City Council - Regular Meeting

morning. We're going to get started this morning with an invocation led by Dr. Lijo George, pastor at North Church. That will be followed by the Pledge of Allegiance led by Emma Ryder from Girl Scout Troop 1772. Please stand as you are able.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to invite you to join me and North Church as we pray for our city. Heavenly Father, we come before you today with gratitude for the city and for the people who call it home, and for the opportunity to gather together in service for the common good. Lord, your word says in Psalms 127.1, unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. So today we invite your presence into this chamber. We ask that you would guide every conversation, every decision, every plan discussed here today. We thank you for the leadership of Mayor David Holt, City Manager Craig Freeman, and the members of this council, and every public servant who carries the responsibility of guiding this community. Grant them wisdom beyond their own understanding, courage to do what is right, and humility to listen well to the people they serve. Lord, your word says in James 1.5, if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God who gives generously to all without finding fault. So we ask you today to pour your wisdom upon these leaders as they make decisions, God, decisions that will affect families. neighborhoods, businesses, and future generations. In times of disagreement, give them unity of purpose. In moments of pressure, give them peace and clarity. Help them to lead with integrity, compassion, and sincere desire to strengthen the city for every resident. Father, we pray for our neighborhoods, our schools, our first responders. our businesses, our families. We pray especially for those who are hurting today, those facing sickness, loss, financial hardship, loneliness, and uncertainty. Your word says Micah 6.8. What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and walk humility with your God. May those values guide both our leadership and and our community. And Father, we stand on your promise, Isaiah 54 verse 17, no weapon formed against you shall prosper. We declare your protection over our city, over our leaders, over our families, and over its future. Let violence, hatred, fear and division not prevail. Let your peace reign in our streets, our homes, our schools and our neighborhoods. Watch over our police officers, firefighters, medical responders and educators, military families and all who serve the community daily. Lord, let the city be marked by compassion, opportunity, justice and peace. Help us. as citizens, to build bridges instead of division, and to seek the good of one another. And finally, Father, we remember the words of Psalms 133, verse 1, how good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity. Lord, bless this city. Let it be a place of hope, opportunity, compassion, and unity. Lord, thank you for hearing our prayers. In Jesus' name we pray, and we all said amen, amen, amen.

Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Well, thank you, Dr. George, and thank you, Emma. I call this meeting of the city council to order, and we do have some ceremonial things to handle before we get into some budget presentations. And first up, it is time to recognize at the end of the year, our youth council. In fact, we're doing something a little different, I think this morning, we're gonna have a graduation here in our council chambers for our 2025, 2026 youth council members. And to bring them up, just kind of as we did at the beginning of this journey, we're gonna go around the horseshoe and we will start with word one. Oh, everybody can come up. We're going to apparently anyways, so we'll start that way.

Mayor and Council, it's my privilege to introduce and to graduate this Youth Council class. This is the 25th year. And so I'm really excited, but I'd like to also take this opportunity to thank Kim Funk and Spencer Brown for their dedication to this program over the last three years. Thank you so much, Kim and Spencer.

Okay, I would like to present Sarah Reyes and Ethan Lam for Ward 1 this morning. If their parents are here, can they stand, please? You guys have done a remarkable job raising these young kids. women and men, and I just recognized when we were sitting out in the lobby kind of celebrating them, the difference between when they showed up day one, how nervous they were, how unsure of everything going on, and how confident they stand now, how they have grown, how they have a bond with each other, and just, my God, how much older they look already in just a few months. They called me almost every month wanting to make sure of what was going on in our city, what was going on in ward one, being able to give a presentation that did justice for it. And I am extremely pleased to hand them their graduation certificates. Thank you guys so much.

Well, I have some unfortunate news. I warned the two Ward 2 youth counselors at the start of the year, if they touch that cursed monkey's paw, they disappear into oblivion. No. Unfortunately, Callie was unavailable, and Matthew's family had a trip planned out of the country, so they're not here today. But I do want to comment on just the vibrancy that they exuded any time they created videos or just talking with them. They were knowledgeable. They were insightful. And I'm just really proud of their work, and I look forward to giving them their very own official plaques soon. So I'll pass that to our good friend over in Ward 4.

Thank you, Councilman. I'm really excited to be able to present these to Kandem Ross and Sonia Holmes. We've had so much great interaction this past year. It's been fantastic. If their parents were able to attend, could you please stand? Thank you very much. So these two have been just really fantastic to work with all year. They're both basketball players. I don't know if they're playing tonight for the Thunder or what, possibly. I'm sure they're both very good. So with that, I'll present these. Thank you.

All right. Congratulations. I think you're maybe going to handle Ward 3, is that right?

Yeah, my kids aren't here, so I'm surrogate councilman for Ward 3. And if Jayden Musa, right? Close. Close. And Edward Wynn's parents are here, would you guys stand up? This is such a neat, neat thing. When the Youth Council toured Ward 5, one of the places we stopped was the bridges in Moore. homeless thing for the high school kids and they were real like why are we doing something and more when we're in oklahoma city so there's a learning experience about how so much of oklahoma city is actually in the more public school district but so interactive and so full of questions and so full of life and it's good to see so i would just like to present the awards here

So for Ward 6, we have Claire Galloway and James Rodriguez. Claire could not be with us today. She had another commitment that she was not able to reschedule, but we're very proud of her for actually being off doing some very impressive things. We're excited for her. And then for James, I just want to say just thank you to both Clara and James for their participation this year. This is such a wonderful program, and I've just recently gotten to connect with some of my previous Ward 6 Youth Council members, and it's always so exciting to see them at the point of graduation where James is today, and then in a few years when they're off doing wonderful things. So thank you so much, James.

Well, I'm very excited to present our Ward 7 Youth Council members. And would their parents please stand if they're here? And let's recognize them for sure. Thank you. Fathia and Jeremiah have been awesome to work with. I can say this as someone who is a former youth council member myself. They are so impressive and amazing that if either one of them become ward seven councilmen after me, we are in better hands, I can assure you. I've been so impressed by all of you and your accomplishments and just by the opportunity to share in your insights about our community and the ways that we can improve. And so I'm just excited for the future that you all have and grateful for your service to our award. So thank you, thank you. And I present these awards to both of you. Appreciate it.

Can you hear me now? Sorry. Yeah, Caitlin, Shogi, first thing I wanna do is say thank you for being here today. The second thing I wanna do is recognize your family that's here today. So could they please stand and let's give them a big hand. Now, for Caitlin, this is her second graduation this month. She graduated from Crossings, and now she's graduating today. And Shogi is about to be a senior, so he's starting to prepare a bunch of applications. But he told me his favorite thing was to make a commercial. And Caitlin said her favorite thing was touring the city and getting to know parts she had never seen before. So we are so proud of you. We're so happy you're here today. And congratulations. Thank you.

And my youth council members were Grayson Petty and Thomas Suarez. Thomas could not be with us today. He's graduated, so he is off to Harvard next year. And Grayson still has senior year ahead of you. But it's been a terrific experience being with both of you, Grayson. And your parents are here. If they are, please stand. Yes, let's hear it for them. We met several times through the course of the year, like everybody up here, and it's just been a lot of fun to be able to share our knowledge about the civic life of our city and hopefully inspiring you and Thomas and all the youth council members a desire to serve, whatever that may look like. But I always say that, especially to young people, that there has to be a slice of your life in addition to your family and your career that is set aside for your community and for service. And I look forward to seeing how that manifests itself for you, Grayson. And she and Thomas already did one bit of service. They administered my oath of office for my third term just a few weeks ago. And that was a lot of fun. So I hope you got some good feedback off of that. Yeah. So it is my honor, Grayson, to present you with your plaque. And congratulations. Let's hear it for Grayson. So yeah, you can go ahead and make your way down. And as Debbie Martin said, this is the 25th anniversary of this program. And so I'm going to make my way down as well to make a little presentation relative to that. We have to use this. If you would join me. Well, you already have. You knew where that was going.

Yeah, yeah.

Debbie, can you get this mic fixed? All right. I would ask the clerk to read a, what is this? It's a citation. Not the kind you get down at municipal courts. The good kind of citation. This is about the 25th anniversary, but it's also about your 25 years of service to this program.

Amy, go ahead. Whereas in 2001, the Oklahoma City Council approved and established the city's first youth council developed and launched by Debbie Martin as an intensive 10-month program pairing teens with city council representatives to learn about public service and experience firsthand how city leaders work with residents. And whereas for 25 years, Debbie Martin has poured her heart into the Youth Council, personally mentoring and supporting each of the more than 450 students who have graduated from the program and inspiring many to bring their talents. back home to Oklahoma City after college. And whereas Debbie Martin's guidance, encouragement, and unwavering support have been a quiet but vital force behind countless initiatives that have shaped Oklahoma City's renaissance. And whereas in honor of the Youth Council's 25th anniversary, dozens of colleagues, friends, and former Youth Council graduates have come together to establish the Debbie Martin Servant's Heart Scholarship, raising an endowment of more than $118,000 to provide annual college scholarships to Youth Council students pursuing their academic goals. And whereas this endowment will continue to grow, honoring Debbie Martin's lifelong commitment to public service and supporting Oklahoma City's young leaders for generations to come. Now, therefore, I, David Holt, Mayor of the City of Oklahoma City, do hereby congratulate Debbie Martin on 25 years of extraordinary service to Oklahoma City's youth.

Yeah, I think. Come on up. I really thank Kim. Well, certainly a lot of people contributed to this. I would have to credit. I think Kim Garrett was a champion of this idea. And I think you were getting suspicious because there was a lot of people here that wouldn't normally be here for a budget hearing today. But you probably had no idea. Did you want to say anything?

Very difficult to surprise, but we're so proud of you. We love you, and you are so deserving of this honor and this legacy. Congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you for inspiring all of us to do that. It's going to pay dividends for these young people for decades to come, so thank you.

I have to say I am absolutely overwhelmed. I'm humbled. I'm honored. I love this city. I love all of you. You make my day. Every month you come to meetings. And I love the fact that I get to make a difference in lives that will ultimately impact our entire community. Kim and Bob, thank you from the bottom of my heart. You're such great friends. Thank you. I am so blessed.

Let's hear it for Debbie one more time. All right. Well, fittingly, we're also going to honor a teacher of the month. So if you'll hang around for that, it'll just take one more minute. But obviously, this morning has got a theme. It's all about our young people and education. And we have an excellent example of the teachers who make all of this possible as well here today. And please come on down. Kuwantu Kamen. That part is easy, Cameron. All right, we have a resolution for you, Kuwantu, and I'd ask the clerk to read it.

Quantu Kamen has been named Teacher of the Month for May 2026 by the Oklahoma City Public Schools Foundation and Rotary Club of Oklahoma City. And whereas Quantu was an Oklahoma City Public Schools District Teacher of the Year finalist in 2025. And whereas Quantu serves as the visual art teacher at Britton Elementary School, where he has created an engaging art program that students look forward to attending. And whereas Quantu designed a curriculum that develops technical skills and fosters creativity, self-expression, and a connection to culture and history. And whereas Quantu has transformed the program into an award-winning, vibrant space where art is a gateway to personal growth and academic success. And whereas Quantu integrates his professional artistic experiences into the classroom to show students how the skills they develop in art can translate to real world opportunities and careers. And whereas Quantu sees an art as an essential and dynamic component of education intrinsically connected to every subject and every aspect of life. Now therefore be it resolved by the Mayor and Council of the City of Oklahoma City that they do hereby recognize and commend Kwantu Kamen on his selection as May 2026 Teacher of the Month by the Oklahoma City Public Schools Foundation and Rotary Club of Oklahoma City.

All right, well thank you, yeah. Got a good audience this morning. Now, this is a resolution, so let's see if we can get a motion and a second. You're the only vote today. This is it. This is the only vote of the day. We've got a motion and a second. Cast your votes. I wish to vote aye. Passes unanimously. Yeah, this crowd, they just want to applaud everything. It's good. Well, thank you for your service to our young people. Obviously, we've got a great example of that here today. And we would love to hear a few words from you, Mr. Kamen. The floor is yours.

Can I have this real quick? Yeah, sure. It's yours to keep. I didn't know I had to speak, but I told them I'm a talker in class, so this is easy. I would like to thank my wife. I would like to thank Jesus because I have a little testimony because when COVID hit 2020 and everything shut down in OKC, I didn't have a job. I applied to be a preschool teacher by trade. I'm a preschool teacher, graduated Liberty University. When I applied for Brinton Elementary, she saw my portfolio and said, don't teach preschool. Can you be the visual art teacher? Can you build a program? And that was a God moment. Because six years later, I have four degrees now, two masters, a BFA in ceramics. And I'm the kid who was a late bloomer. I'm dyslexic, severely dyslexic, ADHD, never was tested, wonder why I went to nine different colleges to figure out how do I learn. So when you have challenges, it made me a better teacher. When I finally got tested at 48 years old, they wonder, how did you get through school? It was the music, dance, theater. Even how people dress helped me remember what's on the ACT or SAT or what's important to the teacher. They did a little sound with a voice. And you need to have that in your notes. OK, when she said that, That's the important thing I need to write down. So it made me a better teacher. So when I walk into a classroom, anyone can learn because I know different variations how a student should learn and advocate for that. And I just want to thank you guys. A person that did not like school, to win this many awards and have students nationally compete. Fourth graders competing in Detroit, Louisiana, Texas for ceramics and pottery. And I just want to say thank you, all of you, for being here. Thank you. Let's hear it.

Well, now it's a natural break. You're welcome to stay all day. But if you'd like to make your way out, thank you all so much for being here, for our youth council members. Thank you, Debbie. Thank you, Kim and everybody who made the special gift possible today. Thank you. Thanks, Grayson.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Well, we are now going to advance to item four, which are presentations and discussion of the FY27 proposed budget. This is our last such session. It is already scheduled for next Tuesday to hold the final vote. uh and there are no more votes today it's all presentations so i'll turn it over to you mr city manager and you can kind of guide us through although i will say we do have some folks who've signed up to speak on different departments so when that part of each uh when each department's presentation concludes we might go ahead and bring them up at that time but very good otherwise very good yeah as mayor said this is our last budget hearing prior to the public hearing and the adoption of the budget scheduled for

June 2nd. I do appreciate all the work of all the people who've put their work into the budget. The budget office has led the way, but every department is involved in the budget process. And today we're going to have four additional presentations on the budget. Our first up is airports. Jeff Mulder, our airports director, will provide the presentation of the airports budget.

Good morning, council and mayor. So Jeff Molder, director of airports, Scott Keith, Tara Sumlin, two assistant directors, and Melissa Fairbrush, our finance manager, are with us also. So we have some slides to go through. Go ahead, next slide. So our budget, and again, just as a reminder, we have the city portion of our budget, then we have the trust budget. And so the city portion of our budget, we essentially divided into these three areas, director, admin, and operations. That's kind of how we break down our organization. Next slide. This is a department values we put together a couple years ago. It's especially helpful for new employees to the airport. Safe, open, agile, reliable, just helps people understand what our values are and what we have to accomplish every day for the airport and for the community. Next slide. So this is the city portion of our budget, a little over $27 million. Most of that, of course, is going to be wages and benefits. Some of that includes chargebacks, so we do get some services from the city, like IT, that's about a million dollars. Risk chargebacks, about 2.5, that's for insurance coverage. Police is about 4 million. In total, about 8.8 million of that number is chargebacks. Next slide. So this is the summary of the change from last year, and it's an increase of 563,000. You can see the changes in personnel and benefits increased 804,000. We did have a decrease of 251,000, and that is primarily a reduction in insurance, the risk charges that were reduced. Next slide. So this is the total trust budget, about $249 million. And a lot of that, as you can see, is capital. So it's project-related, 64% of the budget, which is unusual for an airport. Usually it's the other way around. Usually the operating is the higher number. But here in Oklahoma City, we have three airports. We have the FAA Aeronautical Center. When you put all those together, there's a lot of projects that... make up that number. The increase from last year, about 40 million, a lot of that of course is expenses related to capital projects. Next slide. This shows you a comparison of fiscal 26 versus fiscal 27. You can see on the revenue side, it's about the same. We do have an increase in carryover, which are the prior year revenues. So revenues from fiscal 26 will carry over into fiscal 27. And then revenue bond proceeds, that $28 million is a portion of a project that will begin this year, which is a parking garage, so we plan to issue bonds for that project. On the expense side, you see it's relatively flat. The reserves, and those are current year revenues that we will have from this fiscal year that we plan to just reserve then for future capital projects. Next slide. This gives you a little bit of detail on the revenue side. Some of the numbers that are up significantly from last year, our concessions number, the two is up about 25%. So that is the food and beverage and retail that we have in the terminal building. And our passenger numbers aren't going up nearly that much, but what we're seeing is just the actual revenues we're seeing from that activity. So passengers are spending more money when they're in the airport, so we're reflecting that in the budget. The other thing that always stands out for this is the other charges there listed. And a lot of that is... money in proceeds from the FAA. So that's the Mike Moroney Aeronautical Center, about $13 million. It's a maintenance fund that they pay into that we then help do projects for them. So that's the most significant part of that project, of that particular line item. And under other also, we have about $5 million in ground lease revenue. So that's what makes up that other line item. Next slide. So on the expense side, other services and fees, that's where most of our service contracts are. So we have about 10 million in service contracts. About 3 million is for our contracted aircraft rescue and firefighting. We have about $3 million for our parking contract who operates our parking system. About 3 million for our janitorial services. Next slide. So capital improvement program, we're going to highlight a couple of the major projects that are part of this budget. As I mentioned, parking garage D is what we're calling it. The total cost is about $90 million. We would expect to expend about $40 million in the next fiscal year, 27. Next slide. This is an architect's illustration of it. It creates about another 2,000 spaces. It actually though sits on existing surface lot which that encompasses about 500 spaces. So we have a gain of about 1500 spaces total. Next slide. Another view of that, of the garage. It'll be on the north side of the last garage that we have at the moment. Next slide. That's just a vestibule area of the elevator complex. Another project that we are kicking off this year that will be important under timing perspective is replacing the terminal building floor The terminal building except for the new part has the the square tiles and so that's about a 15 million dollar project total we expect to spend about 11 million dollars this fiscal year and Next slide kind of gives you an idea of the area. So it includes the concourse area, except for the new space that was added in 21, and then the ticket lobby and baggage claim. So all of the clickety-clack floors would be going away. We're putting in terrazzo for that. And the timing, we get started on that. We expect, well, we'll need to finish that project before summer of 2028, so we expect to finish it first quarter of 28. Of course, we wouldn't want to have that going on during the Olympics. Next slide. So this is a project that we just recently got an FAA grant for. This is to reconstruct the Wiley Post Air Traffic Control Tower. Air Traffic Control Tower itself is old. It's aged out. It's not tall enough to see all of those surfaces on the airport. About a $14 million project will get started this year. We'll spend probably about $3 million of that project. Next slide is an illustration of the project itself, so it's a taller facility than the one that's there, but it'll serve our airport and our community for a long time to come. Next slide. uh... terminal access road rehab about nine million dollars in projects over the next starting this year uh... and the primary one is about six million dollars worth and that is we are taking the signals the signal station at the million air heart and the terminal road and turn into a roundabout so this is the last traffic light that you hit as you're coming to its terminal So we're doing it for primarily capacity reasons that there isn't enough capacity and the turn signals in the lanes there now so this roundabout actually gives us more capacity and turns it in and gets rid of the traffic lights. So that starts this fall and we'll wrap up end of next year is our plan. We'll keep it open. We'll keep traffic flowing through it as we construct it. This is an illustration, as you would see it, as you're coming, driving south towards the terminal. We currently have a statue of Will Rogers in our commercial curb area, and we're going to move that and put that in the roundabout. So we figure that's a good place to put Will as he greets everyone coming to the airport. Next slide. So this gives you a snapshot of the capital portion of our budget, and about $100 million for Will Rogers, $10 million for Wiley Post, a little more than $1 million for Clarence Page, and you can see $40 million for the FAA Center. So a busy year continues, and the FAA continues to be very involved with a lot of projects going on there. This is our source, the trust about 40 million, FA money about 40 million, grants 30 some, state 10, revenue bonds 28 and some smaller funds to fund the rest of that program. Next slide. And we are required to do a five-year capital program by the FAA, and so we always have a rolling five-year capital program. So the one that we currently have in place, approaching $400 million for the next five years, and you can see how that's divided out between the various airports in the FAA Aeronautical Center. And last section, leading for results. So we had some updates there. Passengers, last year was a record year, not by much. We grew a little bit. And this year, we're a little bit ahead, pretty much even with last year. Although last week, I think, was one of the busier weeks I've ever seen at the airport. Typically, we track every day, forecast how many passengers are going to the checkpoint for planning purposes. And any time we have 7,000 to 8,000 a day departing, that's a pretty big day. And last week, we had several 8,000 and 9,000 departing days, so a lot of people traveling. Will that continue? I don't know, but a pretty good indication that we're going to have a strong month of May. This is another metric that we've tracked. I'm sorry, next slide. This is another metric that we've tracked. The way you read this is it essentially says almost 50% of the year we are at 85% capacity. Well, of course, when you take a yearly average, summer means we're full all the time. In the winter, in the fall, we're not. So even with that, we're almost 50% at 85% capacity. When you reach that level in the garage, it becomes harder to use the garage, of course, because then people drive around finding spaces. So this continues to use a metric that we've been used as we've begun the planning for the new garage and hope to begin construction on that here this year. And then another slide is the change in passengers. obviously a dramatic increase right after covid and it's continued it's flattened out some not a huge surprise there but um we expect uh you know we in the last couple years we've had a number of things that have created headwinds for passengers in traffic last year we had a couple government shutdowns that really impacts the local economy quite a bit And now, of course, we're dealing with high fuel prices, higher airfare. So there's always something you think, oh, now we're finally getting past this last impediment. There'll be something around the corner. So but we continue to hold up pretty well. And then I think this is my last slide. Yeah. So this just gives you a snapshot of some of the. service that we have. I'll point out a couple of the dots on the map that are new. One is Cancun, C-U-N. You can see it sitting there in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. That service started in November with American. They ran that through April and then they'll pick it up again in November and run that over the fall and winter season. A couple of new addition frequency, one in Seattle. We have historically had one flight a day. Now we have two flights a day in the summertime to Seattle, so that's a nice increase. And then also to Minneapolis, Delta added a second daily flight there. And then one of the new ones way on the right side, BWI, which is Baltimore, Washington. Southwest Airlines served that before COVID. They're bringing that service back this summer on a limited basis. So those are some of our new air service additions. I think questions is next.

I was looking this weekend and saw Allegiant Airlines has decided to give us a direct flight to Gulf Shores three times a week. Introductory one-way fares at $44. Really encouraging. But can you talk a moment? I know we kept having better and better flights nonstop. And then we kind of ran into the pandemic. And I think we're rebounding from that. And I think this Allegiant Air flight to Gulf Shores is another example of how we are growing these non-flights in and out of Oklahoma City.

Yeah, I think so. Of course, the airline dynamics changes every year. Things are so much different than they were two years ago. But this is an example where Destin has been a destination for a long time. It's done very well. And I think this is a case where the airline said, well, people from Oklahoma City like the Florida Panhandle. Let's try another dot on the map. That's what they've done. And it's booked very well so far. They look at patterns and figure out maybe what's working. Let's try some more things. The same with Alaska going twice a day to Seattle. That's always been a strong flight. Let's try some more frequency there. But it's hard to predict what airlines are going to do. They have so many outside factors that impact them now and with the high fuel prices. Everything's holding pretty well for now as far as the capacity and schedule. but that may change again when they split their fall schedule and so i don't know that we just uh... we take those wins and uh... and keep looking for more thank you very much up just as a king king thing going i mean as follows we wanted to be or Well, so it ran from November through April, so it's done for now. And that particular flight was part of a program that was set up by the state a couple years ago where they provided some, it's called a minimum revenue guarantee funds. It's kind of an insurance policy. And that particular fund was made available to American for this flight as an introductory effort. And the idea, if they lost money on the flight, they could then dip into the fund to replenish themselves. And the experience from the four or five months of flights is they really didn't have any losses at all, so they mostly made money on it, which is good when you're starting with a brand new flight. and it's new to the community. So overall I think they're pretty happy with it, even just based on the financial formula. The outbound load factor from Oklahoma City to Cancun was pretty good. The return was not as strong. You have to learn the market. I don't know exactly if it was a timing issue for that. The return flight wasn't as full, but overall I think they're happy. Financially it worked. They're bringing it back this fall, so that's a good indication.

Jeff, what's the timeline on the parking garage? When's it going to be complete?

So, yeah, we'll start in this fall, and our goal is to have it done in 28. Now, will it be done before the Olympics in 28? That's our goal. If it's not, it's not as impactful as the trossel floor. Obviously, we don't want to be ripping up our floor during the Olympics. Because the way we're seeing the Olympic event, for the most part, it's an inbound event. And so if our parking garage hasn't been completed yet, we don't see a huge impact because those people aren't using the parking garage. They're flying in, visiting, using a rental car or taking an Uber. But that's our timing is that would be the get it done before the Olympics. But we've also convinced ourselves that if it's not done by July 1st, it will still be OK. But that's that's our plan.

You mentioned those two options of arrival at the airport, Uber and driving. Having just returned from Salt Lake City with a group of electeds to tour Salt Lake's transit system, I'm guessing slash hoping you all at the airport are in conversation with One Transit in terms of the plans for light rail to the airport and literally while when we arrived in salt lake city you know the light rolls right at the airport took us almost exactly to our hotel downtown and it was just like oh my what a different experience um and i believe the day pass for that was five dollars uh versus taking an uber What conversations are you all having about, should voters approve One Transit when that election happens? What conversations are we having about infrastructure and where, what the actual plan lines and these sorts of things?

So we did a landside master plan two years ago that laid out all the projects we need over the next 20 to 30 years. And at this point, we've just reserved a corridor or a space for a connection via rail. That's as far as we've gotten. We just don't have a whole lot more to go on because the timing is a question. We don't quite know timing when that would actually happen. So at this point, from a planning perspective, we just reserve space, and that's really as far as we've gotten as far as a connection via rail.

Great. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff. Really appreciate your leadership and the leadership of your team and the work that you guys are always doing to bring flights in and make it a great experience for people when they come to the airport. So thank you.

Okay. Sure.

Next up we have our Information Technology Director, Dusty Borchardt, to present the IT budget.

Good morning. Make sure you guys can hear me okay. Apologize, I thought airports was gonna be first, and after that was utilities, but good morning, Mayor Holt, city manager, city council members. I had to go back and look. My name is Dusty Berger, by the way, Information Technology Director. Had to go back and look. It's been since 2019 since we've done a budget presentation for you, so thank you for the opportunity to present to you our proposed FY27 budget and highlight some of the services that our department provides. For reference, the IT budget begins on page 79 of your budget book. There you go. OK, next slide, please. Okay, the IT department's mission and vision you'll see align with the city's core values by supporting secure, reliable, and innovative technology services that empower city departments to better serve the community. So it's through the collaboration, customer focus, support, accountability, and continuous improvement, the IT department helps advance the principles of one city, one team, service first, respect always, own the outcome, and keep getting better in really everything that we do. Next, I'll show you our proposed department organization. So you can see here the IT department consists of five lines of business with 130 authorized positions, resulting in no net position change from FY26. But I would like to highlight a few of the key organizational changes that we made for FY27. So our customer support line of business was actually just one program in that line of business by the same name, customer support. We eliminated that line of business and we moved that program over into our technology systems line of business. We had a line of business called Technology Enhancements that consisted of our data management program, project management program, and our software development program. We eliminated that line of business altogether, but all three of those programs remain, and they were just shifted over into other lines of business. So two of them went to technology systems, and we moved our project management office over into the administration line of business. One of our programs, the Public Safety Application Support Program, was eliminated, but the positions within that program were redistributed to other programs based on functional alignment. So we had some folks go over to our data management program and some go over to our departmental systems program. And we created a new technology security line of business. We already had security programs in place, but they were under infrastructure. We wanted to create a new line of business for those programs. So that's our security, governance, risk, and compliance, as well as our security operations programs. And so both of those programs are now under that line of business. So those changes really brought the lines of business and the program reporting structure into better alignment with our service delivery and also allowed us to provide focused oversight over the technology public safety systems as well as the technology security lines of business.

Next slide, please.

This is the proposed FY27 budget. You'll see that we have a little over $41 million in our total operating budget. We add to that about $19.5 million in capital budget for a total budget for the fiscal year 27 of $60.8 or $9 million. It represents about a 15.4% budget increase. I know that capital budget looks a little bit large there. What that really is is we have a lot of operational things that will get fed over or carried over into our capital. It is for replacing infrastructure, radios, end user devices, servers. It's basically infrastructure equipment. Then we've got about another $2.3 million built in there for some program improvement requests that we are funding out of the fund balance. Out of that, I'll cover some major budget changes. On that first line, personnel costs, those are pretty straightforward. We have about $515,000 increase in personnel-related costs. The next line, that $1.7 million, that takes basically, we just moved the budget. We moved the budget for our critical 911 systems from the IT budget to the emergency 911 fund to better align the budget with those services and where they're provided. The next line, this is increases to our annual contracts to the tune of about $1.2 million. That also includes some new systems, so I'll talk just briefly kind of where some of those increases are coming. Our Oracle, HCM, and ERP, our license costs are increasing there. We have a new system that's gonna manage our Pension Pro, or excuse me, it's called Pension Pro Plus, but it's gonna manage the ERS pension system. We've not implemented that yet. We've gone through RFP and selection for that. We have a new records management system on behalf of the city clerk's office. We've gone through RFP and selection for that system as well. Our Esri GIS platform, we've seen some software increases there for the licensing. We've also seen some increase in our permitting and licensing platform. And then we have an increase in overall just computing device replacement. So that kind of rounds out those increases there. That next line at $659,000 just adds funding to the capital improvement projects. These are some of those PIRs that I mentioned just for various enhancements of city systems. And then the last line at $382,000, it says data management services, but that's really adding some funds to our enterprise asset management platform. So the IT department operates as an internal services department that provides technology services and support to city departments across the organization. So 100% of the IT operating expenses are recovered through a service allocation model that distributes the cost to the departments receiving those IT services. So this slide, if you look at this, it looks a little bit different than what you're seeing in your budget book in terms of the operational budget breakdown by those lines of business. This slide presents that operating budget to illustrate how IT resources are aligned to the delivery of those technology services across the organization. So, for example, if you look at technology administration at $319,000, that's not the total expenses for that line of business. It's a little over $6 million. But most of what the technology administration line of business does will get distributed into services that are actually provided through those other lines of business, whether it be infrastructure, technology systems, or security. Okay, so I'll spend some time just highlighting each of the lines of business for you. I'm not going to read to you the purpose and programs or the number of positions. I just want to highlight some of the things that we're doing within each of those programs. But first, I would like to acknowledge the leadership for each of these programs as well. In our technology administration, Frank Fershaw is our assistant IT director. He's been an incredible partner and advocate for the things that I'm doing within the department. Just a great mentor for me as well. Erica Vander Seipen is our business manager. She did a lot of work on this FY27 budget for you guys and is here helping me present it today. And also would like to thank our ACM, Jason Fairbrush, who has been extremely, extremely supportive in all the things that we're doing in IT. So one of the things that we did this year, we established an IT governance policy to ensure that technology decisions align with the city's mission, goals, and strategic priorities. It also optimizes value and manages the risk from those technology investments, makes sure that we're complying with applicable laws, regulations, our own technology standards, and it protects city systems data and infrastructure. We also established an AI policy. This is just to set clear standards for the responsible, ethical, and secure use of AI technologies. And the policy ensures that AI technologies are used in a way that protects sensitive data, maintains public trust, complies with applicable laws and policies, and supports, again, the city's mission. One of the things that we do is twice a year the IT department meets with each department. We go through and review approved and in progress projects. We look at, you know, we directly seek feedback in those meetings. This is with other department directors and business leaders within those departments. about the service delivery that we provide. And then we're also ensuring alignment of the technology services that we're providing with their business needs. So it's an opportunity at least twice a year for us to sit down with those directors, look at the work that we're doing, look at the service that we're providing, look at their goals and figure out if we're in alignment, if we're providing the technology that's meeting the needs for the services that they're providing to the community. I mentioned this before, the IT project management team within our technology administration completed three RFP projects, basically just helping develop the RFP, going out and selecting a vendor for three new systems. That would be our enterprise content management, our ERS pension system replacing our legacy PeopleSoft pension that's been on premise for over 20 years, and a new budget system. Under our technology infrastructure line of business, I'd like to acknowledge James Rutger, who is our new CTO. He's been here since February of this year, so he's just been on the job for a couple months, but he's already having a tremendous impact, so I appreciate his leadership. I'll highlight a few things within this line of business. So our technology infrastructure supports more than 12,000 network connections and more than 5,000 endpoint devices. We have over 1,000 servers, 723 of which are virtual servers that are on physical host clusters storing over 2,000 terabytes of data. They provide infrastructure and network communication support for special projects such as the new Continental Coliseum, the multi-purpose stadium and upcoming LA 28 Olympic events. As well as other operational enhancements that we work with the departments to do such as traffic signal prioritization and future traffic system enhancements. One of the projects that we're working on currently is a complete shift in how we do telephony services for the city. So we're migrating from our legacy Cisco VOIP phones to Microsoft Teams phone. So this is something that we already have and we're already licensed for. It's just lowering our cost, our overall cost for telephony services across the city. And that project continues. One of the things that technology infrastructure is all about is security. And we obviously have a complete line of business for technology security, but security is built into really everything that we do. So we're continuously working to improve security. Within this line of business, we implemented security baselines for all of our managed devices. We continue to implement port security to ensure unauthorized devices cannot connect to the city's network. And we're implementing passwordless authentication, providing enhanced security against credential-based cyber attacks. In addition to that, we've also updated and improved our backup and recovery system for all of our on-premise servers. Under the technology public safety systems, so I'd like to acknowledge John Love. John Love is our communications technology manager over this line of business. One of the primary things that this line of business does is support our regional P25 radio system. So it consists of 13 tower sites providing 98% indoor coverage across Oklahoma City. There's over 7,100 radios on that system across 46 different agencies and city departments. Most of those are cities, other cities, higher education institutions and public school districts. So 33 of those 46 agencies are external agencies. We're currently in talks with other cities and school systems that are considering joining that system, including one agreement that might actually extend our range and capability a little bit further north of the city. In addition to supporting the radio system, our public safety technology support team completed technology equipment installs in over 340 vehicles. So when you guys see those public safety vehicles driving down the street, the light bars, the equipment inside there, all the technology, the radio systems, the computers, everything is outfitted at our IT radio shop for those vehicles. They do that in addition to the normal upgrades, retrofits, and repairs that they do to the existing equipment out in those vehicles. Under John Love's leadership this year, we completed a major upgrade and rebuild of the 911 computer-aided dispatch system, and we're in the process of adding three external agencies to that system. We're also developing an implementation plan for our next generation 911. This is a modern IP-based emergency communication system that replaces legacy analog 911 to support faster, more accurate responses using voice, text, data, and video. We also provide interoperability and technology support for emergency incidents, regional response activities or operations, and planned events such as the NBA playoffs. You might remember this huge Thunder Championship parade that we did last year. Hopefully we get another one. And the Memorial Marathon. So these are just events that go on that we provide interoperability for. This includes radio channel usage, coordination between local, state, and federal agencies, situational awareness applications that we have for personnel to be able to communicate and share information, as well as providing portable Wi-Fi connectivity and satellite Internet. Lastly we do maintain the city's outdoor warning system and activation system so that consists of 182 outdoor warning sirens divided into 36 sectors for focused activations I've been told this is the largest outdoor warning system municipal outdoor warning system I think there are larger ones, but they're at nuclear plants city of Dallas I think has 179 but over obviously a smaller geographic area and The technology security line of business. I would like to acknowledge Ralph Gibson. He is our chief information security officer over this line of business. I won't go into a ton of detail here. I'm going to be a little bit vague and dodgy about our security stuff, but hopefully you'll give me some grace there. We do have a security review committee. We meet monthly and review our security risk register as well as the progress towards our security initiatives. Again, always trying to make our city more secure and make sure our systems are secure. Our city auditor's office is also part of that committee, so they participate monthly with those discussions. Our security programs work with city departments and external partners to conduct tabletop exercises, so we've done tabletop exercises with utilities over their SCADA environment, as well as working with the airports department and TSA. Our security GRC, Governance Risk and Compliance, conducts annual cybersecurity awareness training, and we do testing campaigns, basically phishing campaigns. So we'll test all of the city employees, anyone that fails those tests, they get the joy of doing remedial training. But again, we know this is one of our weakest areas, our greatest assets are our people, but also it's the easiest way for cybersecurity criminals to attack us. So annually we do those cybersecurity tests and training. And our security operations program leverages our security information and event management system. You might hear that called a SIM in the IT world. That basically just takes all the logs from all of our servers, from our network equipment, and we can monitor those events for any abnormal activity across our network. Okay, under technology systems, I'd like to acknowledge Steven Camp who is our CTO, our Chief Technology Officer over this line of business. Some of the highlights here, we've seen the technology systems line of business supports approximately 60 applications that enable critical city operations and services across these city departments. So these systems range from enterprise platforms, such as our human capital management, HCM, our enterprise resource planning and time and labor systems, to operational applications supporting enterprise asset management, permitting and licensing, code enforcement, fuel and fleet management, animal welfare, municipal court operations, and other essential city services. The line of business continues to modernize the city's application environment through migration of legacy on-premise systems to software-as-a-service platforms, or SaaS, many of which are now being required by the vendors that we use for those software systems. So a lot of the stuff that we've had on-prem for 10, 15, 20 years, those vendors are now saying, End of life, right? Like you've got to move to our cloud environment. Most of those are being hosted in major data centers like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. Some of the major modernization initiatives include migrating our SharePoint on-prem sites to SharePoint online. We also transitioned our on-premise PeopleSoft environment for our HCM and ERP to Oracle Fusion Cloud a couple years ago. We continue to work and partner with our finance team on that migration. And then we have an ongoing migration of our city's permitting and licensing platform. So that should be complete. Hopefully we'll be migrating within the month. That will take basically our entire environment where we do permitting and licensing and it's all hosted on-prem and move that up to the cloud. Again, that is another direction that was forced by that vendor. That's just the way IT is going. Everyone is moving towards software as a service. And what we see with that is increasing costs as well. So in addition to supporting the vendor provided platforms, our software development team develops custom applications and integrations that improve operational efficiency and service delivery. Some examples include our police activity tracker application that's used by officers and supervisors for digital reporting and warrant search capabilities, as well as the city's e-commerce platform. So that supports online payments for permitting and licensing for municipal court, as well as our hotel motel tax payments. Our GIS system, our GIS program continues to support the enterprise GIS platform that's used by a lot of the departments throughout the city. And you guys might remember last week we had an open data policy that was approved. Thank you guys for approving that in partnership with our innovation office. But we recently deployed a modern open data portal in coordination with that policy that just improves transparency and public access to that city data as well as those mapping resources. That's all I've got for you guys today. I do again appreciate the time to present. I'm happy to take any questions you guys have.

Thanks, Dusty. I really appreciate the work that he does and his leadership and the leadership of his team. There's many things that we do that are behind the scenes, and people don't recognize it unless something goes wrong. IT is especially that way, that it's one of those areas that touches, as he talked about, it touches every single department of the city, and we don't function without that. And so the work that they do to keep things up and running all the time, I really do appreciate that effort.

Couldn't do it without the team. Thank you for recognizing that. Yep, thank you. All right, thank you, guys. Go Thunder. So next up is...

Hold on, we have one person who signed up to speak specifically on information technology. Tavia Pennington?

Good morning, everybody. My name is Tavia Pennington. I live in Ward 3. I do have just a few questions about when it comes to the information technology. I know that with future of just technology in general, how does that look with AI? And then also, what does that look like when it comes to funding the data centers? Where are these data centers located? And also, I also wanted to ask about the different things when it comes to like the traffic enhancements in like insecurity. So like, does that also include the future of like, is flock also a part of that conversation? Is that also in like, where are these? What? Who all will have? who i will have access to like this information i know like for fiscal year 2027 just like the underlying things that we don't know about that i think the public should know about um so i will just conclude my time with that okay thank you and and these are just these are opportunities to just to speak but as far as getting answers to those questions maybe staff can meet you out in the lobby or something most definitely thank you Okay, next up.

All right, so next up is Mankinta Holloway, our courts administrator. And Mankinta will present on the municipal courts budget. Appreciate his work with his team and look forward to hearing his presentation on the court's budget.

While Michelle Walter is getting prepared, I want to say good morning. Thank you, Mayor, Council, City Manager, all my colleagues who are here. I want to recognize the Millicent Court family who came to support. This is a team effort, and so we're excited to present our FY25 budget. And while she's getting there, we know today is a special day. This is Thunder Up Tuesday. And I won't get into the other specifics of OU versus Alabama. Leave that for another day. Again, this is, my name is Ben Quintala, the pleasure of serving as the Court Director for Municipal Court. Excited to be with you. Hopefully this is my first, not my last presentation, this is my first one. I've only been with the city a little bit over a year, so I'm excited to be here. And you can find our budget on page 105 in your budget book. Next slide. And so just like last year, the city launched a new initiative when you could talk about one city, one team. At the same time, the court was evaluating how we approach and how we engage those we serve. And so we created collaboratively with all the team members involved what we call our new mission, our new vision. And our mission is to deliver fair and impartial justice with compassion and professionalism, ensuring every individual is heard, respected, and provided with meaningful access to justice. Because we know courts can be a place where people have a little bit of anxiety. It's one of those places people don't want to have to come to, but oftentimes they find themselves in situations that put them in front of us. So we want to make sure that we do that. And so that's our new philosophy and our motto is we're rooted in justice, committed to service. Next slide. And so we are a small department, but we feel we're very impactful and powerful. Right now we're asking our budget to be proposed with 58 positions, and it's broken out into several sections. And when you look at judicial services, that is our judges who are appointed by counsel. We currently have four full-time judges. We're full-time now, gratefully. to counsel for that and that was a Yoma's job so we're really grateful for that broken down into our leadership structure me being the director and our assistant directors here just in the Langdale who's in the back with us she has been phenomenal in helping me to onboard into this space along with our assistant city manager LaShawn Thompson we break that down into our divisions administration division led by Carla Chapman she is phenomenal our community outreach and compliance and enforcement division led by Oskara Lowell. Our court services division right now, we're looking for a division head. We just posted the position. It went live on the 23rd. We're excited about the opportunity, but currently we have two unit operational leaders who are leading the charge in that space until we get a leader replacement, and that is Charnel Barnett and Felicia Randall. And then our financial services division, we have a new leader in that space, and that's Caleb Gattell. And our probation services division is led by Tonya Kubik-Womack. Next slide. But I also wanna pause and say thank you to our financial partners. They have been phenomenal in helping me to understand the processes and all the things, because this is a little bit different than Alabama, but it's been a phenomenal journey, and so we've been grateful for that. And so to that end, we're gonna, our proposed budget for FY27 is $9,690,738, which, when you turn to the next slide, We do, we are a court that collects fine, but that's not our focus because we know that certain times people have hardships and there are opportunities that we need to include in how we administer justice. And so right now, currently in FY 26, we have collected a little over $7 million. And by the end of fiscal year 26, we look to have collected in court costs and fines right at $10 million in collection. Next slide. Today and every time we're proposing a budget, as always, times we're in, seasons where we're in hardships, where we have to cut certain things, gratefully this year, not like last year, we didn't have to shave any fat on positions, and we're really excited about that, but we did have to reduce some things that function when it comes to how we send out postage, travel and training, reduced supplies, unutilized accounts, but what this equates to is us reevaluating how we send out correspondence, because we know postage went up to 78 cents a stamp, and that's really, really huge when we send out anywhere between 1500 correspondence a week, and a lot of that mail gets returned because of invalid information, and so what we're doing is looking at how we send that information out from a digital perspective and ensuring that we're capturing the proper information as people come into the building to ensure that we have their accurate information to make sure they get the information they need to show up for court. Next slide. One city, one team is a mantra. And so we want to let you know that we are a part of that. And these are our partners. And when you look at these departments in the city, we provide the support. So as police write tickets and citations and all these various locations, all that paperwork tends to come to municipal court. And we are the processing agency for the city that handles all of that. So as police, fire, all these other departments grow, we want to make sure that we have the things that we need to support the back end of the work that they do. Next slide. And so when you look at a summary of what we do every year, FR25, you look at cases filed, we've already exceeded that in FR26. And that process is a conjunction work with our judges and the municipal council's office as well. Looking at disposed cases and cases that we've handled, we're all tasked to exceed that number because we still have two months left in this fiscal year of reporting. Indice hearings and findings, we do have people come into our space who can't pay, who can't afford. what is imposed on them, but accountability still is a part of the process for justice. Citations process, you look at those numbers, but also the bottom number, we look at suspended cases when you talk about evaluating people's hardship. And last year we've suspended $1.4 million, and this year so far we're at $1.1 million. Next slide. Like I said earlier, courts is a place that people don't want to show up to, and this is a scale that shows something that we implemented back in 2017 to evaluate how people see us. And if you look at the number of satisfaction in FY24, we were at 4.3 in some areas, but we've never dropped below four in how people see us as a court out of five. But you look at now in FY26 so far, We've exceeded FR25 and so we continue to get better in how we engage and serve people. Next slide. And overall we talk about 87% of people who respond to these surveys, regarding courtesy and respect. It's always one of those things where you're always trying to figure out, are we doing a good job? And the only way you know that is to ask people. And so when we look at this right now in FY26 so far, we're at 97% of people feeling like when they show up in court, they feel like they were treated with courtesy and respect. Next slide. Criminal justice reform, I know everybody watches the news and sees all the things. I just so happen to come back from a trip from Raleigh, and unfortunately, when I was there, there was a shooting at the courthouse that day when I arrived to Raleigh. And so when we think about that, we always understand that people who come to court don't always feel welcome. They come with a whole lot of things, and so we're excited that PD provides people on site. And we also know that people can't always make it to court, and so we get to make sure that we create spaces for them to connect as well. And when you look at this, we talk about barriers to justice. And when you look at the walls, we want to make sure that there are keys that unlock that justice. And so when we think about that, we have case managers that connect to community resources. We also are looking at people who have medical issues who can't make it and giving them opportunity to present that information so we can send that to the judges so they can evaluate whether or not to give somebody another court date as well. Next slide. Performing accomplishments, we look at this as our team participating in an event that was hosted by HR. We're excited to always go into community and create those soft spaces for people to see us in a different light because when they show up in court, it's always about something. I always say it's all about having nothing conversations that build relationships. And so this is an opportunity to highlight some of the things that we do. We talk about streamlining jail arraignment process, looking at evaluating our partnership with Oklahoma County Jail and Cleveland County Jail in partnership with PD, ensuring that the cases that are affected by Oklahoma City, we're evaluating who's in jail and making sure that people who are supposed to be there stay there and the people who don't are released in a timely manner. And our team does a phenomenal job with that. Next slide. All defendants that cannot pay, we're always looking at ways to evaluate their financial situations. And so we have these weekly rule eight hearings. And so this is a way for us to look at those individuals to see whether or not there are circumstances or hardships that we need to consider. And the judges do a phenomenal job in ensuring that that happens. And we're really, really excited about that. Next slide. Our court services division, which I said earlier, right now we're looking for a leader. Every month we talk about the volume of calls that come through courts. Right now, on a monthly basis, we see about 6,000 calls just in this area alone. We look at about 70,000 calls per year just in this area alone. And so the next number that you look at, and we talk about expungements because people do get in situations that they happened in a while back, and so now they're in another space where they've improved their life. and they're trying to move forward. And these expungements are an opportunity for us to do that. So in FY24, we saw 141 people get expungements through courts. We saw in FY25, 188. Right now we're on pace to surpass that. But we want people to understand that we don't start the process. We are the back end to that to ensure that that's not in the system, but that starts with another area. And so we just get that from municipal councils who say that this person now qualifies to have their record expunged. And we also hold about 52 court sessions weekly. And our specialty dockets, which we are really proud of because we go into community to do community court because we believe in taking down barriers to justice. And so we partner with local nonprofits to ensure that we can give them access without feeling like they're intrusive. Next slide. Our driver improvement school, this is another wing to the improvement of how we allow people to access justice, because we know that there are times where people get citations that automatically allow them to actually use the defensive driving school. And so we created a semi-automated sign-up process, and we've seen 1,300 people sign up in FY26 so far, and we still know that there are certain people who don't have technology, aren't comfortable with that space, but we also still provide a paper process for them to come into the building to take care of that as well. And with that, we know driving improvement is an opportunity for them to learn, for them to grow and understand and roll awareness because driving is a whole thing. And it seems like the older I get, the more complicated driving becomes. But it also helps people keep points off their records, also allows those of us who do have younger kids who are driving help our insurance at a reasonable rate. So we appreciate that. So this is what our driving improvement program does. Next slide. And our community outreach and compliance enforcement team was something that was birthed when we talk about this reform. It's kind of like this soft place for people who are concerned about whether or not they'll be arrested if they show up to court, whether or not they can connect to services, And so this team creates opportunity to connect to our individuals who don't speak English fluently. And so we do translation services in that space. We connect to other community resources in the space. We also build that community. And so community court is kind of ran by this division in the court. And so it's always a soft place for that to happen. And this is another place we get a whole lot of calls because of the nature of the service that they provide. We're looking at about 1,600 calls per month on average. And so they deal with the indice plan reviewing their financial stability to see what we need to share with the judges for them to review their cases to ensure that we're giving them the best options to handle their case. Because most people just want to come and resolve their cases without hindrance. And so we want to make sure that we do that. And this division does a great job with that. Next slide. Our financial services team does a phenomenal job in collection. Like I said earlier, we're a place that collects money, but we're not a revenue generating department in the city because we don't want that to be the mantra that that's what we're trying to do and which is not. And so every year we collect in total revenue about $12 million that goes through the court. We look at our data collection and you talk about the receipts and the amount of payments that we have. But we do do payment extensions, because there are times, like anything else, you show up and somebody tells you, you gotta pay $100, and that doesn't seem like a lot, but for some people, that's a huge amount of money. And so we wanna make sure that we create spaces for them to take care and resolve their cases. Next slide. This is a huge program in reform and we wanna really give a shout out to Councilman Stonecipher as being like the champion in this space and the Judiciary Committee and the full council. Back in 2019, Clear Your Warrant was a part of an initiative called Penalty Reduction Program and it's been really, really great. And so it started with a six month program Council reviewed it, went from six months to a year. Last year, we're excited that we went from one year to two years. And so all the way through the end of 27, we'll be doing this reduction, and we believe that you'll give us an opportunity to do it again. And so with that being said, to the right is a new banner. Get a fresh start. Because everybody needs a first start people make mistakes We all have done that and we always need somebody to consider who we are and what we've done Yes, but also see what we could be and who we're trying to become and so we really are excited about this program And so over the last couple years we talked about we've had eleven thousand three hundred seventy one cases closed equal in about $1.8 million in warrants cleared. We've dismissed about 35 to 4,000 FTAs because that's one of the biggest things that we have. Problem is just getting people to understand if you just show up, we can work with you. And so that's been the campaign that we've had across the time that I've been at the court. Next slide. Every year, the legislation meets and they decide there are things that they want to shift and change and that impacts courts. Back in 2023, House Bill 2259 was created and it changed some of the things that we did. But thankfully, when we started looking at when this bill came into place, we were already doing 90% of the things. So when you look at the numbers, we're already looking at how we engage people. And that goes to the testament of our previous court co-administrator, LaShawn Thompson. She did a phenomenal job. I'm just carrying the torch that she had already started. And so with that being said, we look at how we administer justice. So in 2024, we launched some of the things when we talk about the community outreach division, that was a part of this initiative to include how we engage and how we supported our patrons who came in for court. Next slide. And one of our greatest division that does a lot of touches throughout the year is our probation services division. And so every year when you look at the numbers, people who get placed on probation, we have about an 80% success rate with adults per quarter, peaking at about 95%. And we also deal with juveniles. Those who go through and get this service, there's about a 90% success rate per quarter, getting up to upwards of 99%. And so with this touch, we're always making sure that we're navigating people through the process because once your case is resolved and you may have to go on probation or supervision, somebody needs to navigate you through the process of things that you have to do to stay in compliance with what the judge has ordered. And so this is a team that does that. And so in FY26 to date, the number of cases that we've been seeing on probation for adults is 861 and for juveniles we've seen about 265 people and we also offer community work for adults at a rate of $15 per hour and we offer community service for our juveniles and want those things help them connect to community because sometimes you don't understand the impact of the things that you've done on community and this is a way for them to reconnect and see how they can improve how we move forward. Next slide. This is my favorite slide. I am no means a technologist. The team that just went before us does a great job with that. Dusty is phenomenal, and they're great partners. But this is the way we can reimagine courts and how we allow people to access justice. We can look at options when we talk about virtual court, where people can call in, get connected to a judge, and not have to come to the building for certain cases. Not all, because there are certain cases that require you to physically come into the building. But there are also cases that aren't as significant that will allow you to do this as an option. And working with our judges in this space is one thing that we're working on now. Another thing is how we remind people of when they missed their court date. Text message notifications is one of the things that we're trying to really launch. We do send receipts for payments, but trying to make sure that we let people know when your court date is coming up, because there's nothing like forgetting that you have a doctor's appointment and getting that reminder, or you had a bill that's due and you getting that reminder. And we're on the, we're in the coast of a culture that's on reminders and why not courts be a part of that space as well. And so we really want to do that. to help support our people. And then virtual reporting when people can't come because you don't have to come off your job, you can call into your probation officer or case manager to meet with them virtually without having to leave work. And it also allows us to peek into your life to see things that we may be able to help you get to a better place in. Also, digital check-in when people come in currently. They have to go up to a counter and check in. We want to create a space where they can come in and go to a kiosk and check in, and it notifies the court that you're present. It doesn't close your case out, but it just lets you know you're in the building, and then we can prepare to serve you that way. And also, docket boards, when we come in, just like the airport, you can see where you've got to be and what location in the building you're supposed to be reporting to. and our additional customer service survey is we want to make sure, we want to cut into the debt because right now we use these little cards, creating QR codes and then putting it on our landing page that people can actually get online and access ways because we know anonymous, Tips is always what people want to do Nobody wants to be known for being the person who tells you that you're doing a bad job But they do want to often tell you that you need to improve and the motto of the city is to keep getting better and we want to always make sure that we're doing that and so this one city one team rally is really really our focus and the team that works with me do a phenomenal job with that but that being said that is the end of our presentation we'll entertain any questions at this time

Well, thanks for the presentation. Can you go back to the slide that was the survey results in bulk, please? It was one with like a series of questions.

Number nine.

Where everything was mostly over a four, or everything was over a four. That's the one. Could you, where was the one? Yes, the one that kind of stands out to me just as a question. is the one, as I leave the court, I understand what happened in my case, and seeing a pretty substantial leap heading into the partial fiscal year of 26. But what would you say was going on in the previous year? Because if a judge is saying, here's what's going to happen next, but then I don't understand what was happening Kind of walk me through that. I'm just trying to understand that a little bit better. Any guesses?

It'll definitely be a guess. Sometimes language is key because there are legal terminology that we have to use that describes the events and so doing a better job of breaking that down. asking people, do they understand before they leave? Just simple things like that. And then too, a lot of them are going from the courtroom to other parts in the court. And the team has done a better job of asking them that they understand their experience in court and walking back through what happened to ensure that they understood before they leave. And so I think that's what we've been doing lately to improve that space.

I think the other thing that may have played into that was we had some key people retire, get assigned to different departments, and take on other jobs. And so we were in the process of bringing new people on board during that year.

Thank you. Thank you, Mankinta. I really appreciate, again, the effort that you all make. You emphasized it really well in your presentation. Just to make everyone's experience positive when they come to court, you may not get the result that you want all the time, but you need to treat it with respect and to help people resolve their issues. So I really appreciate that focus. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you for the opportunity.

Can I ask one more question before we go? Sure. And Minkint, a great presentation. Love everything about, especially about access, because I think the more we can use technology to make it easier for people to pay their fines, to get before a judge, I love the vision that you laid out. Would you mind sharing, I don't know if municipal courts does youth programming, so obviously we're all committed, and I know community violence intervention work is very important to members of this council. Could you talk a little bit about any work that's happening within the courts around that, or is that, police is handling that? Just, yeah.

Great question. I think we've talked on the side about some of those opportunities. We do partner with PD and the JIT program that they currently offer. We are evaluating other opportunities that we have to serve because we know that there has been some reduction in dollars that supported some of these community programs. And so we're reevaluating what's available. But right now, we're still evaluating that after year one. Yes, sir. We'll definitely stay in touch with you with that.

McKinton, I just want to say thank you for your presentation. It's been an honor getting to meet you and work alongside you for a little over a year now. I know we're not perfect.

Yes, sir.

But the leaps and bounds that we have made in just the short period of time that I've even been on the committees are outstanding. The fact that we're asking people, we're listening to people, and we're making those changes and implementing things I think shows a great part of your leadership as well as the staff that you guys have. I know we're constantly moving forward and working towards that, and I am just so proud of you guys and of our courts. I don't know what else to say, but thank you. I mean, just great job.

Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Minkint. I appreciate it. Thank you. Next up is our utility. Oh, sorry.

Ryan Mewks has asked to speak on municipal courts.

How y'all doing today, council? My name is Ryan Mewkes, and so a lot of these things that he was talking about in the municipal courts, I've had to navigate and been through myself. And as I look at the budget and I see where the city is growing and what we're doing today, it just brings me to one point, and that point would be balance. I see where we're making leeway and trying to add more balance throughout the city, but I will guarantee council if we can just take a deep dive more into having balance into the community, community leaders and advocates on the ground, the boots on the ground doing the work every day, I can guarantee you that the city will start to brighten up and make, faster leaps and bounds than the way that we're already heading. Because when I look at the balance I see, at the budget I don't see a lot of balance, that money is being distributed to the people in the community. And I know if we could get some of that, those funds distributed to the people in the community, there will be a natural path for growth where it'll make all our jobs easier. It'll make Oklahoma an actual great state. But as y'all doing this work, I just want to ask y'all to start believing more and leaning more on the people in the community actually doing the work. Because I know y'all have your hands full, and I know y'all want to see this place be a better place. And I just ask that we try to find balance in every area of the city. So thank you for your time, and have a great day.

All right, next up is Chris Browning, our utilities director, to give his presentation on the utilities budget. Today we had airports and then we have utilities as well. Two of the departments we have that both have city side but as well have a trust side. Chris will talk about that in his presentation, the difference between the two or how they combine together. But I just wanted to point that out between those two budgets. Thanks, Chris.

Good morning. Chris Browning, Utilities Director. With me this morning, we have Lindsey Nunn. She is our Senior Financial Manager, and she did the heavy lifting on this budget this year. So you're going to see it's a pretty large budget, a lot of work. Her and her team did a great job. Also, we have Josh Morgan, Assistant Director, and Vanessa Aguilar is the Deputy Director over our Financial Services Division. So I'll be presenting the fiscal year 2027 budget for the Utilities Department, and the city portion of the budget can be found in the budget book published on OKC.gov. The utilities budget starts on page C169. So the picture that you're looking at here, most of you all probably haven't seen. This is Lake Etoka. This is where two-thirds of our water supply comes from out of southeast Oklahoma. And if you'll look in the picture, in the middle is the pumping station. So that station currently pumps about 180 million gallons a day that we use to supplement with the North Canadian River and our Hefter water treatment plant to provide water to all of central Oklahoma. We serve not just the city, but another 700,000 people here in central Oklahoma. This facility will expand eventually. We're building a new pump station down on Lake Atoka, and that will bring all of our water permitted in southeast Oklahoma to Oklahoma City, and it will provide ultimately about 80% of the water that we use here in the MSA. So I just thought you might want to take a look at one of your assets that you don't get to see very often. So we provide three life essential services to the entire MSA. We provide water, wastewater, and trash collection services. And without those three, it would be very difficult for cities to exist. So it is a very important role that the team provides to every single person in Oklahoma City every single day. And so we provide, we safeguard public health and the environment, support public safety. A lot of people don't think about the fire protection that we provide out through the city. And then we enable economic prosperity throughout the region. So to align with council priorities, the utility department developed core business initiatives. These guide our strategic planning and budget planning processes in which all budget initiatives connect to at least one of these core business initiatives. So we provide safety not only for the public, but our employees as well. We provide quality customer service and meet expectations for the effective service delivery. We continue to secure additional water supply and reliably deliver the water throughout central Oklahoma City. We continue our efforts to maintain and upgrade our systems to enhance the reliability and resiliency of our utility systems to minimize the potential of service disruptions. We follow strong financial management principles that has allowed us to maintain the highest credit ratings available by our credit rating agencies. This has allowed us to issue debt at the lowest borrowing cost. And then we're committed to full compliance with regulations and directives of all regulatory agencies, including local, state, and federal. So this is a summary of this year's proposed budget. So first, we're going to start off with the funding sources. As you can see, our proposed budget is $1.4 billion. The largest portion is debt construction funds, projected to be $776 million, where $403 million will be water and $373 million will be wastewater. The next largest source of funds comes from our service charges of about $565 million where water brings in $313 million, wastewater $169 million, and trash collection service is $83 million. Our sources of Other sources of our funding is about $19 million, and they include interest from our miscellaneous revenues, billing service fees, chargebacks where we own the billing system, but we provide services to some of the other departments like Public Works for Stormwater and then EMSA. So we do get money back from those services. And then interest earned on our operating accounts and then our system development charges. Next slide. So this is our proposed uses for the earnings this year. So the planned execution of our proposed budget for fiscal year 27, the largest component, 68%, is for our capital improvements, totaling $921 million. Water projects are estimated to be $489 million. Wastewater projects, $424 million. And solid waste management, $8 million. And most of that $8 million is for carts and vehicles. Total representative project awards. So under state law, we have to have the funds available to award projects. So this isn't necessarily the spend down. So we'll award $921 million in projects, but many of those projects take two to three years to complete. So the spend down will be longer than that. We continue to meet our financial plan and all of our debt service metrics. The trust operations budget for fiscal year 27 is approximately $142 million. This includes franchise fees and payments to the city. So the city owns the assets, so we pay not only the franchise fees like the other utilities pay to be within the right of way, but we also pay the city a percentage for the fact that we're leasing the assets from the city rather than the trust owning those assets. Materials and supplies, energy and chemicals, professional services such as financial advisors, trust engineers, outside legal counsel, and banking, and then outsourced contracts such as landscaping, payment restoration, and mowing. So the city operation portion of the budget is projected to be $109 million. This funding is for salaries, benefits, as well as other employee related expenses. Represents 94% of our FY27 city budget of $116 million. The primary difference between the 109 and the 116 million is the reserve funds pursuant to city policy. Our debt service for the coming year is projected to be approximately $94 million. This represents the annual payments and interest on the debt finance portion of our capital projects as well. Also represents temporary interest on projects that are currently under construction. So we use part-time or temporary financing for our construction projects so that we can pay the invoices as they come in, and then we roll that over to long-term debt when we accumulate about $100 million. We have solid waste service contracts projected to be $54 million. Approximately 65% of our service area is outsourced, where our residential trash collection and bulky collection are provided by a contract operator, and 100% of our recycle services are provided by the contract operator as well. A contract to maintain and service our solid waste management fleet is also included. in the $54 million, and we have outsourced street sweeping as well. We outsourced the operation and maintenance of our four wastewater treatment facilities for this upcoming year when the cost is projected to be $29 million. And then also we have a partnership with the McGee Creek Authority down in southeast Oklahoma. And so the agreement to support that partnership is about $8 million this year. And other uses include our estimated reserve funds. So this is the city portion of our proposed budget. The table showcases a summary of the increases and decreases. The first one being annual salary and benefits adjustments, including merit adjustments, changes to insurance, pension contributions, and other elements that relate to our existing 826 positions. We have increased our part-time and overtime expenses by $3.1 million, and the department has positioned improvements of about $830,000 this year. The proposed includes adding eight rate payer funded positions, bringing the total position count to 836. We also have adjustments to our service and supplies budget of approximately $34 million, $34,000 primarily to our training and appreciation budgets pursuant to city purchasing policies. We're proposing a decrease of approximately $12.5 million to centralized programs in the trust budget rather than the city operations budget. I'll go more into detail about that in just a few minutes. We have a slight increase of about $313,000 in our city chargebacks for HR, IT, financial, and legal services. And this is an overall 3% adjustment compared to fiscal year 26 budget, or approximately a $3.6 million decrease. So in our water treatment facilities, our initiatives for the upcoming fiscal year are for preventative maintenance, improvements as well as property maintenance. The position is proposed to provide planning and scheduling maintenance services, work at the Heffner Water Treatment Plant. Our goal is to plan and schedule at least 70% of the work that we do at the facility to improve the reliability of nearly 4,000 plant assets. Aquit's property mowing needs have outpaced our current provider's capabilities, so we are centralizing some of the mowing services in Aquit from Parks and Recreation. Parks will continue to mow areas that are continuous to public parks. Aquit will now mow locations that are remote, and we plan to outsource mowing for our treatment facilities. So turning now to financial management, one of the core business values I mentioned earlier is our commitment to strong financial stewardship. One of the ways we're supporting that in FY27 is by aligning our overtime budgets with the needs of our operational divisions. Overtime continues to be a necessity to support inherent requirements of a 24-7 operation, while also aligning with our budgeting best practices as well. We're also proposing centralized program management in AQUIT operations. As we continue to experience volatility in pricing and lead times of purchase of our commodities, centralizing non-personnel related programs in AQUIT enhances our ability to respond quickly and make timely adjustments. This is the $12.5 million that I spoke about earlier that we're transitioning from the city budget to the AQUIT budget. The marketplace today is extremely volatile in the goods and services that we purchase, chemicals for instance. Chlorine has gone up almost 600% over the last couple of years. And the materials that are made out of PVC and copper, those are very, very hard to get these days. So this transition to the budget enables us to go into more of a long-term rather than a one-year contract with these providers and helps us with the market volatility in that regard. It also positions us to better leverage our multi-year contracts, improving stability long term. This shift represents only a minimal increase, only about a 10% differential in our budget. Along with the growth in our operations, our capital program has grown significantly. To support this growth, we have position improvements focused on strengthening our financial oversight, planning, and operational support capabilities. This improvement will help address significant increases in purchasing and payables activity, support the management of our debt portfolio of approximately $1 billion, and assist in overseeing an annual financial program totaling Approximately $1.4 billion. So you may recognize this guy. We didn't let him have a microphone, but he did spend the day in our customer service call center. And what I've heard him say is it was an eye-opening experience. As you can imagine, we get 500,000 calls a year in the call center. And not everybody's happy when they call. And I think he really got a good sense of that. But we get a lot of calls for service. Now, we implemented a portal that helps people remotely activate or disconnect service and things like that. So that's very helpful, but we still get a lot of calls. And so we're going to highlight several initiatives focused on enhancing customer service, strengthening customer service operations. As the customer service needs continue to evolve, existing customer service representative positions will be reallocated to account escalation representative roles to support timely and accurate resolution. You'll see one of our LFR goals is to answer the phone quickly. Some of the questions that we're asked are a bit complicated, and it takes more time. So what we're going to do is take a couple of customer service rep positions and reclass them as account escalation reps so those more complicated calls can move to them quickly so that they can resolve and let the customer service rep get back to answering the routine calls as they come in. These changes will allow more in-depth research and resolution to higher level customer issues, and again, allowing the CSRs to manage more routine customer calls. In addition, utilities call center management is being strengthened to create more balanced staff to supervisor ratio. to allow supervisors to focus more on training, coaching, performance management, and administrative responsibilities. Finally, we are implementing a dedicated field quality assurance program to strengthen oversight of the field data, including meter reader activity, meter reading activity. So we're transitioning from the normal or the standard rather, direct read meter where somebody goes out and they look at the meter and they put in a device the meter reading. So we're going to automated meter reading. We're transitioning. It's about an eight-year program and we're into year three. So these field customer service assurance folks will make sure if we don't get the reads, why didn't we get the read? The good thing about an automated meter is it doesn't misread. But sometimes it doesn't read at all. So we have to go find out what's going on. And then we have to look at the credibility of that read compared to the last month's read. So this team will be doing a lot of that work. So The next two slides are gonna talk about our LFR goals. And both of these go back to the upgrading of the customer service positions to account escalation positions and our goal is to improve our ability to serve our customers so in this one what we try to do is resolve business related issues within five business days so again we we get a bill a customer gets a bill and they don't understand so why is my bill so high so we want to resolve that within five days And as you can see, we're declining a little bit. Our goal, and this is 95% of the time, we want to resolve that before the bill goes out, if we can. If we can't, then we work on it after the fact. But we've slipped down to about 92.5%, so we think with the new account escalation reps, we can move that back up above our goal line of 95%. This next one is answering the call within 30 seconds. When's the last time you all got somebody on the line when you're calling a utility company in 30 seconds or less, right? That's our goal. And as you can see, we're not doing too bad. But we're slipping down a little bit. We get, like I said earlier, over 500,000 calls a year. And 283,000 of them were answered within 30 seconds, which is a pretty good track record. But we're not happy with that. We want to do it 85% of the time. And right now we've slipped a little bit, but if we get the customer service reps on the call quicker, off of those more complex calls, get them answering calls quicker, we believe strongly that we can move that target or that level back up above 85%. So in recent years, and I'm gonna talk about our wins. In recent years, through the development of our utility strategic plan, we like other, many other, most other departments have identified key challenges and those are recruiting and retaining a qualified workforce. I don't know what happened post COVID, but a lot of people didn't show back up to work. So our challenge is getting them here and then keeping them here. So feedback from the city's employee survey, the Gage, highlighted opportunities to strengthen internal communication and expand our employee appreciation and recognition programs. So employee feedback enabled us to focus more on meaningful action to elevate workforce engagement across the department. And the key focus areas are communication and recognition. As a result, we developed and implemented a communications plan to elevate workforce engagement and advance our one city, one team culture. We've also implemented a peer-based recognition program called Utilities Best. So Utilities Best came out of our communications plan and it also doubled as a recognition program. We were concerned about how well it would be received, but this year we got over 80 nominations. These are peer-based nominations where people can nominate someone within the workforce for outstanding service to them, others, to the community. They write the nominations and some of these nominations were incredible. Some of the things that folks do are well beyond the day-to-day routine. So when you look at this picture, the top and bottom pictures slide are top 25 award nominees and the top eight award recipients. for FY26. Again, they're selected by their peers. We have a committee made up of peers. We had 80 nominations. That committee narrowed it down to the top 25. That's the top 3% of our workforce. And then we have another committee. It's not made up of leadership. It's peers. They picked the top eight. That's the top 1% of our workforce selected by their peers. This program has really taken off. And the people who are awardees, even the ones who are the top 25, really appreciate what their peers think about them. And so to be the top 1% is really special. So we have a luncheon for them. Nobody knows who won until that luncheon. And then they're nominated, or they're recognized. And I'll tell you, it's a really emotional event for these people to come up and say, hey, you know what, this is what my peers think about me. So it's a great program. And it's really taken off. And then we take them down on a field trip. This year we took them to Magee Creek and Etoka. They never get to see that stuff. And they think it's really, really cool. A couple folks went and looked at a big pipe. And it's pretty impressive to see a 72-inch pipeline under construction. And so they got to see that. They got to see McGee Creek. They got to see Lake Atoka and the new facilities being built down there. So it's something that's really taken off within our organization. We've also launched our employee hub called Work Vivo. This is part of our communications plan. Many times I heard our team saying, hey, You know, we see stuff out there. They're out all day long looking at things, and they don't know who to call. So now we have an app that's on the computer, on their handheld. They can look. Who do I call when I see something like this? Or hey, I want the director to know this. They can communicate with me directly through this hub. They can communicate with one another directly through this hub. It's a great communications tool for our entire workforce. This is a slide that is so meaningful to me because it represents what the team does. And this is not our opinion. This is the opinion of those who we serve every single year, every year, every category. We exceed the national average by 25, 30%. This past year is not unusual. We set the benchmark in some of these categories. But we exceed the national average in both large cities and all cities across the US for every service that we provide. And we're very, very proud of that. But we continue to look for areas that we can improve because we believe we owe that to our public. I mean, we're asking you all for $1.4 billion. So we want to keep getting better. That's our goal. And those who we serve, their opinions matter. And so here you go. We exceed every category. So now I'd like to run over some of the capital improvement projects, some of the key projects. The second Atoka pipeline, every single segment, there's nine segments across the 100 mile distance, every segment is either completed or under construction. The entire project should be completed by the end of 28, and as I said a few minutes ago, this is a 72-inch pipeline, and we have a 60-inch that we're currently using. Both of those pipelines will be able to bring all of the water that we're currently permitted in southeast Oklahoma by the end of 28. And then we have another project. It's a very large project. It connects both the Hefner and the Draper water treatment facilities, and this does a couple of things. One, it helps us move that water. 80% is going to come from Draper, 20% from Hefner. So we have peak periods that we need to move water in different places in the city. This will help us do that more efficiently. In addition, if something happened to one of those two facilities, I mean, think about it. Lake Draper is right on the edge of the end of the runway at Tinker. You know, we don't want bad things to happen, but things happen. So we're creating a means that we can move water throughout the entire system from either treatment plant through this interconnect. And then we have the Overholster Dam Structural Stability Improvement. So Overholster went into service in 1917, and there's been a few improvements along the way. But it's time that we give it a complete facelift. First of all, it doesn't meet the Corps of Engineers safe dam standards for current flood events. So we're going to improve that and we're going to We're gonna repair some of the structural issues. Now, the dam's not gonna fail any day now, but there's some work that needs to be done. And it is a historical landmark. You know, when Overholser was built, And we were taking water out of wells primarily. And that wasn't sustainable within this region, particularly in the hot, dry summertime. So building this lake was paramount for the evolution of Oklahoma City. So it is a historical landmark and we intend to improve it structurally and improve it in functionality as well. So the Deer Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant is reaching its design capacity. So we're designing an upgrade to that facility. So currently it can treat 15 million gallons per day and we're gonna increase that to 20 million gallons per day. We have various treatment plant improvements at Draper and Hefner. We're building new tanks at both facilities. We're improving the filtration capabilities of Draper. We're doing many, many improvements. And also, one of the keys, and I spoke about this last year, we're transitioning from chlorine gas for disinfection to a higher-strength bleach that's generated either on-site or trucked in. As you can imagine, bringing in extremely toxic gas through a highly... urbanized area is just not a great idea, plus the cost of the gas went exponentially higher. So we're going to transition the facilities to onsite hypochlorite generation. In addition, we're building a new operations center where we're going to consolidate water quality, wastewater quality, line maintenance, meter services, several of our other services into one central hub to be more efficient. It'll be located out at the existing line maintenance facility at 5th and Penn. And then going back to Overholser, so the Overholser Dam was built. In addition, there was a plant built, the old Overholser Water Treatment Plant. Well, the filter building is facing... It's right there just off the road. And it's a really cool historical building. So we're going to take that building and convert it into a central lab and keep the aesthetic. So it's going to look like it did in 1917, but it's going to be totally modernized. So that will help us with our regulatory laboratory testing. All of the operational testing will continue to be at the plants, but all of our regulatory testing for water and wastewater will be at the new central lab. And then, I know that you all have heard from folks out in the city about our water main breaks. We were replacing water mains, aged water mains, at the rate of about $10 million per year. This past year, we doubled that to 20. And what we're doing is we're trying to see how much we can replace annually with the limitations being our resources, our engineering firms, and our contractors. So this year we're gonna go to $30 million to see how that goes in the future. construction and the engineering community. And so we're going to keep elevating that as long as we can get the work done, get it designed, get it built. So this year we're planning to go to thirty million dollars. Now the main breaks have increased over the last few years. Most of these pipelines were put in in the eighties. Very corrosive soils here in Oklahoma City. It prematurely aged those pipelines so Fortunately, our program's working pretty well. We averaged about 600 main breaks per year. Last year we had over 1,100. This year we're gonna be about 800. So it is going down. So what we're doing is making a difference. So we'll keep doing that until we can get back to a manageable level on our main breaks. So with that, I'd be happy to answer questions that you may have.

I have a series of questions. Yeah, okay. First, well first, thank you for the work you're doing. I think similar to municipal courts, utilities is probably where a lot of residents have an interaction, their most likely interaction, right, with the city of OKC. Water line replacement, what determines by neighborhood or by street, road, where we do those replacements?

We evaluate. We have formulas that we use. We evaluate the number and the area that's impacted. And then we prioritize based on that.

Okay, so I think I have two lines of inquiry here. I'm not really sure the best route to proceed. So Douglas Edgemere neighborhood is a neighborhood where I've heard a lot of water concerns in terms of their lines, particularly as newer, larger houses have gone under construction and people have built them in the neighborhoods. I'm thinking specifically like a block east of Western, right? And then around like the Royal Rogers Theater area. There's flooding that happens pretty regularly in backyards that people will send me videos. It's been over the last six years I've got them. So I'd like to better understand a timeline. Well, first I'd like to understand like a diagnosis, like what's going on over there. It feels like different email threads get different responses. So I'd like to kind of have like a coherent picture that I can report back to their leadership.

Right. And you're wanting that based on water line breaks causing the flooding, not drainage issues.

Is that correct? I think there's a couple of things I'd like to better understand. And again, I'm a bit of a dumb-dumb in this area, so forgive me for probably some basic questions. But I'd like to, kind of going back to your 1980s comment, I'd like to understand when these lines were put in. their condition, when the last time was we addressed the lines, and which of these lines, if any, are contributing to any of the drainage, I'm sorry, drain, flood stuff, and maybe this is a bit of a public works conversation too, but it is like a near constant drumbeat from Douglas Edgemere residents. I just want to get a diagnostic of the situation in totality. Do those questions make sense?

So most of the elevated numbers of main breaks are from western to meridian, 50th to 164th. That's the area with the highly corrosive soils. And many of those pipelines were put in in the 80s. And so... It's made out of ductile iron. And so the corrosive soils attacks that ductile iron. We're replacing it with a plastic pipe that's corrosion resistant. That has the same characteristics resisting pressure, those kinds of things, as the ductile iron. And so we're increasing the reliability within that area accordingly. Now, very seldom does a water main break cause flood. Most of the flooding is going to be through storm water, those kinds of things. Periodically it might, but it's not very often. And so those are the areas that we're concentrating mostly on. Now we have main breaks in other areas, but they're one-offs here and there. But that area that I just identified is the primary area that we've seen those escalations. And the water mains are typically designed to last 80 to 100 years. And these are 40 years, 50 years old. So they're buried prematurely. And when we pull the main out of the ground, it's like paper thin, where the exterior has corroded away.

It makes me wonder if it's western for us in this particular neighborhood because Douglas-Hedgemere is from 50th down to about 42nd western east to Harvey Parkway. So I'm curious of that particular line right there. But, yeah, this has been an ongoing concern in the neighborhood. So I'd appreciate that.

Now, one thing that we've done, Councilman, is normally we have standby engineering firms, but they're limited on the amount of work that they can do per year. So we've created a whole new group that can do much more work per year. So we have four firms that can do... $5 to $7 million worth of work per year. That's construction cost, not design cost per year, where it was limited to $2 to $2.5 million. So we're increasing our ability to respond quicker.

Well, good. That's great. Next, when I was in Salt Lake City, one of my former colleagues at Jefferson Middle School was texting me, and I haven't had a chance to check the emails yet. I know Debbie Martin was looking into some of it for me, but Rollingwood neighborhood, one of the residents was telling me that they were without water for a couple days last fall. When was I there? I was there on Thursday and Friday. So this would have likely been Thursday, I think. It was after I went to lunch. I don't know if we know anything about that or if we've had email responses. But I'd like to better understand what was happening in Rollingwood. And then I believe Lakehurst was another neighborhood.

We'll get back with you on that. Now, it's highly unlikely that they were without water for two complete days. Sometimes we'll fix a main just down the street. That pipe is, you know, we want to get service back on as quickly as possible. Some people say, well, why don't you just replace all the pipe while you're here? Well, you can't just go replace the pipe. You have to design it. So we're going to have crews respond to these breaks to get water restored as quickly as possible while we're designing and replacing.

I appreciate that. There's a couple more. One, long overdue, but since I've been hearing more kind of concerns nationally about water and even from my students more recently about water, I would like to, and I know Boyd's out of town this week, but I'd like to go to the Hefner treatment plant and take a tour. I just haven't been able to do that. And in going into that, I think for me, because, again, this is so far afield from my, you know, area of study, going into that tour, I'd like to kind of better understand the process, you know, like how does all this work when it comes to the treatment of our water supply? Just, again, the most basic level.

If you would like, we would be happy to have you tour the facility.

Well, let's do it. Let's go. And then two final ones. I'll save the best for last. One is as we're looking at affordable housing from the bond, and especially as we're looking at trying to prioritize that housing, missing middle infill development and the rehabbing of existing homes, Are there conversations between utilities and the planning department in terms of this is a concern I hear from neighbors and I can never quite tell when it's a NIMBY not in my backyard. So I'm going to I don't want any new housing. So I'm going to throw out water as a concern versus when it's a real concern about aging water lines. Right. Are there is a coordination in terms of where we're maybe anticipating, particularly in the urban medium, I guess. Right. Where are we anticipating trying to incentivize development of missing middle affordable housing with making sure that those water lines are in tip-top shape?

So if we're not able to provide service to our current rate payers, we can improve those lines. But under state law, I can't use rate payer money to pay for development or redevelopment.

well, not development or redevelopment, but I mean like, let's just take my neighborhood, Paseo, for instance, or Helm Farm, just along the BRT line. If you're gonna try and do missing middle or infill housing along Klassen, for instance, what are we doing to make sure that the water infrastructure, whether it's wastewater, et cetera, are in the necessary condition they're going to be to support?

I would think, Chris, I would think that in the areas where we are doing, like if it's infill especially, but what we would be doing incentivized affordable housing would be more towards the core and that would really align more as opposed to it being specifically directed towards new development really how we're evaluating our ongoing system to make sure we've got sufficient water pressure if it's infill housing there's not going to be an issue with having water available there may be a situation where you've got a gap where there's not water lines extended to a specific area but it won't be as significant as what we have in the outlying areas Go ahead.

Rule of thumb, so we design water systems for fire protection. So domestic usage is almost incidental to that. So if we have adequate fire protection, we have adequate water for consumption.

And then finally, and this is still in Councilor Hinkle's thunder here, I'd like to see the Atoka pipeline. I'd like to go on a tour of that. Some students, again, were asking me recently about what plans the city has made to ensure, particularly as droughts occur, that we have that water. And I brought up the Atoka pipeline, and it clicked in that moment. I should probably go see it. So I'd like to... take a little gander, if that's okay.

Absolutely. We welcome you to come along.

Well, thank you for indulging me on this series of questions. I appreciate you and your work.

Yes, sir. Thank you.

Chris, I just want to say thanks for answering the phone every time I call you. I mean, it's as simple as that. You don't ever not get back to me if you don't answer it immediately with the answer. So I appreciate that very much.

Councilman, with over 4,000 miles of water main and over 3,000 miles of sewer main, we need folks to call us because there's no way we can look at that all the time. So we need people to help us identify issues.

The three issues in the last three weeks, you guys were there within hours to coordinate off, put barriers up, make sure nobody was hurt. So much appreciated.

Team does a great job. Thanks, Chris. Thanks for your leadership.

And thank you to your team for all the work that they're doing out there every day. Thank you.

Y'all have a great day. Thank you.

So next up, Chris York, our budget director, will close out. Next week we'll have just a brief overview of the budget when we're scheduled for adoption, but a closeout here looking at the budget comments we've received. And he'll work through those, talk about those, have them generalized, but all the comments are going to be coming out to the council, so you'd have all the comments.

All right. Thank you, City Manager, Chris York, Finance Department. Just wanted to go through a very quick overview of some of the comments that we received since we opened up the comment period back April 28th when you received your first batch of presentations. We've received comments through that period all the way up through last week. We took a snapshot of it at that time, and we've summarized those here for you today. So as usual, we try to solicit feedback from our residents through a number of channels. Our partners in public information and marketing made several posts on Facebook, Nextdoor, Threads, Twitter, et cetera, soliciting those comments from our residents. We also put out several news releases, and those were picked up by multiple media outlets throughout the period. And those resulted in 88 total comments across a number of mediums. The surprising thing for me as I look at these is that email used to be our number one methodology of receiving resident feedback. And now that has almost completely shifted to our vision.okc.gov platform, which I'm very pleased about because that platform allows us to provide information to our residents. All of these presentations are provided there. not to take credit in any way because I think we have always had very engaged residents, but now I think I can tell from the comments that they are much more informed because we're able to provide some information alongside the platform for them to comment. And so you can see that in the packets that you should have received in your email. We did receive 17 live comments, so still a very strong presence there. If we compare that to last year, we have about 38 more comments this year than in the prior year, and so happy to see the trend increasing with engagement. So I don't want to misinterpret our residents' comments because through my lens, I might not capture exactly what they're looking at, so I don't want to... to get down into the individual comments themselves, but what I've tried to do is summarize those for you to talk about just their general topics. Of the 88, about half of those were related to comments about animal welfare. I would describe those as being Partially internal and we of course have many residents that are also employees of the city And so there were many comments from animal welfare seeking out additional funding specifically for positions and for funding of the new location And and there were just many concerns of getting that system up and working with the current allotment of staffing and funds that they had available to them We had eight comments that were related to more citywide infrastructure type of topics, and those include things like streets, sidewalks, and accessibility concerns. Those are about five of them. We did have an air and water quality issue concern as one of the comments. We did have a request for more community spaces. And then one comment asking further clarification of the natural resources program restructure that Melinda briefed us during the prior presentation. Four comments were on the overall budget. Two were recommending that we prioritize transit and parks in our budget. One was opposed to just general headcount reduction. They wanted more services. And then we also had one recommending we seek out alternative or diverse revenue sources to help avoid cut years like we're experiencing this year. Eleven of the comments were requesting or advocating for participatory budgeting. Three had some subtopics of some opposition to the way we were spending money on public safety services and funding. One comment was in opposition of a partner agency, the Oklahoma City Housing Authority, and its operation. And then finally, we had or excuse me one more. We had 12 comments on public safety in general. One was in opposition to the fire department cuts from a former firefighter, but not one of our former firefighters. Two were in opposition of the police department's proposed budget. Eight were in support of the police department's services. And then One suggested again that we reallocate some of our public safety service funds to other types of services. And then finally, we had three comments related to recreational programs that were in support of more or continued funding of parks and recs programs, specifically the Northwest Optimist Performing Arts Center was listed a few times. Historically, we have kept the comment period open all the way until the Friday before budget adoption. If that continues to be the will of the council, we're happy to continue that. And so we've left it open as a default for now, but happy to shift gears if there's a different direction on that. And with that, I would be happy to answer any questions.

Thanks, Chris. And we'll have all those comments coming out to council, so you'll have those in your emails. And then we will just keep it open, and then just any additional comments we get prior to next week's meeting, we'll send those out to you.

All right. Well, that means we have arrived at citizens to be heard, and we have a few who have signed up. I'll remind everybody to state your name and address and keep your remarks to three minutes or less. The clerk will remind you when there are 30 seconds left and then I'll stop you when you're out of time. We'll start with Taylor Wilson.

Taylor Wilson, 748 Dune Circle. Wanted to comment both on the beginning of the meeting of you talking about the youth and how that's the next generation, and then commenting about your employee, 25 years. That really should be celebrated, and I appreciate you doing that. On the overall budget, I commend you for holding the line on expenses. Because the more you build into your budget relative to operational constraint gives you more dollars on the capital side. And that's not without a strategy. And allocating costs to the different trusts to provide more general funds is a good strategy. My comment is on the Embark weekend stopping of service relative to that strategy? Is that strategy, does that calculation include all the reduction of the federal funds that would be also going towards that? Also, is that strategy going to be used as the baseline cost for which you'll draw the line on a potential train on the loss per mile and is that workout, is that what you're gonna use in that calculation? And then lastly, is this a transportation strategy or a marketing when comparing and contrast to the 250,000 increase on the streetcar which seems to be more for tourists and less for the working poor? Thank you. Thank you, Joy Reardon.

Hello, city council members again. It's been a while. Joey Reardon, 125 Northwest 9th. Mr. Cooper, check out BWI. You were talking about Seattle or Salt Lake. Check out BWI. They have both buses, light rail, and the Amtrak buses. I actually had two things. Someone else asked me to talk to you all about the buses, the cutting of the routes and stuff like that. You all might want to check into that. Embark needs more funding to put newer buses on, because a lot of the buses they have now, especially the 11 and 1300 series, if you don't know, the four-digit number on there is the year that they received the buses, and the last two numbers are the number in series that they've got. And the smaller buses absolutely need to go. because they make it extremely hard for ADA, like myself, to get on the bus. I literally have to back onto the bus to get on the bus if I'm going to go somewhere. bus routes. 6th and Harvey, I talked to my council member about it. They did away with the four ADA spots and never replaced them so that Memorial could have bus parking. If you take them away, they've got to be replaced. No choice in that. If you take ADA spots away, you have to replace them. And it's been there since they started, long before they started, when they redid 8th Street. They cut out the curbs and took the ADA spots away. There was four of them. Did y'all receive a contract for the basketball team, the new stadium, to where if they leave before a certain date, They lose a bunch of money and they need to start putting more money into it.

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Homeless. I don't see any changes whatsoever. This key to home stuff, that's nonsense. And your monitor out there in the hallway. No sound, no ADA thing for the people who can't hear. No visual, no CC on the TV out there. Thank you.

Thank you. Nicole McAfee.

Hello, my name is Cole McAfee. My pronouns are they and she, and I'm a homeowner in Ward 6, where I also work full-time in service of safety for 2SLGBTQ plus folks throughout our state through Freedom Oklahoma. I want to start today with an important list that I've read part of before. Samuel Lanham, 50. DeJuan McCoy, 36. Kyle Elrod, 30. Brandon Milburn, 37. Michael Dansby, 43. Stavian Rodriguez, 15. Benny Edwards, 60. Tilford T.J. Barton, 30. Daniel Hobbs, 34. Chris Steven Cannon-Wilson, 23. Charles Carswell, 32. Sergio Gruver, 21. Timothy Sammy Johnson, 38. Ajani Owens-Bay, 31. Kenneth Lloyd Allison, 46. Kevon Latrell Reagan, 22. Brandon Lena, 47. Annette Prince, 77. Lick Vu, 71. Jerry Yang, 43. Jose Martinez, 40. Eddie Hill, 41. Jason Lee Redshirt, 45. Albert Benson, 62. Deonte Hawthorne, 34. Sandra Lee Stamford Perry, 72. 26 people killed directly by interactions with Oklahoma City Police Department in the years since I started following the municipal budget process. I've come here and asked you again and again to shift the budget away from the institution of policing and towards proven investments that keep residents safe. I'm asking you once again to reject the budget before you grounded in the reality of this repeated deadly harm by our police department, which is inherent in policing and which you continue to invest in to the detriment of those of us who call Oklahoma City home. I'm asking because you should be horrified by things like the municipal court presentation today that celebrated harm directed at residents largely for the crime of surviving as poor in the city. I don't keep showing up to make the same ask because I'm a masochist. And given the way municipal leadership has discussed those of us who make the continued effort, and it is a substantial effort to show up. I don't have a ton of hope you will take any action to deviate from the same budget approval process that you have always taken. but I'm compelled to show up because the 26 folks I named are just a small number of the people whose lives have been upended, cut short by Oklahoma City Police Department, one of the continued deadliest police forces in the country, and they can't be here to ask you to take action. OKCPD ensured that to be the case. We deserve a budget that centers our feedback and needs and is rooted in what serves the residents of the city, not the status quo. Please, next week, don't approve the budget. Thank you.

Thank you. Larry Hopper.

Good morning. Thank you for your all service. My name is Larry Hopper. I live at 6008 Southeast 56th Court, Oklahoma City, Ward 4. Thank you, Mr. Stone, for your representation. Hey, I serve as the administrator of a nonprofit called the Alliance for Public Transportation. Not a big organization. And we would have liked to have commented earlier, but we just couldn't get everybody together in time. And the long story short is that We'd rather be seen as the group that says, hey, we need more public transportation funding and compare us to the other metros. We'd like to more usually be the group that helps show people how to catch and ride the bus. But today, a number of folks involved with us and our board, they're concerned about this pretty drastic cut in weekend bus service. So recognize that Embark does a lot with the funding they have. and that they were required to come up with a 2% cut. But this was probably the wrong place to make that cut. Eliminating three or four hours of bus service on Saturdays and again on Sundays is tough. The folks who really need to ride then, even if ridership is low, they're probably the people that are trying to get to work. and uh you know to cut that out really makes it hard for them to probably get and keep their jobs and then let's face it uh you know when the cuts happen july 1st it's going to be hot at eight o'clock in the morning uh at nine o'clock in the morning if you can't catch the bus until uh... eight o'clock and so maybe there's a way to pump the brakes on this particular reduction okay not every cut in the uh... city budget has to occur as of july first uh... some of it might be done when Embark does its next sign up for drivers uh... six months in and maybe in the meantime If you look at ridership, and Saturday ridership, according to what you all heard back on April 28th, is like 12 passengers per hour daytime for each hour that a bus is on the road. Basically, it's 12 and a half on Saturdays and Sundays. So really, the ridership per hour is about as good. And if ridership is really that low from 6 to 8, which was the reason cited, then perhaps the city should take a little time and establish some kind of a microtransit program where folks who enroll in basically a new program with Embark, they can basically get a curb-to-curb ride in that 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. hour if they've pre-registered to be part of the program. That might be a lot more cost-efficient than running 17 buses for two hours from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m.

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And so aside from that, we also have some comments from some folks. Some comments were emailed in, but really too late for Christian to be able to actually see those. And I'm going to give a couple of those comments. One of the people who came, Tahira, in the wheelchair, she had to go to a medical appointment, couldn't come, but she too was concerned about the $250,000 added to streetcar funding. And I would remind you guys, and you know this, with the new hotel-motel tax, there's about $9 million in additional hotel-motel revenues. compared to two years ago. That can't all be consumed in one year, so it could be that this is the year where if you really have to keep streetcar running from midnight to 2 a.m. a couple days a week, transfer some money from that trust budget to the streetcar, free up that $250,000 and maybe more for bus. I could say a whole lot more, but... That's probably pretty much it. We thank you for letting us comment. There's probably more people that will send in some email comments this week and a couple more to speak. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Tahira Johnson?

She had to leave.

Okay. William Tunnell?

Thank you, members of the Council. My name is William Tunnell. I live in Ward 2. I also happen to be the chairman of the Alliance for Public Transportation, the administrator of which was Larry, who just spoke. I'd like to reinforce Larry's comments. I will also speak here today very quickly. about the proposed budget cuts within Embark for weekend service. Just to quickly recap, which I don't know has been explicitly stated, although it was dealt with in the last April 28th meeting, the proposal from Embark for operational reductions is to eliminate weekend service on all weekend bus routes from 6 to 8 a.m. and then after 5, so from 5 to 7 p.m. I would simply like to, in the way of reinforcing Larry's comments, to demonstrate that it's really a draconian reduction. I understand that if you look at it from the point of view of ridership and the amount of people served per mile during those hours, it makes a certain amount of sense. However, I think it is incumbent, I would hope it's incumbent upon the council to think about this from the ridership point of view, really in externality. The kind of costs that are incurred by that outside of the bus system from the ridership are extreme. Effectively, what's happening is we are making full-time weekend employment impossible for people who are reliant on the bus system. I want you to think about this here for a moment. If you have to start your journey at earliest at 8 a.m., and the way we construct our bus system, which there's really no way around it, almost everything has to connect to the central bus terminal and then to somebody else's destination, not even taking into consideration walk time. And bus service is only every hour on weekends anyway. So if you're starting at 8, let's say you get to the bus transit center at 8.30. Every hour service means you can very potentially, 50% of the time, wait up to an hour for your next bus to then get to your next destination. You start at 8, maybe you get there at 8.30, maybe you leave at 9.30, maybe you get to your job at 10.00. looking back that in the afternoon you're effectively prohibiting employment for people on weekends from anything other than ten to three p m It's an extreme hazard for those types of people. Most of them already rely on that service for their current positions. I can also say that in my current capacity in Catholic Charities, one of my responsibilities is in workforce development.

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Thank you. I'm sure you're all aware there's a lot of initiatives there to try to reintroduce workforce adjacent people back into the workforce. Weekend employment is a great bootstrap to make that happen to more full-time employment. So I would just encourage everyone to consider that if they consider exercising any more direct control over the MPART budget. Thank you.

Thank you. Madison Lovell.

Lovell.

Hello, my name is Madison Lovell. I live at 2817 Northwest 47th Street in Ward 2. And I'm with the People's Budget Coalition here to talk about public safety and policing. First and foremost, we want a participatory budget, a budget for us and by us. Participatory budgeting is a democratic process where residents directly help decide how public money is spent. Cities like Greensboro and Chicago already uses this model because they understand that people most affected by budget decisions should have a voice in shaping them. Right now there are far too many barriers preventing everyday residents from participating in this process. Meetings are often held at times like today when working people cannot attend without taking PTO. Finding childcare and rearranging their entire schedules just to be heard. I support a more open and accessible budget process, one where community voices are included from the very beginning, not after decisions have already been made. So once again, our coalition is asking city manager Freeman to implement a participatory budget. More people should have been able to weigh in in decisions that directly affect their lives, their neighborhoods, and their futures. And that brings me to policing and public safety. As it stands right now, Oklahoma has a record 383 fatal encounters involving police over the last 12 years. ranking among the highest in the nation per capita. Yet the system reviewing those deaths may rarely result in criminal charges against officers because their legal standard only asks whether force was reasonable in the moment, not whether policies, training, or systems themselves are failing communities. Black Oklahomans make up 7.9% of the state population, yet account for 18% of the people killed in police encounters in 2025. That means black residents were more than twice as likely to die in these encounters. And despite overwhelming research and testimony from communities directly impacted by violence, suicide, behavior health crises, and governments continue to prioritize punitive responses instead of addressing root causes. The truth is this, we cannot police our way out of systematic problems. The underlying causes of violence and instability are directly to funded or underfunded in this city budget. Parks and recreation, mental health services, affordable housing, youth programs, homeless assistance. For decades, cities across the country have cut investments in social services while increasing police budgets. But when someone is experiencing a mental health crisis, homelessness, addiction, or desperation, an armed response is often not the appropriate response. Police officers are being asked to act as mental health workers, social workers, crisis responders, and even animal control, roles that instead should be filled by properly funded public services. We want... We want community safety not rooted solely in policing. We want more opportunities for young people, not fewer. I want my homeless people living under the bridge near my house to have access to affordable housing, health care, and support, not just more contact with law enforcement. I hope you hear my words today, not just as criticism, but as concerns of a constituent who wants this city to do better. People need to see that the government is responsive to their needs. We need to treat the disease, not just react to these systems. Thank you.

Thank you. That concludes citizens to be heard. We've reached item seven, adjournment, and we are adjourned.