City Council - Regular Meeting

I now declare that the Plano City Council is convened into open session, that all council members are present, with the exception of Council Member Levine, who will be here. The council will now recess into executive session in training room A to hold a closed executive meeting pursuant to the provisions of Vernon's Texas Code's Annotated Government Code, Chapter 551, the Open Meetings Act, in accordance with the authority contained in Section 551-071, to consult with attorney to receive legal advice and discuss litigation, and Section 551.087 to discuss economic development matters. Thank you.

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I now declare that the Plano City Council preliminary open meeting is reconvened in open session and that all council members are present. Our first item on the preliminary agenda is consideration and action resulting from the executive session. Our next item is the Willoughby and open house presentation. We're gonna skip item two until future meeting So Christina, you're up.

Welcome I am glad to be able to come and give you an update on the Open houses that we had in July on the will have been district redevelopment so the slides were in your packet along with a memo and all the public comments that we received and We did continue to work on the slides a little bit after the packet was posted, so there's some slight differences, but not a lot of differences. If those are noted, those also are available by calling the planning department if anyone would like the updated slides. I'll start out with talking about the purpose. We were asked to engage the community to really initiate a formal conversation about this project. This site has gone through rezoning recently a couple of times, so redevelopment here I think is expected. What was really new was the idea of a sports arena, so we needed to be able to start a really public conversation about that topic and listen to residents' thoughts, comments, and concerns about that redevelopment and then provide what existing information we had structured around five primary topics that we're hearing as the major concerns from the community. And those were traffic, parking, noise, light, and neighborhood quality of life. So that was the task. And so we started developing this outreach event, and we communicated that through new web pages. Those were launched June 8th. located on the city's website. We also used our traditional resources, social media and traditional media coverage. We got great media coverage out of this with a lot, just a little sampling there for you all of some of the coverage we got. We also use signage. We place those both in public locations at parks and community locations when like apartment complexes in the area would allow us to post there. We were able to do that. That started on June 22nd. And then we also mailed twelve hundred sixty seven postcards to area owners and homeowners association. And those went out on June 19th. So you can see what those look like as well. We also use this kind of standard graphic design theme so people understood, hey, this is all the same thing that you are seeing if you saw this in multiple locations. So we provided a number of opportunities. We were very excited that we had the opportunity to meet at the shops at Willow Bend. because that would be the site that we were discussing. We provided opportunities for in-person events, two different weeks because of summer vacations, people are often traveling. So we thought two different weeks would be nice to try to catch as many people as possible. One was a lunchtime. We looked at the kind of demographics of the community and thought a lunchtime engagement would be good as well as an evening engagement. And those were both very well attended. And then we did input and information station again covering those five key topics as well as providing a survey of all participants. We really wanted to hear from people in their own words and the best way we thought to do that was to allow them to complete surveys so that we could really collect that data and provide it and make that publicly available and available of course to the City Council. So another way we wanted to provide this opportunity was through a virtual open house. We know that not everyone's going to be available on those two dates. It may be you're on vacation at that time. So this virtual open house allowed us to capture even more people that were unable to attend, and that allowed a self-guided online experience. While staff may not have been available to answer questions to people that were online, the same information was provided and the same questions were provided and people still had the opportunity to provide feedback. Throughout this same timeframe, we maintained the webpage with updates and promoted the engagement opportunities there and that will continue to be updated throughout the project. So these are just some photos about the suites availability. Because this allowed us to host onsite, we were also able to promote the events onsite by using some of the signs in the suite facing outwards. So we were able to catch people that walked in the mall and use that as another promotional opportunity. And so you see how we transformed this kind of very large space into a functional space for the event. That really took the cooperation of a lot of departments and we were able to make this an organized process where people lined up due to the number of participants They got some refreshments and then they were able to walk through and talk to subject matter experts on these individual topics and engage with people about the various amounts of information and then answer the questions of the survey if they so chose. The surveys were provided in both electronic format and paper copies with the majority of people deciding to participate in the electronic format. So what was the response we received? We did get a total of 861 surveys that were completed with about 2,400 comments submitted. Many more people started the survey than actually completed it though. We had 63% of people submit at least one comment and over 50,000 words of written feedback. So if you've looked through the pages and pages, you know it was a lot of feedback, which was really great. So in-person participants, we had 600 in-person participants. And so for anyone who has participated in this kind of engagement opportunity, as someone who's been in the planning profession trying to engage the community on topics for a number of years, this is an outstanding turnout for a public event of this nature. We would love to see this type of turnout for neighborhood meetings or other type of planning topics. So we were really impressed with that number. A thousand, more than a thousand people at the virtual open house, 58 zip codes represented across North Texas, but 82% of participants were from Plano. So while we had a lot of zip codes represented, still the vast majority of people were from Plano. And what that looks like, we use this kind of a dot map to represent a weighted distribution of participation. So you can see 492 participants from the zip code around the mall. And then the other kind of fairly even distribution throughout the rest of the city with distributions outside Plano coming from the nearby zip codes in Carrollton and in Dallas. Then a little scattering of people surrounding as you get further away from the site. So participant demographics, we didn't ask a lot of demographic questions, but we did ask for people's age. And the response we got was fairly representative of the predominant zip code or census tracts that were representing the zip codes. So we felt like it was a fairly reflective survey. So the response, we asked people what was their primary interest in engaging in the topic, and overwhelmingly traffic. 84% said they wanted to talk about traffic. And you'll see that carry through the survey responses, followed up by neighborhood quality of life, and then kind of trailing far behind lighting and other issues. We also ask about people's perceived community impact. So this is our primary survey question from a numeric perspective. So we were looking at before you kind of walked through and looked at information, how do you perceive these issues? And then after you look at kind of the regulations on the book, how do you perceive these issues? The response was on each of the key topics we were able to move the needle a little bit and people got slightly more comfortable on each of the topics. You see the range of each one dropped either a tenth of a point or three tenths of a point in regard to lighting on each of the topics. So I will very briefly summarize the feedback that we got on each of the topics. We've tried to put these in just to a few primary themes, but we did provide all the comments, so if people want to read through them and see those, we've been very transparent with each of those. But with regard to traffic, We think congestion and roadway capacity was a primary concern that we heard from people that just the roadway network can't handle the event traffic and that improvements are needed to better handle that traffic flow. Also that transit and ride share options are really needed to handle that impact that will come from the redevelopment. Neighborhood cut through traffic was also a primary concern. There are a lot of overlap between the topics that you'll see throughout this process. So we need to prevent cut-through traffic, people entering the neighborhood, traffic mitigation measures were requested, people specified intersections that they wanted to see changes, and they really wanted to just see studies. And I think that progress has been made in that regard through the hiring of Farron Piers and the ongoing traffic study. Neighborhood quality of life, there were concerns about decline in the overall suburban character, peacefulness, convenience, and livability of the neighborhoods in the area, that there would be additional crime and safety concerns, security concerns. Again, more overlap with traffic congestion, cut through, event parking, and just those transportation impacts leading to quality of life concerns. property values were another topic we heard repeatedly. Majority interested in thinking it would cause decline, but some thinking that values might increase and concerns either way, but questions about how that would impact the value of their home and their neighborhood. Also comments about how mitigation might occur through landscaping trees. and just avoiding becoming a entertainment district versus the neighborhood character that exists today. Parking wise, there was again more overlap with event parking into neighborhoods, similar to what we've heard in some of the other section, keeping event parking off of residential streets and using fees or congestion management to avoid neighborhood parking, proactively protecting the neighborhoods by using gates, parking control, policing, towing, and other mechanisms, providing sufficient onsite parking, because if there's not enough parking onsite, the concern is that, again, bleeds into the neighborhoods and how that parking will be calculated. and then making sure that parking is both convenient and very affordable or free so that people can access it easily and there's as few barriers as possible to parking where they should and not in neighborhoods. With regard to noise, people were expecting to be protected from noise. concerns about crowds and amplified music on the plaza, traffic related noise, again, the overlap, the need for noise control, but there was a good level of trust, especially as people heard about the city's regulations that an enclosed arena combined with existing standards could be able to manage the noise. Similarly with lighting, at the end there were comments about the lighting is addressed well through city's regulations and that technology and ordinances should be able to manage impacts, but people are aware and concerned about light trespass and direct lighting, maintaining their nighttime character of the area, light pollution, and signage and how that will impact the area. So final thoughts and comments. We really heard a mix of opposition and support related to the project. Questions about appropriateness, need for more studies was another theme we heard. They want continued engagement before decisions are made. Again, You've heard this repeatedly, traffic, parking, neighborhood access, protecting residential areas were the most frequently cited concerns. And they continue to have questions about financing and public investment and just wanting more information on that. And in response to that, the staff has provided additional information online. So we collected some frequently asked questions. We are working a list of that and working on providing comments in response to these questions online. Things like, will there be transit, dart rail, game day shuttles to cut the vehicle trips? How many parking spaces are planned relative to arena capacity? So questions like this, when we can answer them, we will, but we're collecting these questions in a list of frequently asked questions. When answers are available, they can be provided to the public. So final summary of key findings. Traffic is really the primary concern for people. Details about the development plan and its impact are needed and expected. People really want to know what's happening so that we can start analyzing and give them more feedback. People want to understand the why behind what's happening and the rationale, so more information we can provide on that is better. Local residents have trepidation about disruption of their daily lives, and so again, just the more information we can provide, that will help kind of curb their concern. And then finally, as the plans and studies are commissioned, opportunities really exist to involve stakeholders and gain consensus. So I think there's a lot of positive moving forward, inclusion, communication, and transparency. There are opportunities to help answer a lot of the questions that are out there in the community. And with that, I will turn it over to the deputy city manager for additional information.

Thank you, Christina. Mayor, Council, Doug McDonald, Deputy City Manager. Just a quick kind of run through of the timeline of where we've been and where we're moving forward. On June 6th, as you remember, approval of the TERS funding mechanism as well as the non-binding letter of intent. We also have the resolution of approval for the potential venue tax election. Late in June, we did get the approval from the comptroller on that resolution for the venue tax election process. So that will be brought to you this evening for consideration. As Director Day mentioned, our open houses and virtual open houses is really now laying the foundation of the studies and the work we'll be doing for the next few weeks and months to be able to provide some responses to some analysis for the public. We do have the approval of the traffic consultant, which was a very big step for us at the last meeting in July with Farron Piers, and then tonight with the potential consideration for the ordinance to call the venue election. As I mentioned back in June, this is really an ongoing process. This is kind of the beginning of the process for us to identify, is this the right fit for the city? Conducts a number of studies and analysis and as well as actually work with the team and the developer on the partnership. We have a number of agreements that we'll have to be working through and getting through these next few months in order for us to bring those for your consideration and consideration and approval for future council. Centennial and the team are now working closely to work on the design of the configuration of the mixed-use development around the arena, as well as the integration of the arena itself with the district phasing plan. All that has to come into play and it will impact our transportation plan we're doing the fair in Paris. So we're kind of working, walking in lockstep with what the Centennial and the team are doing on the planning of this, because that impacts everything we do on the transportation side. So they kind of happen to work concurrently in this process. And you probably have seen this afternoon, the team did make the announcement that they had hired H&TB as the arena architect. It's a very big step in the process because, again, that now helps us to be able to start outlying the impacts of where the arena is located, the doors of the arena, how people are getting to and from the arena. That has a trickle-down effect to the actual traffic itself. And so that's kind of a really important step that we need to be, that we are excited to have the announcement today. The traffic analysis, you heard through Christian today's presentation, traffic, traffic, traffic. That's a big concern that we've heard over and over through the process of this outreach. And it's something that we really took the first step in conducting with fair and peers. This phase one studies, as Caleb mentioned this last council meeting with our roadway network, we're looking at this from a large scale aspect. So first looking at all the exits and on ramps to the actual arena itself and the site itself. This has that trickle-down effect. So once we have an idea of how people are getting to the arena, how are people getting to the actual site itself where they're parking, that will then expand on into future phases for the traffic impact analysis and look at other neighborhoods and areas that may be impacted. So this is the first step. We will have future steps as the plan expands into areas. But this first piece is really important. We will be starting traffic counts pretty soon. We had to wait until school was back in session. That's important for us to get good, accurate foundation traffic counts. So that is moving forward. This also will look at the neighborhood cut-through concerns. We'll look at the mitigation framework from the citizens. neighbor protection options and at a high level looking at parking access control and enforcement concepts we can bring to the public for for consideration for comment this will have a neighborhood engagement components we'll be working closely with the neighborhoods and bringing back to the citizens some options for consideration get some feedback for us to bring back to fair and peers as i mentioned the next phase is really critical this takes what we've done initially with the uh kind of the high impact zones around the arena and the uh willow bend site itself and expands it on the neighborhoods that we see are are high impact local streets that we need to take in consideration again that'll also have the traffic impact analysis some site circulation we'll be able to really identify some specific areas of concern for mitigation for um uh uh Mitigation framework for protections for the neighborhoods and again, this will also have a large-scale neighborhood engagement component So we know this is going to be important for the community We know we have worked have a great consultant in hand and we'll be able to work with the with the citizens moving forward on transportation We have also a number of projects and studies that are also kicking off. First, really, the market feasibility. We have brought in a consultant called the Concord Group. This is a group that was recommended by our underwriters, JP Morgan. This is a lot of work for cities looking at arenas itself. This will look at what the development group is giving us in terms of the amount of multifamily units that will be built. square footage of retails, amount of office space to be built, and it identifies what the feasibility of these uses around the mixed-use development are going to be. So this looks at absorption. It looks at what the competitor sites will see here in North Texas. We talked to Concord Group today looking at even sites that may be considered for future other arena sites outside of Plano also being considered as part of the market absorption study. We have had a number initial summary report from the Concord group. That's looking at the initial numbers that Sentinel has provided us in terms of the the development profile and it is a very supportive of the mixed-use that's being proposed right now for that phase one So we think this is actually a good plan moving forward We'll continue to work with Concord as we progress to be able to refine the market study but this will be critical to make sure the the mixed-use development around the arena is strong and supportive of the TERS and We're also looking at a residential impact. This is a project and kind of an initiative that we have since the outreach and hearing from the public and the outreach of concerns with property values and neighborhood turnover. We're going to work on a study to look at and analyze comparable venues with nearby residential areas. I'm looking at property value impacts, I'm looking at changing of neighborhoods and home ownership turnover and neighborhood trends. We'll be working closely with the neighborhoods itself and to be able to look at what the impact is gonna be on the residential side adjacent to the Reno side itself. We are right now in the process of getting submissions from a number of consultants and we'll be able to move forward on that rather quickly. As I mentioned, the additional engagement, the traffic impact is going to be the critical piece. We'll have presentation and citizen feedback coming up in the next few weeks. At that point, we'll be able to look at neighborhood protection options and preliminary mitigation framework, all critical pieces to provide to the public to show what are options that we can consider for the neighborhoods and to cut through traffic and parking enforcement. Um, we are looking at it will have been district neighborhoods and how do we further engage with the neighborhoods? Um, city manager is also, and we'll mention to you all tonight, um, a working group that will look at the traffic impact analysis and the residential impact study, almost kind of a focus group that we've heard from the citizens and, and need for to actually move forward to help us out with looking at, uh, giving us good feedback on, on the studies and helping input in the studies themselves. Uh, we'll continue to work. We'll continue to work to address topics from the July 2026 outreach that you've heard from Director Day. And then all of our updates are on our website, planon.gov backslash Willow Bend District, along with bi-monthly updates to City Council. We do our planning on bringing back a sizable update in October, October 12th, the council meeting. But we may have some updates in between that we want to bring to you as well for consideration. But I want to make sure that the public understands we are updating the website. It's a great place to provide information. We updated it last week with some new information. And after tonight's meeting, there will be updates as well. With that, I'm going to open it up to questions for council and bring back Director Day. And if you have any questions on the outreach or next steps.

Council Member Thomas.

Thank you all for putting this together. I appreciate both the quantitative and qualitative data that you share with everyone. In review of the qualitative data, I saw a lot of valid concerns and reading the spreadsheets and stuff like that, there are a lot of great ideas and emails that I get from the citizens. They have a lot of great ideas as to how to enhance this if we were to move forward with this initiative. One thing that I didn't see that Could be a concern is this seems like it's moving really fast. Could you explain to us why we are moving at the pace that we are moving as it relates to this initiative?

Sure. One of the considerations, as you all are well aware, is the team itself has a deadline of their current lease of 2031. That, if you kind of work backwards in terms of new construction, in terms of city issuing bonds, there's a process that has to go before that in order to get prepared for an opening of 2031. This is the year, basically from today until a year from now, that we're actually doing all the studies and analysis and input. Um, so we, um, you know, in terms of the process moving forward, we're, we're trying to move as diligently as possible and making sure that the public is brought along with us as, as, as, as much as possible. Um, but the, the, the, um, intent to get the arena and the mixed development up by 2031 working backwards, um, we're in this next year is going to be kind of a critical year for us to, um, to get things in place for that to happen.

Thank you for your time.

Councilmember Kerr.

Good evening. I kind of want to just reiterate a couple things. If you can go back to your slide that had the timeline in there from June 8th. Really, I just want to reiterate something here. Really, the June, actually June 6th date, that was the start of this, really. There were conversations that were happening before this, but it wasn't until then that we were actually able to start moving forward. The July open houses, town halls, that was the first chance for citizens to say, hey, these are the areas where I have concerns. So that we now can take all those along with the concerns we already had and we can start addressing those. I think it's important that we understand that it's going to be over the next year is when these studies are going to take place. So that as we get results, we can continue to present those to the residents. they will have a chance every step along the way to provide input so we can continue to adjust and address. Does that sound right to you? Yes, sir. Very good. I just wanted to reiterate that. Thank you.

Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. Do we know when we'll start seeing some of these study results?

Yes, sir. So most likely on this next month, probably in September, we're going to be engaging the citizens and neighborhood groups. We're going to be working kind of behind the scenes. Now we'll be providing council some updates, but a lot of that work is going to be actually done with the neighborhoods and the citizens groups. Most likely that October 12th meeting, we'll be able to provide you with the updates on the transportation side, the updates on the market feasibility side, and most likely some updates on the actual arena side itself. And so that October 12th date is going to be a pretty critical date for us that we're trying to kind of work towards. But probably this next month, the next month and a half, you're going to see us probably doing a lot of work behind the scenes with the consultants and actually with the neighborhoods themselves.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Christina. Thank you, Doug. We'll continue to... Look forward to more information as we get it, and we'll pass it along to our public. Okay. Next item is consent and regular agendas. Is there an item on the consent that a council member would like to remove? All right. Council items for discussion on future agendas.

Mayor and Council, as Deputy City Manager McDonald just mentioned, we would like to have a conversation on August 24th, your next meeting, about a citizen advisory committee to help us provide inputs as well as go through assumptions on the economic impact study as well as some of the traffic feasibility. Again, the size of the committee would be up to the council, the appointment would be up to council, but we think that focusing in on the HOAs most closely impacted to the actual project site would make sense. This would be keeping in with how we actually approach things like bonds and others, major projects like this. Having a citizen advisory committee that could provide input on multiple aspects also provides us a channel to communicate out back to the community. We will have that on your preliminary open meeting on the 24th for discussion, so please give some thought and advice to the composition of that committee, the size of the committee, and we will have that on your next agenda.

Hold on, Maria.

What do you think, what would be your recommendation as to how big this task force should be? I'm we probably want different HOAs from the surrounding area, but if it's too big and nobody gets anything done, if it's too small, then we're really not.

We just started having this discussion and so I think every council member will wanna make an appointment of one and maybe a total, of three at large, and one of those would be a chair, so it would be a dozen, 10 to 12.

I just want to get an idea, okay.

We expect them to be able to help communicate back to their HOAs and things like that, but that can change, and we'll be in contact with each other over this next week.

We're looking at one to two appointments. Yeah, and then maybe two to three appointments

outstanding or overall for the overall council so that it'd be it'd be 10 to 12. okay all right somewhere in that range okay so we'll we'll work on that over the next uh week or so to have uh have your thoughts together for uh nominating uh someone that that would really be affected or a hoa president or something like that

And Mayor and Council, we'll reach out to some of the HOAs that we know within that area and ask for some names for volunteers.

Some names as well. Okay. We will take a recess and return at 7 o'clock.

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I now declare that the Plano City Council is reconvened into open session, that all council members are present. We'll begin tonight's regular meeting with the invocation led by Bishop Paul Donison with Christ Church Plano and the pledge led by Mayor Pro Tem Rick Horn. Would you please stand?

Well, thank you for the opportunity to offer tonight's invocation. I will have a personal moment to say I've been in the city for 10 years now. Having arrived here 10 years ago as an immigrant, now an American citizen, and truly I can say with my wife and my four daughters, having gone through PISD schools and to colleges, and serving now in one of our fine churches, that this is truly one of the best cities in America to live. So thank you for the proclamation, the opportunity to pray. Heavenly Father, we give you thanks for this city of Plano. We thank you that you have settled us in this place and given us a home. We pray for the wisdom of our mayor and city councilors. We pray for the wisdom for all those who take decisions for us in leadership. We ask, oh Lord, that this city, oh Lord, would be blessed in its welfare, blessed in its prosperity, blessed in its safety, blessed as a place where families and all citizens can thrive. And we pray, O Lord, that we would be thankful each and every day for the privilege and blessing to live here. So guide us now, O Lord, and guide this council. May this place be welcoming and neighborly for all. For we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Thank you. Be seated.

Thank you so much, we appreciate it. So tonight we have the honor of presenting a proclamation to the Professional Engineers Day, which is a day set aside to recognize the vital contributions licensed professional engineers make to society. I'd like to call forward Caleb Thornhill, Director of Engineering, and the engineering staff. Oh, good job, good job, staff. Thanks for coming. So today, August, actually it was last week. Sorry, we weren't here. It's Professional Engineers Day, August 5th, 2026, but we celebrate it all year round. And whereas licensed professional engineers apply scientific knowledge, mathematics, and innovation to develop solutions that strengthen infrastructure, protect public health and safety, and enhance the quality of life for the residents and businesses of the city of Plano. And whereas licensed professional engineers serving the city of Plano have made significant contributions to the planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of the city's infrastructure while advancing the engineering profession of both local and national levels. Whereas August 5th has been declared Professional Engineers Day by the Texas Society of Professional Engineers in conjunction with the National Society of Professional Engineers, an organization founded in 1934 that represents the interests of more than 31,000 licensed professional engineers. and those on the path to licensure who demonstrate the highest level of dedication to their profession to all 50 states and the US territories. Now, therefore, I, John Munns, Mayor of the City of Plano, Texas, do hereby proclaim August 5th, 2026, as Professional Engineers Day in Plano, and I do thereby encourage all citizens to join me and the Plano City Council in paying tribute to the talented engineers who strive to transform the future of our city and improve the quality of life in the city of excellence. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thank you so much. All right, let's move on to the consent agenda.

The consent agenda. The consent agenda will be acted upon in one motion and contains items which are routine and typically non-controversial. Items may be removed from this agenda for individual discussion by a council member, the city manager, or any citizen. The presiding officer will establish time limits based upon the number of speaker requests.

All right. Councilmember Kerr.

Mr. Mayor, I move we approve the consent agenda as presented.

Second. Thank you. I have a motion and second to approve the consent agenda. Please vote. Motion passes eight to zero. Thank you. Next item.

Items for individual consideration. Public hearing items. Applicants are limited to 15 minutes presentation time with a five minute rebuttal if needed. Remaining speakers are limited to 30 total minutes of testimony time with three minutes assigned per speaker. The presiding officer may amend these times as deemed necessary. Non-public hearing items. The presiding officer will permit public comment for items on the agenda not posted for public hearing. The presiding officer will establish time limits based upon the number of speaker requests, length of the agenda, and to ensure meeting efficiency and may include a cumulative time limit. Speakers will be called in the order requests are received until the cumulative time is exhausted. Item number one, public hearing and consideration of an ordinance as requested in zoning case 2025-21 To amend the comprehensive zoning ordinance of the city, ordinance number 2015-5-2 as here for two amended, rezoning 0.9 acre of land located at the northeast corner of Los Rios Boulevard and Fitzgerald Drive in the city of Plano, Collin County, Texas, to rezone 0.9 acre from agriculture to single family resident seven, and to expand specific use permit number 582 for private recreation facility from 1.1 acres to 1.6 acres, directing a change accordingly in the official zoning map of the city, and providing a penalty clause, a repealer clause, a savings clause, a separability clause, a publication clause, and an effective date.

Hello again, Mayor, Council, and Executives. I'm Christina Day, Director of Planning, here to present Item 1, which is Zoning Case 2025-21. This is a request that includes two parts. First of all, change to the base zoning to half an acre, which is currently agriculturally zoned property owned by the city, and then expansion of an existing specific use permit number 582 that is for private recreation facility. So this site was annexed into the city in 1999 and at the time zoned agricultural, which is the kind of base zoning for newly annexed property. In 2020, I'm sorry, in 2003, it was acquired by the city as part of a larger tract. And then shortly thereafter, Los Rios Boulevard was constructed, leaving this small remainder half acre On the east side of Los Rios Boulevard, the rest of the parcel on the west side would eventually become part of Oak Point Park and Nature Preserve. In 2005, the property surrounding this half acre remainder would be zoned SF7 and become part of the Trails of Glenwood subdivision. That happened in 2007 and S-582 for the amenity center for the homeowners association was approved and that was constructed in 2008 So the purpose of the request before you this evening is to rezone that half acre property again from agricultural to single-family seven and to expand the sup for the private recreation facility that will allow the homeowners association to incorporate that half acre into their private recreation facility. The property that is the city-owned property is part of the open space network on the future land use map. The property within the neighborhood today is neighborhood on the future land use map. That leads to us designating a partially meets for the description and priorities of the future land use plan. It fully meets the facilities and infrastructure policy of the comprehensive plan. With regard to public responses for this case, we got three signed letters in support and one in opposition within 200 feet. There were no responses from property owners within the subject property. All told, we have five letters of support, one neutral, and six in opposition for a total of 12 responses, and those are shown on the map. So considerations, this property has been largely underutilized since 1999. It's really isolated by its shape, being a triangular property that's difficult to develop. The city does not have plans to utilize it. The neighborhood has adequate park access, and the Parks and Recreation Department does not have plans to utilize it. The sup expansion would allow for the HOA to use this property as their private amenity center expanding their existing site If we rezone the property to align with the adjacent zoning So in summary the Planning and Zoning Commission recommends approval by a vote of seven to zero for both the agricultural to sf7 zoning and the sup expansion and and I'm available for questions that you might have regarding this case.

Thank you, Christina. Any questions for staff? Council Member Levine.

Thank you, Christina. Thank you, Mayor. Are we saying that we're going to allow them to use this property but not sell it to them?

I believe a sale of the property is scheduled. That is going to be requested and will come before the council.

So first they want to make sure that it's rezoned?

It's contingent upon the zoning.

Thank you.

Council Member Kerr.

Hi, Christine. Question. The expanded SUP only applies as long as the HOA owns it. So if whatever reason we transfer that property through a sale, if they were to turn around and resell it, the expanded SUP no longer applies?

The SUP would run with the property, but there is a deed restriction that's proposed with the sales contract that would limit the use of the property.

Okay, thank you. I'll open the public hearing.

There are no speakers on this item.

Okay. I'll close the public hearing, confine the comments to the council.

Mayor, I move to approve.

Second then. Okay, I have a motion and a second to approve item number one. Please vote. Motion passes eight to zero, thank you. Item number two.

Item number two, public hearing on the fiscal year 2026-27 recommended budget and the fiscal year 2026-27 proposed community investment program CIP.

Yeah. I'm Karen Rhodes Whitley. I'm the budget director tonight. We are having our first public hearing on the budget and the proposed CIP or community investment program. We're going to have this tonight. We also have another one planned for September, September. August 24th and then a public hearing on your tax rate will be September 14th. The recommended budget totals $841.9 million. Your community investment program totals $290 million. Included in the budget is our tax rate of 43.76 cents, which is exactly the same tax rate as this current year.

Okay, I'll open the public hearing. Do we have any speakers? I think we have one.

Yeah, we have one speaker tonight, Brett Cooper.

Yeah.

Can you remind me how many minutes? Do we have three? Yeah. Okay. Mayor Munson, members of council, I want to start by saying that overall, I'm proud of our city staff for putting together a budget that seeks to ensure that our city continues to provide excellent services with a property tax rate that is among the lowest in DFW and for this particular calendar year may provide some meaningful relief for those households that saw their appraisals drop for the first time in many years. However, I do have a couple of concerns. First, I am concerned that our budget includes money for Plano rides coming out of our general fund instead of GMP money. In addition, this cost was hidden inside of miscellaneous non-departmental outlays instead of being a separate line item for residents to see transparently. I was also disappointed to see that we chose to submit street repair projects for our GMP rebate instead of investing that in projects that seek to improve non-vehicular transit mobility or perhaps paying for Plano rides itself instead of coming out of our general fund. The timeline was tight this year, so I'm hopeful that for next fiscal year, we can seek the input of residents for transit-related projects that are innovative and reduce reliance on car transportation through a transit committee or other public forum. Second, I have concerns about money being spent on the Willow Bend redevelopment. There is a proposal to transfer $5 million for this, while our general fund ending balance is projected to be only slightly above our 60-day reserve target at 61 days. The budget document itself projects lower sales tax revenue, and should we be more concerned about the lingering effects of inflation on our expenses and or lower than projected sales tax revenue if consumers start to pull back given current events? We also have large bond capital projects looming over the next few years. And should we be saving to pay for some of those? Eventually the property tax rate will have to go up to pay for those bonds or services will have to be cut as the interest in sinking portion will have to increase to cover that. I know that you all will put great thought into finalizing this budget and engaging with residents to ensure that their concerns are heard. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, so this was our first public hearing. No vote, but we had our first one. So Karen, let's move on to item three.

Real quick, Mayor, if I might add on sales tax. One of the things that the city has done for really going on the last 10 or 15 years is we have a sales tax policy that actually looks at the average of the last three years. And that's what we actually use for budgeting. It actually lowers our sales tax intentionally to account for some anomalies that are there. So it is actually a conservative budget practice that we use to ensure that we have some comfort in being able to hit that number. So that's very important to us. That's a policy that has been implemented by the city that we do use every year, but wanted just to make sure that we acknowledge that that was an intentional calculation to actually have that be lower than what we actually are likely to receive this year. Okay.

Item number three, discussion and direction regarding proposed ad valorem tax rate.

Okay. Okay. We're here to talk about the tax rate, and there is a form that we need to send off to the Dallas Morning News. So we're going to have a vote at the end of this. You will need to... do a projection on what you think you want the tax rate to be. In the paper, we have to post it. It can go down, but it cannot go up. And we will get to that here in a minute. First, I want to go over the certified tax rolls that we did receive in from Collin County and Denton. Your certified value this year is $66.3 billion. That's an increase of 2.73%. We have still in the pipeline, what a chapter values in dispute total $6.5 billion. A chapter 42 are usually it's tied to commercial property. They do not like they're, They don't agree with what the central appraisal districts have appraised them at, and they can take it to court. So currently, we still have in the pipeline $6.5 billion in the pipeline going through the court system. You have $2 billion worth of your appraised property value going into TIFs right now, totals about $8.9 million. And then available in the general fund and in the debt fund is $264.5 million, and that represents a 2.5% increase over last year. Just looking at your market value and what came in, your new growth totaled $655 million. Residential accounts only totaled 10% of that and commercial accounts for 90%. That's been going on for quite a while as we built out on our single family. $1.8 billion is coming through on the existing property values. You can see here residential only accounts for 4% of that, whereas the last several years it's accounted for a lot more. Last year it was 70% of your existing property value. So we do have our market value on our homes are going down. I think we will see this as of January 1st coming up because normally when they do the appraisals as of January 1st, the downward trend on the market value started last October. So this coming up year, every month I'm hearing, well, When you're looking at it side by side, the market values have been going down. So the commercial part of the existing property value accounted for 96%. Now that 1.8 industrial accounted for half of that. So the industrial properties are definitely going up, whereas commercial office space has been going down. Okay, we have, of course, the assessed property values, 66.3. Out of that, 51% is tied to residential, 49% is tied to commercial properties. The Central Appraisal District, they consider multifamily a commercial entity. It is not considered residential. So on this chart, this is showing you the blue is your residential or single family. It accounts for 51.1%. The green is tied to multifamily. and it accounts for about 11%, and then all the other commercial values go in the yellow, and that's 38.1%. And I have also listed there what it accounted for last year. This is a look. We got on the phone the other day, called up these different cities. Allen, let's see, Allen, Fort Worth, and Dallas did not have where they could tell us their tax rate yet, what they're proposing. But all these other cities tied in here, that is what they're proposing. It's going through their recommended budget, just like what we're doing today. In addition, you will see we have discounted, if you have like Plano, we have a 20% homestead exemption. So that has taken off that 43.76 cents. When you take that 20% off, really, they're really paying 35.01% or cents. So you will see all the different ones, and we have them listed. McKinney and Richardson do not offer a homestead exemption, but you can tell by this chart we still are the lowest out of all this group as far as the tax rate. We're going to talk a little bit about truth in taxation. These are the Texas property tax laws we have to follow. So property owners, there's four different principles. Property owners have the right to know about any increases in their appraised property value and be notified of estimated taxes that could result in a new value. So that's basically what we're doing here tonight. It's going to go on the paper. A taxing unit must publish its no new tax rate and voter approval tax rate before adopting the actual tax rate. A taxing unit must publish special notices and hold one public hearing before adopting the tax rate that exceeds the lower the no new revenue rate or voter approval rate. And once again, the law says we only need one. We usually have three. A taxing unit is required to hold an election to approve the tax rate on the next uniform election date, which is in November, if it adopts a tax rate that exceeds the voter approval tax rate. This is a look at all your different tax rates. We have the no new revenue rate. Currently, it's 43%. .32 cents. Your current property tax rate is 43.76 cents. The proposed that's included in the budget is the same rate, 43.76 cents. And then your voter approval rate right now is 45.85 cents. And I'm going to go through all the descriptions on all these here in a minute. State law has where we can use this unused increment, which is the difference between the voter approval rate and And the actual rate that you adopt, we have no cents this year left because we used them last year when y'all adopted the 43.76 cents. So we're going to go through that here in a minute. This is just a look at the breakout between your M&O and debt. I know we've mentioned before you always have to pay your debt first. The debt rate now is 12.40 cents. It went up from 11.5. So what we have in the budget in the general fund is a tax rate or an M&O rate of 31.36 cents. If any of these other ones were adopted, like if you went down to the no new revenue rate, you would have to lower your M&O. We can't touch, you can't touch debt anymore. It's already been certified that we will be passing the 12.40 cents. Okay, what is your no new revenue rate? at the end of the day basically the revenues that you received in from property taxes last year. So if it's $200 million, it's the same rate on the new appraised property values that you would collect the $200 million. So this year, your no new revenue rate is 43.32 cents, okay? So it's just bringing in the same amount of revenue on existing properties. No new growth is included in this whatsoever. This is a look at over the years. the difference between the ad valorem tax rate that was passed by city council and what the no new revenue rate was. Back in 2019-20, all the way through, what, 22-23, the city council passed either at or near the no new revenue rate, okay? Last year, two cents was added on to the tax rate. That was the first tax rate increase since 2009, 2010, just to let y'all know. This year, Right now we have included in the budget the 43.76 cents. It's very close to our no new revenue rate. The reason why is because our average tax values have started going down and the market share has started going down. They still have in place state law says that every year an average home can go up by 10%. It could go up by 30%, but they're limited to increasing it by that 10%. So it's called a homestead cap, and it's clearly written out on your tax bill. But basically at the end of the day next year, I am thinking market value, average taxable value will all be about the same. So there's not going to be hardly any homestead cap left at all. Just another way to think about the no new revenue rate. When your appraised property values go up, your no new revenue rate goes down. So it's a seesaw effect. We've seen this go on for the last several years. The next portion of this, if your appraised property values go down, your no new revenue rate goes up. So it's a seesaw effect. Back in 2008, 2009, when the Great Recession started, at that time, our no new revenue rate, or what they used to call the effective tax rate, came in at like 52 cents. Our tax rate was 48 cents at the time. So in order to get those same revenues, the city council at that time would have gone up to the 52, but we didn't do that. We went through a whole bunch of different policies, a budget contingency plan, and got it back down to that 48 cents. So that's actually when we brought forth the sales tax cap policy. So that's been in place since 2008. Okay. And then if your price property values come in pretty flat, your no new revenue rate is going to be flat. So that's really what's going on here today. That 43.32 is really close to our 43.76. Okay, just some clarification on your voter approval rate. State law says your voter approval rate is equal to your no new revenue rate. they let you go up three and a half percent and then you put in your debt rate and then any unused increment that we're gonna get to here in a minute. We don't have any unused increment whereas last year, I wanna say we had like 1.20 cents that we were able to use. So but we're out of pennies now, I'll go more into that here in a minute. Once again, the voter approval tax rate provides cities with the same amount of tax revenue spent on the previous year for operations plus an extra 3.5%. And then you get to have your debt rate that's required to pay your debt. You always got to pay your debt first before you do anything else. And that's our 12.40 cents. So at the end of the day, our voter approval rate this year is 45.85 cents. Once again, state law says on the voter approval rate, you have to include the tax rate increment. The tax rate increment is a formula that is tied in your truth and taxation paperwork. They let you between the whatever the city council approves and the voter approval rate, For three years, you can add up those pennies, okay? But now we're out of those pennies. So at the end of that four-year period when we were pretty much at the no new revenue rate, we had like three cents that we could use. Well, all that's come off now. It goes away after the three years. So we have no tax increment. So the amount that we'll be putting in the newspaper is the 45.85 cents. Okay, certified truth and taxation rates. If for some reason we were to go down to the 43.32 cents, which is your no new revenue rate, we would need to reduce tax revenue by $2.9 million. If for some reason you go up to the voter approval rate, it would raise an additional $3.8 million. And then of course, once again, we have no tax increment. So your VAR is still the 45.85 cents. Included within the recommended budget is the 43.76 cents. One penny on the tax rate equals $6.6 million. So if you were to go up a penny, you'd collect 6.6 million. If you go up half a cent, it's 3.3 million. This is just a look at all the different rates. The proposed rate for the average homeowner last year was $452,109. This year, the average taxable value is, oh, something happened on that. It's 574 something, I don't know, something happened on that slide. Anyway, so we got a different average taxable and then you got the change. If you go over here, the adopted tax rates at first column, 43.76 cents. So the average homeowner's bill for the city of Plano was 1978. Even at the 43.76 cents, they're still gonna see a little increase and that's due to your average taxable value going up. So that'd be $55. If you go to the no new revenue rate, they're still going to have an increase. Any way you go about it, you're going to have a little increase because your average taxable value went up, and that's all tied back to that homestead cap that I mentioned that state law says the appraisals can go up 10%. Nothing over that, and that's what you're taxed at. If for whatever reason you decided to go to the voter approval rate, it would go from $19.78 to $21.30 or $152. Once again, we have no pennies left, so it's the same as your voter approval rate. Okay, tonight, why are we here? We are deciding what your tax rate ceiling is gonna be. So whatever rate is published, you can't go up from there. You can go down, but you can't go up. It will be published in the paper, August 13th. I'll show you the form here in a minute. Also tomorrow, we will have it be going scrolling on PTV and it will be live on the city of Plano website. We need to determine what the property tax rate will be, and then also this notice spells out that we will have a tax rate public hearing on September 14th. And then September 14th, you're scheduled to vote on the budget, the CIP, and set the tax rate. Okay, this is a look at the form that will be going into the paper. This is the front side. And this is the backside. So the rate we're gonna discuss tonight is highlighted in the yellow. Your no new revenue rate is already up there, the 43, 32, your voter approval rate. And then, of course, we announced that we're going to have the public hearing at 7 p.m. on September 14th. Your names will be listed at the bottom. If you're for the proposal, against the proposal, present, not voting, or absent. So that's the front page of the form. The second page just provides the tax rate change. So... There's your average homestead taxable value for this year. It's $464,574, which is an increase of $12,465 or 2.76 percent. We're not going up on the total tax rate. An increase would occur if on the taxes of the average home value. And once again, the revenue you're going to receive in from everybody will be $264.5 million, which is an increase of $6.4 million or two and a half percent. So now is the time that we discuss what you want your tax ceiling to be. I will let y'all know, a lot of the cities around here, when they do do this, they put in the, y'all can do what you want, but a lot of them do put in the voter approval tax rate, and that way it gives you leeway if you were to discuss another different tax rate. Or you can put in the 43.76. It's all up to y'all. So I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you, Karen. Thank you, Karen. So... This is our opportunity. We're going to put this in the paper and make this public. Obviously, you can't go up, but you can come down. But in regards to the proposed tax rate, I believe Mark delivered his budget at that number. And so if it's the will of the council, we can leave it at 4376 and just as it's shown there.

Mayor Pro Tem. Yes, thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Karen, for the explanation. I truly appreciate it. Over the past, well, since I've been elected, we kept that tax rate even, I mean, level for up to last year, where we basically were forced to increase it because of the legislation down in Austin that we were so nervous about.

Mm-hm.

So we did well with our increase that we had last year. And I think when we look at our budget this year, our citizens are expecting to see excellence in all aspects of their lives here, whether it's roads, whether it's library services, parks and recreations, and all that. And I clearly empathize with regards to the cost of living has increased since we've been here. With that being said, they'd be very upset with us if we still weren't able to maintain those levels of services. And so with that, I'd like to propose or make a motion that we approve the 0.4376 rate that was proposed in our budgets, but also what you presented. Maria.

Hi, Karen. Thank you so much. I absolutely love the way that you present budget to me because frankly I'm kind of dense when it comes to numbers. But I do remember that throughout my years on council that we have gone through some very difficult times because we really was trying to, we're trying to, keep the tax rate low enough to recognize the concerns of the resident but we were doing it in the, I guess, expense of city. And I've said this year after year after year, that the city cannot be run like it's a household budget. It really needs to be able to serve our residents and our public in order to make sure that the police are paid so that our safety is guaranteed. is taken care of. The roads are paved so we don't have any accidents on the road. Our first responders, firemen, they all need to be taken care of so that we have the safest place. Our park and recreation also needs to be maintained so that we take care of the residents' health. Throughout the years, we've always been trying to balance what is in the border of the minimum that we can get by. So my question to you at this time, and depending on your answer, I'll second Mayor Pro Tem's motion. How are we, if we were to stay with the proposed tax rate, for the oncoming year.

for 2627 or 2728 when you're talking about upcoming, because you're doing great for right now. So the 43.76 is covering everything. The two cent tax rate increase helped us tremendously. I do know with the passage of the last year's bond election, and we had spoke to y'all about this the other night, We are having some pressure on our debt. Your debt rate is already set for this year. There's no changing it whatsoever. We do know for next year, we will need another debt rate increase. We have a portion of it's already covered within the budget that you have before you. Uh, I think we have it scheduled to go up point half a cent next year. And we've got a majority of that is covered within the budget. Now, That's for next year. Going forward, I wanna say on Thursday, we will be presenting a five-year financial forecast update. Included within there, we're going to have a discussion. Your next two years are fine. This year and next year are fine. It's going out to what, 28, 29? We will be bringing on those huge projects and we're gonna need more than a penny extra on the debt rate. Mark, do you wanna mention anything?

Mayor and Council, this goes back to the discussion when we laid out the budget that we can get by this year with holding the tax rate firm, but the future years that we have, there will likely be more than one need to adjust the tax rate to make sure that we can cover the debt and keep up with the operations needed for that. We know it's coming, but we feel like this year, in accordance with how we've operated with the community, we're being upfront that we can cover this year, but we cannot cover future years at this rate. So we know something will have to be done next year and years following.

So I just want to make sure that we don't go through what we went through a couple years back where we're freezing budgets and hiring freeze and cutting back hours of parking recreation. I do not want to see that for Plano because we deserve the best and we are the city of excellence. With that said, I will second.

Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. I was basically just going to second the motion, but Karen, thank you so much for all your work with preparing this, and I'm very, very pleased so far with our budget. Thank you.

All right. So I have a motion and a second to approve item number three, which would be the proposed tax rate of .4376. Please vote. Motion passes eight to zero.

Okay, we will make the form in the morning and send it to the powers that be.

All right, let's move on to item four.

Okay, item.

Go ahead and let Lisa.

Sorry.

Announce it, I know.

Item four, consideration of a resolution to accept the certified appraisal roles for fiscal year 2026-27 for Collin County and Denton County and providing an effective date.

Okay, so tonight, this is just y'all approving what the central appraisal districts have sent y'all. In the package, you have all Collin counties, you have all Denton counties appraisal roll. You take all those numbers, and that's how we get that $66.3 billion is what... we can do property taxes on. Also within the information, we have provided all the tax increment financing and what all goes into that. So this is just accepting the role.

Okay. So we need a motion and a second to approve the resolution. I think that's what we're asking. Go ahead.

May I move to approve?

May I second it? All right. So I have a motion and a second to approve the resolution to accept the certified appraisal roles. Please vote. Thank you.

Motion passes eight to zero.

Item five.

Item five, discussion of the proposed fiscal year 2026-27 Community Investment Program.

Okay, tonight, this is when we provide y'all an overview and more detail of what is included in the Community Investment Program. We're about to have Parks and Rec, Engineering, all of them will come up and talk about their projects. They did speak to planning and zoning the other night that did approve the community investment program, all the different ones. So your total CIP is $290 million. Street improvements is the number one at 88.3 million. Municipal facilities is 56 million. In our capital maintenance fund, we are providing projects at 49.3 million. water and sewers 43.5 parks and rec municipal drainage park fee program and then we have technology so we will start off with ron and the parks and rec projects good evening mayor and city council i'm ron smith your parks and recreation director

here to present our portion of the cip you received in your packet as information a memorandum from parks and recreation that explains in greater detail the projects we have slated for the next coming fiscal year. This list of projects was also in addition to being presented as part of the overall cip to the planning and zoning commission we also had a conversation with our parks and recreation planning board and reviewed this list with them prior to it going to pnz. We have four different categories from which we fund or categorize our different projects. Our total CIP for the proposed year is 70 projects with 43.5 million total for Parks and Recreation, which is approximately 15% of the overall CIP proposed for next year. This map just shows the distribution of the projects that we have identified for next year, showing that it touches all areas of Plano. Our first category is park improvements. The majority of the projects that we have identified are to renovate existing infrastructure, renovate existing parks that are past their life cycle, renewing those. We do have a few new development that's gonna come online as well. So this park improvements is about 25 million. Some of the locations that are perhaps familiar to most of our residents, Bob Woodruff Park is being renovated, that North Core, which is the pavilion, the playground, we're moving that playground up out of the floodplain. We have a new park, Bruce Glass Park, that is proposed for development this coming fiscal year to kick that off, and some of these other projects that are listed here. Our next category is our capital maintenance fund, our CMF. This is general projects that help with the existing infrastructure, smaller amount, just under 7 million this year. These are ways that we can address concerns throughout the park system without a specific project title or master plan, but just to address the maintenance of our system. Our next category is our park fee. This is a special fee that is collected every time a housing development, whether it's single family or multifamily, comes into the city. Those funds have to be used within the zone that they are collected. This zone map is adopted by city council. This shows a couple of the projects that we've got identified for the upcoming year, a total of seven, and it shows the different zones in which those projects will occur. And our last category is our municipal drainage fund, which is about $8 million. That's an image of a project that is just nearly wrapped up at Arbor Hills. And some of the other projects we have at Chisholm Trail, Legacy Trail, Shady Brook, and the pond at Haggard Park. I know that staff will be available to answer questions at the end of our CIP presentation. I believe our next department is engineering.

All right, good evening. My name is Caleb Thornhill, director of engineering, and that is not a misspelling. I wanted to just take a brief moment to introduce Angela Flans. She is the new assistant director of engineering, and she will be presenting tonight's streets, water, sewer, and drainage budgets. And then after that will be John Salopek. He is our new facilities manager. He will be presenting our facilities budget.

Good evening, council, mayor, and city leadership. My name is Angela Flans. I am your new assistant director of engineering. I'd like to present the horizontal infrastructure that's civil engineering in our CIP program. The engineering department oversees about 100 projects. The funding types that we have is street improvements, transportation, municipal drainage, water and sewer. We have about $83.3 million this program this year, and it's about 29% of the CIP. Some of these project funding types, these are some of the more detail of the funding. The streets and transportation covers the pavement rehab, intersection improvements, bridge improvements, and signal and traffic technology changes. Drainage includes erosion control, drainage improvements, capacity improvements, and flood mitigation. Water and sewer includes those pipeline rehabilitations. Water specifically is cast iron pipe replacement, and we do some maintenance and capacity improvements for both water and sewer. This is a pie chart showing the breakout of all our different projects. You can see that streets and transportation takes up a large majority of our CIP projects, and the remainder is your water, sewer, and drainage. This map shows you the effort and the completion of projects in 25-26. The green represents the projects we completed this year. As you can see, there's quite a bit across the city. In 26-27, we actually have quite a bit coming up and they're also across the city. There's intersections and roadway improvements and other kinds of signal projects that we've got going on. So for our streets, This is what we have for funding is in 35.3 million. The purpose for a street CIP is to improve roadway infrastructure for the traveling public going around and through our city. So we're replacing aging pavement and doing other improvements along the way. So we have 10 projects that we completed at multiple locations. And then 26-27, we anticipate 42 active projects in design and construction. Streets also includes transportation, also our traffic related projects. So we have about $11 million slated for 26-27. Purpose is to reduce congestion, increase safety, and improve traffic flow on our city roads. Our traffic technology upgrades include vehicle detection, traffic cabinet replacement, citywide fiber expansion, and street lighting. So we have three projects that were completed this past year, one of which includes the controllers project that we had that touched every signalized intersection in the city. In 26-27, we have quite a bit of work coming up that's citywide. That's 10 active projects in design or construction. In municipal drainage, we have a total funding of about $12 million. Our purpose is to protect our stream banks and prevent erosion and make sure that we reduce flooding. We do have a stream bank stabilization program that we will be presenting to you very shortly, and we also have other initiatives with flood studies. So in 25-26, we completed two projects. These were also with multiple locations. And then in 26-27 with the kickoff with the stream bank stabilization program, we have 14 projects in design or construction. For water improvements, we have about $12 million. The purpose is to improve the city's water system and to make sure that we have safe drinking water for all our city residents and visitors. This is our water rehabilitation in neighborhoods. This is replacement of all our cast iron pipes. If you didn't notice that we had quite a bit of line breaks this summer and these projects are really important to make sure we replace all the aging infrastructure. A lot of our water lines are 40 to 50 years old, and these projects are going to fix that. We have about 1,500 miles of water mains, and we have a lot of work to do. So our current projects, we have 25,000 linear feet in design, 67 linear feet in construction. In 26-27, anticipate five new projects. And last but not least, we have wastewater improvements. Our purpose is to provide safe collection of wastewater, improve quality infrastructure, prevent overflows, and mitigate environmental impacts to the city. We are adapting the wastewater facilities to meet the city's growth and development. We have about 1,000 miles of wastewater pipelines and we currently have 11,000 linear feet in design and 8,000 linear feet in construction. In 26-27, we have seven new pipelines coming up. That's 24,000 linear feet. And after me, I have the facilities manager coming up.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. It's good to be with you. I'm John Salopek, your new facilities manager for the engineering department. I'd like to begin by going over our CIP overview. The two different project types that we'll be discussing are the CIP bond projects as well as the facilities maintenance or the CMF projects. We have a total of 79 projects. totaling $25 million, which equal 8.6% of the CIP budget. When it comes to the facility's CIP or bonds, our purpose is to fund the major long-term facilities investments, including new construction, expansion, significant renovations of our critical infrastructure. The total funding is $11.9 million. Of that $11.9 million, it is of 10 different projects. A few of those different projects you may be aware of now are the Oak Point Maintenance Facility, constructing the High Point Fuel Station, renovating Schimmel-Fennig Library, and other new critical generators, roofs, and window projects. When it comes to our CMF facilities maintenance, we are working on preserving existing facilities through our planned lifecycle replacement and renewal. This will help reduce downtime disruptions to have safe and reliable operations. We have a total funding of 13 million, 69 total projects. a lot of generator projects upcoming as well as HVAC, roofs and exterior and critical equipment. We are also supporting the parks projects. We have six parks projects that we're supporting them on. Next up, we have Peter Brasser with special projects. Thank you. Thank you, John.

Peter Brossard, Director of Special Projects. I'll be talking about all of our new ground-up design and construction projects funded by the CIP. We have five projects with a total budget of almost $300 million. This next year we'll be spending, the budget is about $41 million of 14.3%. We have several projects, the biggest which is the police headquarters 911 and Fire Station 14, which has been conjoined into one large project. located on the corner of Alma and Park. This is the current sort of schematic design of it, and which we're going forward with. We're about just going into the conceptual design phase, and I think it'll be a really exciting project.

The next is Fire Station 14.

Both of these buildings are really going to take into account employee safety and welfare and quality of life as they work in these buildings. These are 24-7 buildings, and so it's really important that we provide that. And there will be prototypes for the rest of the city. We're also doing underway the design of the police training facility. This is a replacement of the aged one from the 90s. And this will go forward with a whole new complex. And then fleet operations, this is, Another one where we are, the current facility is way beyond its life. It doesn't actually fit all our vehicles inside, so this would be replacing that in a new location. And then Fire Station 8, it would be, this one's lagging slightly behind because we are really working hard on Fire Station 14 as the model for all new ones, and then this will take that new design and replace the old one there. And that's my five projects. Thank you.

good evening Abby Owens director of public works for public works we have about 76 projects this year we have also drainage fund projects historically have not but as we've talked about with stream bank stabilization we're going to help support engineering and some of those more minor repairs that are needed public works has about 31 percent of the CIP budget So for street improvements, we have two major funding categories. The first is bond improvements, and that's right around $41 million. And then the capital maintenance fund is around $30 million. So altogether, we're planning on spending about just over $71 million on street rehabilitation and overlays. So arterial concrete repair and overlay is gonna be about 30 million. That includes all of the major roads that you'll see that will do the concrete repairs first and then behind that will follow with the overlay. I think next year's budget has just about 16 miles of overlay that's planned because we've done a lot of concrete work over the last couple of years. Residential street and alley repair, these are gonna be alleys that don't need full reconstruction. So we're gonna do less than 50% of any sort of pavement repair in these areas. That's gonna be just over $11 million. And then that's gonna be throughout the city. These types of projects are going to be in what we call residential neighborhood zones and I'll show you that map here in a second. So these are the locations that we have planned for concrete rehab and then the overlay after that and so it's the processes it's about 18 to 24 months of concrete repair and then the following summer is when we'll do an overlay. residential projects at any given moment we typically have four to six projects that are ongoing we'll start one neighborhood and then we'll move into different areas year over year so this year we will still be continuing to work and finishing out k8 and l8 g4 p3 and q4 and then we'll be adding in j4 and j2 and these are areas we plan to go no more about every 25 to 30 years and while we're in the neighborhood area we do all of the street repairs sidewalk repairs and alleys that are needed so that we don't have to come back again For capital maintenance fund we spend right up to that $30 million cap that we have every year and this is going to be more we have requirements contractors that jump around to different work orders. We also use this funding to do any sort of traffic signal repairs or enhancements that are needed. One of the things we're looking at for this next year is the lighted street signs that you see at our major arterials. A lot of those are in need of replacement and rehab so we're looking at improving those. We do guardrail repairs, any of the pavement markings that are done throughout the city is paid through here, and then also sidewalk repairs that we jump around on. This is really going to be anything that's driven by requests from residents or smaller work orders that don't deem an entire project area. Water infrastructure rehab. These are going to be items that are just general ongoing maintenance and repairs that are typically more expensive than what we can handle in our operations budget. So this year we'll be wrapping up the coating on Parker storage tank, which you'll see here. And then we are going to start design on the Jupiter elevated storage tank. We're also continuing with the construction that will eventually occur on chloramine boosting. And then we're going to start our ground storage tank master plan. Wastewater infrastructure is similar. It's just going to be anything that's outside of our normal operations and maintenance budget that we can sustain. And so this includes lift station improvements, also monitoring our flow monitoring of our sewer system, I&I studies to reduce any sort of infiltration of rainwater into our sewer system. And then we have an odor study that was approved a couple months back at council that we're working on as well. Drainage is our newer category, as I mentioned, and so we have about $150,000 set aside in this current year and the upcoming year. This current year, we're working on silt removal along Chisholm Trail, but we see that there'll be future adjustments that are needed, so we've programmed a steady $150,000 at this point, and we'll evaluate each year based upon what we're seeing. And that is it.

Thank you very much. We do have some questions. I see Council Member Thomas.

Thank you, Mayor Muntz.

Who would you like to ask that question to?

I'm interested in the erosion control.

Okay.

Caleb.

You win, Caleb.

Actually, I still see Angela sitting right there.

I know, I was gonna say, do you remember I introduced Angela a minute earlier? No, go ahead, what was the question?

So it's been noticed that some of the areas in our community has issues with erosion. And my question is, first, what are drainage fees and what role do those fees play into fixing the erosion issues that we see around the city?

Do you want to talk about drainage fees and I can talk about erosion?

Okay, go ahead. Yeah. Last, last year, when we brought forth the stream bank study. At that time, we had notified the city council that we were going to need a rate increase. We had not increased the rates in quite a while. So we produced, I want to say it was $1.50 per month for residential. And then on the commercial side, I want to say it was like 0.02. to eight on the commercial side. But we did that, it was passed through that as a three year drainage rate model. So in what, 28, 29, we'll be bringing back, it's supposed to last three years. So we are going to hire in Nugent who also handles our solid waste and water and sewer and do a complete redo of the drainage rate. You did pass that through last year. So it's a three-year rate increase. So what?

Well, let me add one other thing, Councilwoman, if you don't mind. The Drainage Fund, Water and Sewer Fund, Solid Waste Fund are all enterprise funds. And so we charge enough in those fees to actually pay for all services that are associated with that particular utility. So solid waste pays for solid waste, drainage pays for drainage, water and sewer pays for water and sewer.

That's correct.

So we actually use those rates to ensure that we can provide those services. And whether it's a capital expense or an operational expense, that's what we actually use those fees to do is to provide that specific service so that it does not impact the general fund and the property tax rate that we currently have.

Thank you. Councilman Kerr.

Mr. Thornhill, stay up there, please. Sure. I noticed that in the water and sewer, that one of the items you're addressing is capacity. You're adding capacity in some places. Is that something we're doing on behalf of North Texas Municipal Water District, is capacity for the city of Plano? If so, what's happening that there needs to be a capacity increase?

So I'll talk about water first. Typically, like Angela mentioned, the majority of our water projects are the aging infrastructure. Probably 90 plus percent. If we have a capacity issue, it's a known issue that's usually associated with a development that we may have to address. The wastewater, when we say capacity, some of our systems are surcharged. So it's not necessarily adding capacity to the system, although technically it is, but it's relieving the system of the surcharge. Surcharge means it's staying inside the manhole, it's staying inside the pipe. It's just, or it's coming in, I guess, outside of the pipe, but it's staying inside the manhole. And we want it to stay as much in the pipe as we can. Now, with that being said, we've had many discussions. There may be some capacity improvements with some of the redevelopment that's coming that we are analyzing and looking at to see if we need to add more to our system.

Okay, very good. Thank you.

Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. I think my question is for Caleb, so I'm sorry, Caleb. But in regards to our traffic cabinet replacement project, it seems like that's been going on for a while now. Do we know percentage-wise how much of that project's been completed?

You know, we do know that percentage, and I don't have it off the top of my head. I want to say we are at, I think the last number I heard was close to 80 cabinets have been replaced. Okay. And throughout the system, we've got somewhere around 270. Okay. So a little over or a little under a third, I guess, is where we're probably at. It's a multi-year program. Right. We coordinate with our public works team. They have to be out on site. We can only do so many a week. Right.

That's why I wasn't sure the question was for you or for Abby. I'm just keeping an eye on their project, so thank you. Well, good.

All right, thank you, Caleb. Thank you all for that information. We appreciate it. We'll continue on with any questions privately if you'd like or have some later on. Let's move on to item six.

Item six, to call a special election for sports and community venue project to be financed with a short-term motor vehicle rental tax, a short-term hotel occupancy tax, an event parking tax, an admissions tax, and a venue facility use tax in accordance with the provisions of Chapter 334 of the Texas Local Government Code, making provision for the conduct of an election, including a repealer clause, a severability clause, setting an effective date, and resolving other matters incident to such an election.

Thank you again, Mayor, City Council, Doug McDonald, Deputy City Manager. Before, again, I do want to introduce Greg back here. Greg is with McCall, Parkhurst, and Horton. This is our bond council, so this is a group that is helping review all of our materials, bond information, publications, notices, anything like that. They make sure we're staying in compliance with state law. They work really closely with our city attorney's office. So, Greg, I appreciate you being here, as well as I know we had Hilltop Securities here earlier as well on the financial side, and so... I wanted to acknowledge their participation here this morning. So the venue tax. One of the things that our city council's for y'all's consideration is on chapter 3034, the local government code. This authorizes the city to impose certain new taxes on visitors and activities associated with a sports and community venue subject to approval by the voters. Revenue generated from those taxes may be used to help finance the construction or renovation or improvement of a venue. Voters will decide if City Council proceeds on if they would like to support this funding tool for the sports and community venue that relies primarily on visitors and event attendees. I do want to note that while this vote to use Chapter 334 to finance and develop the venue project, a no vote does not prevent the city from proceeding with the arena project under the tourist statute and other laws. Council, you've seen this slide before back in June, but we'll just kind of bring this back to you for consideration. The number of taxes will be considered as part of this election. The short-term motor vehicle rental tax, the hotel occupancy tax. I do want to mention both the City of Dallas and hotels in Frisco that have 75 rooms or more already have this 2% increase. The city of Arlington and Fort Worth also have this 2% increase, so essentially it's bringing the city of Plano's tax of that 2% to match some of our neighboring cities. The venue event parking tax, the admissions tax, and a venue use tax. This election, council, if you proceed on, would take place on November 3rd of this year. Council this is the proposition language that was provided to us by our bond council. You'll see it will be one Proposition for the voters. It'll be the very last item on the election in November Proposition a you'll see here it outlies the the number of taxes with short-term motor vehicle tax event parking tax and so forth I do want to draw your attention State law does require us to have that. This is a tax increase I want to assure this is not a tax increase on individual property taxes for citizens here. If citizens were to rent motor vehicles or if they were to stay in a Plano hotel or go to an event, either parking at an event or to attend an event for parking, they will be charged one of these new tax increases. But this is strictly limited to either taxes that are related to the event and parking or short-term motor vehicle tax or hotel motel tax. Council, if your consideration is to adopt an ordinance calling the special election for November 3rd, 2026, for the sports and community venue project to be financed with the motor vehicle tax, short-term hotel occupancy tax, the event parking tax, admission tax, and the venue facility tax. I also want to bring to your attention, Council, we will be bringing to you future Council meetings tax revenue projections. We are working right now with our project consultants, and we'll be able to provide that information for you So, counsel, I'm happy to answer questions you may have.

Yes, thank you, Doug, for the presentation. A couple of questions. First, the rates that we're proposing here, these are almost going to be like our ad valorem rates. Once we approve this, this is the maximum rates that we're going to be able to charge. Is that correct? That's correct. These are the maximum rates that we can charge by state law. And there's still going to be a considerable amount of studies, particularly when we look at the venue use tax. We still have a lot of work on our side to work with and see what we can do to help both the players but also help the city. generating revenue to support the construction. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Okay. Now, here's my second question. After an election, if the citizens of Plano vote to approve these tax rates, when do these rates take effect?

That is a good question. Greg, do you know that answer? I'm going to bring Greg up here real quick to answer that question. Thank you.

Hi. The rates would become effective under a future ordinance adopted by the City Council.

So it will come back to us when we actually finalize these rates? Yes. Is that correct?

That's correct, yes.

Okay. Thank you.

Council Member Levine.

Thank you, Mayor. Doug... What will the city be able to do to educate our citizens about this election, what it is for and what it's not for?

Thank you, council members. So we're actually working really closely with our media relations communications department. We'll be having a website that has information on the proposition itself. We'll be treating this similar to what we would do with our bond projects, going out to the community, providing information, factual information on the election itself, as well as putting publications out, notices, mailers, all being kind of following our typical process for any type of bond propositions. Thank you.

Okay. I think we have some speakers. Thanks, Doug.

Our first speaker is Michael Forner.

Good evening, and thank you for your time tonight. That's kind of a tough act to follow.

Yeah, you have three minutes. I just want to make sure you knew that.

Yeah, a couple things. I did my own, more or less, traffic research on my own. I live in West Plano. I'm in the 75093 zip code, which is the same zip code, of course, as we'll append. lived in Plano for 35 years. We moved there in 2017. So I've seen a big uptick in traffic. So I travel north a lot. And I was looking north just real quick. Frisco, McKinney, Prosper, Salina, they've had 250,000 new residents in the last 10 years. The projections are even to be quite a bit bigger than that. I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around the idea of putting a sports entertainment district in the middle of a residential area. Because if I look at 75093, there is about 4,000 single family homes in that area. If you add on condos, townhomes, it's like 4,500. That's a big number of people. My concern is going to be, it's been expressed so far, but if you have a Dallas Stars game expecting, say, 20,000 to 22,000 people, probably between 8,000 and 10,000 cars. As of right now, there's not much public transit in that area. That's a lot of cars. In addition to that, if it's during the holiday season, which hockey is, you're talking about another 20% to 40% more car traffic. So now you're up to, give or take, 11,000, 12,000 cars. And for the life of me, I just don't really understand. I'm all about pro growth. I think the AT&T, the Daisy brands, Samsung is great. Those are all in commercialized areas. Um, so for, for me, you know, I, I'm in the middle of this stuff all the time, so I don't have to necessarily wait for a traffic report to tell me or an analysis to tell me, um, you know, if it might work or work or not. I've read the documents online, understand the financial pieces of the deal. Uh, I'll also have looked at other, uh, partnerships between sports teams and cities. And some of those things have really not worked out very well for the cities. You know, to name a few, Atlanta, Hartford, their hockey team. I mean, there's been winners and losers in these things. And the thing that I'm most concerned about, I feel like the deck is stacked, is that, you know, I'm in that impact area. So I see it and live it. And, you know, now... We used to live in Los Rios when we moved to Plano years back. I'm not gonna care as much. So you probably already have the numbers to have this thing passed. I'm just surprised that it's just gone this far. Okay, thank you for your time.

Our next speaker is Eileen Shibata.

Ms. Shibata, pull that mic down for you, if you don't mind. There you go. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor and City Council members, for the opportunity to speak this evening. I'm Eileen Shibata. I'm a resident of Plano. I'm concerned that the City is asking residents to vote on taxes without providing full transparency of the pros and cons and the costs of this project. My quick Google search shows that numerous studies consistently conclude, over decades of research, that sports arenas do not provide net economic gains to host cities. And these are reports released through Harvard, Stanford, University of Chicago economists, and others. I could not find any research refuting that conclusion. Plano is a city focused on business, and we've been successful because we're able to offer stable housing, low crime, great schools, reasonable commutes, and low taxes. I fear you're jeopardizing these key advantages. You're increasing the traffic congestion on a critical north-south artery, the Dallas North Torway, as well as the President George Bush Turnpike. I think you're going to be reducing the attractiveness of Plano to families. And I think if it does, it threatens our tax base, critical to future school and other community funding. These taxes proposed, I appreciate the comments made earlier to me because I didn't understand how were we comparing with other neighboring cities? Are we pushing our businesses out of Plano? I noticed that the tax on the sports team is capped at a fixed amount. Why isn't that tax a percentage so it can naturally increase over time the revenue earned by the Plano due to inflation or the success of the business venture. We're talking about over a 30-year lifespan of this arena. The open house provided no information on the scope or the cost of these projects. I was told by a city council member that you can't stop this project. There's going to be 120 events at the arena throughout the year. There's no planned increase in parking infrastructure on the site, and I want to know where is that information going to be posted to the general public. The letter of intent that I saw, I quickly breezed through it. This is between the city and the developer, and it's clear the $700 million amount we're talking about, that's only linked to the arena. The city is now going to promise infrastructure beyond the arena and I'm not even clear if additional capital improvements to the arena throughout its lifetime is going to be within that cap. There's also other costs yet to be negotiated into the agreement. I think we're closer to a $1 billion investment by Plano and Plano doesn't even receive any of the venues from the operations of the arena. It's all going to the developer. So if we're talking about placing an American Airlines Center Arena in our backyard... Ms. Shibata, your time's up. Oh, okay. I just want to say that residents should vote no in November. No to the project and no new taxes. Thank you.

Our next speaker is Judith Walsh.

Good evening, Mayor Muntz and the members of the Plano City Council. I am Judith Walsh, a resident of Plano at Parker Estates, living less than two miles from Willow Bend Mall. I am employed at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Plano, which is .6 miles from Willow Bend Mall. Thank you for the opportunity to address the impact of the proposed Willow Bend Mall project on our neighborhood character and quality of life. Our West Plano community is deeply concerned. Many residents chose Plano specifically for its quiet residential streets, excellent schools, and a city that puts families and residents first. We did not choose Plano to live next to a 90-acre year-round sports and entertainment complex, which includes approximately 18,000 to 20,000 seat arena designed to draw large constant crowds. This scale of development is fundamentally inconsistent with the surrounding neighborhood Those of us living closest to the site are ground zero and will bear the brunt of the negative impacts such as increased traffic. The timeline for this permanent structural shift has provided limited opportunity for meaningful resident input. Therefore, we respectfully ask our city council to pause the approval process and the November election. until the council can formally commit 100% to binding enforceable neighborhood protection measures such as strict noise limits, lighting standards, event night parking enforcement, increased security, traffic abatement, and preservation of our power grid. In conclusion, I'm proud to be a Plano resident. Please listen to our concerns. Thank you. I'm grateful for your time and attention.

Thank you.

Our last speaker is Jeremy Matthews.

Good evening, counsel. My name is Jeremy Matthews. I live in Plano, and I am speaking in opposition to this election ordinance. For what it's worth, I am once again expressing my opposition to the agreement that the city has so far made with the Dallas Stars regarding the proposed arena. In particular, the $700 million that the city plans to contribute to the arena's construction. In regards to this ordinance, while it is apparently in compliance with Chapter 334 of the Texas Local Government Code, I believe it is one of omission in regards to the financing of the arena. Yes, it contains a whereas clause referring to the council's June 8th resolution which mentions financing the arena and when Ter 6 was created. But this ordinance and its ballot text do not provide a clear or full financing picture to the Plano voters. This election covers only a portion of the financing of the arena. and quite likely the smaller portion. It is not made clear that likely most of the financing will be backed by the TER 6, and the borrowing involved in the selling of bonds only requires city council approval. Plano citizens traditionally vote on bond elections in the millions or hundreds of millions of dollars. This tradition of the voters approving or rejecting such borrowing should continue, but it's not happening here. Nowhere in this ordinance or in the ballot text is the clear connection made between the $700 million and the arena. Whatever the legalese or financing mechanisms, this is what Plano voters should be allowed to explicitly approve or reject. Personally, I think $700 million, 70% of the arena cost, is way too much for Plano to contribute. Other cities like Arlington have contributed far less of a percentage for sports venue construction. This is also a lot of debt for a city the size of Plano to absorb. Larger cities like Dallas or San Antonio can better absorb it. It is also basically a luxury arena by the wealthy that will cater more so to the wealthy. $1 billion for an arena that seats only 18,000 people. Public funds should not be sacrificed, certainly not this much, for such a venture. This is not a good deal that Plano has made with the stars, and I think the city should take a step back and reconsider it before going forward with this venue tax election and on down this very expensive path. Thank you for listening.

Thank you. So item six is for us to... vote on whether or not we're going to put the venue tax election on the referendum in November 3rd. So that's what we're voting on tonight. Council Member Kerr.

Mr. Mayor, residents. I think I've met all of you and probably spoken to all of you that are here already about this. And each of you have voiced your concerns. And what we heard today is that we're at least a year out before we have all the studies done, all the information. all the answers that related to the size of the project, where it's going exactly within the space, all of those sorts of things. And so I feel that if we were to make a decision now not to move forward with this, we would simply put ourselves in a bad position. And so I think that we have many opportunities to say no in the future. But I think now is not the time to do that. I think we have an opportunity, assuming that we address all of the issues that have been brought up and those that will come up. I think we have those opportunities. We're going to hear bi-monthly updates. We're going to have more town halls. As the studies come out, we will present those to you and other citizens here so we can get a better handle on it. I just feel like it's a little early to say no to this. And so with that in mind, I move that we approve this item.

Maria.

So I'm going to second this, but for a different reason. I mean, I think this is just so that we could put it on the election for November. Is that right, Doug? And so basically, we're allowing the residents of Plano to make that decision whether or not they want to move forward on this. Right?

No, this is just the venue tax election, which would be- Right, that's what I'm saying is- Yeah, but this would not stop the project.

No, no, no. In regards to the city. What I'm saying is about the tax, but it has to be voted by the residents, right?

Correct, correct.

Okay, yeah, so regardless of which step we are, every step of the way, the resident gets the input as to whether or not it needs to move forward. That's how I, that's the reason why I'm seconding it.

All right, I have a motion and a second. Sir, your sign is too big.

I'm going to let it go, but we don't allow signs that size.

What does it say? Okay. I have a motion and a second to approve. Please, be quiet or we're going to ask you to leave, okay? This is our meeting. Ours too. Please vote. Motion passes eight to zero. Thank you. Okay. Comments of public interest.

Comments of public interest. This portion of the meeting is to allow up to three minutes per speaker with 30 total minutes on items of interest or concern and not on items that are on the current agenda. The council may not discuss these items but may respond with factual or policy information. The council may choose to place the item on a future agenda. And our first speaker tonight is Ramesh Shastri.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, council members, and the city leadership. My family and I moved to Plano in 1999 from Rochester, Michigan. The last 27 years, we have noticed that this city has been managed by very capable and competent people at every level of the city. And this is evident from the quality of people who work in the various departments and the top-notch amenities and city services that are available to us. Over the last 27 years, we have raised two sons and we are now empty nesters. Although we have decided to stay put in Plano. Therefore, we have a vested interest in making sure that this city maintains its high quality of life and the high bar it has set for itself. I'm here because of a brief conversation I had with a city employee during which time he mentioned that there were going to be some new surveillance cameras installed. And it is from that perspective that I want to make sure that any traffic surveillance camera network that the city of Plano deploys would respect our privacy. While the intent of the system might be innocent on the surface, the images and associated data have allegedly been used to threaten, harass, illegally monitor, and track innocent people, not to mention the lack of transparency on how the data can be abused for commercial exploitation. Incidentally, there are also instances when police with good intention used the system to track criminal perpetrators and due to errors inherent to the system, instead accused innocent people who were then left having to prove their innocence. Regardless of which camera network, be it Flock or Axon or some other flavor, the city of Plano needs to take a thoughtful approach to ensure that our civil liberties vis-a-vis a reasonable right to privacy is never compromised when deploying such camera networks. It is also imperative that these camera networks be banned from sensitive locations such as schools, educational institutions, banks, women's clinics, doctors' offices, hospitals, religious facilities, just to name a few, because it's impossible to predict how a spur-of-the-moment convenient cost-saving measure might be abused in the distant future. Thank you very much for allowing me to speak.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Alexander Stein.

Moving on.

Our next speaker is Benjamin Godsmith.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, City Council, and executive leadership. I just want to continue the same concern that was just discussed with the automatic license plates cameras. The concern of Not that necessarily Plano will abuse it. However, there's a general concern of a lack of oversight that state governments or national government will use this information and suppress civil liberties of it. I don't want to take up more of your meeting. I just wanted to have a moment on the record to show my personal concern as a citizen who loves this city.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Harlan French.

Much like the two before me, I want to speak about the ALDRs or automatic license plate readers as well. call it what you will the most commonly localized version is flock cameras and these flock cameras have been currently only over 70 cases have been misused one leading to a domestic dispute between a police officer who tracked his ex-wife and their children and got into a physical altercation with her current ex or current boyfriend I think that these are things that are really concerning, but not only that they could be misused by anybody, not necessarily Plano, but that this data is being sent to private corporations, which could be utilized for any means. They'll be taking these data and selling it to other people. But it's not just the issue with our data. It's also that these are going to be tracking our personal movements, which have been previously seen as unconstitutional by the USV Jones in 2012. This ruled that the GPS tracking was an unconstitutional search without probable cause. And this has been used to create probable cause for people going over state lines. If I go into Oklahoma to visit my mother-in-law and I come back into Texas, am I going to have probable cause to have my car searched for any reason? I don't believe that that's acceptable. And this ruling, U.S. v. Jones, was also upheld by U.S. v. Katzen. The surveillance was a Fourth Amendment breach, and the entirety of their search was thrown out. Currently, this raises civil rights concerns and abuses that could be continued throughout the use of these flock cameras. With the constantly involving nature of these cameras, it would be sensible policy to be more cautious with this information, as these cameras do not just track personal vehicles, but also individual movements. And in addition to all of this, I believe that there was no vote to put these cameras up. And I think that there should be a referendum for Plano to vote on this. If the citizens believe that this is in their best interest, I believe that we should be allowed to vote on it. As a city of excellence, I do believe that we're above surveillance. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Brianna Morello.

Good evening, everyone. My name's Brianna Morello. I'm an independent journalist. I've tried reaching out to several of you on this, obviously, committee meetings, whatever it is. I've tried my best to reach out to you guys. Have not heard back from many of you, unfortunately. Today I'm here, unfortunately, because the police department has failed me And it is infuriating as a journalist. I've worked with police departments all the time. It is infuriating that the Plano Police Department have completely ignored me. They continue to ignore me. I was forced to post a video online of an individual who decided to follow me in my home. He did not belong to my property. I live over in the Legacy West area. He followed me into my apartment complex, went into the side door. It's actually right by the Plano Police Department. I was completely shocked that this individual was following me up a stairwell, wouldn't leave when I told him to get out of my building. I told him several times to get out. He didn't belong there. His name is Harvey Barsoom. And because he decided to ignore and continue to follow me up the stairs, I was forced to defend myself because I'm someone who's dealing actively with death threats. The FBI at the time was investigating those death threats. Plano PD knows about that. I called them weeks prior so that they flagged my address. Long story short, unfortunately, they sent an individual named Officer Ken Minx to my apartment. He took a statement from me, but he never followed through when I asked him to look at the footage. I even showed Officer Ming's the police report, which detailed the fact that the FBI was investigating threats against me. There was a group of individuals who have tried several times because of my work, because I go after sex offenders and murderers, who tried to put child pornography on my devices. They tried sending it electronically. They have issued death threats to me repeatedly. The Plano Police Department knew about this prior to this individual following me. I was forced to defend myself and pull my firearm in that stairwell because this individual would not back down. He looked up at the camera, was still going up the stairs. The only reason why he turned around to leave my property was because he saw a firearm. That's why we have Second Amendment in this country. Now, unfortunately, Officer Mings decided not even to look at the footage. I know this because I asked people on several occasions who worked the property if they heard from Mings. Mings, they said they never heard from him. I have that in writing from the property. Mings later lied in a police report, in my opinion, and said that he actually reached out to my property. I believe he did not do so. Again, I have that in writing. And the police report that Mings actually filed only wrote up after I posted the video online, after threatening to sue the city of Plano, after threatening to sue the police department. I got the footage. I released it online. The internet helped me solve this case, not the Plano police. Unfortunately, Mings, still in my police report, wrote that it was just a flirting incident and then said that the individual would have grabbed me if he wanted to cause me harm. They have allowed Mings to get off with all of this. They have covered this all up. He didn't even enter the surveillance footage as evidence because he knew I was going to FOIA it. So the Plano Police Department, in my opinion, is actively involved in a cover-up, still to this day with millions of views. They have not responded. I have their emails on how they were just more concerned about my following than it was a Fox News journalist at one point in my life. And that's all they were focused on. So there needs to be oversight in the Plano Police Department. It is unacceptable, their behavior, and it doesn't need to end here. You guys have a job to do. Follow up on this. Thank you. Thank you.

Our last speaker is Blake Mark.

Okay. There being no further business, we are adjourned.