information of how the residents can be informed.

You've come to the right spot. So this Kimberly is your advocate and kind of represents us as the city and our role of how we help to manage the pits. She can connect you. She has all of the email cell phones. She knows the dates that they're meeting. Um, she could assist in that.

I can also explain to you about the improvements and everything that's going on.

Okay, and then accountability to make sure things get done.

She could also tell you there's some state laws that govern all this, and it's pretty required if you're going to take out a bond and utilize those monies. It's restricted monies. It has to go for those. And then we as a city should be doing our due diligence to make sure that none of those monies are paid in reimbursement only until services are rendered. And so if you want to confirm all that through staff, so you're not just taking our word for it, I think it would greatly help you.

Oh, that'd be perfect. Thank you very much.

Real good. Yes, ma'am.

I'd be happy to help you.

Ms. City Secretary, you get her name?

Yes, I did. Thank you, ma'am.

Okay, great. Do I have anybody else who'd like to offer public comment on item 710? Okay. At this time, we'll close.

Mayor, one thing. Before we go, because there'll be a second reading on this as well, correct? Can we make sure that we connect them? Because this is the question that the PID board, and I guess there's a PID president, can answer them. We're just the middlemen here on that. But can we make sure that we get them connected and that we get their questions answered so when we come back two weeks later, we can say we got their questions answered? Because I'd hate to approve a budget, and we say it's $100, and then it's $250. So I'd just like to make sure that if we can just make an effort to get them connected to the right people, and make sure that they're satisfied with the answer so when we get another chance to approve the budget we're all on the same page as to what they're paying what that's looking like and it matches with what we're seeing here yes sir thank you real good anything further council

At this time, we'll close the public hearing and would request a motion on 710.

I move to adopt ordinance number 8266 as presented. Second.

Motion and a second from place two. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. We'll take up item 711 now.

Colonies pin. The advisory board met and approved the 2026-27 budget and five-year service plan on June 24, 2026. The assessments, they stay at 15 cents per square foot, which is the same as last year, no change. The assessment total is $1,627,612. The expense total was $1,535,275. The current assessment revenue is adequate to cover mentions costs.

Real good. At this time, we'll open a public hearing on our colonies, PID. Do I have anyone who would like to speak for or against this item? Seeing no one, we'll close that public hearing. Request a motion on 7-11.

I move to adopt Ordinance Number 8267 as presented.

Second. Motion and a second from Place 1. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Ms. Kimberly, I think this is your last one.

Yes.

Item 7-12, please.

This is the Homestead Public Improvement District. The advisory board met and approved the 2627 budget and five year service plan on June 18th, 2026. The assessments are at 7 cents per square foot. Which it says no change, but this is actually their first assessment. Since they became a PID OK. The assessment total is $284,592. The expense total is $90,500. The current assessment revenue is adequate to cover the maintenance costs.

Council questions on this one? Thank you, Ms. Kimberly. At this time, we'll open a public hearing. Do I have anyone who would like to speak for or against this item? Okay, we'll close the public hearing and request a motion.

I move to adopt ordinance number 8268. Second.

Motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Gentlemen, let's push through the next one for EDC, and then we may need to take a recess. Item 713, Dr. Eckstein. If you don't mind to come up here from the wonderful world of economic development and tell us what we're looking at here, sir. Thank you very much, Mayor.

Dear Mayor, dear council members, thank you for the opportunity to present the ADC financial year budget for the next year. The budget, which you'll see up front, reflects post fiscal discipline and the strategic shift in how we approach economic development. Walking through the numbers, we expect approximately 32.3 million in revenue and 26.5 million in expenditures. But most important is a change that I would like to discuss today, not the size of the budget, but how we are positioning Amarillo to compete. So going back to the numbers from the revenues, 12% go into all our operation funds, 88% go into the project fund. But more interesting is if we look at the numbers for business development, because they doubled from 700,000 to 1.4 million. We made a strategic shift. economic development has been passive the last years we've been waiting for government leads now we're going out we're attending trade shows we are activating partners so we're hunting down the companies that we want and that costs a bit of money and we're also putting back money in companies who are already here. We don't only want to attract companies to Amarillo, but we also want to see the companies grow here already in the area, like OCF, for example, or maybe Bale Helicopter. So we are trying to create meaningful events. We try to put money into making more jobs on the ground here. So we invest heavily in business retention and expansion. The budget has been approved by our board, and yeah. There was one item which was a bit higher because we had gateway signs. Our board didn't approve it in the amount, so we took that out. But the next step is that a committee should be formed to discuss which way gateway signs on I-40 could look like that we make the city more attractive for people passing through our city. I'm very happy to answer any questions.

Questions, council? On the gateway signs, I know that was something that we were previously trying to budget. That is something you'll bring back for a budget amendment when it's ready, is that right?

That's right, yeah. We'll reform a committee. We don't know who's going to be on the committee, so somebody with a design aspect, somebody maybe on the billboard side. So we'll get a group together, work in a small team, and then propose something meaningful that also you and the public can envision how the city signs

These are large, attractive monuments that say, like, welcome to Amarillo, not just signage.

Right, yeah.

So the cost, I know, was substantial. You've got that. Tell me what your reserves look like. Do you happen to know those?

We've got budgeted $700,000 for this.

Well, you have the current budget of $700,000 in the project fund?

We would have it. At the moment, we only budget $100,000 for it.

Okay. And then the reserves, do you guys happen to know what your reserves are currently as the EDC?

I don't know. It's by a hazard at the moment, no.

Nothing that is impactful for the budget approval here, but I would like to know where the reserves are on if I can get staff to to hit that on an email. I think they're healthy would be my point. Not that we have a concern, but that you decided to stop fishing and go hunting. So I think you're healthy in being able to track down some larger game. And then we've got some fantastic stakeholders out there to kind of the northeast side of town that are growing. And we always want them to hear and know like they can have a lot of confidence in you and us continuing to support all the expansion. So, Council, any further questions on this?

Yeah, I believe that we had talked, those gateway signs or those gateway monuments were, they were budgeted in 20, I'm going to guess here, 25? Is that correct?

I don't know. I wasn't here at that point. I knew they were budgeted some years ago.

They were budgeted, and we approved $50,000 for the design phase for it. So they had had that money in their budget, and the project did never go. So that money was still there. I don't know that it was ever allocated. It was allocated, but then I think that they took it back in.

We paid for the design, I think. Correct. We paid $46,000, so we have some design patterns.

Okay. Yeah, I think, you know, previous council showed some support for that. Current council, I believe, still supports it, and we want to continue to move that committee forward.