Audit Committee - Regular Meeting

The time is now 10.03 a.m. on September 2nd, 2026, and the meeting of the Audit Committee is now called to order. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Council Member Mesa-Gonzalez. Present. Council Member White. Here. Citizen Member Taino. Citizen Member Pacheco. Chair Villagran.

Here. Chair, we have quorum. All right, great. So I will be allowing member speakers two rounds of comments per item with five minutes the first round and five minutes the second round. The first item on the agenda is approval of the minutes. Are there any corrections to the minutes? Hearing none, can I get a motion and a second to approve the minutes? All right, we've got a motion and a second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, say no. Motion carries. Madam Clerk, are there any members of the public signed up to speak? We have no members of the public signed up to speak. Great. Okay, we have got a number of items. We'll start with the individual items. We have three pre-solicitation high-profile briefings. Um, um, clerk, please read the caption for item two.

Item two is a briefing on the release of a solicitation for one contract to provide the information technology services department ITSD with citywide security officer services for an estimated total value of $45 million for three years with two one year renewal options.

All right. Uh, the floor is yours.

Good morning, Chairperson Villagran and committee members. I'm Marshall Ramsey, CIO and Director of the Information Technology Services Department. So this morning I'm presenting a pre-solicitation briefing for citywide security officer services. Before we begin, I would like to share that I joined the city back in May earlier this year, and this is my first opportunity to brief this committee or any committee within the city. I grew up in Austin, spent most of my life in Texas. I have a large family in South Texas so many trips through San Antonio over the years with some stops here and there and I've always loved the city. The past 15 years I spent on the southern coast of California taking advantage of some opportunities that have brought me back to Texas. It's great to be here in San Antonio not only as part of our city's workforce but as a community member. I'm honored to be here to serve the city and the people in it and I appreciate you having me. So we'll get to our briefing. So with this solicitation, we are seeking a qualified contractor to continue providing comprehensive security officer services. This includes emergency response, access control, monitoring, and foot patrols across 52 city buildings and facilities. I wanna add in here that there are a couple of exceptions to this. So both the Alamo Dome and the International Airport, the security services there are provided under separate contracts. So those are out of scope for this citywide contract. This is a request for competitive sealed proposals. We are proposing a term of three years with two one year options. This contract is utilization based by department and the estimated annual value is nine million. We anticipate a total contract value of 45 million across the full five years. We're in the fifth year of our current contract which expires in April of 2027. For outreach, we are leveraging an NIGP code for guard and security services. This has identified 105 potential vendors from the central vendor registry, and six of these vendors are prior or known. We will leverage the standard advertising methods, including TVSA, the co-submitting and contracting web page, Express News, and SAPES. Evaluation voting members include Joe Frank Picasso from City Manager's Office, myself, Shannon Lawson, our Chief Security Officer, Kathy Donilon with Public Library, Derek Raby and Louis Resendis from our ITSD Physical Security Team, Ann J. Garcia with Development Services, and Mark Jenkins with Building and Equipment Services. The evaluation criteria includes 30 points assigned for experienced background and qualifications, 40 points for the proposed plan, 20 points for pricing, and 10 points for certified small business enterprises. The Economic Development Department reviewed the applicability of the SPEDA program and applied both evaluation and contractual requirements. So as presented on the previous scoring slide, 10 evaluation points for certified small business enterprises and a 5% SBE subcontracting requirement. So ITSD in coordination with Economic Development Department will monitor compliance with the subcontracting requirement throughout the contract. Within our tentative project timeline, we intend to release the RFCSP on September 11th, and we'll conduct a pre-submittal conference on September 25th for those interested. Respondents will have 45 days to submit with the due date of October 26th. Evaluation and contracting will occur in November and December, and we'll provide a post-solicitation briefing to this committee in January of 2027. City Council consideration will be requested in that same month, and the new contract will begin May 1st of 2027. This concludes the presentation. My team and I are available to answer any questions, and we appreciate the committee's consideration.

Okay, thank you. And welcome, and that was a good presentation for our first one. Is there any comments from my members? Questions?

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Just a quick question on the evaluation voting members. Is there a need to include any folks from public safety on that?

That's a good question. I can check with our team and get back to you on that. I'm not sure of the historical kind of what we do for voting membership.

Maybe on the IT side given.

Yeah, we can go back and look and see if there's someone we can go ahead and add to the team just to make sure that we cover that.

Thank you.

Council Member White. Yeah.

Thank you for the presentation. Y'all cut my mic too. $45 million contract, and this is done by usage by department, right?

Correct.

Have we thought about consolidating or centralizing security services to maybe eliminate or just to find some efficiencies? Or how does that work? When you say consolidate... Well, I guess, is it just each department uses these security services on a sort of at-need basis?

As needed. I mean, there are specific facilities, you know, City Hall, City Tower, where we always have a presence. I think we could pull data for you if you wanted to see kind of where that utilization is at. But then there's also a part of the contract and as needed for specific events or, you know, we can move that up and down as needed.

And it'll all be done by one company? Correct. Okay. Thanks, Chair.

Okay. Thank you for the presentation. Again, I was like, didn't we just do this? But I look forward to seeing who comes out for the pre-submittal conference and then really seeing how, if we can get kind of that local... the locals to come out, and if we have that industry, and we just discussed this in EWDC, so we'll make sure that we share that with everyone, and I know Troy hasn't put together something solid yet, but really understanding, and for the next presentation, I'll ask, in terms of experience, background and qualifications, which is worth 30 points. And Troy, you may need to help with this one. Is that 10 for experience, 10 for background, and 10 for qualifications?

No, ma'am. When we put together the solicitation, we put together a variety of questions that focus on their experience, background, and qualifications. There's 30 points in total. It's not segregated by each specific area. So the team has the ability to assign up to 30 points based on that category.

So because I think in experience and background, that is where we can kind of see what if y'all have a standardized for experience and background questions, I think that would be something we should look into because I think when we talk about understanding the community, local, history, that in some of those questions that could be part of the experience and background. In addition to who have you protected before, what scale can you help with the bigger events that we have? would like to talk more about that, and I'll bring it up for the next one also. So thank you, I think that's it. This is just a briefing, so we'll move on to the next item. And it was kind of, on paper, item number, for me on paper, item number two was item number three, so item number three was on paper item number two, so.

yes item number three is a briefing on the release of a solicitation for one contract to provide the capital delivery department with construction services for main plaza renovations located in at 115 main plaza in council district 1 for an estimated total value of 11 million dollars good morning madam chair committee members i'm mike shannon i'm the director of capital delivery department this is not my first time in front of this board or committee i've done this before so hopefully

I'm doing all right. So I'm going to talk about the main plaza project. We're excited about this one, and this is a pre-solicitation briefing. So the Main Plaza project, just to give you a little history, it was funded in FY23 and 24 for some renovations to right across the street at Main Plaza. A great project in partnership with the Main Plaza Conservancy. And we have been in the process the last couple of years designing that with a design firm. That design is about finished. And we're looking to put this out for advertisement to select a contractor later this month. It'll be a request for competitive sealed proposals. The construction timeline is about a year, and it estimated about $11 million construction contract. And again, our funding sources was that FY23, FY24 COs in the capital budgets. Main Plaza, and that equates to $10 million of that budget. Main Plaza has committed up to $5 million. to complete the funding for the project, and this would be a new contract. So, uh, like most of our solicitations, we did a lot of outreach. We did over 700, uh, vendors notified. Um, and I will be, uh, we'll be advertising, uh, on all those, the TVSA channels, uh, Civcast, et cetera. Uh, so we have a lot of vendors in this category. Evaluation voting members include certainly city manager's office, uh, my department, um, the chief downtown officer, Shannon Miller. Parks and Rec, of course, CCDO, and we also have our design team as well as a member of the Maine Plaza Conservancy evaluating the solicitations. And again, this is the breakdown that we have, similar to the last one, but a lot of points, 30 points for experience, background, and qualifications. Similar to the last presentation, that is one group of 30 points that we will look for those proven EBQs that make them the best. Understanding the project and proposed management plan, 30 points, a lot of points for experience, working in a very high-profile space in the middle of a cathedral, a city hall, downtown area. That's going to be important, so 30 points there. Experience with San Antonio region and past performance, 10 points there. We want proven experience that can deliver projects on time within budget, so that will be evaluated. Pricing, of course, 15 points, and the prime contract, SBE prime, at 15 points. So... SOME ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS, 6% SBE AND WE WENT THROUGH THE AVAILABILITY ANALYSIS THERE SO THE OPPORTUNITIES ARE THERE AND THE PERCENTAGE FOR SBEs ARE AVAILABLE SO WE RAN THAT THROUGH OUR SBE TEAM. Here's our project timeline. So again, as I mentioned, later this month, we'd like to put this out for advertisement, go through the evaluation process throughout fiscal year 27, quarter one, and be back to this in February of next year to select a contract or bring to council in March. We plan to start construction May 1, that is after Fiesta, and be done before the next Fiesta. That's really important to this project. for the activities around Main Plaza. So that's my presentation and I'll be answering any questions.

Okay. Do any of my council committee members? Yes. Yes.

Just a comment on I appreciate the experience, background, qualifications under the evaluation criteria just because it's such a historic place and making sure we're working with the archdiocese to not conflict with services and things like that.

Thank you. That will be important. Actually, I didn't mention, but the archdiocese has been involved as we have been planning this. We've had several meetings with them on how we can ensure that they can maintain operations through the different phases of the project, so that will be critical.

Okay, thank you, thank you.

Councilman White, no? Okay, so you know that I'm gonna take forever on this. So Main Plaza is up for a refresher. Oh, will we have to stop for a break? Okay, all right, I was like, don't leave. Thank you, thank you. I'm taking Councilman White's time. But do time me, please. No more than five minutes. This is critical. Does Main Plaza need a refresher? It does. Does it hold a whole bunch of people's stories? That is true, too. This is why it is very imperative that we get this right as we start this and you communicate it from the front end. We appreciate, of course, all the developers that want to come in and do business and architects that have new ideas and concepts. But what I really want to make sure is that we, and I think you do have a great voting criteria group that understands that. However, we have been here before with the Alamo when we went and took on a project like that. So I want to make sure that that does not happen this time around, that we really do take into consideration all the stories that are there in terms of that experience, background, familiarity with the history of San Antonio and the importance of this. Because this, while a small area needs to do this, and we need to upgrade it and take care of a lot of portions of Main Plaza, It does mean a lot for a lot of people, and what I don't want to see is it become a lightning rod for this is the story you should tell, this is the story you shouldn't tell, but really capturing that and having that availability. And again, that's how we tell our San Antonio story, so I think we need to keep that front of mind. Even though this is a capital delivery project and people think it's just buildings, It's not just buildings for this community. So I'm excited about the evaluation of the voting members and the participation there. I think you are going to want to see kind of some input between just the completion and get some people's feedback on it. It works really well in District 3, has very significant opinions and I just want to make sure we keep that in mind for Main Plaza because it doesn't just belong to District 1, it belongs to the entire city. So that's basically it in terms of that. I'm really hoping we get just a good turnout for that pre-submittal. So if we could just push that out because I really think that conference is where we need to communicate just how and how when we use it locally and we use it in our Visit San Antonio and in our travel and tourism story too.

I agree with everything you said.

Okay, I figured you would, Mike, thank you. All right, this is just for discussion, and I was under my five minutes, which I, ah, three minutes, see? We'll move on to the next item. So next item, please read the caption, Madam Clerk.

Item number four is a briefing on the release of two gap funding solicitations for multiple contracts with the Neighborhood and Housing Services Department, NHSD, for rental housing development and homeownership production funded through the 2022-2027 program. affordable housing bond home, investment partnership program home, and community development block grant CDBG programs for an estimated total value of $11,200,000.

Good morning, Chair, Council Members. Ian Benavidez, Deputy Director with Neighborhood and Housing Services Department. I'm also not new here, but I haven't been here as much as Mike. I'm here to present a pre-solicitation for our GAP funding. The Neighborhood and Housing Services Department is planning to release two requests for proposals. seeking developers to apply for gap funding opportunities for multifamily and single-family affordable housing projects. The RFPs are funded through the 2022-2027 affordable housing bond, home, and CDBG programs, which are federal funds, with an estimated total value $11.2 million. The affordability periods will vary by project type, with covenants requiring at least 20 years of affordability and prioritizing those with 40 years or more when applicable. For the first solicitation, which is rental housing, we'll be releasing $8.7 million. This will combine both rental production and rehabilitation into one streamlined solicitation. It will prioritize housing that serves households up to 30% AMI, including public housing and income-based housing. It will require at least 15% of all units serve households earning at least 30% AMI or below. It encourages higher density development within urban cores and development within half a mile via green and silver line, frequent transit lines, or via link zones. It prioritizes family size units with exceptions for rehabilitation projects and multifamily projects serving older adults. It prioritizes projects that leverage additional funding sources that are able to stretch our city investment dollar further. And it requires a displacement impact assessment for all new projects to assess potential impacts on surrounding community. Through our outreach, we've been able to identify several NIGP codes, including architectural services, including consulting, building construction, residential, building construction, commercial, and industrial for a little over 1,300 targeted outreach vendors. will advertise through tvsa our bidding and contracting website the heartbeat and sapes our voting committee members include members of the city manager's office director's office for neighborhood housing services director's office for homeless services and strategy director's office for office of historic preservation our capital programs department with via our planning department, our accessibility compliance department, our development services department, and as always include a member of our community bond committee. We'll also have representative from the city attorney's office, resilience and sustainability, other support staff from neighborhood housing services, the housing commission, including a housing committee member with lived experience, and our underwriting consultants that serve in advisory capacity. Our second solicitation will be for home ownership production, 2.5 million. This prioritizes new construction, rehabilitation of single family homes for low and moderate income families that benefit households earning up to 80% AMI. The federal funding is again, CDBG and home, and we will align our federal requirements to maintain the long-term affordability and owner occupancy. It requires a displacement impact assessment for new production projects. And our scoring panel includes subject matter experts. The NIGP codes identified include home construction for single family, a little over 100 targeted vendor outreach, will advertise through TVSA, COSA bidding and contracting web page, Heartbeat, and SAPES. Our evaluation voting members include city manager's office, neighborhood housing services, office of historic preservation, VIA, planning department, accessibility compliance, and development services. Again, we'll have representative from the city attorney's office, resiliency and sustainability, neighborhood housing services, the housing commission to include a member with lived experience and underwriting consultants that will serve an advisory capacity. The scoring for these solicitations will be very similar to the past scoring that we've done. It will include affordability with the highest weight at 30 points, requiring at least 15% of units at 30% AMI or below, public or income-based rental housing will be prioritized and that'll have a five point set aside. Our gap request project readiness and underwriting will be 15 points, looking really for the most shovel ready and projects that have leverage funding. 15 points for unit specification, construction priorities, location, site plan, timeline, and sustainability features. We're looking for family size units with proximity to transit, universal design, and other additional sustainability features. Development experience, good track record of being able to develop housing. Displacement, temporary relocation plan and residential protections to include amenities and residential services. This will be where we look at our displacement impact assessment, any tenant relocation plans for rehabilitation projects, and onsite amenities to include high-quality pre-K and ready-to-work partnerships, 10 points. Nonprofit status, 10 points to partner with an agency or qualified nonprofit. And our veteran-owned small business, points of five. Because these solicitations include federal funds, there's no local preference or sub-ETA. Our project timeline includes coming here today for our pre-solicitation. We plan to release our RFP on September 4th That's when our restriction on communication will start. We'll have our pre-submittal conference scheduled for September 14th. Our deadline for questions, September 17th, with the due date of the solicitations on October 20th. Our post-solicitation includes our evaluation, negotiating contracts, and our post-solicitations, either at the audit committee or a B session in December. And then we plan to come back to city council for final approval in January. That concludes my presentation. Happy to answer any questions.

I THINK THANK YOU IAN I'LL GO AHEAD AND START WITH THE I'LL START WITH THE RENTAL HOUSING THAT YOU KNOW GAP FUNDING IS NEEDED AND WITH THE RISING COST WE'RE SEEING THE NEED FOR IT AND SITTING ON THE SAN ANTONIO HOUSING TRUST WE HAVE THESE CONVERSATIONS QUITE A BIT BUT THE AMOUNTS Do you have a goal on how many projects that you can help with these amounts?

It varies by solicitation based on the applications we get. 8.7, I mean, our typical awards were probably ranging from 4 to 5 million. So depending, again, on what we get and the gaps that are being requested, I think two to three projects on the multifamily side.

Two to three on the multifamily. And on the home ownership production side?

Probably one to two, depending on applicants. Smaller nonprofits tend to do smaller projects with smaller requests. And then we have our larger nonprofits like Habitat that usually request a larger amount for their larger subdivisions.

Yeah, that's kind of what I was, these amounts. But I do want to help anything that's so close that needs to get over the line. But as we continue to have these conversations about where we put our housing dollars in, I think we need to start asking more kind of holistic questions about are we moving people out of poverty with the help that we're giving them? Or are we helping, of course, I'm gonna think of older adults, are we helping older adults live out the rest of their days where they'd like to. But no, I think it's good that we're using it for gap funding because I know there are some projects that are teetering there and we want to make sure that we get that done. So those are the only questions. I just had the question on that. Hopefully we'll get, I'm kind of thinking we will get a lot of people apply because costs just keep on going up. Thank you. Do any of my members have any questions?

I agree. I think we will get a lot of interest just because it's a difficult development period. If we do find any other additional funds, and I put it here on the slide, I forgot to state it, like program savings through any of our federal funds, we'll add those to the solicitation and then may be able to help an additional project.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Ian. All right. Okay, we are heading into, we're gonna take a quick three minute break because we're gonna miss, I'm gonna walk away and we'll move, and then we'll start with the post solicitation high profile briefing. So recess for three minutes and then we will be back.

Time for recess has expired.

So we will resume the meeting at 1037. All right, we are moving on to the post-solicitation briefings. And I think that was helpful because people who needed to leave left, so. All right, we will now move on to the post-solicitation briefings. Madam Clerk, please read the caption for item five and we will take a staff presentation.

Item number five is approval to proceed with scheduling one contract for City Council consideration for the Capital Delivery Department to provide planning and design services for the Colabor Road Loop 410 to General McMullen project located in Council Districts 5, 6, and 7 for an estimated total value of $9 million.

All right. Good morning again, committee members. Mike Shannon, Capital Delivery. And I'm going to talk, this is a post-solicitation briefing, so we'd like to bring this to council to select a vendor for this important project. So we issued a RFQ, a request for qualifications for, this is planning, design services, environmental, and just planning development for Calabria Road. This is a long stretch of Calabria Road, 410 to General McMullen. So it's about five miles. So this is a big project, but we have a lot of design to do. This was an RFQ we had put out this summer. The estimated value of this contract for these services is $9 million total. Again, it's a large five-mile stretch. The funding source here was some 22 bond money, but most of this was an $8 million Federal Highway Administration grant. We have about a $3 million match from our bond for this. So this is, again, one of those grant funded, grant funds that we got and received to make this project happen. And again, this will be a new contract. So through this summer, we had 10 respondents to this RFQ. We actually had a committee that scored this, city manager's office, my department, others. And we actually had four vendors that kind of separated themselves. Remember, we had experienced background qualifications, had 45 points. PROJECT AND PROPOSED MANAGEMENT PLAN 35 AND THEN EXPERIENCE IN THE SAN ANTONIO REGION AND PAST PERFORMANCE AT 20 POINTS. SO THESE DESIGN TEAMS WERE SCORED THAT WAY AND AGAIN THOSE FOUR VENDORS A THROUGH D DID SEPARATE THEMSELVES SO THAT WAS KIND OF THE INITIAL EVALUATION BASED ON THEIR SUBMITTALS. WE THEN WENT TO INTERVIEWING THE FOUR AND THEN ONCE WE DID IN PERSON INTERVIEWS WITH EACH OF THOSE FOUR VENDORS, Vendor B actually rose on top there, had the best score, and through our normal process. So again, just a little of what we did. We had 200 vendors that we notified. We had 24 at the pre-submittal, but we had 10 responses received. And going through the process with our finance and due diligence, no material findings that caused us concern with any of those 10 as we scored them through the process. Uh, so at the end, uh, this is post solicitation. We'd like to proceed to council with our selection of, uh, the vendor B up on the screen there.

All right. Can I get a motion in a second to move the contracts forward to full city council? And then we can begin a discussion. We've got a motion in a second. Um, uh, is there any discussion? I just be prepared for discussion from I think five, six, and seven when we take it there. But it looks like we've got vendors and you did the interviews, so I think that should be fine. Yes, Councilman White.

Did vendor age points significantly decrease

after the interview?

Between the initial scoring matrix and then the end? So I'll just bring up the scoring matrix again. But yeah, so as we evaluate their submittals, so really their paper submittals, their documents, this was the initial round of scoring that we had. Clearly, you can see 80 and above kind of separated themselves, those four vendors. The committee chose to interview them. When we interview them in person, we add additional questions that highlight those A, B, and C criteria. But we felt as the clarifications that we got at the interviews did cause the final scoring of those fours to be a little bit shifted. And it all added up to be a little bit better for Fender B based on really those interviews are kind of critical to the process, especially we have a lot of vendors. So yeah, some of the scores go up and some of those go down comparatively when we're scoring in that interview process, which is not that uncommon. Yeah.

Thank you for that, Mike. And I think as we as council members move forward and as Troy, we might need to have that conversation in EWDC as we talk about some of the CCRs coming through is that it's really two different things. One is the paper evaluation and then the second is the interview evaluation and the different factors taken into consideration there. So thank you for that. All right, we have a motion and a second to move forward to full council. There being no further discussion, all in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed say no. Motion carries. All right, we're moving on to item number six. Madam Clerk, please read the caption for item six.

Item six is approval to proceed with two annual contracts for city council consideration for the convention and sports facilities department to provide supplemental temporary temporary electrical and plumbing services for events held at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center and the Alamo Dome that will generate an estimated revenue total value of $9,500,000 for three years with two one-year renewal options. Revenue generated from this commission-based contract will be deposited into the Community and Visitor Facilities Fund.

All right, the floor is yours. Good morning, chair and committee members. My name is Monica Ramos. I am the assistant director at the Convention and Sports Facilities Department. I do feel obligated to follow the previous presenters to state that I have not, I'm not new to the, to attending committee briefings, but I am new, so this is my first here. Today, I am presenting the post-solicitation briefing on the temporary electrical and plumbing services for events held at the Convention Center and the Alamo Dome. This is a revenue-generating contract with the current contract receiving 35% commissions on gross receipts and has generated approximately 9 million over the past five years. For the solicitation, the department issued a request for qualifications with a proposed term of three years and two one-year renewal options. The estimated revenue to be generated from this contract is 1.9 million annually and approximately 9.5 million over the proposed term. THESE REVENUES ARE INCLUDED IN THE COMMUNITY AND VISITOR FACILITIES FUND, AND THE CURRENT CONTRACT IS SET TO EXPIRE AT THE END OF THIS MONTH ON SEPTEMBER 30, 2026. WE RECEIVED AND EVALUATED FOUR PROPOSALS FROM THE SCORE MATRIX. WE HAVE 45 POINTS THAT WERE ASSIGNED TO THE EXPERIENCE, BACKGROUND, AND QUALIFICATIONS. 30 points to the proposed plan, and 10 points for the SPADA prime contract program, 10 points for the local preference program, and 5 points for veteran-owned small business preference program. As you can see from the score matrix, the vendor A and vendor B scored very similarly and much higher than vendor C and D in terms of the experience, background, and qualifications, as well as the proposed plan. In addition, the highest scored vendors received points for the local preference program, having either a local office or 100 employees, local employees or more. We went through the evaluation process with members of the city manager's office, the convention center, and Alamo Dome staff, and external partner who have a great understanding of the facility needs. This is a non-exclusive contract, and the evaluation committee recommends awarding the contracts to the highest ranked respondents, vendor A and B, without interviews. There were 1,937 vendors notified of this solicitation. Six vendors were at the pre-submittal conference, and we received proposals from four vendors. There were no material findings when the minimum requirements review and the due diligence review were conducted. The department's proposal is to move forward with selecting vendor A and B for full city council consideration in the next few weeks. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you for the presentation. Can I get a motion and a second to move the contracts forward to full city council so that we may begin discussion? We've got a motion and a second. We'll begin discussion. Who would like to go first? No one? SO I WILL THANK YOU FOR THE PRESENTATION. I KNOW THAT THIS IS IMPORTANT AND THE OTHER ONE HAS EXPIRED. I THINK THIS IS KEY IF WE COULD KEEP A RECORD OR GET SOME INFORMATION IN TERMS OF AS WE TALK ABOUT CONVENTION CENTER EXPANSION, HOW THE TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING AND IF WE COULD GET THE INFORMATION OF WHAT WE CAN DO in the new build of the convention center expansion to be more energy efficient I think would be key so that possibly where it becomes easier than having to bring in the electricians and the plumbers for some of the events. I know some of the things that are hosted, the convention space, uses a lot of power in some of the demos nowadays. So we want to make sure that as we build new that we have the energy sources and that it's efficient for us to do that. So thank you. I think you did a great first presentation, Monica. Look forward to hearing you again come and present. So thank you for that. All right, we've got a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed say no. Motion carries. We're moving on to item number seven. Madam Clerk, please read the caption for item seven.

Item number seven is approval to proceed with scheduling three contracts for City Council consideration to provide the San Antonio Public Library with print materials, cataloging, and processing services for an estimated total value of $24,500,000 for five years with two one-year renewal options.

All right, the floor is yours.

Good morning, Madam Chair, committee members and staff. I'm Dale McNeil. I'm one of the assistant directors at the San Antonio Public Library. It's good to be back with you again. This is a solicitation for using the request for competitive seal proposals process for vendors to provide print materials, primarily in English and Spanish, but occasionally in other languages as well. These are materials that are ready to use at the library, so they come with cataloging, that's description essentially, processing, you know, that's putting the materials on the books that makes them ready to use by the public, and that allow electronic ordering by our staff. These support all of the public libraries of San Antonio Public Library that have circulating collections. There is a proposed term of five years with two one-year renewal options. You can see there the value of $3.5 million annually. with a total then of $24.5 million from the general fund. Our current contract expires at the end of next month. We're using a cooperative program The contract at the moment, as I've spoken with you about before, there was really an implosion in this business and the vendor we had before died a slow and rather agonizing death that finally they breathed their last in the fall of 2025. So that's why we're back. here. So we attempted with this solicitation dividing it into categories and you can see those six categories listed there. What's called here open day collection, we cancelled really that would be if we build a whole new library and we need to buy all the books for that new library. That does not seem to be on the horizon. So there didn't really seem to be any particular reason. That's a very specific kind of contract. So that is why we canceled that. The category five and six, that is leasing and reading incentive is books that we give away. The responses were deemed non-responsive. As described here, there was failure to submit pricing in the format that was prescribed. As you can see, this is the result of the evaluation. Vendor A seemed to be, well, not seemed to be, was the clear PREFERRED VENDOR, THEY SCORED HIGHER REALLY IN EVERY WAY THAT YOU CAN SEE THE ITEMS THAT WE USED TO SCORE. THAT WAS FOR, I GUESS I SHOULD SAY, THAT WAS FOR CATEGORY 1. FOR CATEGORY 2, AGAIN, VENDOR A WAS THE CLEAR PREFERRED VENDOR BY THIS SCORING. In category three, that was really the same. And talking about the due diligence, we did notify 179 vendors. There was a pre-submittal conference with five vendors. We received four proposals for the categories one, two, and three, two for category four, and then we've talked about the categories five and six. So with that, we are recommending that the recommendation of vendor A on those categories move forward for full city council consideration. And of course, I'm happy to respond to any questions.

Thank you for the presentation. Can I get a motion and a second to move forward to full council? And so we may begin discussion. We've got a motion and a second. We'll begin discussion. Council Member White.

Tell me about the reduced circulation.

So what is happening is that our balance of electronic and print is changing. Still, circulation of physical items including print books, is more than half of our business. So it still is a key, vital part of our business. It is just decreasing and decreasing more in some neighborhoods than others. So I know it seems like on the one hand, you're hearing about decreasing use of print materials. And then on the other hand, we're asking for millions of dollars to buy print books. And I think both, not I think, both things are true at the same time. The public continues to use print books, but perhaps not in quite the same, certainly not in the same quantity as before.

How does, I don't know if I'm going to ask this properly, but how does this, what we're looking for here in this contract in terms of numbers differ than to what we did maybe three years ago? Are we asking for more or less or the same?

I don't have that exact number right here in front of me. I'll see if somebody else can help me out there.

It would seem to me that it should be less than it was before, but I just don't have that.

Councilman White, I was here the last time y'all came for this. Well, we have to remember that prices have gone up and we have less providers that provide print material and the services that we ask. So I don't know. We can get you that information from the last time that they came and presented. However, I know that it wasn't, it was not put in the categories that you currently put them in now. So it may be a little higher or a little lower, but it's not based on the circulation. I think it's based on inflation. and that they did it differently here so we could have it could be more competitive because this this industry which and i don't we don't have anybody local dell correct we don't have anybody local that does this so we have to contribute to the national uh... uh... you know economy to to get this and provide this so that's the one thing is we can get you the materials i can't remember last year when we did this but uh... We can get that, but again, it was two different ways that they've presented it. So it might not, the math isn't going to add up like you want, and Troy will need to fix the math to give you an idea.

So to be clear, I don't want the math to add up in any particular direction. But, you know, it seems to me like I don't just want to keep doing the same thing we've been doing and the same money we've been doing with every department when maybe... We don't need to. And so if we're seeing if there's significant reduced circulation, maybe that's not entirely related to how much we need to spend. Maybe now we need to spend on other things. I don't know. But I do think we should, before this comes to council, I would like to see what we've spent previously understand what the differences are now between what the libraries are using this money for today as opposed to what they might have been using the money for several years ago. That makes complete sense and we can certainly do that.

Certainly each year and each month we consistently look at the ratio of electronic and print books to make sure we're responding to the customer need.

Yeah, one thing that we can do is, you know, prior to going to council, we all send you a follow-up memo to the entire council, kind of walking through the scoring. We let you know who the vendors are that are being selected. As part of that follow-up memo, we can provide some of that additional information before it goes to council.

Great. That's all I ask. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilwoman Mesa-Gonzalez, any questions? All right, Dale, thank you for the presentation. Again, this is an opportunity that we as the city of San Antonio contribute economically to an industry that is national and global because people still use books to print material to read, but we are also contributing to the digital and that. So I appreciate you coming and presenting. I do wish that we needed that open day collection. there are pockets on the south side that we would love to see a new library open but I am fully aware of where we're at in this budget cycle so I'm glad y'all put it to a side but I don't want to I have hope that one day we are going to need that contract so thank you for that explanation and then we'll see how we continue to kind of

I DID HAVE A QUESTION ON THE PRINT LEASE PLAN. WE DON'T HAVE A PRINT LEASE PLAN, CORRECT?

CORRECT. THERE MAY BE SOME COOPERATIVE AGREEMENTS THAT WE COULD USE TO LEASE MATERIALS.

WE DON'T HAVE THOSE COOPERATIVE AGREEMENTS IN PLACE?

DO WE? NO. I DIDN'T THINK SO, BUT I JUST WANT TO GET A CONFIRMATION.

BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE THE PRINT LEASE PLAN, WHAT'S THE EFFORT ON the wait times for those high demand titles?

So for sure, when we were able to lease materials from our previous vendor, Baker & Taylor, there probably were a little bit shorter wait times right when the books first came out. Those probably are a little bit longer now, and that's something we really are struggling industry-wide, not the San Antonio Public Library, but industry-wide to replace what was available from that previous company.

And there isn't, nobody submitted a, I guess what's going on in that industry then, to not have anyone submit for the print lease plan?

I don't know that I can really speak to the background of why they didn't.

I guess can somebody?

No, we'll have to go back and work with the library. I don't know why, maybe the demand's not there as much, but we'll have to go back and look at that. I can't answer the question.

Okay. Yeah, that would be helpful just because if it is affecting the hold queues and the wait times, then that's impacting service.

Yeah, I can really only just conjecture, and my conjecture is that with this giant vendor going out of business, the other remaining vendors are struggling to just keep up with the main business. But that's purely just guess on my part.

Sure. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you.

I have theories too, but I'll take them offline about tariffs. But anyway, let's move on from that because we have a motion and a second to take this for full city council. We understand Troy is going to follow up with a follow-up email. But if the discussion has ended, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed say no. Motion carries. All right, so we are to our final internal audit reports. Does anyone need a break at this time or recess? Okay, so we're in our final internal audit reports. Madam Clerk, please read the caption for item eight.

Item eight is acceptance of the Office of the City Auditor Report AU25-003, Audit of ACS Dangerous and Aggressive Dog Program.

All right, the floor is yours.

Hello, good morning. My name is Michael Gutierrez. I was the audit manager over this project, and I'll be presenting the results of ACS's Dangerous and Aggressive Dog Program audit. The objective of the audit was to determine if the dangerous and aggressive dog program is operating effectively and operating in accordance with department policies and procedures, state regulations, and best practices. We concluded that overall the program is operating effectively. However, we did find improvements are needed regarding department policies and procedures in a few areas, such as documenting investigations, reviewing compliance of dog owners, responding to and tracking of all affidavits, assessing program fees, and monitoring user access. To give a little more information, ACS partners with 311 on this program. When a call is made to 311 regarding a dangerous or aggressive dog, the call is categorized into one of those four areas there. ACS first responders respond to these calls. Once they're on site, if they feel the incident qualifies as a dangerous or aggressive dog, or if they observe serious bodily injury has occurred, they will contact the dangerous dog teams to come in. Once an affidavit has been submitted, the investigator begins to investigate the incident. The investigations can have one of three possible outcomes, as we see there. The dog can be deemed dangerous, the dog can be deemed aggressive, or the case can be declared unfounded if all the evidence gathered does not meet the standards that are set by the state. Moving on to results, we'll look at the positive results first. We concluded that animal care officers are responding to 311 customer service calls within the required response time. We took a look at a sample of 100 calls and we determined ACS responded to all 100 calls and they met the required response time for 89 calls out of the 100. Because all calls don't lead to investigations, we also reviewed 44 investigations and determined ACS responded to all 44 initial calls and then met the required response time on 42 of those 44 calls. We also concluded ACS is correctly declaring cases as unfounded when the evidence they gathered doesn't meet the standards that are set by the state. We reviewed a sample of 25 unfounded cases and we confirmed the standards for declaring a dog as dangerous or aggressive were not met based on the evidence that was gathered. We also concluded ACS is properly ensuring that dogs declared for destruction are euthanized by humane methods. We reviewed case notes for a sample of 44 euthanized dogs and we determined that all 44 cases contained a euthanasia order and all 44 dogs were humanely euthanized in accordance with the policy. Lastly, we concluded that ACS is appropriately ensuring that animal care officers are properly certified by the state. We reviewed training certificates for all 68 officers and determined all 68 officers were appropriately certified. So our first recommendation is regarding documentation for investigations. We concluded ACS does not consistently record and store the required communications, case information, and supporting documentations for investigations. We reviewed a total of 71 investigations, which included dangerous and aggressive investigations, serious bodily injury investigations, and noncompliance investigations. We determined 57 cases did not contain documentation of the required communications, such as notifying the dog owner and the affiant of the dog being deemed dangerous or aggressive. Also, 70 cases did not contain all the document support required, such as photographs and videos of the scene. Our recommendation is for the department to establish written policies and procedures addressing serious bodily injury investigations and noncompliance investigations as well as ensuring the controls that are already in for monitoring investigations are conducted accordingly. Our next recommendation is over reviewing compliance. We concluded ACS is not consistently performing and documenting the required 30-day compliance inspections and the subsequent annual compliance inspections to ensure owners of dangerous and aggressive dogs are complying with regulations. We tested 16 dangerous and aggressive dogs that required a 30-day inspection during fiscal year 25. Case notes for eight dogs did not contain documentation to support communication was made with the dog owners to schedule and perform a 30-day inspection. And case notes for 14 dogs did not contain documentation to support compliance was achieved. In addition, we also tested 50 dangerous and aggressive dogs that required an annual inspection during fiscal year 25, and we reviewed case notes for 45 dogs that did not contain documentation to support that annual inspections occurred or that compliance was met. So our recommendation here was for the department to establish procedures to ensure that compliance inspections for the dangerous and aggressive dogs case are performed and properly documented and also to establish controls to ensure these new procedures are executed as intended. Our next recommendation is regarding responding to and tracking affidavits. We concluded ACS does not document and track the receipt of affidavits that are submitted for dangerous and aggressive dogs. In addition, investigators are not adequately documenting their timely contact with the affiant and the dog owner. We reviewed a sample of 35 dangerous and aggressive dog investigations and we concluded 28 cases did not contain documentation to support that from the day the affiant submitted that the contact was made with the dog owner within five days and with the affiant within three days. So our recommendation is for the director to establish a policy and procedure for documenting and tracking the receipt of the affidavit submitted and also to create controls to ensure the new policy and procedure are properly executed and also to create controls to ensure investigators are monitored for timely responses. Our next recommendation was regarding assessing program fees. We concluded ACS is not consistently assessing applicable program fees, which are primarily euthanasia fees. We reviewed a sample of 41 cases that involved just over $7,000 in fees owed by dog owners. 22 cases included waived fees of just over $700. And of those 22 cases, 19 cases included waived euthanasia fees of about $475. So our recommendation is to establish a policy and procedure to address the criteria and the process for waiving these fees and also to create controls to ensure these new policies and procedures are executed as intended. And our final recommendation comes over monitoring user access. We concluded ACS is not periodically performing or documenting reviews of user access to Chameleon, which is their system of record for this program, or their Microsoft Teams channel. We did go through and we verified user access to Microsoft Teams was appropriate. However, user access to Chameleon was inappropriate. We reviewed user access for all 260 users and we verified 19 users did not currently work for ACS and did not require access. Of the remaining users, we tested 30 and we found one additional user had separated from the city and no longer required access. So ACS management agree with our recommendations and have already developed an action plan with an anticipated completion date of August 2026. That concludes my presentation. I and ACS management are available to answer any questions anyone may have. Thank you.

Thank you. Does Animal Care Services Department want to provide a response?

Good afternoon, committee. I'm John Gary, the Director for Animal Care Services. Really, I just want to thank Buddy and the rest of his team for being able to do this. Really, as a director, they were able to come in and do something that I can't do. I can't spend hours of every day combing through paperwork after paperwork after paperwork to identify some of these concerns. Obviously, having the ability to have them come in and provide that was tremendous for us and really identified what I think we already knew. I think whenever you look at when we changed our dangerous dog ordinances in 2024, overnight, we went from about 300 cases in FY24 to over 500 in FY25, so almost doubled, and it happened very rapidly. I think what the audit really reflects is that additional workload without additional staff that happened very quickly. And so we saw some, when it came down to the end of the cases and documenting cases by uploading them into the various systems that we use, you know, there were some things that could have been done better with our team. And I will say, as you saw at the end of the last slide there, we did already implement every new procedure that was recommended. They were all implemented in the month of August. Thankfully, you know, special thanks to our interim assistant director, Bethany Snowden, who worked very, very closely with Buddy's team while they were there. And so we were actually updating things on the fly during the audit. So a lot of it was already done by the time we got the audit results. So with that, just thank you to the committee and thank you to Buddy and his team for their work on this.

Thank you. And if I can get a motion and a second to take this to full council so we can begin discussion. All right. We've got a motion and a second. Thank you for the presentation. We all know that we're here because of a tragedy and we needed to address this issue and trying to address the staffing needs for ACS. and what they're working towards. So thank you for this presentation. Did any of my council colleagues? Councilman White.

Yeah, I just wanna point out the value, Buddy, of the work that your team does here. And I think it's really evident in the findings here related to ACS. The first couple of findings on what they could do better relate to communication with not only the dangerous dog owner, but also the victims. And really, there were some lack of communication issues here. And that, to me, goes directly to the public trust about what we're doing as a city government. When people make complaints, they should have a follow-up and know what the result is from the city. And the same, the people that are being accused of things need to know what's going on as well. So there's that part of it. The second part, and probably as important, if not more, is the public safety aspect of what's going on here. Lack of follow-up with some of these dangerous dog owners to make sure that they're complying with whatever was handed down to them. I mean, what's the point of putting these rules in place if then we don't follow up and ensure that things are going better? The same with responding to the affidavits. If people are making dangerous dog complaints and submitting these affidavits and nobody at ACS is responding and maybe the case doesn't get opened or whatever it is, you have another potential dangerous animal on the street that's not looked at. So there we have a substantive public safety issue. And then finally on the collecting of the fees, maybe small amounts here, but every little bit helps. We obviously have budget issues here and And we need to make sure that we're collecting all the dollars where we can. So this audit, I think, in particular, really hits three important areas. Thanks for doing it, buddy. Thank you to ACS for taking it seriously and making the corrections that are asked for here in the report.

Thank you. Councilwoman Ms. Gonzalez.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. And Ditto, thank you for the work from our audit department and to ACS for quickly implementing as it was happening in real time. So that is appreciated. I had a question on the, I think it was a 45 of the 50 dogs that had no documentation. Is there a plan to, I guess, was there a, was it the 45 of the 50? that have no documentation of the annual inspection? Yeah, is there a plan to physically verify each of those animals?

Again, I want to say that the follow-up did happen. It was the officer did not document that it happened, and so that's what we had to address.

Okay, and so that was addressed, and they're all done? Okay, so can you... Can you report that back to us in another way other than just saying it happened?

Well, yeah. I mean, basically what we've had our team do is go through, and I think they're still going through some of those older records because some of the records were a little bit older, and basically going through paper files and then trying to now upload them into the electronic system so that the documentation is there. And I will say some of them won't exist because, in practice, the officer didn't go in and make a note saying, or I called this person and did this, which we addressed through policy.

Thank you. Um, and then on the, the, uh, slide eight, um, what, what does a resident have to do to file the affidavit today? Cause I just want to make sure that this was happening on the, I guess, downstream. Right. So, um, making sure that filing that affidavit in itself, there isn't any process barriers there. And then they're met here with no response. And so I'm just curious, what does a resident have to do to file the affidavit?

So right now we receive affidavits in various different ways. Some come through the mail. Some are done directly with the officer. And then some actually come in to the lobby and actually fill one out. Um, again, I wanna make sure that, uh, it's, it's dated that we, we did work every affidavit that we received. It was the documentation of that, that, that we're so, um, you know, obviously we would know very quickly if, if someone filed an affidavit and we didn't work that case, uh, we would know very, very quickly that person would be complaining. Uh, and so we, we do do a good job of actually working these. What we did do is, is we actually now, so as these affidavits are coming in, they're, they're documented onto a tracker. so that we can say, okay, we received this one and now we have worked it. So we're able to document the fact that we worked it where before we were working them, but we weren't documenting that we've worked them.

Got it. Okay, thank you so much.

All right, there's no further discussion. We've got a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed say no. Motion carries. We move on to item number nine.

Item number nine is acceptance of the Office of the City Auditor Report AU24-016, Audit of San Antonio Fire Department Uniformed Employee Overtime.

Good morning, my name's Nastasha Leach and I was the manager for this project and I'll be taking you through the results. So our objective was to determine the drivers of significantly increased overtime. The fire department's overtime remained relatively stable until COVID pandemic occurred in which overtime expenses increased and did not return to pre-pandemic levels. Overall, we identified increasing absences, use of various types of leave and the implementation of new programs without a requisite increase in staffing as primary drivers. This audit was seeking to identify the drivers. We are currently performing a follow-up audit to determine the impact that these drivers have. Additionally, during the course of the audit, we identified areas that, while not drivers of increased overtime, lacked clear policies and procedures, and in some cases could be considered abusive. For a little bit of background, the three main divisions of the fire department are the fire division, EMS and communications. These divisions operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week and have 24 hour shifts. As of October, 2023, the fire department had 1,804 uniformed personnel out of a budget of 1,812. As previously mentioned, overtime increased significantly as a result of the pandemic and did not return to pre-pandemic levels. Fire department is a practice of overstaffing the division as a buffer for routine absences. For fire, the buffer is approximately 20%. EMS requires 72 personnel per shift with staffs 100, and comms has a buffer of approximately 12.5%, or one to two people. If minimum staffing needed is not met, other uniformed personnel are brought on on minimum staffing overtime to provide coverage. If fire staffing policy was working as intended, there should be little minimum staffing overtime. However, that overtime spending increased from 15 million to 25 million between fiscal year 2019 and 2023. In hours, that's an increase of approximately 180,000 hours of minimum staffing overtime. This audit focused primarily on minimum staffing overtime and its causes, and the scope was fiscal year 2019 through 2023. First, we identified increasing absences as a driver of increased overtime. Increases in deployment were largely driven by COVID-19 and other activities such as special assignments without a related tracking code. Additionally, line of duty leave increased by 87% during the five years. Sick and vacation leave also increased by approximately 10% between fiscal year 2019 and 2023. We identified that a few personnel used the most leave. There were 30 uniformed personnel that had more than 5,000 hours of leave each over the five year period, which is equivalent to between two and two and a half years off. It was also brought to our attention that during previous administrations, the fire department had implemented new programs and teams without an increase in staffing. While these programs were beneficial, it did contribute to stretching the staff thin and requiring increasing overtime to meet minimum staffing needs. Further, there may be opportunities for some duties to be performed by civilians, thus freeing up uniformed personnel for more direct firefighting and EMS duties. As such, we recommend the fire chief work with the Office of Innovation to determine the factors contributing to high rate of absenteeism, monitor any long-term absences and high uses of intermittent leave, ensure any programs or teams requiring additional personnel are discussed and approved with city management and the Office of Management and Budget, as well as monitoring tele-staff coding to ensure special assignments are accurately coded. Additionally, we recommend the city manager evaluate current duties performed by uniform personnel that could be performed by civilians. We also identified a lack of enforcement of sick leave positions and high class pay, which may be used inefficiently to cover absences. Of the 254 personnel that withdrew between fiscal year 2019 and 23, 34% whose working hours consisted entirely of sick and other types of leave. Because these personnel are holding their position while taking sick leave, the fire department is unable to replace them with new personnel except by using overtime and high class pay. Additionally, per the CBA, the district and assistant chiefs have an aid that receive high class pay when their chief is on leave, even if the aid is not performing at a higher rank. As such, we recommend the fire chief monitor the use of sick leave to ensure that physician's notes are obtained per the requirements in the CBA and departmental leave policies, as well as the city manager should consider including high class pay to aides upon the absence of their supervising chief in future negotiations. A few personnel are making extensive use of light duty assignments, line of duty leave, and unpaid leave. These three categories of assignment and leave were responsible for the equivalent of 41 full-time employees not being at their regularly assigned duties each year. Specifically, we identified 24 personnel that received between one and four years of light duty assignments and another 26 uniformed personnel that received one half to one full year of light duty assignments. We saw similar but lesser trends with line of duty and unpaid leave. While these personnel are working light duty assignments, they may need to be replaced with overtime, increasing overtime spending. Discretionary leave is administrative leave granted to appointed personnel at the discretion of the fire chief for work hours performed in excess of regularly scheduled duties. We found that appointed personnel were using a significant amount of discretionary time prior to retirement. On average, 10 to 40% of their working hours were discretionary leave just prior to retirement. And so we recommend the fire chief should monitor and ensure that discretionary leave is utilized and approved in compliance with policy. For pyramiding premium pay, the CBA states that when two or more types of overtime premium compensation are applicable to the same work of hours, only the higher rate of compensation shall be paid. However, the CBA does not define premium compensation. Based upon the verbiage in the CBA, the audit office concludes that high class and holiday pay are premium compensation as they are higher than the base rate. Thus, high class holiday and high class overtime would be considered pyramided. The city paid out about 80,000 hours of high class holiday and 97,000 hours of high class overtime pay during the five year period. Our recommendation is that the city manager clarify the terms of the CBA regarding peer emitting and what constitutes premium pay and then establish controls to ensure that that pay is not being permitted. Employee leave time is treated as working time for FLSA purposes. So if someone is on leave and picks up an overtime shift, they receive 2.5 times their regular rate of pay. In contrast, civilians would have their leave returned to their leave bank and would be paid at regular rates. Additionally, the uniformed personnel have the potential to use current scheduling practices to strategically schedule time off through a combination of leave and shift trades, which enables them to physically work the same number of hours as their regular shifts while earning overtime, which could be considered abusive. So for example, a uniformed member could take leave on a regularly scheduled shift and then pick up an overtime shift for the next day. That person would have worked the same number of hours, 24, but received those 24 hours entirely as overtime. As such, we recommend the implement a policy of reimbursing leave to an employee's leave bank if working on a previously scheduled leave date, have management regularly reviewing telestaff entries for patterns of potentially abusive behavior and implement policies and procedures to prevent it. Additionally, the city manager should clarify specific provisions of the CBA to include the accrual of FLSA overtime based upon time actually worked. Finally, we identified that controls over telestaff could be improved. Telestaff is the electronic scheduling system used by the fire department to manage shifts and track leave. We identified personnel with full access to telestaff, personnel who no longer required access who maintained it, and users that had rules granting them enhanced privileges that let them approve others' time entries as well as their own. We identified 14 out of 43 judgmentally selected transactions that were self-approved. We also identified missing data and records that had been deleted, and an individual who was coded and paid two types of overtime for the same hours. The fire chief should develop and implement a policy and procedure for determining appropriate levels of access, ensure timely deactivation of staff no longer needing access, and continue to work with the developer of Telestaff to ensure system controls are working as intended. Fire Department management agreed with the recommendations and have developed an action plan with an anticipated completion date of October 2027. Thank you very much. Myself and the Fire Department leadership are here to answer any questions.

Does the Fire Department want to provide a response or a statement?

Good morning, members of the Audit Committee. Before Chief Rausto comes up to the podium and address the audit, I wanted to provide some context to this particular audit. This is an audit that I requested to the auditor's office in early 2024. This is before Chief Rausto was appointed to be our fire chief. And the reason why I requested the audit, I had seen increases in overtime due to COVID, but after COVID, the overtime was not coming down. My office working with the budget office, we did analysis of overtime, by employee, and I had some concerns about the number of hours associated with each of the employees. One of the things that we identified at that point is that for purposes of overtime, and I'm going to use a civilian employee as an example. So in the civilian world, you have to physically work 40 hours before you're eligible for overtime. That has not been the practice in the fire department for I understand 30 years or more, where employees can be working in a fire station, their regular schedule, just like the collective bargaining agreement says, but if they decide to work or volunteer to work a shift at a different fire station, which is not their regular assignment, they get paid overtime for that additional shift that they work, even though they haven't physically worked the hours called by their schedule. So we addressed that as part of the collective bargaining negotiations in 2024. Unfortunately, we were not successful to make that change, and that is one of the drivers of overtime, and we'll continue to address that as we start negotiations again next year. However, through this process, we also identified some areas that we could put better parameters for the use of leave, for example, sick leave. And we were successful in adding those parameters to the collective bargaining agreement. The chief has implemented policies to be able to ensure that we better track that, to ensure that those employees that are utilizing sick leave is actually four because they're actually sick. So we're asking for a doctor's note for those cases. So I just wanted to provide a context as to why we did this audit. The overtime in the fire department is complex, so that's why the audit took time to be completed. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Chief Roustow.

Good morning. My name is Valerie Frosto. I am the fire chief. First, I want to thank the city auditor and his team for the work that went into this audit. As Maria mentioned, I know that it is extremely complex. We appreciate the review and opportunity that it gave us to reinforce the improvements that we already started and continued alongside the audit. We accepted the recommendations and all of the corrective actions identified in our response have been completed. I think it's important to provide a little context around overtime in the fire department. The auditor mentioned that we operate 24 hours, 365 days a year, and we have minimum staffing requirements that have to be met regardless of vacancies, injuries, illness, approved leave, training, or major incidents. So overtime will always be a part of operating a large fire department. The issue for us is making sure that overtime is necessary, properly authorized, accurately recorded, and responsibly managed. The audit identified several areas where we could strengthen that oversight, and that's exactly what we've done. One of the biggest areas that we focused on is employee leave and absenteeism because workforce availability has a direct impact on overtime. We've worked with the Office of Innovation to better understand our leave data and the factors contributing to the absenteeism. We've overhauled our leave and absence policies as well, and the intent was to clarify expectations, improve consistency, and make sure our practices align with departmental policies, the collective bargaining agreement, and applicable law. We've taken that same approach with light duty, line of duty, and leave without pay. Those cases are reviewed regularly by leadership so we can stay aware of how long employees are out, follow up on their status, and make sure they're ready to return to work without coming back too soon. We've also strengthened oversight of sick leave by clarifying documentation requirements, including when a physician's note is required, and improved the process for submitting and tracking that documentation. At the same time, we're reinforcing expectations with our supervisors. Employees certainly have a right to use the leave benefits that are available to them, but our responsibility again is to make sure those benefits are administered consistently and in accordance with policy and the CBA. The audit also identified opportunities to strengthen our internal controls within Telestaff and we've addressed all of those as well. We've tightened system access based on employee's role and responsibilities and established processes to ensure access is changed or removed when someone transfers or leaves the department. We've strengthened supervisory review and conduct regular internal audits of Telestaff entries to identify things like overlapping time entries, self-approval, and excessive hours. While overtime is voluntary, we want to ensure employees are not taking on more hours than is reasonable or safe. We also provided refresher training to all already has been completed, and worked with IT, finance, the vendor, and system administrator to strengthen the controls through updates, enhanced validation, and system controls. There are now multiple levels of review in place rather than relying solely on the system itself. Another important area is how we use our uniform personnel. Every uniformed employee assigned outside of frontline operations has the potential to affect our staffing picture, and because of that, programs requiring additional personnel receive greater scrutiny, particularly when they could result in positions being moved out of operations and potentially increase overtime. The department also worked to reduce overtime by adding dedicated positions for programs that previously relied on field personnel. We've added 10 positions in FY24 and eight more are proposed for FY27 to support training, recruiting, and school-based programs. As Maria mentioned, there are some matters such as higher class premium pay that need to be addressed through collective bargaining. The city has raised those issues previously and they will likely get reevaluated this coming negotiations. Look at all of these findings together, they really come down to having the right controls in place and also oversight. We've completed the corrective actions outlined in the audit, strengthened our policies and internal controls, and put additional monitoring in place to help us better manage leave, staffing, and overtime. Overtime will continue to be necessary at times to maintain minimum staffing and meet the operational needs of the department. Our responsibility, actually my responsibility, is to make sure it is appropriately used, properly managed, and that we remain good stewards of city resources. I appreciate the auditor's work again and believe the changes we've made have strengthened our processes moving forward. I'd also like to mention that we are currently undergoing a second overtime audit and welcome that review as yet another opportunity to continue improving. Thank you again and I'll be available for any questions you may have.

Thank you. Can I get a second? Can I get a motion and a second to accept the audit so we may begin discussion?

Okay.

We have a motion and a second. The time is now 1137 a.m. and the audit committee will now meet in executive session to consult with the city attorney's office concerning attorney client matters under chapter 551 of the Texas government code. Thank you. All right. The time is now 1146 a.m. and the audit committee will reconvene in open session. No official action was taken in the executive session. We may begin discussion. Chief Rosto, if you can come up, please. I'm pleased to hear that you're working on the recommendations as we move forward. Tell me a little more about the, because this is our base, the hours and making sure that our firefighters aren't stretched doing this over time. Is that something you communicate doing tele-staff or is that something like a call that a supervisor says where so and so has been on too long, he needs a break or she needs a break?

Correct, kind of all of the above. We have various levels of review. Initially it is reviewed by the professional standards chief, and this is every pay cycle. He then, if he identifies any excessive, not excessive, but hours that could be excessive for that particular employee, that'll be reported to senior staff, and then they will discuss that with me. So we are keeping a very close eye on the hours worked by employees.

Thank you. Cause I know, um, you know, for some of them, this is, this is a calling. So it, even when they should say no, they're like, yes. And I think that that's important that we, we, uh, you guys continue to monitor that as we kind of, uh, adjust and, and look at how we make changes to this. So that I'm, I'm glad we're seeing that happen. Um, and I think the, um, the, the other will happen. Uh, the other thing, use of kind of discretionary leave. That's another aspect is that if, and I know you have counselors on the scene at the little, the kind of station where they go in and to check their health. And I think that's important too, because what I do feel the fire department in, and we have great departments across the 42 departments, but because of the high stress situation they have, is they could be our greatest ambassadors to talk about kind of that mental health and that fatigue that they get if they continue to share their stories about how once you get in a call and you see this and your adrenaline's up, you do need to take time for yourself. And then also, there is no shame if this was a calling and then after so many years, you're like, I need an adjustment and a change for that. And I think that's where we look at our other 41 departments in the city and say where can these city employees go after maybe they've done their run with the department. So looking forward to seeing the changes that are coming under your leadership. The one thing I always understood with the previous administration is I knew, and I said this in another audit that the fire, the time off between there. It's great to give people time off, but they need to talk also about what happens there, and then sometimes it's important to be in community with other firefighters that just experienced what you experienced. So I understand some are going to need time off after these critical incidents. Some of them are going to need to be with their... their co-workers and talk it through too. So I'm hoping that you can find a good balance for the staff that you have. So thank you for that. Looking forward to more work. Great job, Audit Committee, in doing your job. And again, just make sure that we continue to kind of have this work and keep the communication line open with the Public Safety Committee and full counsel.

ALL RIGHT. COUNCILMAN MESA GONZALEZ. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE PRESENTATION AND BUDDY TO YOU AND YOUR TEAM. AND I THINK WE TALKED ABOUT THIS OR THE FOLLOW-UP AUDIT THAT HELPS US ACTUALLY GET TO WHAT'S DRIVING THE OVERTIME. SO THE REPORT HAS THOSE THREE POSSIBLE DRIVERS BUT THERE'S A COST BEHIND ALL OF THAT AND SO WANTED to get more kind of background on that. Is that coming up in the, is that something you can answer?

Yes, we're in there right now and we're, it's similar audit, but it's more dollar driven. So we're going to look at potential costs, the potential cost impact for several of these drivers.

Okay. And so how is overtime appropriated in the fire department budget?

So Councilwoman, in the case of the fire department, we have the general fund that is the primary budget for this department. We also have an allocation under the airport. And the fire department participates with the state in deployments when there's disasters in other areas in Texas or outside of Texas as well, and also grants that we received. So during the audit period that the city auditor's office cover, We had grants that were coming from the federal government because of COVID. So some of the costs associated with overtime was covered through that, through the general fund, reimbursement from deployments as well. So that's how the budget is appropriated. And for those expenses above appropriations, it could be due to grants or deployments, like I mentioned, Also, the department does budget adjustments throughout the year to ensure that if we are over in that line item, we have other areas of the budget to offset that cost. So at the end of the day, the fire department is not over budget.

So would you say that the vacancy and the overtime are... I guess, do you use vacancies in that adjustment?

It could be not necessarily vacancies. It could be, for instance, when we develop the budget, we may have a set of employees that have much more tenure. As those retire and we replace them with newly graduated cadets, the cost is going to be lower of the new incumbents. So that difference between the pay of those that have more tenure offsets some of the overtime costs. And as I mentioned, we're constantly monitoring the budget so we may be doing adjustments from other line items outside of personnel.

Okay. And then there's a number of recommendations here. Can any of those be implemented unilaterally?

Yes, there are many that the chief has already implemented, like she alluded to the development of a policy on how she's managing the different types of leave, as well as those assignments to anything that is what we consider a special assignment that is outside the operating divisions. She's making sure that she's managing that to make sure that we don't incur additional overtime.

Okay, and I think there was a... on the report there is a 30 uniformed personnel identified that had more than 5,000 hours of leave each, um, over, I think it was a five year period of time, I guess. Was there any, Follow up with those officers or those uniformed personnel, excuse me?

Those have all been addressed. So they were for various reasons. Most of them were associated with line of duty or an off-duty injury.

Okay, thank you. And I know if overtime comes down and staffing doesn't come up, THAT AFFECTS RESPONSE TIME AND SO JUST MAKING SURE THAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT THAT TRADE OFF OPENLY I THINK IS IMPORTANT WHETHER IT'S AN AUDIT OR PUBLIC SAFETY OR IN THE A SESSION MEETINGS BECAUSE I DON'T THINK OVERTIME REDUCTION IS FREE BUT JUST SO THAT WE HAVE OUR EYES WIDE OPEN ON WHAT ALL THIS MEANS. THANK YOU SO MUCH.

COUNCILMAN WHITE.

FOLLOW UP ON THAT. My question is, you're putting in all these new control measures to stop some of the things that we just saw on some of those slides. And I won't comment too much on that. We've got to get a handle on that, and I take you at your word that we are putting in safeguards to make sure that some of this stuff doesn't happen moving forward. How much is the overtime going to come down based upon you implementing these new guardrails? Do you guess or estimate?

I don't want to give you a number if it's not exact. It's a $1.5 million reduction in the minimum staffing budget.

$1.5 million in decreased dollars for overtime. based on implementing these recommendations. Okay, now with that said then, I think it was said 70% of the overtime is due to the minimum staffing requirements. Are we going to look at the cost difference between continuing to pay the overtime versus hiring new firefighters?

Yes, we have actually made out what the relief factor looks like for future requests. So when we add a unit which requires additional staffing, accounting for the leave time that those employees will need to take during the course of time. So I think that will help to offset that somewhat.

Councilman, and to add to what the fire mentioned, so we've done a couple of changes as part of the budget process. In fiscal year 24, we added positions for a quartermaster in a muff unit that was staffed with overtime, and we did the analysis and recommended we add the firefighters instead of the overtime. In the proposed budget for fiscal year 27, we have eight positions related to the training and recruitment functions of the department. Same exercise. We identified that it was cheaper to add the position, so we'll continue to do that.

Got it. Okay. Well, good. I mean, that I think makes all the sense in the world. I mean, which one is the better deal for the city? That's really all, I guess, that I want to say today other than thank you to Buddy and your team for all the work and for the coming additional audits.

COUNCILMAN MS. GONZALEZ.

JUST A QUICK QUESTION ON TELUS STAFF THEMSELVES, WHICH IS I THINK ON PAGE 6 OF THE AUDIT REPORT, THERE'S A LOT OF INTERNAL CONTROLS ASSOCIATED WITH THE TIME KEEPING SYSTEM THAT COULD BE STRENGTHENED. WHAT DOES THAT LOOK LIKE? IS THAT CONVERSATIONS WITH TELUS STAFF, WITH ITSD? IS THAT HOW LONG ARE WE IN THAT CONTRACT FOR? What did that solicitation look like?

Sure. So we have worked with tele staff, which is a contractor, and through ITSD to make the recommendations included in the audit. So tele staff is a system that is used by the fire department like a scheduling tool. That way we can schedule all the employees and we know where they're at at any given time. that information then some of that information then is translated to sap so those employees get paid so there's a process for us to ensure the the accuracy of the data that is transmitted to sap and one of the areas that was identified by the auditor's office is that the payroll which is the system of record was accurate but telestaff was not so those are the the things that we um did already some changes, and we have additional money in the fiscal year 27 budget to continue to make improvements to tele-staff.

How long is that contract? I did a quick Google search on Telestaff, and that was the first thing that came up. With SAP and Telestaff, there seems to be a disconnect and requires manual, I guess, movement with ITSD. I'm not saying it's all telestaff, but I just really want to make sure that, I mean, this is a huge department that's relying on a system like this, and if the system is, you know, hasn't upgraded, that's concerning to me, because if we're continuing to work with the developer of telestaff, and that's the only thing they do is hold hours for public safety departments, that seems like a... I don't know. It just doesn't seem like something we'd have to talk to the developer. Does that make sense? I'm just not understanding.

It does make sense. Okay. I mean, typically on these contracts like telestaff, and the reason why we have telestaff out at the fire department is because of the complexity of the timekeeping requirements. It's not something that necessarily we can do in SAP. Okay.

The tele-staff can do that.

Right. And, you know, typically on those type of contracts, we'll go back and we can find when the termination is, but typically the renewal is going to be a maintenance contract to basically for support. We do have an opportunity coming up as we talked about with the kind of the overhaul and the implementation of SAP. One of those pieces is payroll. If there are specific disconnects between telestaff and SAP, we can explore that at that time and see how we can remedy that, then also work with telestaff to see if there's any enhancements that need to be made on their side as well.

Okay, thank you so much. Councilman White.

Just briefly, that deal you all mentioned before we went to exec about telehealth, somebody could not work 40 hours a week but go to another station and work and get overtime?

Yes, sir.

That's still going on right now? None of these guardrails prevent that?

No, that requires a change in the collective bargaining agreement.

That is a CBA issue? Yes, sir. Got it. Okay. Thanks.

Okay. So... Is there any further discussion? There being no further discussion, we have a motion and a second to accept the audit. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed say no. Motion carries. We're going to move on to item 10.

Yes, ma'am. I know we're running late on time, so we'll try to be brief. But this is going to be our, is that time of year again? We're starting our external independent audit. Uh-huh. With that, there are required communications that four of us are external auditors required to make to the audit committee, and there's a separate ask that they will be as well. To kick it off, I'll let Vicki give you a high-level overview and background, and then we'll turn it over to four of us to talk through the required communications.

All right. Hello, Chair, members of the committee. My name is Victoria Rader. I work in the finance department as the Deputy Finance Director, and I'm here with Amanda Eves. She's our partner for our external auditors, Forvis Mazars. We were here a few months ago giving you the results of the 2025 audit, and now we're going to begin the 2026 audit. Just really high level, the difference between what external audit does and what the internal audit does. External audit, they ensure that our financial statements are properly maintained, they're free of material misstatements, and that we're following accounting standards. And they provide an independent view of the financial statements of the city. It is required under the city charter and by the state statute that we have a CPA firm come and audit the city. Our internal audit led by Buddy and his team, they perform financial fiscal compliance and other audits as directed by this committee, and their reviews tend to be more programmatic and specific in nature. This is the last year of the contract with Forrest-Mazars. You can see that we had a three-year term with two separate one-year extension, and here is the price for each year. There's a lot of responsibilities that go into this audit. High level, some of our responsibilities at the city are to develop and revise internal controls and fiscal policies and procedures, ensuring that we implement any new accounting standards, that we prepare our annual financial statements, and with that, that we also consolidate any component unit financial statements into our audit. We're also required to develop a transmittal letter, our management discussion analysis, disclosure notes, and statistical sections. We separately prepare an airport's PFC report. We also prepare our federal and state grant expenditure report, and we enter these into our federal data collection form. Of course, we're here to support our auditors and give them the information they need regarding supporting schedules, any documents, and of course, answer any of their audit or follow-up requests. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Amanda Eves as she goes over the audit plan and strategy for fiscal year 26.

Okay. Amanda, I see you have a 27 slide presentation. Is there any way we could just go through the highlights? Because I do have a hard stop at 1215. I'm not sure if my council colleague, okay, so.

Yes, we absolutely can. How much time do I have?

Ten minutes.

Okay, yeah, absolutely.

Okay, great.

So thank you very much. You know, I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you again today. So I feel compelled to say this is my fifth time to be presenting the audit plan to the committee today. We also have our teaming partners here with us today. We have someone from just about all of the firms. They are really a key component of our audit team involved, you know, from planning through completion of the audit. So I want to make sure and include them in the discussion here. Today, this is a different slide that you haven't seen in the past, so I do have a few other individuals here with me today that I just want to briefly introduce. So again, being my fifth year here, I've really just kind of looking back and reflecting on the years that I've been working with the city There are other team members involved that really support this engagement that you all haven't met that I wanted you to have a chance to meet today. So we have not shown on the slide, but here today is John McDowell. So John is the managing partner for our San Antonio practice. Brian West is the managing partner for our Houston market and really what these two individuals have done. They've also served on the governing board at the firm. And they have really made sure that we had the people and the capacity in order to serve the city. So very, very big part of our team here. Also, we have Rachel Ormsby. So Rachel is an audit partner. She works with a lot of cities and governments in Texas and around the U.S. She's also our national industry leader for public sector. And then Angie Dunlop. is our Houston market sector leader. She's an audit partner as well that works with cities and governments around the U.S. And they both serve on our Center of Excellence for Public Sector, which is a group that gets together on a monthly basis to talk about industry developments for public sector, things that we need to be looking at and anticipating with our clients so that we can serve you all better. So these individuals have been a bigger part of the engagement and just wanted to have you meet them and I'm glad that they could be here today. So our responsibilities are to audit the financial statements but there are also a number of other reports regarding federal and state compliance with grants, passenger facility charge audit as well as some agreed upon procedures. These are similar to engagements that we've conducted in the past and we do these all at the same time so it's more of a Efficient process, we're not doing these audits one at a time. These are the deliverables associated with those audits. This is our timeline. So we started off planning in June, have done some interim testing, and we're here doing our planning presentation with you now with the end goal of being back here in March to present our audit results to you. So similar to what you've seen in the past. Materiality, you'll hear us talk about materiality now at year end. And so materiality is where we really look at the things that matter most to the users of the financial statements. And we focus in on those areas. We determine what's material based on not only a dollar amount, but again, what would impact the users of the financial statements. Just some things to kind of bring to your attention again. responsibility of the audit committee just to oversee internal control over financial reporting and grant compliance. Your financial statements have significant estimates, as we've talked about in the past. Those have not changed. And then, of course, your grant compliance testing and making sure you file your required reports with the federal government. And then lastly, you'll see an appendix in the back that talks about future accounting standards that the city will be implementing this year and in the future. just for your awareness. Um, as you're aware, the city has a number of different component units. So what this slide shows you is that the component units that are reported in the city's act for, and then on that bottom line, the other auditors. So there are other auditors that audit some of those components and we correspond with those auditors. We obtain their reports, but we're not auditing, um, those individual components. and there's a full list in the appendix for your reference. Significant risk areas, so these are not areas where there are problems or necessarily indicating a problem, they're just more significant areas. So revenue recognition, management, overriding internal controls, again your program compliance with both federal and state grants, And then you're implementing a new accounting standard this year, so that will be a significant risk area and focus during the audit. And these are not different than what you've seen in the past, other than GASB 103, which is new. Your federal single audit, so these are the major programs that we anticipate testing based on the financial data through interims. That could change at year end, but usually... We're able to really know what those are by now. And then these are the two state programs that we'll be testing. During our audit, we do consider the risk of fraud. We do team brainstorming, interviews with management, looking at estimates, any unusual transactions, and doing something different every year to add unpredictability to our audit procedures. And then we would ask that this committee, you know, if anyone is aware of any known or suspected fraud, any significant risk, any internal control deficiencies, legal or regulatory noncompliance, related party transactions, cybersecurity issues or significant or unusual transactions, that you would bring those to the attention of Chairman Villagran and she will share those with us. And we will use those and consider them in our audit plan. And that is the end of my presentation. I'm happy to take any questions.

All right. Uh, great. Do any of my council members have questions? Thank you so much for the work. As you know, we are, we are continue to grow in the city. Thank you all for being here next time. Let us know. Well, we'll bring tacos or coffee. I'll make sure that's here. Uh, but the one thing I think we're, what we're seeing a trend nationally and where on those changes with governance is we are needing to take a little more interest in what our neighbors, our local municipalities that sit within the city of San Antonio city limits are doing. So that is one thing as we work with them. They're not always as big as us, so they don't do the audit that we do, but I am looking forward to see how their growth or lack of growth is impacting our city and our potential. So I'll be looking forward to seeing that and thank you for being with us for so long. I think you've been here as long as I've been on it. So thank you for the presentation and we look forward to hearing those results and of course I will be in touch regarding any of the insights my council colleagues have. Thank you. All right, thanks. Oh, the time is now 12.12 p.m., and we are adjourned.