City Council - Special Meeting

I was going to start without you. I knock it off your time, too. I didn't even notice.

And we can begin in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our special city council work session meeting where we'll be discussing the budget on today, Friday, June the 26th. Ms. Hilbert, will you please call roll?

Yes, sir. Councilman De La Garza?

I am present.

Councilman Kitter?

Here.

Councilwoman Butler? Present. Mayor Pro Tem Young?

Here.

Councilman Lofgren?

Here.

And Mayor Crocker?

Here. If you would, please rise. Join me for the pledges, followed by a moment of silence. Thank you.

Please be seated.

All right. Welcome everyone. We have a busy agenda for today. Um, I understand Mr Garza that we have no announcements or reminders in no public and employee recognitions, correct? That's correct. All right. Items from council. Is there anyone? I see none. All right. I have no cars for citizens communication, so we will jump right into the business of the day and start our work session. Mr Garza. All right. Good morning mayor and council. Uh, welcome to another, uh,

Council workshop right on our budget and we're excited to present to you the fiscal year 27 preliminary budget. As always, I want to take a minute to say thank you to all of the staff that spent quite a bit of time putting this budget preliminary budget together. The finance team under Wesley's leadership has done an excellent job. This year in particular, there's been a lot of things that have pulled myself and Gilbert in many different directions. This might be the first budget that Wesley actually tackles all by himself, right? Close. As close as it can get, right? But anywho, today we plan on following a very similar format like we have in previous years and so I will provide a holistic overview of the preliminary budget and then the various department heads will take turns going through their department budgets while at the same time hitting a little bit on highlights. I did ask them this year in particular to spend an extra minute or two talking about their successes for the fiscal year or for the past year. You may recall that we did not do the full-blown annual report presentations earlier this year, and so I felt it appropriate that they take an extra minute or two to highlight some of the great work that they've done in the past year or so. And so without further ado, I'll get started on the holistic budget proposal. You'll notice in front of you that there is a document with physical copies of all of the presentations from the department heads. The presentation that I will go over, you do not have a physical copy of. This presentation was finalized at about 8.50 a.m. this morning. Where I want to start is actually where I was last summer. And so last summer when we proposed the 2026 preliminary budget, it was a pretty rough year for a lot of cities. And so you may recall that I kicked off last year's preliminary budget presentation with this slide just highlighting some of the budget challenges that a lot of communities across the state are facing. And you may recall me mentioning that we're truly blessed that we are not in this position where we have to cut positions, cut services, or are facing any deficits. We're not in that position and we were not in that position because of our historical conservative approach to budgeting, which I think has helped us out quite a bit. We also did not have to face any reduction in services or personnel during the pandemic, which a lot of cities faced at that time as well. Going into fiscal year 27, it actually is a very similar story. And so these headlines are just from the last month or so where you have, once again, a lot of cities across the state facing budget deficits, having to cut services, having to cut staff, And so once again, this provides an opportunity for us to just feel really proud of the fact that we are not in this situation. And I hope that we can all agree that we need to make sure moving forward that we never put ourselves in a situation where we budget so tight that any sort of change in the economy or in the environment puts us in a position to have to cut services or cut personnel. So that's something that I'm very proud of. And similar to last year, again, we're not having to do any of that going into fiscal year 27 in spite of the fact of declining revenue and plateauing property values, which I'll get into. And so some of the common themes around the 27 budget story are, of course, centered around having a balanced budget. We are, of course, always mindful of the property tax rate. We also always try to do the best we can for our employees through a pay program enhancement. This year in particular, I'm going to spend an extra minute talking about the health plan. because of some trends there that are going to necessitate us addressing in the next year or two. And 27 in particular on the CIP side is very heavily driven by the community center project. And so we're very excited about that. And as always, public safety is a big priority of ours. And so I'll be very intentional in highlighting the enhancements to public safety that we've done over the past few years, but that we plan to do once again in fiscal year 27. Overall, the overall preliminary budget is looking at roughly $242 million on the expenditure side and $231 million on the revenue side. There's about an $11 million delta there. And so I do want to take a minute to remind everyone on where that delta comes from. And so here you see that for fiscal year 27, there is roughly a total of $11 million in excess fund balance. This is basically money that goes unused. It becomes surplus. And we, to some extent, depend on to help fund one-time expenditures in the subsequent year. And so this year is no different. I think it's important to be clear that in spite of the usage of these excess fund balance, excuse me, these excess funds, that we still maintain an adequate reserve for our policy, and of course I'll have a slide that shows where we stand as it relates to that 25% reserve minimum in our larger funds. I also thought it might be helpful to show a little bit of a history of the usage of these excess funds. You'll notice that in fiscal years 22 and 23, they were a very high number. This is due for two reasons. One, when the pandemic hit, it really slowed down our expenditures and slowed down a lot of projects, which caused us to have a greater amount of excess, which provided an opportunity to utilize that excess in fiscal year 22 and 23. We also were the recipient of ARPA funds. And so in one of those years, specifically 23, that accounts for that lump sum cash that we received through ARPA. That was sort of a one-time situation. But you see how since then, we've been consistently utilizing anywhere from six to $11 million in excess funds. I do want to also draw your attention to the wastewater utility fund row, because you'll note that in fiscal years 23 to 25, they were very heavy years of using excess funds, and 26 was a very low year. I think it's important to highlight that this conservative budgeting approach that I referenced has helped us not have to decrease services. is something that we've been eating into slowly but surely over the last few years. And I'll make that point a little clearer in some other slides. But the amount of excess funds, both in general fund and in water fund, are likely to be trending down as we begin to be more aggressive with our budgeting approach in order to continue to meet the needs of our organization and community. As I said, I'll point them out in some follow-up slides, but you'll begin to see that downward trend moving forward. Any questions on that? Okay. So on the revenue side, we're looking at, for 27, about $231 million, as I mentioned. There's about a $13 million difference compared to fiscal year 26, and it's predominantly driven by the fact that we have a lower CIP. for fiscal year 27. You may recall that was an ongoing conversation during the development of the CIP with this reality that just moving forward over the next few years, we just don't have as much debt capacity for CIP projects. And so we're beginning to see that downward trend on the CIP side. Before I get into a little bit of detail on where we stand with property tax revenue and sales tax revenue, I thought it would be a good time to remind you on a couple of legislative changes that have a direct impact on our property tax revenue specifically. Of course, we're familiar with SB2, which was adopted in 2019, which, as you know, creates this cap of 3.5%, and anything above it requires voter approval election. You may recall that we're also technically allowed to roll over some of that unused capacity, which in theory could also help communities keep up with the rise of inflation, but it's challenging when inflation is larger than that 3.5%, which it had been for a couple years there. In addition, and more recently, this just went into effect, is an increase in the business personal property exemption. That went up from $2,500 to $125,000. And this year, as we review and receive our certified tax rules, we're gonna see that impact and that hit for the first time. And so I'll show you what that's causing on the NTAV side. But this is a significant impact on the taxing ability for cities, as obviously the exemptions don't count towards that. And so what is the combined effect of these two legislative pieces create? It obviously makes it hard to keep up with inflation and just the increase in the rising cost of the cost, excuse me, the rising cost of the delivery of service. And it just makes things very tight, which is putting cities in positions to either have to cut services, draw reserves, pursue a voter election, or grow the tax base through new development and growth. And quite frankly, what's happening in a lot of these other cities that are having to reduce service or that are facing deficits is because of the plateauing of property values, the decrease in values that are being able to be assessed or levied a property tax with the exemption, as well as just budgeting very aggressively. And so again, those are things that we wanna just be very mindful of. And a combination of us, to some extent, eating into our cushion while facing these constraints is gonna put us in a very unique position over the next year or two in having to make some tough choices on how we wanna get through this time. And so we're very blessed that we haven't been in that position that other cities are in, but if we aren't intentional enough and if we don't develop a strategy, we may end up there. And so just keep that in the back of your mind. Those are things that we think about every day in my office and we look forward to having those conversations with you moving forward. And so what does that look like as it relates to property values? Recall that we don't receive the certified tax rolls until the end of July. So this is just a guesstimate of where we think we are based off of some of the updates that we received from the appraisal district. But it shows a very flat with minimal growth NTAV for this upcoming year. Now this already contemplates that increased exemption that I referenced. If that exemption were not there, then this NTAV would be a little higher. And so that's, again, the impact of that increased exemption is going to cause your NTAV to take a hit. In addition, I'll point out the amount that is under protest. And so the column on the right, the second row, shows that there are still roughly $900 million worth of assessments that are under protest. This time last year, that number was at about 600 to 700 million. There has been a significant increase in the amount of protest that the appraisal district has received this year. And so that's something to keep an eye on as well. And we expect that once everything settles and we receive the certified tax rolls, that we'll end up somewhere in the very minimal growth area on the NTAV side. On the right hand side, it does not include the upcoming year because we wouldn't incorporate a 26 figure until it's certified. So on the right hand side, you only see up to 25, but you see how the residential values are plateauing. And that's also something to keep in mind. This chart here kind of better illustrates that plateauing effect. And so the way that I put this together was in an attempt to describe a pre-pandemic environment the pandemic environment that saw that rapid growth and that inflation growth, and then the plateauing effect. And this is very, very, very relevant to us because for years, we've been talking about how this, massive growth that we experienced in NTAV for four years was not sustainable. And we were blessed to benefit from that through a combination of having historic levels of CIP programs, historic levels of investment in our employees through different pay programs. We did what we could, and I think we did the right thing in taking advantage of that growth to some extent. but that we knew and have known that that's not sustainable and that the key to our NTAV growth is growing Victoria, pun intended. But again, this is just something to keep in mind. And one of the beauties that happens when we have the increase in NTAV is that it provides the opportunity to lower the tax rate while increasing the property tax revenue, which is why in this chart you see that property tax rate going down between 21 and 24, and then you're also seeing the plateauing effect of the tax rate itself, which is gonna put us in a position assuming that values continue to plateau, to either have to consider tax rate increases to generate additional revenue, or at minimum put us in a position to have to maintain the tax rate. One thing that is important to note here too in terms of just how this situation has been handled in the past is that you'll observe in this chart here that from 2011 to about 2016, that tax rate was being lowered. And so again, there was very minimal growth that happened during that timeframe. And so it just further validates that relationship between our property assessments and the tax rate. Any questions on that?

Can you go back that one slide that showed the difference in the values because, yeah, there we go. So it's 6.4 versus 5.7.

We're at five point seven, right? Yeah, and that's and that's due to the raising of the exemption in part So there's also regardless of that exemption existing or not. There's also been a holistic across the state plateauing effect and even decrease of property values got you because the market is plateauing itself, right? And we're seeing that, you know, in the housing market, you know, and just commercial property market across the board. So it's not solely because of that. I want to say, Wesley, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, that the exemption, I think, accounts for about 200, what was it? It's about $130 million. $130 million. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So what are we going to do with the tax rate for fiscal year 27? As we've discussed, maybe not fully in a public environment, but what we've discussed for months is wanting to take a very conservative approach to the property tax rate. And so what we know is that we're going to pursue the no new revenue tax rate going into 2027. We don't know what that tax rate number would be because we need to wait to receive the certified tax rolls in order to run through the calculations. But regardless, we know that that's the plan. And we know that that's the plan because we want to prioritize the implementation of a new stormwater drainage utility. And we know that we want to do that while minimizing an impact on our homeowners, at least as it relates to what we can control, which of course is the city property taxes. And we think that's the fiscally responsible thing to do. And so again, while we do not know specifically what the number will be, we know that the plan is to propose a no new revenue tax rate come the official proposal of the budget at the first meeting in August. So on the sales tax side, here's an example of us being more aggressive. As I mentioned earlier, historically we've always been very conservative with how we budget certain revenues. And here you can clearly see that we're becoming more aggressive. We started that last year, and you may recall me mentioning last year that we were getting more aggressive with the way that we budget on the sales tax side. And so for fiscal year 27, we are accounting for a budgeted increase in revenue of half a million dollars. And so you can see how we're estimating that we're gonna end up roughly at that 19.5. You can see that we hit an actual of 21 million in 25, but we're proposing being basically right at 20. And so again, this is an example of us being aggressive with budgeting in order to keep up with our increased expenditures, which even though they're not a lot, we still have to account for that additional revenue somewhere. This is also an example of how other cities get really aggressive. I can tell you from experience, too, in working in other communities that are more aggressive that there would be nothing that would stop us from saying $21 million, $22 million, and just take our chances and just do that to fluff the budget to balance it out. But then what happens if you hit a recession? You don't get that money, and then you're having to cut services. And so, again, I think it's important that we do our best to continue to be as conservative as we can with our budgeting approach so we can be recession-proof, we can be pandemic-proof, we can be anything-proof. Any questions on that?

Okay.

So going on to the expenditure side, and so as I mentioned, it's a $242 million preliminary budget. That is about a $12 million decrease compared to 2026. And again, it's predominantly driven by a decrease in CIP and one-time expenditures. Basically, we're not buying as many vehicles as we did last year or this year, I should say. And so this summarizes that decrease of roughly $10 million on the CIP. I won't go into details on the CIP. We did that at a recent council meeting, but happy to email and send that recap. But this is simply just to showcase that decrease and more specifically showcase how the residential street budget is going down because again that debt capacity is not there how it was for the last few years and you can very clearly see that in this chart here that just shows the historic levels of funds that we had there for a couple years as it relates to residential You may recall that at a recent conversation on the CIP, I also shared that we're working on some ideas on how we can enhance our investment in streets. Those ideas are not included in this preliminary budget. Those ideas are something that we're still working through and will probably take us a few more months to finalize. And so don't be surprised if come August, the first meeting in August when I propose the official budget, we haven't yet figured out those creative options. And so I feel very confident that we will be able to follow through with those creative solutions, some of which I've already shared with some of you. It's going to necessitate partnering to a greater degree with the Sales Tax Development Corporation, and so it'll take time to work through that aspect of it. But again, it's not lost on me that investing in streets is a big priority for all of you, and that we need to think outside the box in order to invest as much money as we can in streets. One of the trends that I also want to bring to your attention that is consistent with the fact that we are not budgeting as conservatively as we have been in the past is that you're gonna also see that in the amount of money that's available to transfer to the CIP from the general fund. And so you're already seeing that here in fiscal year 27 that the amount of money that we're transferring to the CIP is only 3.5 when in the last four years, it's been on average about a million dollars more than that. And so as we eat more into that cushion, it obviously leaves less excess for one times and less money to transfer to the CIP. The very far left bar also showcases the impact of the pandemic and the fact that we put a lot of projects on hold and ARPA funds, which, again, was an anomaly and not something that's going to happen again, I hope. So let's talk a little bit about personnel and pay program. I'm not gonna go through this in detail. This is simply just to convey to you a reminder that we have invested quite a bit in our employees over the last six years. They, of course, our employees are our most important asset. We obviously would not be able to do anything without them. And so I think we rightfully so have invested in them to the extent that we can. And you could see that over the last six years, we've invested almost $11 million in total over that time span. And that's not something that we intend to stop doing. But what will change is that just the amount of funds that are available is obviously going to vary. But I think continuing to invest in our people is still the wisest move on utilizing our limited resources. In fiscal year 26, you may recall that was the largest hit with the historic pay program that predominantly over 70% of that pay program went to public safety. That's very relevant because one of the things that we want to do for fiscal year 27 is do a wage adjustment to non-public safety, not all, but to the majority of the non-public safety employees. Before I get into that, I want to get a little bit into the weeds on some personnel changes. We normally don't go into this level of detail, but I felt that in this year's preliminary budget, it was important to do so for a number of reasons. One, to showcase how some of our leadership is thinking outside the box to meet needs. But second is that I'm going to show you the increase in personnel cost that's going to show roughly half a million dollars in baseline adjustments. And I wanted to make sure I explain why that baseline adjustment is as significant as it is going into 27. This slide shows how our FTE count is being proposed to change from fiscal year 26 to 27. And so under Chief Gomez's leadership, he's made some very data-driven decisions on how to utilize his personnel. And so we and he have eliminated an assistant fire chief, a quality personnel with the fire department, as well as a community health specialist with the fire department in order to add five EMTs and one EMS Lieutenant. I'm not gonna steal his thunder, but he's gonna share with you data that suggests that the increase in the call volume for the fire department is literally driven by EMS calls. And so we need to invest more personnel into EMS. And that's not just for fiscal year 27, that's something that we're gonna have to address as aggressively as we can over the next few years. We're not gonna be able to obviously have the funds to catch up overnight, but it's something that we know needs to happen. And so this change that the chief did mid-year highlights that. And it also, more importantly, highlighted the benefit of having EMTs. Again, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole, but that was a very much needed change. In addition, we had a change with our HR department where we upgraded a position and basically created an HR generalist. All in all, the net effect of some of that was adding four positions. Some other examples of reorganizations that don't necessarily impact the FTE count, but do impact that half a million dollars in baseline adjustments. And so here you see a summary of that, which again, we normally don't get into this level of detail, but I felt it was important this year in particular. And so as an example at the top left, you'll see a reorg that for our communications department, that had reclassifying basically an admin assistant three position into a communication and engagement coordinator while also enhancing our brand manager and multimedia producer positions. And so you'll see how there was a $76,000 baseline adjustment for that. Then there was the position in my office where there was a reclassification of the CFO position to the deputy city manager position. In fiscal year 26, we also intentionally only funded certain positions for nine months versus 12 in order to balance the budget. And so that vacant position was one of those. You'll see the reorg that I mentioned related to the fire department and the one related to HR. Then there's one related to the building and equipment services department that basically creates a job title change and eventually will create another position in time. And then the police department, you see that there were two officer slots that are being reorganized to become police service techs and case prep specialists, which actually is a net savings since those positions cost less. Basically, one of the things that we're doing with Chief Fetters is trying to, and I know that Council Member Lofgren would appreciate this because it's part of conversations him and I have had for years, that if there's a job that a civilian can do, the police department, let's transition that to a civilian position. Civilian positions are more affordable, and then it allows us the ability to also prioritize our uniform positions to doing the being out on the streets, doing the crime fighting, doing all the Chuck Norris stuff that Chief Fetters likes to talk about. And so all in all once you take into account that roughly half a million dollars in baseline adjustments and you take into account this two and a half percent wage adjustment to the majority of non public safety Centric employees. We've also included honoring the step for both PD fire and dispatch So once you add all of that together you get to a roughly 1.6 million dollar pay program recommendation for fiscal year 27 I'll also note at the very bottom there, we put a bullet that we've adjusted the TMRS rate and increased that by 1%. This is, I'm sorry. Yes, sir. Yes.

Am I working now?

Can you hear me now?

I can hear you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Do you have a question?

No.

Oh, okay. All right. So this kind of just shows how that $1.6 million is divided amongst all the various funds that we have. Of course, like always, the general fund takes the largest hit because that's just where the majority of our personnel are, including public safety. I'm missing the slide. Oh, okay.

Making great progress.

Yeah, this is excellent. Yeah. Any questions? I know you wish I just would not talk, but I'm sorry. I only get a couple of opportunities a year to talk about this. Anyway, this shows a very good news, actually, which shows a significant decrease in our debt service obligation. this will afford us the ability to look at lowering the INS rate as well as doing another aggressive redemption program. And so in that second column from the top, you'll notice that we're actually proposing a $1.2 million redemption bond program for fiscal year 27, which is más o menos close to what it was for fiscal year 26. That affords us the ability to free up the debt capacity that we'll need for future CIPs over the next couple of years, but also continue to afford us the opportunity over the next couple of years to reassess the INS rate should something crazy happen with our appraisals that necessitates us playing around with that. And so that creates that flexibility. We talked about having that flexibility with the INS rate last year. We talked about it when Wesley proposed increasing the redemption program mid-year for 26. And so that is very, very important because we do not know what the legislature is gonna do next time. And so trying to maintain that flexibility is key. Not maximizing that credit card as soon as we finish paying it off is a good pause and a good practice right now. This kind of just shows the trajectory of our debt obligations and our debt service payments, which obviously are going to continue to trend downward, which in theory, free up that capacity, but also again, create the opportunity to reassess the INS rate as we finish paying the debt off.

Any questions on that?

Okay. So getting a little bit more into the weeds of some of the larger funds. And so you'll see here how the general fund for fiscal year 27 is basically just the minimal increase of $435,000. And so you see that it's being preliminary proposed to be 67.3 million, mainly driven by some public safety expenses as well as the pay program. You'll notice the red bars at the very top as I've mentioned the CIP is not as Rich as it was in 26. And so we're seeing those adjustments. We're not buying as many vehicles as we did in 26 So we're seeing those adjustments In light of ongoing conversations about public safety, I thought it'd be appropriate to showcase a five-year history of the percentage of the general fund that goes towards public safety. And so you could see here how it's basically gone from 55% to 60%. And so in five years, it's basically gone up by close to 5%. More specifically, you'll notice how the fire department has gone from roughly 26% to 30%. And so out of the three different departments that we consider public safety, PD, fire, and municipal court, the fire department has seen the largest growth over the last five years. And as I mentioned earlier, we're probably going to continue to see that trend as we look to address staffing shortages in this just reality of increased workload, which Chief Gomez will get into in greater detail. This basically kind of just is another way to summarize what that $435,000 is about. Of course, the pay program. And one thing that I'll get into in a later slide when I show or when I talk about the health fund, but this year we're looking to send $600,000 in one-time funds to our health fund to try and slow down the fact that claims costs are going up and we're beginning to see the fund balance in our health fund go down. And so we want to pump $600,000 into the health fund to kind of just give it a little bit of boost to give us a little bit of time to figure out what we want to do there. And so you'll see that $600,000 spread out amongst the various funds. And so 217 of that is coming from the general fund. And if you're sitting there kind of thinking, Well, help me math this out because you just showed me a $1.6 million pay program where roughly a million was general fund, but you're only showing a 435 increase to general fund. Well, that's because we're not doing as many one-time expenditures in fiscal year 27 and basically utilizing some of that cushion towards recurring. And that becomes a little more clear when we kind of get to this slide where we see that that cushion is not as great as it used to. And so you can see on the right-most bar that our cushion is only about $1.5 million. The last few years, that cushion's been about $2 to $3 million. And so again, as we eat into that cushion, there's only so much cushion to eat. And so that cushion has been a blessing to us because it's afforded us the ability to still invest in our employees. It's afforded us an ability to not have to cut in the eyes of plateauing values or pandemic effect or recession-like economy shifts, right? So that's something to keep in mind because it's not sustainable for us to just continue to eat at that cushion without at some point addressing either expenditures or revenues. I skipped through this one, but I'll go back to it, mainly to make the point that we do plan on requesting from BS3C a million dollars to go towards the acquisition of a pumper for the fire department. And so as we sort of look and assess the needs of our department, looking at our apparatuses and our fleet, our fire department, because of just how much the wear and tear the ambulances, the pumpers, the engines, the ladders, they all get, we need to be as aggressive as we can be with replacing those before they get more and more expensive. And so we are gonna recommend a million dollars from VSTDC to go towards that pumper. And Chief Gomez will speak a little bit more about the fleet situation. Any questions on general fund? Okay. So on the utility side, you'll see this increase by $10.5 million, predominantly driven by CIP. We are beginning to get more aggressive with CIP. You may recall that we've had some pretty large amounts of money sort of saved up in our utility fund to be utilized for CIP projects. And so now that we've completed certain studies, now we're beginning to tap into that quote unquote cushion on the utility side. And so that's why you see such a big difference on the CIP side. And as I mentioned earlier, you know, every fund is contributing towards that transfer to the health fund. We're obviously accounting for that two point five wage adjustment to personnel as well as some increases to supplies and chemicals. We're beginning to see that continue to rise. Inflation and the pandemic, you know, did a did a it had a pretty significant impact on the cost of those chemicals that we use at our plants. And so we're now properly accounting for those increases as we don't foresee them ever going back down. I won't go into the details of the CAP program, but I do want to highlight some of the larger projects We now for fiscal year 27 are accounting for the North Street utilities for a groundwater wells assessment, which is directly tied to that water study that we recently completed. The OCR interconnect design was also attached to that study. And we know that we need to rehab some water towers as was described by staff at a recent meeting when we talked about the CIP.

And similar story on the cushion.

And so this cushion here now that's estimated to exist for 27 on the utility side is only $763,000, which again, that cushion has also been in the millions of dollars the last few years. And so I hate to sound like a broken record, but I think it's important for me to reiterate the point as much as I can that we're going to have to have some conversations about either expenditures or revenues as it relates to our entire operation because it's not sustainable for us to continue to just eat into these cushions that we have worked so hard to build up. Yes, sir.

You said there was an excess of 2.3 million and now it's going to be 763,000. Is that correct?

I'm assuming that 2.3 you're getting from a previous slide.

Yes.

Uh, no. So that excess from the previous slide is not a budgeted excess. So every year, you know, we budget thinking we're going to spend X amount and then we have a surplus because we don't spend enough. We don't spend as much money.

Okay. But that was surplus.

Correct.

Okay. Of that surplus. Yeah. It's surplus. Are you going to have a surplus of 763 in this one?

Well, ideally it would be more because ideally we don't spend all of the money that we're budgeting to spend, right? Because we have vacancies, you know, think, you know, maybe we don't eat into all of the maintenance budget line items that we have. Right. And so that's why we're very intentional with conveying that this is a budgeted cushion, right? Because once we get to an actual cushion, that actual cushion is much greater because of the fact that we don't spend all the money that we budget.

Right. Do you have a bond redemption program for wastewater?

I'm not certain of that.

I don't think so. No, there's no bond redemption and utilities wastewater. We talked about in the past. One of the reasons why we haven't done that is two reasons. One is that you got a lot of principal being paid off now because you have a debt service that's declining. It's making a lot of principals. Second is that we have used up all that excess capacity and moved that into the operation because we've been using that money in CIP. As he's mentioned, your excess fund balance, it used to be in the $2 million. Now it's going down to $7 because we have moved that excess recurring into operations because we've been using up on chemicals and everything else. As a result of that, your cash flow went down. There's not enough room to do redemption.

There's not enough excess to do both, keep up with our increased expenditures, and then use some of it for redemption, basically.

That's why it's important in the coming year, they're gonna do that water study. Rate study. Thank you, rate study, because we need to get back to a level. And we haven't done a rate study since 2019, so anyway.

Yeah, we need to get back to where we're redeeming bonds.

Oh, absolutely. You and I agree on that, but we need to get that cash flow to a level where we need it at. We don't have the luxury we have in the service side. Okay.

I'm sorry. Any questions? Any other? Okay. I'll keep going. Environmental Services Fund. And so you'll see that this is a decrease of about $1.6 million. You may recall that last year we actually tapped into one of the sub funds of the Environmental Services Fund to help pay for three ambulances. And so thank you, Daryl. Daryl, I think, reminds Chief Gomez of that any chance he gets. But anyway, but we're not doing that again. And so that's one of the, and we also aren't buying any new garbage trucks because we've already accounted for those this year, I believe.

They're in the budget.

Okay. There's fewer. Oh, we already ordered them. That's why I'm confused. Okay. Yeah. We ordered them early, but they're accounted for in the budget. Thank you for the clarification. You see in the bottom right that we've also included a small transfer to the health fund to be consistent with sending $600,000 over to the health fund. And then, of course, we've also allotted or accounted for that 2.5% wage adjustment to our personnel. There's no change to the revenue budget. There also has not been a review of the rates for solid waste, and so that's something that is on a future slide as something that needs to occur in the next year or two, or year more specifically. And so same situation here. And so here you see a $1.5 million cushion that's also been greater in the past, but we've intentionally been eating into it, right? We bought ambulances, we're buying trucks, right? So there's an intentional usage of this cushion, but again, That cushion is going to run out if we don't start addressing the revenue side of the equation or technically expenditure, but that obviously would mean cutting services, cutting personnel and things of that sort. So very consistent sort of theme and message right around the state of our finances. Stormwater drainage utility, this is basically the same slide that we had shared in previous presentations. What is in the preliminary budget is what was proposed. At our next regular council meeting on July 7th, staff will come to you with options. And so... You may recall that we've been receiving feedback not only from the town hall that we had, but some of you have received feedback on the exemptions of religious institutions, the impact on business budgets, just the overall cost. At the first meeting in July, we plan on bringing you options that address basically all of that. We plan on showing you what the impact would be if we do the exemptions for religious institutions, if we drop the rate to $4, if we reconsider a tiered residential system that Council Member de la Garza had brought up at one point because that also came up. We'll provide an option that delays the implementation of it until January to allow businesses to properly plan for it since usually businesses operate on a calendar year budget sort of exercise, right? So we plan on bringing all of those options for discussion at the first meeting in July and then whatever direction we get from you, we'll adjust the budget and account for it accordingly in the official proposed budget at the first meeting in August. All right, so on the health fund, this is just a refresher on the fact that we have not increased premiums for employees in quite a while. We could actually take this all the way back to 2019. It's been a minute, and we have only improved the benefit since then, which has been great for our employees, and I'm very proud of because of some of the feedback that I was getting back in 2019 was that anytime the city would do a pay increase, the health premium would also go up and so it would cancel each other out and the employees never saw that net impact. Obviously, we've been able to enhance compensation over that last seven years while also decreasing the premium cost of health insurance so that net effect on employees has been great. However, we're also going to have to start having conversations about just the long-term reality of our health fund. You'll notice and note here that in 2019, we literally hit rock bottom as it relates to the fund balance for our health fund. And we've intentionally have increased the amount of money that is going towards the health fund since then. But as I alluded to earlier, we're beginning to see an increased cost of claims. And even with that boost of $600,000, we are still estimating that we're going to see a further decline of the fund balance of the health fund. And we are doing that via intentionally increasing the claims estimate on expenditures by a million dollars. We're also expecting our stop loss insurance to go up. Stop-loss insurance is gonna continue to go up. It's just one of those where the more times that you hit your stop-loss, the more expensive the insurance is gonna get because we're hitting it often, right? And so we need to account for those increases and this is putting us in a position to have to have some tough conversations with you, with employees about what is the solution to slow this down. I hope we can all agree that we need to avoid getting back to that rock bottom. And so part of what we want to do is rather than being rash about making changes, is to start having some conversations with our consultant as well as you and our employees on what that looks like in order to stop the bleed or address this decrease. It's just something we're going to have to start talking about. For now, though, we aren't proposing any changes for 27. We, quite frankly, have not had time to really delve into the details of that. Many of the personnel that would be involved with that conversation have been tied up with civil service, with collective bargaining. And so we just haven't had time to work through that with our benefits consultant. But it will be something that we'll continue to work with them on through the rest of the year. So TBD on that. On the hotel tax fund budget side, we are basically forecasting a decrease, and it's predominantly due to not doing a one-time payment of a million dollars to go towards the community center project. There's a very minimal decrease to revenue projections that I'll share with you here in a minute and on the expenditure side it includes that wage increase as well as a transfer to the health fund and some minor adjustments to some programming elements that Joel will get into as part of his presentation. We are beginning to see somewhat of a downward trend in revenues and so we're accounting for that by decreasing our projections slightly. This is just another version of showing you the same story that shows that $100,000, excuse me, that minimal change in 27. On the left is just a reminder of all of the different funds or different programs and initiatives that are hotel tax fund funds. You may also recall that the last two years, I've sort of brought up this cautionary remark that we only have so many hot funds to spread around, right? And so it's gonna necessitate at some point also revisiting how that is handled. There's quite a bit of money that gets sent to the community center. And so we're hopeful that with community center investment that we're able to lessen the dependency of our hotel tax fund, which would be ideal so that we don't have to look at cutting, you know, other programs so that we don't have to look at cutting, um, you know, the, um, hot fund awards program amount that gets funded every year. So TBD on this item as well. But, um, I'd be remiss if I didn't make a quick remark around that. Any questions on that? Okay. So the community center project, this is literally the exact same slide that we shared a couple of months ago, that that project is basically being split, funded, or spread out, I should say, amongst four different fiscal years. And so fiscal year 27, we'll see that $23 million impact. We actually plan on bringing the first iteration of debt issuance, I believe in August, to begin that project. And so we are looking to break ground in August, early August. And so we're gonna have to bring specifically the venue tax debt issuance to you in August. And so expect that to happen. So some of the ongoing things that may impact just fiscal year 27, even just before I get to the first meeting in August, or that might impact the fiscal year 27 meeting throughout the fiscal year, are things like what's gonna happen with the stormwater utility. Maybe we start to want to be more aggressive with implementing recommendations from the water feasibility study. We haven't given up on the idea to remodel City Hall Complex, but that project has been placed on the back burner for now as well, but that's still in our radar. We know that there's obviously the ongoing conversations about collective bargaining that we don't really know to what extent that might cause us to make any changes to 27 budget. or the 28 budget, and so we're still working through that. We do plan on continuing to meet with our city council compensation committee because there are some very specific topics that we want to make sure that we collaborate with them on, ranging from the health insurance changes to also trying to get an early start on what a 2028 pay program might look like. And so we intend on doing that. And then depending on what the legislature does, we'll have to just be mindful of what impact that might have on the property tax rate situation moving forward. Long-term, I already mentioned we need to be mindful of the health plan. We've already alluded to the water rate study that is in process, but there's also a solid waste rate study. Both of those rates have not been adjusted in a long time. The utility rates haven't been adjusted since 2019. The actual garbage rate for the solid waste line items hasn't been adjusted since... since the 90s. And so these are things that we're going to have to have hard conversations about. And I've already alluded to the compensation pay program. Another thing that is also still lingering out there is what impact we might see with federal budget cuts, specifically with CDBG. We do have quite a bit of nonprofits in our community that depend on our CDBG allocation program to help serve the most vulnerable populations in our community. If those budgets are significantly slashed or eliminated, then we're going to have to, in my opinion, have conversations about how do we, do we want to fill that void? You know, just what do we want to do in that regard? So that's just something to keep in mind. Any questions on these items that might impact conversations and moving forward? Okay. And so, uh, Just a little bit of a heads up on what to expect over the next couple of months. And so as I've already alluded to, at the first regular meeting in August, as I do every first meeting in August, we'll propose the official budget and then we'll go through the budget work sessions, the public hearings, we'll propose the tax rate, which again, we'll have a better sense of what that will be after we receive the certified tax rolls at the end of July. And as I've mentioned, we know for sure that'll be the no new revenue tax rate. We just don't know what actual number it would be. And then ultimately, you know, we'll adopt the budget in September and it'll go into effect in October. And then we start the process all over again. Any questions on the timeline?

No?

Okay. Well... If there is no other question or feedback, then we'll just get right into it. If you're okay with that? Sure, sounds good. We do have an embedded break in the schedule after, I believe, both police and fire. And so if it's all right with you, we'll just continue on and we'll allow our last chief editors to come up and kick it off, providing you an overview of the police department.

Good morning, Chief. Good morning, Mayor and Council. I do have a breaking news update. DC Moya has been tracking the Gracie the giraffe, and apparently it's been located and it's safe. We can't say for sure, but it may be because of her social media post. FY26 has been a great year for Victoria PD. A lot of that's because of all of the things that y'all have done for us. and we're confident that 27's gonna be even better. Our authorized strength is 168 overall, 39 are professional non-sworn, 129 cops, and we're broken into three divisions. There's no real new changes in that. This is our updated organizational chart. You all have any questions on that? So as the city manager just mentioned, we froze two officer positions and reallocated that to the records technician and case prep specialist to accommodate the changing workload. And seven of our police positions are grant funded. Our department mission, to reduce crime and the fear of crime through outstanding police services in partnership with the community. Our goals and objectives nested in the 2035 comprehensive plan, respond to priority one calls in less than six minutes, reduce crime and crashes by 3%, enhance our capabilities through technology advancements, the drone first responder program, which I'll talk more about that in a little bit, the new computer aided dispatch and records management system. We want to complete our automated fingerprint identification system certification, Strengthen our retention and enhance employee wellness programs through mostly in-house, low or no-cost programs. Recruit, hire, and train personnel to fill our existing vacancies, and we wanna try to stay five vacancies or less. And continue to push our community engagement with outreach and education. Maintain an overall investigative case clearance of 40% or higher, which we have been doing. So like I said, 26 has been great for us. We got a new building that we've moved into. We finally got dispatch moved in about two weeks ago. So we're now all complete and uh, everyone's happy. The new pay plans, everyone, everyone. Wow. Goal accomplished. The pay plans have done wonders for our, our recruiting and retention. Our retention rate has, has gone up, we've had very few people leave, and we're hiring people like crazy now. We have 20 cadets, 11 that will start the academy in a week or two, and nine that just hit the streets, and then we have about 35 in the queue who want to go to the academy in January. So those are unseen numbers. We got the nine new patrol cars. Purchase a gun range, another game changer for us. It's gonna make us, help us get to be a regional training hub and we can do all kinds of different things in the future as we develop that. We were reaccredited by the Texas Police Chief Association Best Practices Program. I think we're over nine years in that program now, so that means we're one of the top police departments in the state. and we participated in over 175 community engagement. We're on track to go over 175 community engagement initiatives this year. Class one crimes, despite our vacancies, we've been able to hold steady and maintain that reduction since 2021 in class one crimes. Same thing with class two. The arrests up and down, some of that is actually controlled by staffing at the jail. During COVID and since, they've had struggles with their staffing with the jail staff. Because of the jail standards, there's a ratio of jailers versus inmates, and so when they get to a certain level, we have to turn off certain low-level arrests, non-violent, non-intoxication type arrests. So minor, like Class C violations that we would have to hold off on those. Crashes, fairly steady. We're hoping once our vacancies get better, we can have more enforcement be seen more out there, and we're hoping that will improve driving habits. Our response times, so I mentioned our goal was six minutes. The national standard is six to seven minutes. You can see that we're, in 2025, we're at four minutes, so we're well below that. And we just do that by prioritizing those calls and going back and screening and making sure that they're correct. The cases on the right, those are burglary of vehicle cases. Those have also seen a major reduction. I would say that's probably due to our proactive investigations and our education with the public. Overtime, so it's gone up about $174,000 in 2026. Again, I think that if you consider our record vacancies, we've done a good job at managing that because we have to maintain a minimum staffing to keep the city safe. And the way we were able to accomplish that was to bring specialized units and put them back on patrol and also we're rotating detectives through patrol so that we can make sure we have someone available when a 911 call comes out. case assignments are holding steady and those detectives are rotating through patrol and still maintaining their caseloads so everybody's you know really working hard to keep up our innovation and funding so our grants we have about 1.1 million in grants that we use to to help out with our cost we have a I don't go through the whole list unless you want me to, but we're covering personnel costs, some vehicles were purchased, six rifle-rated shields were purchased with grants, and Gulf Bend bought us a vehicle for our mental health officers, and we were able to get some computers for our field training officers. In the future, we hear that there's going to be some grants maybe coming available for drones. As we're developing our drone first responder program, we're going to be looking to utilize that. NIBIN is a National Integrated Ballistics Network, and we would like to entertain becoming a lab here. With that, we would be a regional asset for any gun-related crimes where we would have our people trained so they could analyze bullets or casings and determine if they're connected to crimes. So that would be a really good thing to get into. Real-time crime center for the region, that's another thing we will continue to look for grants. Digital forensics unit hardware and software. As you know, cell phones and technology are almost attached to every crime now, and so we're just getting a huge amount of phones and computers that need to be dumped. And sir, do you have a question?

Yeah. So right now, our department- Can you speak into the microphone? I didn't understand what you said. No, but it clicked. So right now our department doesn't do our own gun analysis, the shell casing analysis, someone else's?

No, sir. We fire the rounds and we have to send them to another place.

And does that cost us money?

No, there's no cost, but it definitely slows us down. So the digital forensics, as that grows, we need to grow that unit and their capabilities to download phones. Some phones, because as the technology improves and the memory in the phones improves, it could take several days just to download one phone. And some of our drug cases alone, we might get five phones a week. And so we're constantly downloading, and then you have to go back and parse out the information that's relevant to the crime. So it's very time consuming. And then we are approved to get a Texas Army National Guard counter drug soldier. If they have one within 50 miles that's interested, they're paid for by the Army National Guard and they're trained in digital forensics. And so we're hoping that that opportunity will come up and we'll have that soldier that could work with us.

Before you move on, Chief, I... you'll notice that this slide here is a little bit different than what it's been in years past. And I should have mentioned, made this comment earlier, but, um, we want to be more intentional with highlighting grants. And we also want to be more intentional with how we might be using AI. And so the next slide, the chief will go through, we'll hit on some of the AI things, but every department has now, will you'll see is gonna be more intentional with speaking about both of those things. And the goal is that that hopefully becomes a greater part of our culture and our just everyday mindset that we just try and find as many funding opportunities as possible, that we try to lean into AI as much as possible. Some departments have already been doing those things to a greater degree than others. So don't be surprised if you see some departments maybe have very minimal things to share in this category, but hopefully over time, right, as our organizational culture becomes more mindful of these things across the board, not just with some departments, you'll start to see more information. And I think that's gonna become even more critical now that, as I mentioned, funding is gonna start getting tighter. So how can we lean into grants or AI to help us improve or maintain services without it necessarily costing us any local funds? So anyway, sorry, Chief, go ahead.

So some of our innovation and funding initiatives, we are using AI software to speed up our open records requests. And so just for an example, and we get much more of these now than what we used to because of all the body cam footage and in-car camera. So if there's a juvenile in the video or a license plate that's not involved, the records techs have to go in and they have to blur out or block out those images throughout all of the video. So it's very time consuming. AI helps you kind of tag the thing you want to blur and it'll go through and try to help speed up that process. The new computer-aided dispatch and records management system will have a closed AI system, and that will help automate crime data reports, assist officers with their offense reports by grabbing the basic data and kind of starting it. And it'll allow us to have a command overview of incidents. So what that is, it's a part of the system where we can bring in drone footage, surveillance camera footage, maps of where officers are located, and then we can make better, faster decisions on critical incidents. and it should improve the overall workflow of taking the call all the way through the investigation. It's just more efficient. The Drone First Responder Program, which everyone is super excited about, including the fire department, because it will help both of us. it will increase safety and increase our resource allocation. So what that looks like is there's a drone that will be parked at the headquarters and then one out at station four. Those two drones can cover 85% of the city. And so if there's a violent type call, a hazardous material call or a fire, that drone can launch itself, fly over the scene, and so we can get eyes on it from the office, from dispatch, in the cars, and we can see what we're getting into. So if it's a man with a gun call, we can fly over the top and see where he's located if it's actually a gun, and so we can get that information out quickly. It'll speed up our response time. If it's a fire and it sounds like it's a minor fire, but then they get the drone overhead and it's a huge fire, they can send more resources faster. So we're hoping to develop that. And we have a pretty cool deal working with the vendor where the first year will be free. And they're gonna help with the installation cost. As I talked about, we're looking at exploring software to help with the cell phone forensics. For example, there's one called Rabbit Hole where it's kind of like AI and you tell it what you're looking for in the crime and it'll go through the report and grab that information and parse it out for you so it speeds up that process. I already talked about the NIBIN lab that we want to look at. The body worn cameras have an option now where it has immediate translation. So if you're dealing with somebody and you don't speak their language, you press the button, they say it, and then it'll tell you what they're saying in English. And then LPR cameras, we're looking at expanding that. And the good thing about the LPRs is you can put in a license plate for a vehicle that is attached to a crime, a wanted person, a stolen car, and when it passes that camera, we get an alert and it tells us where they're at and we can go try to apprehend them. So it's a really game changer. So for 27, again, we want to continue the momentum of our recruiting and retention programs. If you've been in the movies lately, you might have seen our video in there. You may have heard us on the radio or on local TV. So we're really pushing hard to, one, get our brand out there, but attract great people to be part of our agency. We just discussed the Drone First Responder Program and the CAT RMS. Our investigations fleet, many of our cars are 15 plus years old. They don't make parts for them anymore, so we have to be intentional about replacing that fleet before we don't have it. Leadership development, our department is younger, so we need to speed up their learning process. They are leaders in the community, so we need to give them those skills, and most of that is just internal training that we're doing. Glock replacement our Glocks are our pistols are about are ten plus years old and the industry standard is to replace them every ten years and so we do that in stages we do it like a quarter or a third of at a time and because of the improvement in technology if we go to the ones with the optics that are mounted on there the accuracy is way time way better with that. If you haven't shot a pistol with an optic on it, it is a game changer. It almost feels like cheating when you're used to iron sights. And so that's safer for the community and it's safer for the officer. And we're just gonna continue to improve, or yeah, move on the momentum, sorry, of the pay structure, the firearms range, the new building. It has been a game changer with our retention and recruiting. It's our overview of our budget for 27 compared to 26. And if we dive into that, the two biggest numbers are personnel and M&O. And of course, that's from the pay plan. M&O is with technology come costs. And we can't get away from that in order to continue to reduce crime. And our capital items, we have computer replacements. Obviously, that's a need. And then SWAT equipment. The body armor and helmets expire every five years. So we have those on a rotation where we do a quarter of the team at a time. And then the vehicle- What do you do with the expired? You want one?

Yeah, is that revenue generating opportunity?

Sure, if you sign off on it. You expecting trouble?

Mike was starting kindergarten. I got to get ready.

And then the health fund transfer that they spoke about earlier, we have a piece of that. Any questions on that?

I have a question going back a little bit to the, when you were talking about goals and objectives, maintain an overall investigative case clearance of 40% or higher. Where did that 40% goal come from?

The 40% is a national average, so we try to stay above that, and we're at about 43%. So 2028 and beyond, looking into the future, again, we have to focus on retention and recruitment. We've always been great at recruitment, but we gotta fix our retention. As we fix our staffing, we can get back into the Police Explorer program. That's a long-term recruiting and retention program where we're developing kids 16 to 19 and introducing them to the police world. Hopefully, they'll come back and be members of the community that want to be part of our department. Expand the drone first responder program. So as the drones continue to get better and get longer flight times, we can push out into the county a little bit. And that would be to help the fire department. So when they start getting these grass fires, we can fly the drone over that grass fire. They can have a better plan of attack. They can be safer. They can see which way the fires move in and all that stuff when the wind changes. So we're excited about that. The NIBIN Lab, we want to host training with our new range and our new building. We want to be a training hub that acts as a recruiting and retention tool. And as AI develops, it's going to get into everything. Of course, we have to use closed loop. We can't have our stuff going out to the public. But that's going to continue to develop and play more of a role as we go forward. And then adding a civilian digital forensic analyst that's cheaper than an officer. And we'll train them just enough to be helpful to us, but not to where they're marketable to the private sector. It's a fine line in there chief. It really is. So unless y'all have questions, that concludes my presentation.

I have one question real quick on the drone first responder program.

Yes sir.

Um, do you anticipate that that will necessitate additional personnel? And if so, would those be licensed officers or is that more of a civilian role?

What's the thought process here going forward? So we already have seven trained pilots. We're going to double that. The training is very inexpensive, and we do most of it in-house. So we use existing officers. The other part I didn't mention was as the drone flies itself over the scene, when one of our pilots gets there, they can take control of it on the scene and then get a finer detailed search. We have drones that can fly inside houses. So instead of sending an officer in to look for the bad guy, we can send the drone in first. Right, and then they can shoot at the drone instead of us. Yeah, so we can do that with personnel We yes, it won't there will be any more cost on on personnel for that. Great.

Okay, very good. Any other questions? All right. Thank you.

Appreciate it Thanks chief. And so we'll continue on and chief Thomas will come up and Talk about the fire department Unless you want to take the break now

Why don't we take just a quick 10-minute break now. Okay. Perfect. Thank you.

All right, mic's on. Be back in session. All right, so we'll continue on. And so I'll turn it over to Chief Gomez to go over his budget. Good morning, Chief.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. I appreciate you all being here and allowing me to speak about our department and our budget presentation. So let's get started. So again, Victoria Fire Department, it's not a secret. We are an all hazards department that not only responds to fire suppression and medical emergencies, but also respond and mitigate other hazards such as hazmat, water rescue, and technical rescues as well. We are also involved in increasing life safety for the community through inspections, teaching, and various programs. This is our organization chart. We're divided into three bureaus. We have a administration bureau that oversees our logistics and training. We have our operations, which oversees, of course, fire and EMS. And then we also have our fire marshal, also known as fire prevention and investigation, that oversees inspections, investigations, and also provides various educational programs for our community. So our department, as our city manager had mentioned earlier, there was an opportunity to restructure a little bit and put more boots on the ground. And with that, we were able to reassign three administrative positions to the field. And through the, I guess you could say the access and salary that we were able to carve out three other positions, and so we've grown from 130 to 133. So, When someone picks up the phone and calls 911, they need our help and the expectation is that they're not saying, oh, I hope station five arrives or I hope it's this station coming. They just know that when they pick up the phone, their expectation is that we get there quickly. When we get there, we understand what the emergency is and we have familiarity with that and then we get them on the road to recovery. or normalcy. And so with that, our priorities are life safety, insulin stabilization, and property conservation. So thus our department mission is to preserve life and property with dedicated and caring service. So for this year, the goals and objectives were emergency response, training, and a safer community. We are constantly reviewing our data, looking to make sure, ensuring that our response for the community, that it's efficient, it's effective, and it's dependable. Like I mentioned, there's an expectation when they pick up the phone to call us. And again, we get there fast, we know what's going on, and we get them on the road to normalcy. So along with that, it, calls for measuring what I've mentioned before, the unit hour utilization, measuring our response times, our turnout times, and such. One of the things that we implemented, it was called Medic Status Zero, And what that is, it's a status or situation that we're in when the demand is really high and we're down to our last ambulance. Our dispatchers will mention over the radio medic status zero. What that does is it increases the situational awareness for all of us, especially the medics out in the field, that we're down to our last ambulance and the incident that they're on that they need to do whatever they can to get back on the road to be available. And that's either in transporting or finishing up a report at the hospital, but doing what they can in an appropriate manner to become available again. And so we also implemented, uh, looking at our data, we implemented a peak demand unit for a couple of months just to see how that affect the, uh, utilization of our other ambulances. And, uh, for our resource management, we actually, we have at station four, we have a ladder there. It's an aging apparatus, uh, Not much life left, but a little bit. And so what we did is we actually put an engine there to respond in front of it. So it delays or expands the lifespan of that apparatus. But more importantly, the crews there, they have the option of flexing from the engine to the ladder, depending on the emergency. training that was really big with us with our members because we had a huge turnover if you recall back prior to this year and we lost a lot of members and so we have a young department and it's critical that we train and that we're making sure that they understand the importance of, uh, and had the importance of the training. They're familiar with everything that they're doing in order to provide a safer, uh, service, enhanced service for safer community. And, um, We were lucky to come into a house that was going to be demolished. One of the things that I wanted to focus on was hands-on training. I didn't want to just, hey, read, sit at the computer or the typical death by PowerPoint. And so we wanted hands-on. Again, young department, we wanted to enhance their skills. It's critical that they understand this and the hands-on training, what that does, it creates muscle memory. We operate a lot of complex tools, sometimes in poor lighting, and it's important that we are very familiar with our tools and that we can operate them in a crisis situation and lessen down any type of critical errors or anything like that. So we were fortunate to come across with a house that a homeowner was gonna demolish. That gave us a month of training where we got to actually do a real-time search and rescue. We were able to do forcible entry. We were able to train on ventilation. So these are really critical skills that were really valuable for our members to receive. So whenever the action was called upon to really perform, they have that skill, that muscle memory to deliver that and to mitigate the incident. Officer development, again, we have a turnover in officers, and so one of the things that we wanted to do is invest in our officers. So there is a program that we're sending our officers to, to College Station. It's a management course in emergency management, and basically it teaches them how to manage a really large incident. It teaches them anything from managing a hazmat incident a trained enrollment, any type of complex and coordinated attack. So it's very valuable and it's free. And so it's just us finding time to get our members out there and get the training. It's a week-long program. They get to work with other members from other departments where the networking and the relationship building and all of that is just information knowledge that they bring back to Victoria. We have also partnered with other agencies. We started a program this year that we started training with our volunteers. So every other month, our volunteer fire departments they come on a Saturday morning to our Academy and we'll go over certain topics the last thing that we've done is we've trained over radio communication we've done actually some live burn simulations and we've done some vehicle extrication again I think it's really important that we trained with the volunteer fire department since we do respond out into the county it's getting to become familiar with those members, putting names to faces, and once you recognize and you know someone, it just makes it a little easier in helping mitigate an emergency. We also, which is a big deal, we also partnered with the Coast Guard. Because the Guadalupe River is considered a navigable waterway, we reached out to them, and they were all for training with us. So we just recently had some training with them on helicopter familiarization, and we look to training with them more in the the future and we see the value in that with the river and if we have to do any kind of search and rescue or if we had some kind of event like we did in 98. The Coast Guard can be here within 30-35 minutes and so we see that as a big asset that can help us here with any water rescue or emergency. We want to make sure the community is safer and with that, I want to say and just give a shout out to our fire marshal, Annette Ponce. She has done an amazing job coming in. When she came in, there was literally, we had lost people to retirement, career change. There was literally just the admin assistant and one other inspector, and she has really built that program back up to have some really qualified members part of that. And with that, all of the members are trained, they're certified, and so you can see that there will be more inspections. So the inspections will increase, definitely with the businesses and buildings around Victoria, which will also, again, it enhances the safety of our citizens. The VFD programs that we're continuing with those that are hit, I'll talk a little bit more in detail with that, as well as leveraging social media. So our highlights for 2026. We received numerous awards. Again, the VFD programs. I can't talk much enough about the fleet and of course the public safety headquarters. Thank you, Chief Federer, for reminding me. That should have been on my slide, but definitely it's a big deal for us and I can't tell you how valuable it is when I come to work and I see his lovely place. We have really communicated a lot face to face. And I think from all that, the drone program, working together on that is gonna be very valuable for the city. But the headquarters definitely has really improved the collaboration, the communication between fire and PD. So I can't thank you enough for all of that. So going to our awards, Texas Best Practices, I boast about this all the time. If you can think about it, we won the award again this year, recognized again. If you can think about all the fire departments in the state of Texas, there's only 36 fire departments that can claim that they are part of the Texas Fire Chiefs Association's Best Practice, and Victoria is one of them. The EMS side, we won the American Heart Gold Standard again. This has been the 10th year of winning that award. The first two years were at the silver level and the last eight years has been at the gold standard. We have received several grants, which I'll discuss in a later slide. And then with the VFD programs, the smoke detector program is really really big. We get out into the public Saturday mornings, go knocking door to door. Hey, do you have a smoke detector? Does it work? Can we test it? Things like that. So for year 26 we've actually contacted, came and contacted with over 300 homes. We've installed over 150 smoke detectors. So that's been, again, a very, very big hit. The Hands Only Stop the Bleed, that is managed by Chief Woodward. And that, again, is a successful program. We've trained over 600 people on that. And then we added also Narcan administration for Narcan, I'm sorry, for narcotics and overdoses. So we've actually trained up to 400 people on how to use Narcan. And the Hybrid Academy, that was our online academy that we started last year. We had five of our members that were EMTs that we had hired, and then the goal was to train them up to become firefighters and then graduate and move them over to the fireside. So we had our first academy graduation of that concept back in November, and actually our class was an all-female class. So it was really good to see that. With fleet, I can't thank you all enough, city management enough. This is really big for our department. We do have an aging fleet and it was really important that we had equipment, apparatuses, things that were very dependable that would increase the safety of our citizens. It would help with our response times and, you know, it also is a morale booster for our members. And with that, the five ambulances that you all invested in, they're actually here in Victoria. They are getting outfitted as we speak with the emergency accessories that they need, and they will be put in service here in the next couple of weeks. We do have an engine that's coming. We actually had some of our members just returned from Florida to see the build and to inspect it. It should be arriving soon and the anticipation is that we also have that available to be placed in service in August. So for performance metrics, so this is just the city. And as you can see, it's definitely has grown from 23 to what is projected. So you can see in 2023, we had over 11,000 calls and look at 27, the projection is like we're going to be teetering on 13,000. And so usually when you look at this increase, you can almost guarantee that there's going to be anywhere from maybe a three to 4% increase. It never goes down. It's always increasing. The next slide here is basically what the county and the response for the county and you can see from 2023 it was 2400 and projected at 3200. Chief one question I see your categories here good intent is that somebody thought they saw something and wouldn't be a third party hey someone's unconscious on the park bench or something we go out and They were asleep. God, you know work stuff. The intent is there, you know, but it's Not an emergency. Yes, luckily it was an emergency. Got it, okay, thank you. Now, we've had gone out and saved some cats in the gutters. We actually posted that on Facebook, and we did not realize their response. We ended up taking pictures of our members with the cats, posted it on Facebook. Next thing you know, people are asking, are these guys married? You know, I mean, and they're sitting there with the cat. You know, so it was like, okay, well, I didn't know we became a dating service. You know, so... Anyways, so what I want to share with you here is you look at the call volume, right? So you look at... the increase year over year, and we can always say normally the county usually makes up about 20% of that year after year after year. What you don't see is what I showed you and I separated that out, the city and the county. So the city's demand has increased from 23 to what's projected. We're looking at a 16% increase. I think what's alarming is that when you look at the county in the same, realm or the same span is that increase has increased will be at 31%. So I want to just bring your attention to that and also ask what I wanted to, what this also doesn't show and I also want to share with you is responses. So there's a difference between incident and response. So for example, we ran the numbers for 2025 total. We had 14,788 incidents. Not every incident requires just one response, if you understand. So, for example, a structure fire, at the end of the day on that, it can require anywhere from four to seven vehicles responding to that. Same thing with an unconscious person. You have a fire truck to support the ambulance that is responding. responding. And so when you looked at the year of 2025, even though we had 14,700 incidences, the actual, um, the actual responses was 22,550 responses. So you think about that and that sort of say the wear and tear on our apparatuses. And then you think about the obligation also to the county, um, Normally, when we respond here within the city, especially with a medic unit, the turnaround from responding, being on scene, transporting, and then getting back in service could be roughly 45 minutes. The county eats up a lot of time responding. If you think about 20 minutes, get there, maybe 20 minutes on scene, then returning, and then transferring the patient, and then cleaning the medic unit right in your port. I mean, you could look at a good hour and a half, maybe two hours at that medic unit, it was tied up. So those are challenges that we have there. And then again, along with the demand increasing every year. So for our strategic innovation and funding initiatives, we did receive several grants this year. And we did, from the Golden Crescent, we received a little over $16,000. With that, we were able to purchase a narcotics vault, which help secure our narcotics we were able to buy a life-size mannequin that can simulate all kinds of illnesses that enhances our medics when they train that you can simulate certain illnesses that they can you know prepare them so whenever they see something similar out in the field they understand and can operate uh... with the signs and symptoms that are presented uh... the biggest one was the operation lone star uh... with that we were able to purchase any a command incident command vehicle along with the emergency accessories needed so this is for battalion chief We were able to purchase an all-terrain vehicle, a side-by-side. It also holds a stretcher on the back end of that. It also comes with a trailer to pull on. And that's really... really big for us because like when we have special events, you know, especially like in De Leon Plaza, we have that side by side that can cover a lot of ground. If we encounter an emergency where they need medical assistance, we can actually pluck them from uh the crowd and get them to an extraction point where we have an ambulance waiting so definitely it has enhanced our abilities increased our flexibility and patient care and such we also received funding that we were able to use money in an overtime capacity and that's where the peak demand we implemented again using our data identifying the days that we're the busiest and then drilling down to the hours that we are where the demand is the most, we're able to implement and place that peak demand in service. Again, with opportunities pursued, we are pursuing Lone Stars again. We are also looking at the 100 Club, and then more importantly, the Safer Grant. The Safer Grant is a grant that allows you to increase staffing, and it's basically, I don't wanna say like a layway, but you get it now and you kinda pay a little bit later, and it's a three-year process where whatever the cost is for the amount of members that you're trying to obtain, that the program will pay for 75% of it the first year, 75% of the cost the second year, 65, I believe, the cost for the third year, and then you graduate into now it's on your dime. So we actually, when we talk about increase in staffing, we actually applied for six firefighters, so we'll see, fingers crossed, how that turns out for us. Again, the partnerships, I kind of spoke about that earlier with the volunteer departments and the Coast Guard. And these programs that are enhanced through our external funding, again, the peak demand, the special events, kind of what I talked about just a while ago. So operational innovation, some of the tools that we use right now is, so the EPCR, that's the electronic patient care report. That's what our medics use to document patient care. It has a function on there that as they're documenting, it can create a narrative for them. So they don't have to write the report. After they're documenting everything, they don't have to sit there and then generate the report. It's already generated. They can submit it to the nursing staff and then get back out in the field sooner. Again, we talked about, Chief Fetters talked about the CAD system that's coming, and that's going to pay a lot of dividends for us because the CAD system that we're going to get is more robust. For me, I'm very data-driven. I'd like to see all kinds of numbers because I do believe that the numbers tell a story, and we are kind of limited with the system that we have now, so That's going to be a huge improvement for us and resource management and sending the right resources to the emergency that is at hand. The LifePak 35, this is a heart monitor that we recently transitioned to. The LifePak 35 is very robust. It can analyze and interpret data, the ECG for you. It has the ability to transmit that ECG to the hospital so the doctors can see what the patient is, what rhythm they're in, and they can anticipate and gear up as we're bringing the patient. More importantly, I think one of the things we kind of hang our hat on is CPRs and that we are really good at that. And so the LifePak 35, when we have a CPR, it actually breaks down the incident, the activity, and it breaks it down minute by minute and it can show exactly and it measures every chest compression and it can show you for every minute the chest compressions, it can give you a, a ratio and what you're doing. And these are always important to share and review with our medics because a lot of times when we're doing patient care, you're stopping to do a intubation or a IV, you don't realize how much time has stopped. And so when you look at this report, you can actually see where the compression stopped and then when they begin again. So it brings a lot of awareness to our members on that functionality when they're performing that. So for new programs and initiatives, I think just like Chief Federer's great minds think alike, we do want to be... It's the water you're drinking in the new building. Is that what that is? I think it's just seeing him down the hallway. Being able just to, hey, wave at him. Hey, how are you doing? No, we recognize Victoria as the big dog in the region. And we want to enhance our academy. We want to be the regional training center. We want people outside of Victoria to know, hey, where do we get this training? Whether it's fire officer one, fire instructor one, where can we go and get training? any type of training related to the fire department. And that's where we want to increase, uh, and enhance, uh, the awareness of other people around us, the other departments, other cities that we have that capability. When you think about the academy fire academy, if you think what's the closest fire academy, Corpus San Antonio, and you think about everyone in between all that, and that's their options, we want to be known as the regional training center and to come here to train. We want to, again, pursue and leverage and take advantage of the technology that's available today, and like I hit on the computer aided dispatch, the drone program, working with chief fighters on that, the station, a new station alerting system that is very robust. Again, that's gonna be really key. I anticipate that that will also help with, identifying the right resource and sending in a quicker manner, I guess you could say, to our emergencies. And then one of the things we're looking at right now is a tablet command. Whenever we have a structure fire, our incident commander is tasked with keeping up with all of the resources that are there. Through the AVL that we received a couple of years ago and put on our apparatuses, The way this functions is that when we respond to a structure fire that we can actually use an iPad and kind of get a satellite view. And then we get a satellite picture and then we also can see the building, all the general information about the building, where the standpipes and stuff like that. But then we can also see our resources coming, responding. We know where they're coming from. And then even as we enhance that picture, we can actually locate them based on which side of the building we've tasked them to address. So that's gonna be a really big game changer. Also, it gives us the ability and staff, with my assistant chiefs, if we're not there that we could also see from our office, see what's going on as well. So that's going to be really huge for us. And what I want to do is I want to look at a new program. And basically, just like I had mentioned about, if you recall back my last presentation, we talked about the AEDs and how they're in dispatch, they're in the call notes, so the dispatchers can relay, hey, there's an AED here and stuff. What I want to do is create a special needs form that our citizens can go. It's a voluntary deal that you can do. You don't have to give any names, but basically you could go here and say you live at this address. and I have a mother that is wheelchair bound or bedridden and she's occupied more in the bedroom which is in the left corner of the house. Or I have an autistic child or I have some really big dogs. Something that I just think is key with all the technology that we have, the information sharing is really key. And so when our, crews can see that information that's embedded in the call notes from them filling out this form. I just think that just enhances our ability to mitigate the emergency at hand. And again, you know, again, not walking into a house where there's two huge dogs just sitting there waiting on you or something like that. But I just think it's really important that we enhance that. So that's one of the programs I'm looking at. implementing as well as leveraging social media more. With social media reaching out and creating more content on a consistent basis on life safety, fire safety, and things like that. So here's our budget overview. As you can see, the personnel costs are part of the 2027 pay program, the STEP pay program. And for our M&O, we had our recurring increases due to leased equipment. You can see there it's on fleet maintenance. Again, because of our equipment, our apparatuses, they are aging. They've had to be in the shop a little bit more than normal. But with these five ambulances coming, with the engine coming, with the other three coming in 27, we look for that maintenance to be lower, and then it also, the downtime to be lower, the maintenance to be lower, and it just keeps our apparatuses in service and ready for the next response.

Real quick, Chief, I'm gonna interject. We could have done a better job in explaining some of the one-time expenditures, but you'll notice that there's total expenditures of basically almost $2.4 million. Wesley, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but that's also inclusive of that close to $1 million transfer in from VSTDC that would go towards an additional pumper. And then also, as it relates, you've heard both chiefs talk about, or excuse me, yeah, you've heard both chiefs talks about the computer aided dispatch replacement, and then you heard Chief Gama speak to the station alert system. Both of those combiners are about a $3.5 million investment in replacing those two legacy systems. And so I think we'll find a better way to kind of illustrate this for the presentation in August, but that's a significant investment in public safety for two systems that are basically have reached the end of life. I think the CAT system is how old?

The CAT system after three changes. So that's probably a little bit over 10 years.

OK, over 10 years old. And then the alert system. The station alert system's over 20 years old. My understanding, and Chief Bell jokes about this, but whenever that station alert system needs a part, he has to find them on eBay or just somewhere because those components aren't even supported anymore. And so I just think that we can't just, we have to do a better job of just highlighting that significant investment in public safety through the replacement of those two legacy systems. And so we'll do a better job of illustrating that for the presentation in August, but I wanted to chime in and provide that because as you know, investing in public safety is a combination of investing in technology and fleet and personnel. And sometimes you don't have money to do all of the above. And so we have to prioritize. But definitely always a heavy investment in public safety. But anyway, continue on, Chief.

Yes, exactly that. Stolen thunder. I'm glad you mentioned that. The supporting system for the station alerting system, it's old, antiquated. You have to search on eBay or Facebook Marketplace for the part. If anyone has done eBay before, you know you turn into a bidding war and there's accounting a countdown where someone will snipe you at the last minute and get the, you know, pay a little bit more and get that product out from underneath. So anyways, yeah, this is huge for us. So the, the revenues here, you can see we were at roughly, I'm just at almost 7 million. That's with the intergovernmental service as well as the emerging con and then, uh, the false, the false alarm, uh, fees. And the intergovernmental is the contract with the County, right? So for 2028 and beyond, first of all, I just want to point out the pictures. This is what you all invested in for our fire department. If you look up at the top right, that is the ambulances that are coming. We actually changed up the paint scheme a little bit. We have gotten all kinds of praises for the look of the ambulance. Here is the engine where our members just recently went out. And so that is the new color scheme. of the engine as well. And it's just, again, big morale booster. Shows our troops that we're investing in them and that a lot of changes are coming. So with that, we're always talking about staffing. We've got to increase staffing. We've got to address the EMS side. And like I had mentioned before, with the average call rate continuing to increase every year, we have to focus the attentions on EMS as well as also our fire prevention. We need more inspectors as well. As far as exploring optimal operations and models, we like to believe we are the best out there and we are emulated by others, but that doesn't stop us from peeking and looking at other departments to see what they are doing. Because if there's some best practice out there, we wanna bring that to Victoria. That's very important for us because if you stay complacent, you become irrelevant. We always want to be on the foreground, on the cutting edge in delivering the best service for the community. As far as the fleet replacement, as these new apparatuses are coming in, I think it's important that we develop a replacement schedule. And with that, what that does is it ensures the reliability, it ensures that we're fiscally responsible, and it just increases the community in safety. Our apparatuses are complex. They're expensive tools that deteriorate over time under intense operating conditions. Managing them with a structured approach prevents critical operational failures. It prevents budget shock. And we want to avoid all of that. We want to make sure that there are no budget spikes, that we lower our maintenance costs, and that at the time, at the close to the end of life, that we maximize the trade-in or the resale value of that apparatus as we go to secure another one. Station rebuilding, that's important as well, station rebuilding and replacement. Our fire stations are aging. as technology grows and our apparatuses are bigger and You know the stations the challenges is accommodating the station not only the apparatuses but then also the other resources that we have such as our hazmat trailer and our other you know our boats as well, you know things like that, so we have to look at our stations and You know decide if we need to invest and rebuild or remodel, or do we need to just rebuild a newer station that can accommodate these newer and modern apparatuses? But more importantly, I want to stress that we want to protect the firefighters. It's important that we protect the firefighters and we worry about their health. A lot of these new stations, they come with a section that's what's called a decon section. It allows our members to decon the carcinogens that they acquire or are exposed to when they are at the fire ground. So it's really important that they're able to come back to a station where they have a decon, where they're able to leave the carcinogens there and keep them away from the living quarters. So I think that's something important that we need to put on our radar and look to the future on and how do we protect and increase the health of our firefighters as well. And with that, I'd like to thank you guys for sitting and listening. Thanks, Chief. And of course, not proposing acquiring a helicopter.

Even though it's the new color scheme?

That was our training with the Coast Guard, and they were gracious enough to do a couple of fly-arounds around Victoria with some of our members. So it was really a great, great training. And again, the members see that we're trying to do all we can to invest in them as well.

Chief, you've got a $20 million budget, correct? Yes. The intergovernmental, the county is $2.94 million that they're paying. That equates to a 6.82% of our $20 million.

I don't think it's as simple as calculating it that way.

I don't know if you can- I'm just looking at revenues and budget, and it's 6.82%. $2.94 million out of $20 million.

We can get you a better breakdown of that. Not every expense we make falls under that.

It just falls way short of the call volume.

Oh, yeah, yeah. For sure, yeah. And it never does, right? I mean, the contract is 14%, or 14.5%, or whatever it is.

Well, my quick math was 6.82%, so I'm just trying to figure out how we get to 14%.

I think, well, I just did the 2.9 million divided by 14.5% is 20 million. Oh, okay. Well, you're better at math than I am. I just use calculators.

Okay. Any other questions? Wesley, don't be rude.

Thanks, Chief. We appreciate you all. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Mr. Garza, should we just move through? Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it.

We can jump into municipal court. Tiffany will come up and present the municipal court presentation.

Good morning, Ms. Toda. How are you?

Wesley, I want to ask you four questions.

Good morning you all. Mayor and City Council, I'm happy to be presenting the Municipal Court budget presentation today. So Municipal Court primarily focuses on customer service, court operations, and administrative functions such as code enforcement matters, animal service hearings, and other aspects. I was trying to figure out how best to include an image of our building and so I put it here in the background. of the new Public Safety Headquarters. And so here we have our organizational chart. We have the Municipal Court Presiding Judge and Associate Judge which are appointed by City Council. And then we have our five full-time staff members presented here. And this is just an overview of our count. This fiscal year we were able to add an Associate Judge to assist Judge Heinold with our move to the new Public Safety Headquarters. So the Municipal Court strives to provide increased access to fair court proceedings and accurate information that follows all applicable state laws and ensures the rights of all are protected. We are very grateful for the addition of our Associate Judge. Judge Easley has been a huge benefit to our operations and so we're very grateful that we've had the opportunity to add her as part of our team. So our goals and objectives include providing strategic operational direction for the operations to improve access to justice, leverage the new public safety headquarters to improve operational efficiencies and customer service operations, and then continue to help reduce recidivism through our educational and outreach efforts in conjunction with some of our public safety partners, as well as our community partners throughout the community. Our fiscal year 2026 highlights include our award through Tyler Technologies for our efficient usage of our court software through our outreach efforts where we have court out in the community and our continued community outreach efforts through our child safety program that we have as well as receiving our award for the traffic safety for the sixth consecutive year. The child safety program has been a huge benefit to our community. We have two programs that are with that program that include child safety grants to nonprofit partners as well as our car seat educational programming as well with our car seat techs within our department as well as the police department. We do have an upcoming event for that next month that we're excited to partner with another entity on. And then also enhancing public safety and quality of life for those who reside and travel through the community, including the move to the new public safety headquarters. This has provided tremendous opportunities to help modernize our court operations and partnering. I've had more meetings with PD and fire than I think I have my entire 14 years with the City of Victoria. So it's been nice to be able to meet with them and talk with them more face-to-face. Our continued partnerships with both Billy T. Kattan and Midcoast Family Services. These are for both our adult and youth programs that we have that primarily focuses on offenses such as for the adults, public intoxication related matters. Those charged with those types of offenses may be referred to Billy T. Kattan to help keep that offense off of their record and help improve their quality of life. And then we have our youth diversion program in partnership with Midcoast Family Services. And this is for our more youthful folks that they're aged 10 to 16 years of age that may be charged with non-traffic violations and they're diverted to Midcoast Family Services to get the resources that they need. And so we continue these partnerships in conjunction with these two entities. So with our performance metrics here, our goal is to not just focus on those new cases coming in, but also to focus on any backlog of cases. And so we have been trending upwards in the last few years where we're closing more of our older cases, thus closing more cases than we're receiving from new filings. And so this just shows that continued trend. We have seen somewhat of a downward trend case filing and that's across the board. There were things that have impacted that legislative changes. I know one thing in the past year that really impacted was juvenile curfew violation. So that's one that we had that went away that did also decrease and so things such of that sort. And so we are continuing to close more cases than we're filing. Our outreach efforts help a lot with that. Going out into the community helps to get those older cases off the books, if you will. With our court activity, the highest bar there, the gray bar, is number of cases that folks have when they're coming into court versus the one there in the middle, the darker blue, that is actually number of people appearing in court. So on average, somebody may have two to three cases when they're coming to a court docket. They might have one or they might have 10. But they're coming into these dockets. This includes our everyday dockets that we have, our traditional ones, and then even our outreach efforts. And then the lowest bar there at the bottom is the number of dockets that we have per year. We average anywhere from about 10 to 12 court dockets per month. We try to take at least one week off a month where there's no court so we can catch up on all the day-to-day activities. But we traditionally have court about two to three times per week on average.

Okay.

And so here we have the Strategic Innovation and Funding Initiative. So in this fiscal year in 2026, we were awarded a grant through the Office of the Governor for youth diversion efforts. We were awarded $46,444, which has allowed us the opportunity to add a part-time clerk to help with offset the workload of the staff member who is dedicated full-time to those efforts. And so this has really provided us an opportunity to evaluate how we can better serve our youth. Oftentimes municipal courts are the only time somebody encounters court. And so if we can get them early and really help guide them and help keep them out of the system that helps over a long-term reduce recidivism. We also do have supplement funding from state mandated court fees that include things such as security technology and juvenile justice related matters that help to supplement those fundings. With AI and operational innovation, we did just this past week complete the transition from our local server to a hosted environment with Tyler Technologies. We are limited in usage of AI at this time with our court software, but we're moving in the right direction. Our current platform that we utilize does not currently support AI functions, but some of their future programming does, which one of those moves is that move to the cloud. And so continuing to work closely with them on how we can best utilize that. I have worked with James and IT about different AI programs that we can use that don't work within necessarily our system, things that we can utilize to help improve some efficiencies and help automate some of those processes. And then we did also transition to a new payment system with Tyler Technologies called Tyler Payments, and then just continued training with our staff members. on usage of that and how we can make that most efficient. Some of our fiscal year 2027 new programs or continuing programs would be our continuing efforts to provide traffic safety and community outreach initiatives. We are looking to, currently we utilize a third party collection agency for past due cases and cases that have gone and defaulted. And so we would like to bring that more in-house and prevent that third party being involved in that process. And so in this next fiscal year, I really wanna evaluate what that might look like. so that we can help better improve case compliance and reduce some of that backlog that we have experienced. And so that would help prevent us utilizing this third party. The third party is something we are able to continue to utilize, but it does add an additional financial burden because we're adding an additional cost that goes directly to that provider and that is paid by the person who is charged with that violation. And so they get a 30% increase if they are referred third party. And if we can reduce that and have that be more in-house, I think we could be more effective at closing those cases quicker. So we'd like to evaluate what that might look like. I've worked with a few other cities to kind of get some of their plans on what they did to do that. And then the new building still continues to pose great improvements in security. We're grateful for all the things that we have with it, and so we want to continue to improve that. exploring the walkthrough metal detector, and then also in continued partnership with the police department for court security purposes. So for the fiscal year 2027 budget overview, there is an overall increase of $25,754. A little over 10,000, 10,500 of that is one-time expenditures for an overall increase of 4.57%. And so with that, that would include the increases there include the fiscal year 2027 pay program, increased software maintenance to the continuing usage of our software. We do experience a slight increase year to year on that. Increasing in education and for mandatory training of judicial staff, including the addition of Judge Easley, as well as our part-time staff member. And then one-time replacement. So the one-time costs include things such as cash stores or receipt printers. Those are about almost 15 years old at this point. And then a health fund transfer as well. This is an overview of the fiscal year, year to year revenues that we receive from payments of fines and fees. Majority of what this picture shows what the city retains versus what goes to the state. The state also gets a portion of costs and fees. And so then fiscal year 2028 and beyond, we're continuing the exploration of adding an online juror management portal for maintaining all juror information, including their forms that they need to submit. AI usage of court translation services, those are things that we could utilize when we need those, not for a court hearing or a trial. For a trial, we do have to bring in per state law a certified interpreter, but for day-to-day transactions at the window or in a pretrial type of setting where they're meeting with the prosecutor, we can certainly continue to explore what those might look like. Continuing to work closely with our case management system, our provider Tyler Technologies to determine how we can best migrate to the cloud with that web-based programming that they have coming in the future. And then continuing to evaluate that child safety program to make sure we're utilizing that fund to its full capacity and providing services to the community that this community is aligned with, as well as City Council priorities as it's related to that fund usage. That's all I have for you all unless you all have any questions for me.

Any questions on municipal court budget? Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it.

All right, so we'll keep it going, and I'll ask Julie to come up and present her combined presentation for her divisions. Ms. Fulgram, welcome.

Good morning. So as you know, Development Services is made up of several divisions. We've got Development Center, which is all thing building permits and inspections, Planning Services, Code Enforcement, and GIS, and we are a one-stop development center. This is our organization chart. It's been pretty stable for the last 10 plus years. So our assistant director primarily takes care of the field operations, permits inspections, code enforcement, and I have oversight of everything, but then also more day to day on the rest. We have been at 26 full-time employees for, again, in excess of a decade. We do occasionally switch positions between the different funds in the department as needed. Last year, we did switch with switching over to Tyler. We were able to really fix some of the fund centers. We moved the assistant director into the development services admin category. It had previously been a development center. But when I was assistant director, I was funded out of planning and since that's a management function, we put it in the admin center last year. But the 26 full-time employees has, like I said, been the size of our department in excess of a decade. Our department mission is to provide sound professional advice and technical expertise in a fair and consistent manner and approach enforcing codes with a common sense approach and facilitative attitude. And this is our great staff. We're only missing one. So that's 25 out of our 26 employees represented. So our goals and objectives, I have them broken up through the different centers, fund centers. So our development center, we are working on code updates always. Right now, the big code updates are the 2024 International Residential Code, which is either going to be adopted the very end of this fiscal year, the very beginning of next fiscal year. But of course, implementation will then be ongoing, as well as swimming pool updates. And then continue training initiatives. We have two fairly new building inspectors that are doing really amazing on getting their ICC certifications that they need. For planning, we're going to continue to upgrade and implement our MGO, our new software. We've already implemented the permit side, but we're moving on to all the different modules which includes the planning module We'd also like to reimplement the quarterly progress reports now that we have our planners for the most part kind of trained up to Minimum level that they need to be for the development side And then continue amendments to our unified development code for MPO We'll just continue following all of those federal laws, but they're big project or we're gonna have a free study next year. I CDBG, again, continuing to follow all of the applicable federal laws and then implement our comp plan that we adopted last year, as well as administering our lot-to-home program for code enforcement, just continue enforcing all of the codes and really addressing substandard buildings with a focus on multifamily structures that are substandard. And then GIS's big goal is to get that impervious cover data set just in tip-top shape, and then also continuing to provide services to other city departments like a story maps and whatnot. So for our past highlights, um, we had some pretty big permits this past year with, uh, the fish pond senior living permit apartments that were issued. Our public safety headquarters was finally COD. We have the Victorian apartments under construction. huge project with the Victorian Retail Village Expansion. The beginning of this fiscal year, we CO'd the Amazon Center. And then working with the Victoria County through the interlocal on their mental health hospital. And then Hope Ranch just was actually CO'd yesterday. We also finally implemented our MGO new software and then have been ongoing with the building and input meetings for the 2024 IRC. In GIS, we had new aerials flown in January, so those should be published to our map Within the month and then planning, we've, again, always are updating and tweaking our UDO to make sure that it just always stays on top of everything and there's as minimal errors as possible. For MPO, we helped with our public engagement plan for the transit implementation so they can implement new routes and also developed a new TIP, Transportation Improvement Program, which is a companion document to their big five-year plan. We also amended the public participation plan with some changes the TxDOT requested. And we are, at last council meeting, all approved the contract for that regional freight plan. And our CDBG, we implemented our first year of our new five-year comp plan and then launched the lot-to-home program and also in partnership with Habitat the Victoria ramp-up program, which they're actually administering that program. We're helping fund. And then in code enforcement, we had a record number of building standards commission cases and junk vehicle cases. So this is what our 2026 highlights looks like in pictures. You see that Hope Center was just CO'd yesterday. Then we have the Victorian and Fishpond Apartments under construction. And then I hope everyone has been shopping at the new Victoria Retail Village. some code enforcement highlights. And yes, I confirmed several times that the top picture and the bottom picture of the house, the yellow house, is actually the same house. You can see the neighboring property looks the same.

I pushed back on that very heavily, by the way. I was like, there is no way.

So ideally, we would love to see all substandard structures end up like this. But unfortunately, some just do make their way to But this has really been a big focus of code enforcement is trying to get structures that look like the top to end up looking like the afters. So here's our performance metrics for permits. As you'll see, year over year, we're pretty steady. But then the value of construction can really fluctuate depending on what type of construction projects. A big mental health hospital is going to have a much higher value than a commercial shopping center or whatnot. But the work and the permits are still there. And then, of course, if you remember many, many years ago, Our state legislature said that we are not allowed to ask for value for residential anymore, so we track those based off of square footage.

That's not updating.

Sorry, having technical difficulties. OK, so this is our planning case types. We track land use verification letters, site plans, plots, pre-development meetings, and variances. So that large gray bar is our pre-development meetings. And we always want to get ahead of the development before they submit so that we can work through any potential issues and help minimize the number of variances, which I think has been a good practice. Land use verification letters, you really see Properties, there's a lot of companies that request these types of letters whenever commercial properties are changing financing. Their bank always requires a land use verification letter, so that's kind of a fun one to track to see how many properties are changing hands. This is our code enforcement environmental nuisance cases. This includes all high weeds and grass, trees, as well as junk and debris. We don't currently have a system. Our new software will be able to divvy these out. But right now, all environmental nuisance cases are just tracked holistically. But as you can see, they're pretty standard year over year. And then these are other types of code enforcement cases. As you can see, our substandard structures have been trending up. We're really trying to get them to trend up this year, and they will end up being, they're projected, they'll end up being much higher actuals than last year, because it's been a really concentrated effort to address more substandard structures. Of course, if you're doing more substandard structures, then that does mean that we maybe can't do as many other types of cases because they are a little bit more involved. And then it has been a very wet spring and summer, so the high weeds and grass, of course, are about to hit, or they kind of already have. These are our GIS cases. And as you can see, the data sets maintained, which is that really high bar in light blue, is something that takes a lot of time for GIS, as well as the map and data requests from different departments. So we do manage two federal grants, the MPO grant and the CDBG grant. As you know, the MPO, we do hold back $75,000 out of our every year allotment to fund our big five-year plan every five years. And so that adds up because that's a big cost that we really wouldn't be able to do in-house. And then we utilize Housing Finance Corporation funding for direct cost to the Lot to Home program, which is mowing or any title work, things like that. For AI, we really use it a lot for research. It's very helpful, especially digging through the Code of Federal Regulations or all the federal briefs that get published. And we use it for surveys and whatnot. I'm still very skeptical on using it to review plans because plans are pictorial in nature. And every time I've uploaded a plan set, a plat, or whatever, and asked it for a question, it spits out an answer that it's very confident. But when you actually go and review it, it's never right. And so it's just not there yet, I think, on that type of. Review to be able to utilize it but for writing plans research. It's a great tool So this is our new programs and initiatives for next year for development center, we're just gonna focus on training and code adoption and then we are already in talks with the ISD because of their bond so that's going to be result in a lot of work for our Permanent Center. Planning is implementing the UDO and our MGO planning module. MPO is that freight study I mentioned. We also are going to be having to update our five-year or update our textile planning agreement. It's something that's supposed to be updated actually every six years and but it was just reauthorized the last few times, and so this will be a first time that it's really been holistically looked at in a long time, over a decade. As you know, the city is the fiscal agent for the MPO, so the MPO is actually a separate standalone organization as designated by the governor, so we're waiting to see what major changes come out of this planning agreement. And then we are also beginning to develop the 20 to 55 travel demand model, which is a several-year initiative that feeds into that five-year metropolitan transportation plan. For CDBG, we're brand new into our new con plan, so it'll be the second year. So that's just kind of business as usual, as well as the lot-to-home infill housing program. And then code also has an MGO module that we'll be implementing. And then we want to get ahead of our neighborhood sweeps and doing more cleanup events, as well as the substandard buildings. And then GIS's big project is implementation of the impervious cover data set, and then just continuing education and collaboration with other departments. So our budget is increasing by $20,852, or 0.8%. And that is accounted for the pay program. For M&O, it's just increased cost in software maintenance, subscriptions, things with internal service charges, just basic inflation costs. Our capital is increased due to our computer replacement program. And then we do have a one-time expense. This year, the National APA Conference will be in Houston, and normally we send all of our planning staff to the state conference. The travel's going to cost the same, but the registration fee for the national conference is about a 25% increase over the state registration fee. So instead of going to the state conference, we'll all go to the national conference, and then there's this one-time increase in the registration fees. And then we are replacing two vehicles that are over 10 years old. So we are not recommending any adjustments to our fees. So again, a lot of our fees are based off of values. So if you see our construction permit values are higher, then our fees will be higher or vice versa. And then looking to the future, some of the issues that we work with daily is we have disjointed offices. I get my steps in almost every day going through the different offices talking to folks. In our development center, the training of the inspectors is something that we're always looking for valuable training opportunities and getting them trained up and just the overall staffing. You know, always trying to guess what is our permit load going to be like. In planning, we will have a need for a new comprehensive plan, probably somewhere 20, 30 range. And then, of course, always keeping up with our changing federal regulations and funding. And then code enforcement, there is a need for some sort of volunteer program or to help with those that are less fortunate in our community that are kind of repeat violators because they just don't have the resources. But funding is difficult to identify, where to identify funding to help with that sort of program. And then GIS, again, continuously changing software and training. So GIS and our inspector positions are just very technical positions that require a lot of training to be experts in. And that's all I have. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Can you go back to the revenue slide with the round thing? You're projecting for the year that we're in that we're gonna have a big decrease and then we're gonna have a big increase next year. Could you clarify or comment on that?

So for our permit, year-to-year, we're looking at 775 to 763. Well, for your 26 projections, you got 670.

And then for 27, you have 768, which is less than it was in 25. Why are the can you clarify those projections for me, please? What do you look at for 20 the three columns Last three columns.

So I think there's a difference actually an increase.

Yeah, so there's a there's a there's I think a misprint Yeah, what I have there and what's up there is different.

Yeah We caught that this morning

I was looking at the, oh, the book's different than what you said.

Mark, you passed the test.

Yeah, you passed the test. Congratulations. I was looking at the screen. I was like, Mark, I don't know what you're talking about. Perfect, okay. Okay, apologies.

Okay, thank you. We fixed that.

I just have one quick question. I noticed you had projections on junk vehicle issues, I think 400 this year and 400 next year. Just out of curiosity, do most of those incidents, do they derive from observation by folks in your department? Are they from complaints or reports by neighbors?

There's a lot of complaints. Our current software doesn't allow us to track which are complaint-driven versus proactive. But I can tell you just anecdotally, Junk vehicles, there's a lot of complaints. But when there is a complaint for a junk vehicle, so 100 Main Street, our code officers will go out. They'll identify the junk vehicle. They'll do a sweep of the area then because they don't want to just pick on or charge. just enforce on one. And so if there's a junk vehicle next door at 102 Main Street, then that can create a cascade effect. And so we actually do have some citizens that will give us a list of like 15 to 20 junk vehicles at a time, or vehicles to check. They may not all end up being junk vehicles. And so we do have a lot of very helpful citizens that give us lists to go check out.

Okay, thank you. Any other questions? All right, thank you very much. We will jump to our next report then. Thank you, Julie.

Next up we have Joel, he's gonna talk about CBB. As he comes up though, I'll make an observation that I'm sure you've picked up on, but specifically with municipal court and development services, this is an example of departments where they continue to improve the delivery of service with minimal cost impact. And so I think that's important to point out that there doesn't always have to be a correlation with increased funding and improved services or improved progress with the department. Sometimes there is, obviously, but not always. And so I think it's just important to just highlight that we have some departments that don't necessitate huge budget increases, but continually increase. progress and lean more into technology and other factors. And so I just want to point that out. And so anyway, Joel.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. I will run through my presentation here for the Convention and Visitors Bureau in Main Street and try not to keep you from lunch at that set time and present our fiscal year 2027 budget. So what does our department do, Discover Victoria? Well, we have several major tenants, as in advertising events, promoting our rich history and attractions, servicing sports events, assisting conventions and meetings, informing our residents about what there is to do in Victoria and increasing community pride, and supporting our travel partners, which do not only include hotels, but our arts and cultural nonprofits, small businesses, and anyone here in Victoria who we feel impacts the travel industry. So our organizational chart, we have myself as director, reporting directly to me as our destination marketing manager, our CVB assistant director, Elizabeth Tice, and our guest service specialist, and reporting to Liz is our downtown coordinator for the Main Street program. Now, Liz is listed as CVB assistant director, and she also performs the functions of the Main Street manager. So departmental employees, you can see that in fiscal year 27, we are not adding a new employee, that was simply the transfer of the downtown coordinator to the CVB. Back after the beginning of this current fiscal year, some functions of the Main Street program were transferred underneath the CVB, specifically marketing downtown events, programming downtown, and the maintenance aspect of downtown Victoria, That section of the budget is administered by the Parks and Recreation Office. So our departmental mission for the CVB to foster economic development in Victoria by positioning it as one of the premier mid-size market destinations for leisure travel, conferences and meetings, and sports events through strategic marketing, sales, and destination development. For the Main Street Program, through leadership and use of the Main Street America, the Victoria Main Street Program will ensure that downtown contributes to the community's overall quality of life by providing opportunities for economic growth as well as for entertainment and personal enjoyment. Our goals and objectives, to increase visitation to Victoria from several sectors of travel, provide services to sports events, which is a huge driver of our hotel room nights, especially on weekends, and conferences, enhance existing and create additional promotional programs, such as you see there, that woman is holding a prize from our annual You'll Love Shopping Victoria promotion, which we plan to do again next year that gets people into the doors of local retailers during the busy holiday shopping season. Supporting Victoria tourism partners by marketing their businesses, especially through social media, which we do for many local small businesses that are very successful posts and increase awareness for them. And then the Main Street program increasing visitor and resident engagement in downtown Victoria through programming and business support. So some fiscal year 26 highlights. We integrated, as I mentioned, the promotional efforts and board management of the Main Street program under the CVB. We developed the short-term rental registration program and city ordinance, which I came with you all for several meetings several weeks back. planned the America 250 July 4 blast-off. That has traditionally been a Parks and Recreation managed event, but with it being America 250 and us doing the parade this year. Parks and Rec and I and CVB met a few months ago and we agreed to take on the planning of the blast-off. which we have experience with because we do the New Year's Eve blast off every December 31st. We have brought back the street dances, the night tune street dance events. We had our first one on June 12th, had 200 people come out at peak, which was very nice attendance, especially for our first one. We will have three more in July, August, and September. We revise the requirements of annual hot funds awards program, which I came in a meeting a few weeks ago to kind of change the to make it a little more stringent on the the room nights and Who can who is eligible to apply? We are currently in the process of updating our old entire inventory of Old Victoria driving tour Directional signage if you're driving around downtown you'll see these older green and white signs that say historical tour with an arrow on it and a number of them are washed out and hard to read, we will be updating that entire inventory this summer. Planning is still ongoing for the TEAS Fest 2026 event. We were reaccredited as a Main Street America community, kudos to Liz and her staff for making that happen. As you can see here, with the boards completing the downtown art project that's on the side of the Welder Center and restructuring the Main Street e-newsletter and social media standards. We also are very involved in the sports tourism. That is, of course, the sports tourism coordinator is housed under Parks and Recreation, but Liz works very closely with Jerry. They meet about every other week to talk about upcoming events. We see it as kind of a two-fold thing where the sports tourism coordinator in parks, they're reserving the facilities, They're making sure the fields are ready, everything like that. We're that second leg of bringing those events in where we provide the hospitality, hotel specials, welcome items, all that kind of stuff. So it's very important that Liz and Jerry meet very often to make sure we're not duplicating efforts there. But you can see we had a number of sports events this current fiscal year, a number of golf tournaments. We hosted some small conferences, as well as supporting a few that were coming here. And we also directly support smaller events that may not be in the Hot Funds Awards process, such as VTX Art Walk. We do do a direct sponsorship for the Crossroads Barbecue and Brew Music Festival. We will do that. one more time this year for a large sponsorship, and then we'll be scaling that down in next fiscal year 28, because this event's had about three years to get their legs under them. But these are a lot of smaller $1,000 kind of sponsorships just to support these events that do provide a great quality of life. So some performance metrics. Our website continues to grow. We are, I think, the best events calendar in town. Have everything on there from major, major events like Memorial Weekend Bash all the way down to, you know, Austin Atilio playing with Evan's Pizza on a Thursday evening. We... have just seen the trend of our visitation go up and we expect that to continue. Our social media reach, we've gone down a little bit just in terms of what we've spent. We do plan on increasing that spend next year. We're not increasing the budget necessarily for that. We're just kind of re-examining a few of our partnerships, a few of our subscriptions and kind of letting those go away and increasing money in different areas like digital advertising and social media. which is something our tourism advisory board has really wanted to see. Visitor center visits, we have had a little bit of a decrease. We're hoping to get more of an increase next year. The Saturday visitation has been positive. Working on some local awareness campaigns to let people know that the visitor center is open on Saturdays. Our hotel room nights have stayed pretty stable. We get these numbers by looking at our weekly STR reports. multiplying the occupancy rate each day by how many rooms were reported because not all of our 27 properties report. They're mostly only the chain properties report to that. Anything that's independent is typically not included on those STR reports. So that value, of course, is a little bit underrepresented, but that's going off the data we have available. And then we do have one metric for the Main Street Program reinvestment numbers. Again, Liz is still getting under her what we exactly plan to report in the future. I will say a lot of the early stages of the integration of the Main Street Program was getting used to the board, working with the board, streamlining everything. We do have a great board president, Jeb Lacey, and Liz has done a great job kind of getting that board in the direction we'd like it to go. So strategic innovation and funding initiatives. We had a record amount of sponsorships for Tejas Fest 2025. We are already doing very well for 2026 at over 50,000. For the first time, we do have a Live Oak level title sponsor with Atzenhofer Chevrolet, which we're very excited about. We did receive a $5,000 sponsorship from Del Papa Distributing for the upcoming July 4th blast off. And we did apply for a $5,000 Levitt Foundation grant for Taos Fest. We did not receive it, but we will apply again next year. It's an annual process, and we're going to try it for Night Tunes next year because I think they do kind of prefer a series of events when they award these, as we've learned, as they award these grants. AI and operational innovation, considering that we will absolutely, I apologize, that's a typo, we will be using the Azure software for short-term rental management. We had a demo with them. Right now, everything's kind of going manually, but it is a 100% system where basically The short-term rental owner can sign up for that, can sign up, fill out their paper, their permit information. It helps us locate where those short-term rentals are, arrange for communications with them, all kind of stuff. It would be a one-stop shop for the short-term rental management. Also implementing some new programs that will allow us to share photos and video assets very easily, especially with our other city departments and tourism partners. Implementing a Sherpa platform for sourcing and managing content creators, so they actually bring in content, social media creators, photographers, because it can be very hard to find a local photographer that's not expensive. that this can bring in photographers for us. While we still would utilize local photographers, it just streamlines that whole process. And then using AI programs like LLMs, ChatGPT to improve a copy for our website. So fiscal year 27, new programs initiatives. Again, mentioning utilizing the Azure software. We plan to design a sports facility sale packet. We currently don't have anything formal yet. We've talked with Parks and Recreation, made sure we weren't double budgeting on that. So designing and creating something that can really sell all of our sports facilities here in Victoria to potential tournament organizers. Purchase and management of multiple music licenses. So, in the past, Parks and Rec had purchased an ASCAP license, an ASCAP license. Currently, that had expired. We had purchased a BMI license that will cover all city events for the rest of this year. But to be really... Comprehensive with your coverage, because as you may or may not know, any event that plays copyrighted music publicly needs to have a music license. There are three major entities, BMI, ASCAP, ASCAP, and CSAC. So we plan on purchasing all three licenses. And many local small businesses do this. Altogether comes out to a few thousand dollars, but the penalty of playing unlicensed music can be in the tens of thousands if a lawsuit were ever to come. So it's really just proactive to making sure we're covered. Standardizing direct support for local events or creating more of a formal sponsorship program for those smaller events that I mentioned earlier in the presentation. Direct support for two new hotel impact events such as the STPGA. They currently have brought a, bring a, Fall golf tournament here to Victoria. They're interested in bringing a spring tournament As well as a theater network of Texas youth conference this brings in hundreds of youth for an entire week to Victoria And Michael tear has been hard at work the director That's actually them at the previous conference the theater Victoria youth in Paris, Texas And they're going to be bringing that event here for next year. So we want to support them Revising and restarting our historical bus tours that we did during Bicentennial and exploring regional tourism collaborations. So Main Street programs, new initiatives, creating welcome packets for new downtown businesses, implementing a new program called See My Legacy. We would do this in concert with several other city departments, sharing a membership. It can really do a lot of things. walking tours, volunteering, sponsorship, solicitation and payment, creating an outdoor art museum. This is a passion project, especially of our board. I mentioned that, showed that picture of the Martin de Leon mural on the side of the Welder Center. The board wants to see more public art created downtown and create a sort of walking QR code trail that shows all of those places people can visit. updating the downtown business and building inventory list, and we are currently in the final stages of the rebranding of the Main Street program, but there will be some steps to where we have to update the Main Street pages on the Discover Victoria website, social media, that sort of thing. So you can see the CVB budget overview. I will explain the variance here. So what accounts for that is the pay program increase due to the increases in subscriptions and memberships. Those are the music license I mentioned a few minutes ago. Sports marketing, such as a sports sales packet and internal services charges. Capital increase due to computer replacement program. All of our computers for the department are six years old. And when you unplug it, it lasts for about 20 minutes. So we are gonna be getting all the way around a new laptops for the office Some one times a new department copier and I mentioned those sponsorship opportunities for next fiscal year So the Main Street program you can see that budget went down by quite a bit the reason for that is the The employees who had previously been budgeted under the Main Street, the maintenance employees are now budgeted under the Main Street maintenance program that's managed by Parks. Liz did budget for some advertising expenses, no capital requests. And then the one time expanding the facade light repair program, so the facades lights are the lights that line the top of the buildings during Christmas time. And then Night Tunes program, we would love to make this a recurring event. We're going to evaluate how it does this year as far as attendance goes as well as next year and see if this is something that we continue annually if we have that success there. So fiscal year 28 and beyond, supporting the Gary Moses Community Center through event sales and services, and we're already keeping track of events that we could steal from other places that the newer, larger facility could absolutely hold. I was at my daughter's, there was a dance competition in Corpus, and we were in a high school, and I'm like, we could totally have this at the community center. Developing a public art permitting program. Several departments have been talking about that for a while. Creation of secondary sort of gateway signage, especially major areas like Texane and Victoria, and the community center. A design similar to the big stone monuments you see, but it'd be something more made out of metal, and as you're driving down the highway, you'll see, you know, community center, Gary Moe's community center, youth sports complex to your right, that sort of thing. Um, and then expanding visitor center hours of operation through the renovation of the space at 700 main center, of course, at several years away, um, as the city hall complex is something that's being looked at as well. Um, And for the Main Street program, fiscal year 28 and beyond, create a plan to recruit and retain downtown businesses, achieve a Texas Commission on the Arts Cultural District designation, this is a big one, because to receive that designation would mean grant funding would open up for different downtown entities, work with the Texas Main Street program, property owners to preserve and restore historic buildings, and beautification and streetscapes improvements. And Mayor Crocker, I think you might recognize that from our proclamation, but that's you in the Oval Office.

Yeah. I don't recall being there, but I recall that picture, yes.

President Crocker. All right. Any questions?

Thanks so much. You did a great job of keeping us on schedule for lunch. All right. I think we've reached a point in our schedule where we will take a 30-minute lunch break. So we will be back here at 1230. After our lunch break, we'll reconvene our meeting. Somewhat on schedule, but we'll start with our library presentation. Ms. Berger, good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Let's go. The library's department description. We are known for our access to library materials, programs for all ages, technology and internet access, and meeting and learning spaces. Our organizational chart has changed this past year. Due to the retirement of our training and technology librarian, we were able to promote within and create three new positions. They're the coordinator positions, if you see the digital content coordinator, customer service coordinator, and the training and technology coordinator. We were known to have 25 full-time and six part-time, but with that retirement, we are now to 24 full-time and six part-time employees. Our department mission, we often look to support lifelong literacy, prioritize access to technology and certain resources, fostering community support for learning, reading, and personal development. And we are known to be a community anchor. And these things, our mission and our goals and objectives, which are improve access to technology, foster community, sorry, my apologies. There you go. Foster community awareness and support, inspire personal development, and serve as community anchor. Again, these things, our mission, our goals and objectives, they are always at the forefront of everything we do and all the services and programs we provide. We always consider those things. I will learn to click my clicker now. Some of the highlights. We have a lot of highlights, and some of them are reflected in our grants page. But I wanted to make sure to space it out a little bit. So our highlight for 2025 was our 50th anniversary. The library moved from the Nade Museum and became a public library 50 years ago. Many of you supported some of our initiatives in 2025. Thank you for that. Some of the highlights were our Night at the Library celebration. We were able to sell 140 tickets, and that night was very well received in the community. We've gotten emails requesting, please make sure that I am on the list for the next Night at the Library. Our .5K, three blocks, that was a lot. Mayor, I know you struggled for those three blocks.

I was the shepherd, keeping everybody going from the back, so it was good, it was good.

Yes, we had 115 participants in our .5K, and again, we had multiple programs, initiatives leading up to the September celebration, but that was one of our highlights was recognizing the achievement of the public library and all that the library has done for the community. Some 2026 highlights. We upgraded our catalog kiosk. I don't know if y'all have ever been to the library, but we have catalogs. We've only had two set throughout the library. But as you can see, we have standalone catalogs now that make it easier for our patrons to go to one of our library catalogs and search for the items they're looking for. And they are well received. And we added a new one because our patrons are like, these are so nifty and helpful. No longer is it a drawer. It is a computer. We added a second self-service sign-up for library cards at the desk, that tablet you see on the top. Again, we went from paper copies to sign up for a library card. Now you can do it all yourself at one of our tablets. And some in-house initiatives that we have that we're super proud of is we saw these book displays. I don't know if you see those little clamps where we're able to display our books, which helps when it comes to circulation and promoting our collection. Those clamps we were able to make in-house. They retail for $7 to $8 a piece. So we were... We created 78 of those, which was a cost savings of $550. We also created headphone hooks for the public computers. As you can see the picture on the top, which has the headphones hanging from the side of the monitor. Anytime that we're able to create something in-house, we do it. So we make a lot of our prizes. We make a lot of craft things with our 3D print. And as you can see, these are two things that we were able to have some cost savings. Those hooks right there, again, they retail for about $7, $8. So we were able to save about $200 on that as well. My math is a little, math doesn't math, but $168. We rounded it up. And then many of y'all know about our ribbon cutting for our children's area. If y'all haven't been in there, we invite you to go look at the space now. We have new shelving. We have new manipulatives, new toys, new tables and chairs. It has been well received in the community. And when I say that, we normally average about 32% of our juvenile collection circulating every month. We are now up to an average, on our low months, 37%. June is a little different because it's summer reading program. We just hit 50% of our juvenile collection. That means that is that much moving out of the library and getting checked out. Our performance metrics that oftentimes we hear, will physical collection go away? Absolutely not. Physical collection or circulation of our books is still the most popular on demand. But as you can see, there is a growing trend for our digital collection. It continues to rise. We have three platforms. We have Cloud Library, Hoopla, and Libby. Those services are our eBooks and eAudiobooks. And the demand keeps growing every year. Our patrons love to have both access to physical and digital. So we continue to monitor and see the trends where, as you can see, we've offered digital collections since 2010, and it continues to grow, just continues to climb, and the usage is very popular. Our cardholders, we continue to stay steady at 37,000. We do see a little bit of a drop, but it's not a reflection of how the library is used because you can come to our programs without having a library card. So even though there is a little dip, we are starting new initiatives like different types of promotional things, come get a library card, things like that to hopefully grow that number. Foot traffic, again, as I said at the previous slide, we continue to see the library being used. We welcome about 11,000 people per month on our average month. It spikes to 15 to 17,000 in June and July because those are our most high traffic times. And trends show that we will, by the end of this fiscal year, we will exceed our number from last year and 2027 is, well, looks the same, like it'll continue to grow. Our program attendance, that's another one where we continue to see our programs are well received. I wanna take a moment to just talk about and thank y'all because a lot of, because of the economy and the way things are, people are looking at more staycationing And we are a preferred place to go hang out and to go to free programs and things like that. We've seen an uptick in our attendance. Our LEGO, we do LEGO nights, afternoons where we just throw LEGOs on the floor, we see over 200 people. This summer, we had a reticle reptile program for an hour. We welcomed 297 people. Crocodile Encounter, 152 people. And our story times are hitting 100 to 115. So again, thank you for the support because we are a staycation destination. Some strategic initiatives, and again, these are part of our highlights as well, is we received the Marcia Shanklin Foundation grant awarded $165,000. We were awarded in June 2025, but because these shelves have to be customized, we were able to install earlier this year. Same with the TSLAC grant, we received $67,200 for our study pods, as you can see at the lower picture. Again, same thing, we were awarded in August of 2025, but the install happened in February of this year because they had to be custom built. And with, again, with the new shelving, we saw an uptick, we continue to see an uptick in our circulation and people using. the library, and with our study pods, since we've implemented, putting them into service, we see 80 to 100 reservations a month. That has been able to alleviate some of our reservations in our bigger spaces, so now we have more options for bigger spaces to be used by bigger groups, and these small spaces to use for the smaller two to four people, one to four people meetings. And the TSLAC grant, we were awarded $2,500 just recently. And what we did was we purchased more prizes for our summer reading program so that we can have more incentives for reading during the summer. OK, AI, how are we using it? Well, a lot of patrons come and ask us what this is. So a lot of my team has started to not only understand it for themselves by watching webinars and training videos, but they have to help our patrons navigate where to find resources on what is AI. So we use it for professional development. And despite everyone's belief that my team probably reads all day, we don't. So it's hard to generate those book questions for our book clubs. So they use it often to create those book club questions. And as you can see, the picture at the bottom is a rendering of the library and shelving. That's what we used when we did purchased before we purchased the children's area shelving, because this helped us create an image of what it would look like, how many shelves we needed, what it would look in the space. Because again, these, all these things have to be customly built. So we use it quite often for that. And then we, I don't know if you have seen some of our graphs, uh, in our promotion for, for, um, all of our programs. So our team uses AI a lot when it comes to our Canva promotions. So just a couple of things that we are hoping to get this year is a scan easy printer. What it is, it's a picture right there, it's a one stop shop. We continue to see that wireless printing, scanning, scan to USB, faxing, those are in high demand. We don't offer faxing right now. And because everyone uses their phone, the wireless printing is in high demand. We have a system that's probably 10 to 15 years old when it comes to how we offer scanning and how we offer wireless printing. So now we are to the point where we need to find a better, more efficient solution. So this is what we're looking at implementing this next year. and our automated door control. My team has to push carts in and out of the work area. We have a motion controlled door opener. Our machine's a little old and it sometimes can get a little temperamental. So those are the two things that we're hoping to get this next year. Our budget overview. There is a, as you can see, here's just an overview and the variance is 76,772. We'll drill down into what that is. So the increase is due to our pay program, an increase, higher cost of everything when it comes to our supplies, our building maintenance, our electronic subscriptions, like I talked about the digital demand. Those items are going up as well. our IT request, and then we do have 60 computers in the library. We have 35 public and 30 staff computers, so we are on a rotation, so it's part of our computer replacement program. And then, as I mentioned before, the door controller, hopefully the scan system, and there was a health fund transfer within that variance amount. Our revenues, we do do all the charges that we bring in for services. We are projected to show that we will bring in the $45,000. 2028 and beyond, what we're looking at, we continue to see that... We need to figure out how to go outside the library and get beyond the library walls. This has been identified as a midterm recommendation for our library master plan. What we hope to do is expand services for underserved areas and populations with transportation barriers. We hope to support outreach literacy and provide flexible, visible presence through the community. Excuse me. We have recognized that 42% of Victoria County residents fall within, and the youth and senior group fall within that transportation barrier needs. So we are actively looking for grants and opportunities to expand that with a library bookmobile. We've already applied for a bookmobile one time, We were not able to be awarded that grant but we are actively looking and right now there are two potential grants coming up that we are gonna continue to refine our request and hopefully see something. In 2028 and beyond, some of the things that we're hoping to, again, we continue to actively look for opportunities and ways to improve. We are always going to look at our programs and services. We're always going to fine-tune those things. But with the update of our youth juvenile area, we see the significant improvement in that. And we see that... there's something to it where let's look at how do we improve the inside of the library. So if ever, if there's ever an opportunity, we broke down to phases of what that would look like, what it would look like to build, um, certain areas of shelving for the library. As you can see, they come with a little bit of a price tag because these are all custom shelving. But again, we will continue to actively look for opportunities and ways to improve, uh, customer usage in the library and improve the look of inside the building. Well, that is my presentation. Hopefully, I got the award for the fastest presentation. No, but please let me know if you have any questions.

Any questions on the library?

I have one. For those that may or may not know, and I am one of those that don't know, when we talk about the printer that you want, is there a fee for print services? So is there an opportunity to recapture some of the expense for the printer?

There is a fee. It's 10 cents a page for black and white, 25 cents per color page.

All right. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Thank you. I'm never going to win that award, by the way. But that's okay. And so we'll transition over to Parks and Rec and I'll turn it over to Lisa. Lisa's also going to hit on sort of the second half or the other part of Main Street. I know that's a little bit different this year since historically Main Street was always its own presentation. But in any case, Lisa will hit on that as well.

Thank you.

It's not her birthday.

Long story. It's not her birthday. Yeah.

Anyway, go ahead. Well, even if it's not your birthday, always good to see you.

Thank you. All right. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Obviously, I'm Lisa Wube, Director of Parks and Recreation. Today, I will provide an overview of the Parks and Recreation Department and present the proposed 27 budget. The Parks and Recreation Department manages nearly 849 acres of parkland across Victoria. Our system includes parks, trails, athletic facilities, playgrounds, recreational amenities, and community gathering spaces that serve residents of all ages. These facilities support recreation, tourism, environmental stewardship, and quality of life throughout the community. This slide illustrates the overall structure of the department and the major service areas we oversee. Our operations include administration, parks maintenance, recreation, programming, golf operations, community center services, and sport tourism. Each division works together to maintain facilities and deliver programs and events for residents and visitors. This chart provides a closer look at staffing assignments throughout the department. The structure allows us to efficiently manage daily operations while maintaining parks, facilities, recreation programs, and golf operations. Several positions associated with golf and events are funded through other sources, helping reduce the impact on the general fund. The department maintains 31 full-time and five part-time employees, which has remained stable over the last several years. We remain committed to delivering quality services with our existing workforce. Our mission is to enhance opportunities for community wellbeing through recreation, tourism, and environmental stewardship. This mission guides our investments, programming decisions, and long-term planning efforts. We strive to create meaningful recreation experiences while protecting and improving our public spaces. Our primary focus is maintaining a balanced and accessible park system that meets community needs. Key priorities include updating the master plan. November, 2026 is the actual five year mark pursuing grant opportunities, expanding recreation programs and improving facilities. We also continue looking for innovative ways to enhance service delivery and support sports tourism. Our recreation highlights for 2026 continued. We continue to experience strong community participation throughout the year. Major events such as Trunk or Treat, the Christmas celebrations, and Sock Hop attracted thousands of attendees. We also expanded programming with the launch of an adult pickleball league, responding to the growing community interest. Our 26 parks highlights. The parks team achieved several notable accomplishments this year. Highlights include environmental stewardship initiatives, park improvements, new partnerships, and recognition through the Texas Recreation and Park Society Maintenance Rodeo. We also improved safety with the installation of the Perry Weather System. It's a warning system located at the Youth Sports Complex. Gazebo Pavilion and RV rental performance metrics, they're measured by tracking reservation volume, occupancy rates by day throughout the year. These metrics help evaluate the demand, maximize the use, and identify ways to improve our customer service. Recreation program experience significant growth year over year, increasing from 140 events and programs to 195, representing a 39% increase in community offerings. The growth was driven by the introduction of new programs such as game night at the community center and our monthly trivia night at the adult sports complex, providing additional social and recreational opportunities for residents. The department also expanded its focus on health and wellness through programs like Stroller Walks Toddlers, it's most famously known for. We also had a key, it's called Chi Gun and that is at De Leon Plaza and that's gone very well and that encourages active lifestyles for participants of all ages. Our senior programming saw notable enhancements as well with the addition of special events including the senior Easter celebration and the senior sock hop creating more opportunities for engagement and connection with the senior community. Looking ahead, the recreation department plans to further increase programming opportunities through the introduction of adaptive programming. And there's many initiatives lined up to provide that inclusive experience for participants of all abilities. 2027 new programs and initiatives include exciting initiatives focused on community engagement, park improvements, and wellness. Key projects include Martin Luther King Park improvements, design of the Children's Park Splash Pad, and the launch of the Discover Victober, which is a new month-long city-wide initiative during October to increase community engagement and promote local tourism. So stay tuned for more information about that. We also plan to expand free wellness programming and introduce new community partnerships through the Dogs and the Bark initiative. Grant funding continues to play a critical role in expanding park improvements while minimizing local financial impacts. We're actively pursuing multiple grant opportunities for park development, trails, recreation amenities, and accessibility improvements. So I'll talk a little bit about each. Pine Street Park Community Tree Planting Project. Parks and Recreation planted five native trees alongside HEB partners and Keep Victoria Beautiful volunteers to bring increased shade to Pine Street Park. Funding is awarded annually for plantings, occurring during the upcoming tree planting season, which lasts from October 2026 into March 2027. Nonprofits, municipalities, civic organizations are encouraged to apply for a $5,000 grant for projects that increase tree canopy, reduce the heat island effect, increase available green space, and beautify public spaces in Texas. Children's Park Splash Pad. The Marsha Shanklin Foundation gifted the Parks and Recreation Department a total of $553,000 for the Riverside Park project. With these funds, the foundation requested a splash pad be constructed, which will be named after the Marsha Shanklin Foundation. The Lone Tree Hike and Bike Trail Lighting Upgrade Project. Just like it sounds, it involves installing new LED lighting to the existing poles. We also have Meadow Lane Park. An application was submitted by our grants coordinator, Katie Conley, in August of 2025. That included a full $650,000, which there is a $325,000 city share. rehabbing, replacing a deteriorated playground and recreational elements to improve the access, add fencing and landscaping and lighting, and we look forward to that. We were expected in 2026, we got the award announcement in 2026 in January. The boat ramp and kayak dock. The design phase was awarded in early 2024. $105,389 came from Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and the city will be covering the $63,375. The boat ramp and launch dock will be redone. The kayak takeout dock will be moved to the other side of the pump house with the old kayak dock to be removed. The design is near 90% completion and after the design phase is complete, the city will apply for a grant for construction from Texas Parks and Wildlife for the boating access program and that's in 2027. Ted B. Reed, Texas Parks and Wildlife Recreational Trails Grant was announced in 5-22-2025, and that was $312,570 with a contribution from the city equaling $62,514. What we would like to do at Ted B. Reid is to improve the existing trail in the park, add a sidewalk along Salem from the fire station to Country Lane, and add a crosswalk across Salem to Windcrest subdivision. What's next is an environmental review that will take place prior to the contract being developed. And then we're talking about Martin Luther King Park. I wanted to mention this as well, and then I'll highlight on the Kiwanis as well. There is a committee that's been developed for the Martin Luther King Park, and we're reviewing recommendations from the park's master plan. This includes community outreach and engagement engagement as well. The next step is to engage half of the associates to prepare a revised conceptual design and cost estimate. The design activities are funded by the Victoria Sales Tax Development Corporation for 2026 and we will apply for grant funding in 2027. As I see mentioned here, the Kiwanis Club has introduced a new capital improvement grant. This is the first year that they've offered it. It's a $30,000 grant and we plan on applying for that in 2027. I wanted to highlight on two AI operational innovation initiatives. So recently with our communications department, we launched an interactive mapping tool for mosquito spraying zones to allow users to search by address and easily identify what zone they are in so they're able to track when we're coming to spray in their area. And then lastly, there is a recycling program that's been developed at the Duck Pond. This is a volunteer-led initiative, and it's coordinated by the Texas Sea Grant. And it helps to keep discarded fishing lines out of local waterways. And so it prevents wildlife entanglement and it reduces marine debris by maintaining a network of collection bins. So our new assistant director of Parks and Recreation, Randy DeHarty, had actually brought this program to our attention and so is actively at our duck pond right now. And they look like circular tubes. The proposed 2027 budgets total approximately $3.7 million. Recurring expenses increase by about 3% due primarily to personnel costs, inflationary impacts on operations. Overall, the total budget decreases by approximately 1.25% because of increased one-time expenditures compared to 2026. Personal increases primarily reflect the city's 2027 pay program. Maintenance and operations costs continue to rise due to increased prices for supplies, materials, and contracted services. One time funding is focused on the Meadow Lane Park, playground renovation, the health fund transfer, and vehicle replacements. We're looking for several pickup trucks, while capital requests are limited to essential laptop replacements. Department revenues are generated through recreation programs, facility rentals, sport tourism activities, and other user fees. We continually evaluate revenue opportunities while maintaining affordable access to parks and recreation services. Revenue growth helps support programming and operational sustainability. 2028 and beyond, looking ahead, we are focused on long-term improvements that will strengthen the park system and recreational opportunities. Major priorities include pursuing CAPR accreditation, which is the Commission for Accreditation of Parks and Recreation Agencies, that will help strengthen our park system, expand our trail connectivity, enhance our sport tourism facilities, and increase our adaptive recreation offerings. These initiatives position Victoria for continued growth and improved quality of life. Thank you for your time and continued support of Parks and Recreation.

All right. Thank you, Ms. Mube. Any questions?

Yes. Sorry. No, go ahead. On the Martin Luther King Jr. Park, you mentioned that there was going to be some community involvement. Yes. And I was just curious as to how word of that was going to get out.

So we're going to work directly with our communications department to tap into our community residents that live in that area. We've already started to communicate about churches, already started to plan for day and nighttime meetings, so that way we can gather as much input as possible. But that's happening internally with our communications department.

But there's also a committee of already identified stakeholders that has met. And so, for example, Ms. Wilma Edwards is part of that committee that is involved with the process to improve MLK Park.

Correct. Yes. Thank you.

Any other questions? All right. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Okay. So we'll stay on the topic of Parks and Rec, but we have multiple presenters that will hit on the various divisions. And so I'm going to ask Kate to come up and present on the community center. Good afternoon, Kate. Welcome.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. It's going to be an exciting time for the community center in fiscal year 27. As I mentioned, I will be presenting the budget for the community center fiscal year 27. The community center serves as a regional venue supporting community events, recreation programs, tourism, and economic activity. If you're not familiar with the community center or if residents haven't visited in recent years, there's an arena, there's dome, annex, and a conference room. I'll learn how to, present with paper and digital copy here in a second. These facilities accommodate everything from small meetings to large regional events, tournaments, livestock shows, and conferences. Staff provide setup, teardown, and customer support services to ensure successful experience for event organizers and attendees. Here's our organizational chart. The staff that reports to me is a community center supervisor with an administrative assistant three. That's a part-time position. That is different from the past. We've transitioned that to a part-time role. We also have a part-time community center operations assistant and four setup facility assistants. The staffing remains consistent with fiscal year 26 going into fiscal year 27. As we enter into the new expanded facility, we will reevaluate that to increase our staff and provide better experiences for larger and more dynamic events. Our mission is to provide high quality facilities that support community gatherings, recreation, tournaments, and special events. We strive to maintain the facility at a standard that attracts a diverse range of users from across the region. The community center remains an important asset for both residents and visitors. Our focus is on increasing facility utilization while maintaining affordability and flexibility for customers. We are expanding marketing efforts, strengthening partnerships, and increasing recreation programming opportunities. We also plan to implement post-event surveys to improve customer service and encourage repeat business. One of the most significant accomplishments this year was moving forward with a community center expansion project. We awarded a construction contract and anticipate construction activities to begin in the summer of 26. Additional improvements include updating facility rules and regulations, implementing an asset management database and enhancing landscaping at the facility entrance. The community center continued to host major regional events that generate economic activity and community engagement. Highlights include the 80th Victoria Livestock Show, South Texas Farm and Ranch Show, the Midcoast Hurricane Disaster Conference, Texas Gun Shows, and Rise Fighting Championship events. These events demonstrate the facility's value as a regional destination venue. These performance measures help us evaluate facility utilization, event activity, and operational effectiveness. Tracking trends allow us to better understand customer demand and plan future improvements. The data support informed decisions regarding programming, staffing, and facility investments. We continue exploring opportunities to improve operations while generating additional revenue. We are also expanding technology solutions including online reservation capabilities and continue supporting countywide emergency preparedness initiatives. And a couple of grant opportunities and external funding opportunities that we have coming up. We have a donation of a dedication statue of Gary Moses by the Food Bank of the Golden Crescent. And we are looking at developing sponsorship opportunities for the new facilities. For example, maybe a dedication wall, some sponsor banners in the arena, something like you would see in the current Riverside Stadium in Riverside Park. And then our AI and operational innovations, we're expanding our existing civic rec software. That is our reservation software that we use to book and customers process their payments through that. So we're looking at expanding those existing civic rec features. In FY27, we will begin implementing long-range recommendations from the Community Center and Fairgrounds Master Plan. We're launching a new Gary Moses Community Center branding campaign to strengthen awareness and identity. We will also expand online registration and reservation capabilities to improve customer convenience and operational efficiency. This is a brief overview slide for what we will anticipate over fiscal year 27. Just as a small and succinct reminder, in July of 26, we're anticipating construction beginning, and that is on the new construction of non-existent facilities. It's the rodeo arena and the pole barn that we'll start with. And then in March 27, after livestock show and a couple of other events, including the Growing Victoria Summit, we will close the existing facilities. That's the annex, the dome, the arena, the conference room, et cetera, and begin construction on that. And in February of 28, prior to the Victoria livestock show of 28, we will reopen. Financial impacts, you'll see a reduction in revenue because the facility will be closed for a majority of fiscal year 27. So that'll be reflected in next year's metrics. Personnel impacts, we are looking to keep the community center staff whole by reassigning them within the division to other areas of needs aligned with their skill sets. The proposed FY27 budget totals approximately $794,000. Recurring expenses increase about 6%, primarily due to personnel costs and operational needs. And the overall budget decreased nearly 37% because FY26 included significant one-time expenditures that are not repeated in FY27. Personnel increases reflect the city's FY27 pay program. Maintenance and operations increases are primarily related to staff training and professional development opportunities, and there are no capital requests and no one-time funding requests included in the FY27 budget. FY27 revenues. Revenue continues to be generated through facility rentals, event services, RV parking, and other user fees. Rate adjustments adopted in FY25 have helped strengthen revenue performance, and staff will continue monitoring facility usage and revenue trends to support long-term financial stability. 28 and beyond. Looking ahead, we will focus on maximizing the benefits of the expanded facility and strengthening the community center's role as a regional destination. Long-term goals include operating as an enterprise fund, expanding sports tourism partnerships, increasing recreational programming, and enhancing our digital presence. These efforts will help improve cost recovery while continuing to provide quality services to the community. Thank you so much. If there are any questions that I can answer.

Any community center questions? It will be a busy couple of years, no doubt.

It will be. A whirlwind of exciting, busy times.

Thank you, Kate. Appreciate it.

And this wasn't in the presentation, but certainly a highlight of fiscal year 26 was, of course, hiring Mallory as the supervisor for the community center. It took us a while to find somebody with the right experience. And so we're very excited that she joined our team just at the right time as we embark on this new endeavor. So we're excited about that as well.

Thanks so much. Thank you very much.

All right, so we'll keep going with Parks and Recreation. I'll now turn it over to our other assistant director, Randy, to walk you through the golf course presentation.

Good afternoon, welcome.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. I'll be presenting the fiscal year 2027 budget for the Riverside Golf Course. Riverside Golf Course remains an important recreation at, excuse me, Recreational asset that supports local play tournaments youth golf developments and sports tourism The Riverside golf course provides quality golf experience for residents and visitors while complementing the amenities offered throughout the Riverside Park the course serves golfers of all skill levels and host tournaments and player development, and community events. Our focus remains on providing a well-maintained facility and exceptional customer service. Here you can see our staffing structure that supports golf operations. Staff responsibilities include golf course maintenance, clubhouse operations, customer service, tournament management, and facility upkeep. Several positions are funded through golf operations, allowing the course to operate efficiently and support revenue generation. The Riverside Golf Course operates with 11 full-time employees and between five and 10 seasonal and part-time employees, depending on the time of year. Staffing levels have remained stable and continue to support both daily operations and tournament activities. Seasonal staffing flexibility allows us to meet the demand during peak golf months while managing costs responsibly. Our part-time employees are made up of our golf shop attendants who work inside the clubhouse and take care of customer service and our guest service attendants who take care of our golf cards and then make sure that things are going well on the course. Our department mission is to provide an enjoyable and well-maintained golf course that enhances recreational opportunities for the community. We strive to deliver quality playing conditions and positive customer experiences while ensuring long-term sustainability of the facility. The course remains as an important part of the recreation activities. We're focused on maintaining competitive rates, improving course conditions, and enhancing customer service and growing tournament participation. These efforts both support golfers' satisfaction and long-term success of the facility. Some of the highlights from this past year, We were able to see some significant improvements in infrastructure. We were able to bring in a water well pump system that would help stabilize our irrigation. We've also advanced plannings for future capital projects, including a new carp barn and tournament pavilion. that will be initiated this year and will necessitate in a budget amendment. And we will be bringing that budget amendment to council later this year. Some other highlights is that we continue to strengthen our role as a tournament destination. These events bring visitors to Victoria while supporting golf youth golf development, and local economic activity. Something else that we did this past year was to return some of our easy-go golf carts, 20 of them, and brought in 20 new club golf carts, club car golf carts with lithium batteries. Some of the events that we hosted, two in particular, the District 22 5A Championship and the AJGA Victoria Preview Tournament. The American Junior Golf Association tournament is a 54 hole stroke play event that featured 96 of the top junior golfers ages 12 to 19 from across the US and six other countries. The tournament is part of the AJGA preview series and it's designed to provide emerging players with the opportunity to gain national level competitive experience and build their standing for future events. This marks the fourth consecutive year that Riverside has partnered with AJGA, reinforcing the city of Victoria's commitment to junior golf development and youth sports. And the event is title sponsored by Discover Victoria and brings in many visitors to the area. Looking at some of our metrics, the tournament rounds are how many people played or participated in any given tournament. We see roughly 40 to 60 tournaments each year with anywhere from 80 to 100 players per tournament. For example, the AJGA, which was a four-day tournament, had almost 400 rounds with average 96 rounds per day. The projected increase in tournament rounds for 2027 is driven by continued improvements in operational efficiency and facility enhancements. The planned conversion of the existing cart barn into a tournament pavilion will provide additional event space allowing Riverside to accommodate larger tournaments and greater participant capacity. In addition, the continued growth of the Riverside Cup Series and an increase in high school and junior golf events are expected to expand both the number of tournaments hosted and overall field sizes. We've consistently held at 225 annual pass holders over the last several years. And last year we dropped the cap from 225 and this year we're sitting at almost 250 pass holders. We also brought in a more accurate record keeping procedure to make sure that the pass holder rounds are correctly accounted for. There are several choices for pass holders including options for seniors and cart shed rentals. The pass holder option continues to be a popular choice among the avid golfers in Victoria. Daily green fees represent a round of golf purchased by someone other than a pass holder or tournament player. 2026 is off to a slower start than previous years with daily green fees due in part to the weather and increase in tournaments. The 2027 projection reflects an estimated 1.5% increase over 2026. Continued improvements in the course conditions thanks to the implementation of our Tuesday half-day maintenance closure are expected to enhance the overall golfer experience and support modest growth in daily play. When you combine our daily tournament and pass holder rounds, we're seeing over 32,000 rounds of golf played at Riverside each year. Tuff Britz is a senior at Victoria East High School, and he's been selected as a recipient of the Texas Golf Association Bill Penn internship for the summer of 2026. He began working at the Riverside Golf Course on May 18th, where he is being introduced to the vast network of jobs, mentors, and opportunities that the golf industry provides. Thanks to this program, clubs get to hire high schoolers with an interest in golf to fill seasonal employment needs and up to $3,000 in grant funding from the TGA Foundation to offset personnel costs. The Texas Golf Association also offers a TGA Project Muni grant. And we've already taken advantage of the first step of this grant in that we were able to have a PGA agronomist come out and go through the course look it over and write a Very detailed long report which we can make available to you if you want on the conditions of the course and where we can improve as We look into the future with this grant any of the improvements that we make that they suggested They are going to help offset funding for those improvements.

I

Some of the innovation that we're looking at as well is we're launching, soon we'll be launching a starter and marshal program where we'll have someone making sure that tee times are kept on time and people riding the course making sure that the rules are being followed and pace of play is being adhered to. This will help us increase the number of rounds each day. This program is at no cost to the city as the participants in this program will be allotted rounds of golf to use. Some of the new programs and initiatives that we have for 2027, we plan to launch that starter Marshall program, expand tournament offerings and continue growing junior golf partnerships. Additional customer service enhancements include in-house club re-gripping services, and we're considering a rebranding and new logo for the course.

Randy before you get to the to the budget aspect of it. I just want to kind of go back briefly Okay, because I do think that it's important to convey that one other element that we're embarking on this year is a more specific master plan for the golf course. And so, uh, we recently, you know, hired a new golf pro who has since moved on. So he unfortunately wasn't with us for a very long time, but one of the initiatives that he started us on was to, um, just go through a more formal master plan for the golf course that'll look at redoing the greens, things that have been identified in other reports from PGA-centric entities. But that master plan is gonna eventually help us Figure out how best to incorporate some of the other capital improvements that are needed in the golf course Historically, we have always kind of taken the approach of let's let some money build up within the golf fund once it builds up Let's use it to address some things right? We did that with the parking lot We're about to do that with this tournament pavilion and a new shed for the golf carts but the reality is that some of the capital improvements the golf course needs, we're just going to have to find alternative ways to fund them, whether that's through CEOs, whether that's through other one-time funds that might become available, whether that's through partnership with the cell sex development corporation, whatever it is. And so the idea is that that master plan will help us prepare for those conversations. So anyway, thank you. Yeah.

All right, looking at the 2027 budget overview. The budget totals approximately 1.63 million and recurring expenses increase by about 4.6% due primarily to personnel costs and inflationary pressures. Overall, the budget reflects a continued investment in maintaining quality operations while supporting future growth opportunities. As you can see here, the personnel costs reflect the city's 2027 pay program, while maintenance and operation increases are primarily related to inflation and rising operating costs. As far as one-time expenditures, they include the installation of security cameras all the way around the clubhouse. And we're looking at purchasing a new air fire and blower to help support course operations. 2027 revenues continue to be driven by daily green fees, annual passes, tournaments, cart rentals, and golf shop operations. The green fee adjustments approved in January of 2025 continue to support revenue stability. We remain focused on balancing affordability with the financial sustainability of the golf course. In 2027, rate changes, rate adjustments are made in January every two years. And so they're coming up again this coming January. These are designed to help offset the increasing operational and capital replacement costs. Daily green fees and annual passes are being looked at in light of the changes that we've made to see whether or not it's even necessary to increase them. We are planning on making adjustments to the tournament fees and an increase to the capital replacement fee to help support the future equipment and infrastructure needs. 2028 and beyond, as Jesus alluded to one of our driving factors for what we're looking at for the next several years will be that master plan and looking at several major capital improvement projects to preserve and enhance the course such as an irrigation system upgrades, greens renovations, fairway improvements, tee box expansions, water feature enhancements, the expansion of cart storage and tournament facilities. These projects will improve playability, operational efficiency, and the long-term sustainability of the Riverside Golf Course. That's all I have. Thank you. Do you have any questions for me?

Any questions? Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you.

We're going to keep it going, and we're going to transition to public works. And so we have split public works into two presentations. Greg will handle the utility side of the house. And then for the very first time, Jonathan will make a presentation to you and hit on the general fund aspect of it. So please ask Jonathan a lot of questions.

So Greg? Hey, Greg. Welcome. Good afternoon. No, no.

I'm doing the water and wastewater . Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. I'm very happy to go ahead and present the Water-Wastewater Combined Presentation for 2027. The department description. The public works consists of, of course, water distribution, water treatment, wastewater treatment, wastewater collections, industrial waste and pretreatment, and environmental. The city, as you know, has one surface water treatment plant, nine active water wells, two wastewater treatment plants, 18 lift stations, approximately 399 miles of water distribution lines, and 350 miles of wastewater collection lines. As you'll see above is our organization chart. Of course you're gonna see the first thing that stands out is gonna be multiple different colors. And black is gonna be what's funded out of the general fund. And blue is what's gonna be funded out of the water fund. And the gray box for the stormwater maintenance is gonna be something, of course, we'll have to see what happens with the stormwater fee when that's proposed. Excuse me, as you see as well too, nothing has really much changed about our organization chart. Of course, we did have one position that was added last year as assistant director, but everything stays the same with, of course, the director, assistant director, two operations and maintenance managers, one being over the pretreatment streets and traffic, and the other being over the water and wastewater plants and the utility departments. Department employees. We have had a little bit of a change here. As you see with the water treatment plant, last year we had 15 positions. This year we had 16. We got one position that was transferred over from the collection side to the surface water treatment plant and another from the water distribution side to the utility billing office. That was one of our admin clerks. Everything else still stayed the same with six frozen positions and the rest of the information that you see above. Our department mission. Our department mission is always to provide a safe, consistent production and distribution of potable water and safe, reliable treatment and collection of wastewater. That's our great staff right there. Starting from top left being our pre-treatment staff, top right being our wastewater treatment plant staff, bottom left being our utilities division, and our bottom right being our surface water treatment plant division. Our goals and objectives. Of course, the goal is always to have maintained regulatory compliance, zero violations, ensure safe, reliable water and wastewater services, invest in infrastructure replacement and system improvements, improve operational efficiency through people, process, and technology. And of course, to support growth through sustainable planning. Some of our fiscal year 2026 highlights include the following, completion of the water feasibility study, replacing the filter media at the surface water treatment plant, and of course this is number two of six. We have had a lot of water quality improvements recently since last year, our water tower mixers, auto flushers, chlorine analyzers, and all this at our water towers and plant three. One of the highlights of course I also want to touch a little bit more on is approval for alternate disinfection study. We went ahead and did a pilot program for the regional wastewater treatment plant. Our goal right now is to go ahead and do this disinfection study because it's a more safer product than what we currently use for chlorine gas. Our goal is to have a safer product for this disinfection study in addition to that to be hopefully the first city in Texas that will use parasitic acid full time.

And Greg, if I'm not mistaken, uh, to your point, This pilot is the program that I assume TCQ would be utilizing to determine whether they would allow this treatment process just all across the state. So we're really at the forefront of utilizing this different method. And Greg deserves a lot of credit for it. It's utilized in other states. And so, you know, once again, we have an operation here in Victoria that's at the forefront of just trying to find better, more reliable, more affordable ways to treat water. And so that's pretty exciting.

And the last highlight there is going to be successfully transferred a position to the surface water treatment plant. And once again, surface water treatment plant is now fully staffed. And to go a little bit more detail as well too, we have changed a lot of our operations at the surface water treatment plant. And we have really done a lot of training and everything else since, our water notice and move forward quite rapidly. Some more of our 2026 highlights. We're installing a grid classifier at the regional wastewater treatment plant. We completed the TCEQ permit renewals for both Odom and regional wastewater treatment plants. And recently we went ahead and got approval through council to go ahead and purchase a chlorine scrubber at the surface water treatment plant to ensure a safer work environment. As you know, the previous one was been, I think that one was installed back in 2001 when the plant was originally built. So it did last 25 years. So that's good to see. Uh, one of the other highlights is the city staff will replace 1000 residential water meters and 4,200 radios for a total cost of 800,000. I know that was the one that went to last city council meeting that saved if by doing in house was even 40 to 45% of the cost. And so that's something that we're very happy to tackle. Uh, in addition to that, pretreatment staff has worked with, uh, one of our, our, uh, stormwater, I'm sorry, our industrial users at Texas Concrete to address illicit discharges. Some of our performance metrics. Currently this year, we went ahead and this is always a tongue twister, treated 3,650 million gallons of water.

It sounds so backward, right?

And as you see last year, there was a lot less. We were in drought three a couple of times, so that would be contributing factors why we treated less. And for next year in 2027, we project to hopefully treat a little bit more. now that we have a lot more rain this year. Hopefully it'll be that way next year. Some of our industrial waste inspections, we completed 14, or projecting 13, so we stayed pretty flat. And some of our illicit discharge inspections, we completed 50 this year, and we're projecting that to be around the same. And of course the illicit discharges will be what impacts the storm water, grass clippings, erosion from, certain areas, and the industrial waste inspections will of course be anything from these industrial waste users that put stuff down the drain. We wanna make sure that they meet all regulatory requirements so that way it doesn't go ahead and affect our wastewater plants and go ahead and cause them to have further issues or at some point, since it's biology and the bugs in there, it causes them to die, gets received the plant. Moving forward on our performance metrics as well, 2026, as you see, we had 9,130 work orders that were closed. The average time to complete a work order for this year was three hours and 44 minutes. And in 2026, I also want to highlight that we had 113 new meters installed with 1,225 meters replaced. And of course, that was also gonna reflect the contract that just went to council for the 1,000 meters. And next year, the estimate is gonna be a little bit lower. We're also gonna go ahead and figure out how much we're gonna allocate towards that. But of course, the goal was to go ahead and do the same thing we did this year. Strategic innovation and funding initiatives Right now we're starting to use AI a little bit more. AI is what we currently use in wastewater treatment. This has been very beneficial in helping optimize our plant and aeration control, adjusting our chemicals, and wasting, which is getting rid of some of the solids that go to the landfill. some of the grant opportunities and external funding. We're currently reaching out to the Texas Water Development Board. I know that Governor Abbott has recently went ahead and approved a lot of spending, billions of dollars, to see if we can get some water supply infrastructure grants. fiscal year 2027 new programs and initiatives. Of course, we want to expand in our inflow infiltration program, initiate a more robust public awareness campaign on stormwater pollution and prevention. And dead end main flushing is consolidated into one department for uniform water loss and sampling. So since, um, Since last year, well, I guess at the end of, yeah, at the end of last year, we went ahead and transitioned our flushing program that was done at the water plant to our utilities department, so they handle that now. Our fiscal year 2027 budget overview. Currently, the total budget number was 1.7 million. Personnel had a factor to play into that, of course, with the 2027 pay program being roughly 4.55%. The M&O recurring increase due to cost on chemicals at the surface water plant and the wastewater plant, including additional lab samples for water quality testing, that was one of the things that Since we had the boil water notice, we were doing things once every 90 days, for example, for our nitrate and nitrite samples. Now we're doing them weekly. So in addition to that, more testing throughout the distribution system for chlorine testing, monochloramine testing, and free ammonia to make sure that we don't have nitrification throughout the system. So that was some increased costs right there by 3.85%. The capital decrease due to fewer capital purchases in fiscal year 2027. And for our one times, we'd like to go ahead and replace our regional wastewater treatment plant clarifier. Also, the filter media at the surface water treatment plant, replace that. And some vehicle replacements that are much needed. Our fiscal year 2027 revenues. On this, on your books, it has probably a different graph than what is represented up here. We just did have a last-minute change a while ago. But a lot of this is gonna go ahead and be flat, sitting roughly at 27 million. Of course, with the water sales being 51%, sewer sales composing roughly 46%, and Michelin is... being one percent interest income being one percent other financing so no revenue increase this year fiscal year 2028 and beyond our goal is to have more infrastructure replacement programs rehabilitation of all the water towers completion of the regional wastewater treatment plant screening structure inflow infiltration study and manhole rehabilitation i know we're looking at phase one which would be roughly 330 manholes roughly $800,000. The next steps for the water feasibility study, I know we're looking at blending studies and off-channel reservoir improvements, and expand the wastewater program at the regional wastewater treatment plant. We think we could possibly generate some more revenue by seeing what we can do to go ahead and take them to regional and get more waste haulers over there. If you have any questions, I would be more than happy to answer them. If not, thank you.

I have one question as it relates to the grant aspect. I know that the last legislative session, there was a very large amount of money. And I understand that that will be recurring funds going to water development in the state of Texas. That's going to be implemented and controlled, I think, at least the distribution through the Texas Water Development Board. I'm assuming we're keeping up with kind of that process in terms of that board putting in place, what the mechanisms are going to be, the requirements, the application process, and that sort of thing. Because I know a number of projects that we've talked about very well could fit within some of the parameters of the types of projects that I think those funds were set aside for. I just want to make sure that's on our radar. That's probably not your job, but it relates to this 100%.

Yeah, it's definitely a combination of Katie's team and our staff. But yes, absolutely, we're keeping an eye on that.

And my understanding is they're developing their program now, and then they'll release it, and everybody kind of figure out what it actually is and how we do it. I think Gilbert has some info. He's looking.

Katie, Katie. Testing. Testing. I kind of break it up a little bit, kind of get serious about stuff. Katie has been looking into it. We're gonna apply an application. Katie, what did I say?

Is that Spanish mixed? No, no. I gotta keep it interesting, apparently.

Oh, thank you very much.

She's been looking into the program. One of the items that we're gonna apply for is the OCR, as you're aware, that is on the top of the list.

Okay. Okay. That was one in particular project that I think probably matched what they were trying to do there. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you for the information. Any other questions? All right. Thank you very much.

Much appreciate it. Great. Thanks, Greg. All right. So we'll turn it over to our first timer, Jonathan. Jonathan was recently promoted to our operations manager for streets and drainage and that side of the house. after Greg was promoted to assistant director and Roland retired. And so we have new leadership at Public Works, not only with Greg, but with Jonathan and with Austin, who's sitting in the crowd. And I'm sure he's jealous that he's not presenting.

Yeah, he looks really jealous right now.

Yeah. But we thought it'd be a great opportunity to start exposing Jonathan more to you and giving him opportunities to professionally develop. And so no pressure, Jonathan. Welcome.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. I'll be providing the overview of the Public Works General Fund budget. The Public Works General Fund budget consists of the street and drainage department, which includes the operational part of the street sweeping program, as well as the traffic control division. In the street and drainage department, we have 326 miles of street that we maintain, as well as 93 miles of open channel drainage. 262 miles of underground storm sewer. On the traffic control side, we have 103 signalized intersections and approximately 15,000 signs, which includes street signs, advance warning signs, speed limit signs, et cetera. Our organizational chart is kind of the same of what Greg went over, except the colors on the boxes are flipped. The street maintenance and the traffic control division are in blue here because that's what's funded out of the general fund. Of course, the stormwater maintenance is contingent upon the stormwater utility fee. Department employees. We did have the four frozen positions in the street department back in 25. That will go down again from 25 to 24, depending on the stormwater utility fee. But everything else remains the same. The department mission to enhance quality of life by providing safe, reliable, and cost-effective street drainage and traffic services with a strong commitment to customer service. On the left there is our street and drainage division, and on the right is the traffic control division. Goals and objectives. To improve the street ride quality and provide prompt response to downed trees or any other obstructions that impede the flow of traffic. Maintain and improve drainage systems to reduce flooding risks. Improve traffic safety and system reliability at all intersections. And continue citywide sign replacement and rejuvenation programs. And we're currently doing that by zone in our traffic control department. Our fiscal year 26 highlights. We improved roadway conditions through targeted maintenance in our new in-house crack seal program. Completed drainage improvements in the Hayek Ditch and the Lone Tree Acres subdivision to reduce flooding and protect infrastructure. enhanced traffic signal coordination, upgraded pedestrian traffic safety along Sam Houston, Navarro and Houston highway. I will say that Navarro coordination is complete, but Sam Houston and Houston highway are still in progress. Um, hats off to the traffic control division. They were able to, uh, cut down the Navarro travel time from Rio Grande and Navarro to, um, Larkspur and Navarro, or Glasgow and Navarro, by a little more than 50%. We implemented proactive maintenance to extend asset life and reduce cost. And the plan is to restore our ATMS system, which is Advanced Traffic Management System functionality to improve response time communications. Currently, we have to rely on citizens to contact us if there's any issues because we are only able to communicate remotely with about 10 of our intersections. Everything else has to be, we have to be on site in order to troubleshoot. Our performance metrics on the street and drainage side, crack seal and linear feet, of course, 25 shows a reduction because that's the year that we took it over in-house and by the time we were able to obtain all of our crack sealing components was close to the end of our crack seal season, what we call our crack seal season, so I fully anticipate being able to get back up to what the contractor was doing, if not more, going forward. Pothole work orders, of course, they've trended in the direction that we want. That's just a testament to our CIP program and the amount of streets that we've been able to reconstruct. Okay, his question was if I would explain crack seal season. Crack seal season, what we call is really what we like to do in the summer. Of course, it wouldn't be good for the month of June that we've had this year. However, the humidity, the moisture, everything that's in the ground plays a contributing factor when we're crack sealing. We try to do that in the driest months of the year. Of course, humidity in Texas, if we solely base it on that, we'd never crack seal. But we try to do it when it's the best of both worlds and we're able to apply the material and it's going to be as effective as possible. So usually it's between May and the end of August when we try to do it. On the traffic side, sign and pole replacements, that stays pretty consistent with what we've been doing. There was an uptick in 24 because of the other bicentennial sign replacement that we did. And then our signal and beacon head upgrades. In 2025, when you see the increase there, it was some leftover signal heads we had in 24 that we were able to replace all of Sam Houston from Navarro to Houston Highway. Street resurfacing and linear feet, that number solely reflects the CIP program and what we've resurfaced, whether it be by sealcoat nonics, mill and overlay, or reconstruction, and striping as well. We hope to, again, get back to the number that is projected this year. strategic innovation and funding initiatives. We're currently in the preliminary steps of pursuing the SS4A or the Safe Streets for All grant. Our hope is to be able to obtain some funding there to really get ahead of our traffic cabinets that are coming close to the end of their life expectancy. Also coordinating with TxDOT for the traffic and pedestrian improvement projects through the Set Aside program. AI and operational innovation, leverage AI technology to improve timing plans and collect critical data, traffic network modernization, and of course, again, restoring our ATMS system to its full functionality and expanding school zone management network. Our hope is to one day have all school zone flashers to where we can monitor and maintenance remotely versus having to be on site. We currently have 15 out of the 64 that we can manage remotely. fiscal year 2027 new programs and initiatives, initiate the stormwater drainage utility feed to support long-term stormwater system funding, improve traffic signal coordination on Houston Highway and Sam Houston, which again, we're still in the process of doing those two, and implement a new traffic jet printer and laminator that will significantly boost our production capabilities, enabling us to print and finish six traffic signs simultaneously, which is a big difference compared to what we have now, only being able to do one at a time. 2027 budget overview. We had a decrease in our one-time expenditures, which is pretty significant. The slight increases we did have were come from the pay program. We've had to increase a couple of our accounts just due to inflation. Our capital decreased due to the computer replacement program. Our one-times decreased due to fewer capital projects and the health fund transfer. 2028 and beyond. Pending the approval of the stormwater utility fee, We hope to enhance outfall maintenance, storm sewer cleaning, and ditch rehabilitation, as well as enhance the street sweeping program by adding staff and equipment to continue to decrease stormwater pollution. We also hope to continue to upgrade the yellow backing on the traffic signals, as we've done some. In the picture there is Navarro and Goodwin. We've had some others that we've done along Houston Highway, but our plan is to get all of Sam Houston next year as well, going forward. Any questions for me?

Anybody have any questions? We're going to take it easy on him this time? Next time. I appreciate it. We're coming after you. No, good job. Thank you. Great, Jonathan.

Thank you so much.

All right.

I think we're scheduled for a break. Yes, sir.

All right. So let's take a break. And according to our schedule, we're back at 2.15. Okay.

Silence in the gallery.

All right, we are back in session off the break, and we will continue with our presentations today.

Yes, sir, and I will turn it over to Christy so she can walk you through the Environmental Services and Community Appearance presentation. Good afternoon, Ms. Shuker.

Good afternoon, everyone. All right, so we're here to talk about environmental services, and... As a reminder of what all is in environmental services, we're kind of in four big chunks. The first one being our biggest chunk, which is solid waste collection and disposal. This, of course, is our residential pickup of garbage and recycling, and we do that in-house. We also do our tree land pickup and bulky waste and yard waste pickup. So all of the residential services are done in-house. And then we have community appearance, which does all of our right-of-way mowing, weed control, and also all of our beds, so landscaped beds, or the majority of them, I should say. And that includes the mulching, weed control, irrigation, replacing plants, all of that. And then we have contract management. There's quite a few contracts that our department manages. And those include the commercial contract for waste. So that would be all of the dumpsters. So those would be obviously businesses, apartment complexes, those places. And then we have our landfill contract. And then we have our compost facility contract. and our landfill gas. The landfill produces methane naturally from decomposition, so we'll capture that and use it as a, send it off as a fuel source. And we also manage all of the mowing contracts for the city. And then we have environmental education and outreach. And that is the way that we communicate all about these services that we do. And Keep Victoria Beautiful is housed within that part of our department. And by the way, on that picture that I had AI generate, originally it had the landfill in the middle of the city. And I thought that was perfect. I was like, that is the value of that asset. But I took it out because. You really don't want it in the middle of the city. Not for real. Okay, here is our organization chart, kind of showing you those at least three of the chunks of what we do. Community appearance over there on the left, we have a supervisor and crew leader. That total department is six. And then we have our environmental programs manager. If you remember, we hired Meredith Bird, so she's running that now. And then our solid waste superintendent, Daryl Barnes, and then we have a lead driver, and then our drivers for all of our different vehicles are are under there and Total we have 29 full-time employees currently majority of those being in our solid waste division of the department Our mission is we are committed to enhancing the beauty, cleanliness, and livability of Victoria through high-quality services, public education on waste management, and active community engagement. We do this through initiatives like Keep Victoria Beautiful, Community Appearance Division, and we work to inspire pride and long-term investment in our city's future. Our overall goals and objectives, we're always looking to improve route efficiency for all of our services, providing education in relation to all of this, and I've always said you can have the best operations, but if your community does not understand how they work, they don't work so great. So we have to always keep that in mind. Providing oversight and maintenance of all of the contracts that I listed previously. And then, of course, providing operational support and oversight for Keep Victoria Beautiful. Keep Victoria Beautiful is a 501c3 with a governing board. And so they are a big part of what we do. And then overall, to beautify locations throughout the city, largely through Keep Victoria Beautiful and community appearance is an essential component of economic development. and quality of life. If you don't have a good looking city that looks like it cares about itself, people notice that. So this is an important part of our goals. In this fiscal year, we've done a few things. The first of these is we've done a little bit of just reorganizing, not adding any new positions, just reorganizing for some effectiveness within the department. One was we created the environmental programs manager position. That would be Meredith. And then we promoted Daryl Barnes to solid waste superintendent. He was previously solid waste supervisor. We've also initiated the landfill management procurement process and we plan to bring that or we have plans to bring that to City Council in August. We're in the middle of finalizing those negotiations currently. And then we purchased three new automated trucks. These are the side load trucks that pick up the garbage and recycling. And then one rear load truck, and that's the one that picks up the yard waste. Some more of these highlights for keep Victoria beautiful. We were awarded the keep Texas beautiful gold star affiliate status for the fourth consecutive year KVB also hosted the second annual Earth Day fundraiser of this past year and then we completed 16 cleanups with over a thousand volunteers and expanded funding for the beautification grant program in for increased impact of what we can do with that program. We've also launched the Know Where It Goes educational campaign, part of that continued education effort. And then we've done some improvements to places like Hiller House, Community Center, Public Safety Headquarters. Our Community Appearance Division had big roles in that. Especially lately, sometimes we're not necessarily doing a whole new project, but it's redoing, reworking some of our existing ones that take just some needed attention. And then we also have just initiated our air quality grant program through TCEQ. That's a grant we receive to look at planning and modeling of air quality. A few of our performance metrics. This is one that I wanted to show. This is our total tonnage accepted at the Victoria landfill, just to give you some perspective. If you notice, it dips down and dips back up. In the past and that's largely due to special projects, you know, it may have been a big dirt job or something like that So that can fluctuate that a little bit. Of course, we're hoping to have more of those in the future Looking to this year in the next we're a little conservative just because we don't always we can't always predict those jobs coming in and then at the bottom there and the black is the residential collection that we bring in. So that's our MSW that we bring in, our municipal solid waste when we collect it from people's homes. So that's just over 20,000 homes that we collect that on. Remember, it doesn't include all of the apartment complexes and commercial that's picked up by waste management. This is what we bring in. But it, gray carts, sorry. It's the gray carts, yes, the trash, the garbage. And another thing I wanted to point out, last time Daryl presented on the disaster debris contracts that we work on, and we were talking about the amount of debris that's picked up during, that can be produced picked up during a hurricane or a disaster like that. And we were trying to see what that looks like. It's clearly a lot. But to give you a perspective, from Harvey, that was just about 60,000 tons if you convert those cubic yards. Look at that compared to this. That's a lot. That's like three months of what comes into the landfill. Now, maybe wouldn't be that much, but it gives you a sense of what one disaster can do and why you have to have these contracts in place, a staging facility, ways to bring down the waste, compact the waste, break it up, divert it, and stage it. So a disaster like that does require quite a bit to manage that amount of just going straight to the landfill. So just following up on that amount of waste that can come in. And for the landfill we bring in just about 700 tons Tons a day and our haulers about half of them are smaller haulers and then the other half are the big commercial haulers Our recycling contamination I always like to focus on this a little bit because we have a lot of work to do we're always aiming to beat that 30% contamination and rate or below, we're working towards that. And I wanna point out that 2026 number that's higher, we base this contamination rate on audits that waste management does for us. Our recycling that we pick up from people's homes goes to like a transfer station and then it's taken to a MRF in San Antonio. They do audits for us every so often. On this last audit, there was an unusual amount of bagged recycling. Bagged recycling, we can't take that. It's in a bag. It was way more than usual. It's kind of an outlier in our audit. It was like 20%. Normally, it's about 2%. So I anticipate that coming down a bit, but I had to explain that 40%. Because I did get it from an audit, but it was a weird audit. So it was a weird audit. So some of the things we're doing to address this, not only with our education campaigns, but also really reinforcing our policies that we have in place, meaning tagging our carts, communication with residents, not picking it up if they've been tagged a couple of times, and then they call in, we help them remedy it, and then we'll go back and pick it up. But we've got to be consistent on that as well. There's several pieces to this. And then a few more metrics, real quick. Landscaping projects, they're kind of consistent. We have quite a few. This includes right-of-way mowings and weed control. There's about 10. The rest of those are tree beds, flower beds, and you know what goes into taking care of those and irrigation. So we do new projects, but the more you do, the more you have to take care of. So we have to keep that in mind. Volunteers, number of cleanups, you'll see that steadily increased. And I want to point out on the number of cleanups, we had 16 this year, we anticipate more. KVB only hosts four a year, four big cleanups. The rest of these are because people are motivated and they get a group together. We give them the supplies and they do the work. Meredith has been great about really getting that word out there, highlighting it on social media, And our communications team is really helping us ramp that up as well. So that's a good sign. Some of the things we're doing here on our grant opportunities, I mentioned all of our education efforts. That is largely almost completely funded through grants and any donations we get. Combined, just in fiscal year 26, we're looking at almost $55,000 from Coca-Cola, HEB, Golden Crescent Regional Planning Commission. And then our KVB fundraiser raised $24,000 this year, which we were really excited about for just our second fundraiser. The year before it was 17. This goes towards those beautification grants I mentioned. We're gonna, the board really wants to raise the amounts of those so we can make a bigger impact in Victoria. And then our air quality planning and modeling funded through that, air quality planning grant through TCU for $281,000. that I mentioned earlier. Some of the things we're doing on innovation, we are utilizing AI to analyze driver report data, identifying some inefficiencies, truck downtime, and excessive courtesy pickups. For example, just recently, we were using it to look at courtesy pickup data, which comes from our driver's daily data sheets and our dispatch to determine the cost effects for the department. This is when we run around going back and picking up cans, either because they weren't out in time. We could have missed them. That happens. But that is a big cost to the department. So getting that under control is important. We're looking at expanding that with multi-platforms AIs. Just to have two different platforms, will help with that reliability issue and also reliability and safety issue. So we're looking at doing that in the future. This doesn't sound very innovative, but we installed radios in all of our solid waste trucks. But we got them all in there, so that's good. And then we've also piloted the use of a system called positive system service verification Combined with our existing GPS capabilities this allows us in real time To see when we pick up a garbage cart it will go from red to green so dispatch can see that they can see the video and then they can communicate with customers it also helps us know did they have their carts out on time or not this is all part of efficiencies and Some new programs that we'll be looking at this next fiscal year a solid waste rate study Since we're not even sure when the last one was done. I think we need one done. I think it was a while ago We also are always looking to establish sustainable staffing levels to enable future route expansion while we've made some great headway maintaining that high level of staffing is important before we add another route and launching the educational campaigns, and then we're very excited. TxDOT approached us about another green ribbon project, and we are in the process of looking at what exactly that would look like. Right now we're looking at the Loop 463 and Highway 59 and or Loop 463 and 77. We also always have to look at capacity because we have to take care of these things once we put them in. So this will be exciting for Victoria, for sure. And then we're also gonna be introducing KVB scholarship program for graduating seniors. The board really wanted to do that, so we'll be implementing that this year. On our budget overview, Our requested budget for this next fiscal year is $7,568,371. We have a variance of about $1.6 million less, obviously. Largely, that big difference is obviously largely due to our decrease in our one-time expenses. Our recurring, our M&O is from change in uniform vendors, software maintenance, lot abatement, but really this big variance is due to fewer garbage trucks. We purchased four this last year and we'll have two this next year. Our revenues, largely this is from the services that we provide, so a large part of this, you can see it's like, you know, almost 60% is just from residential collection. And then we've got recycling, brush and bulky. It's all broken out, as you know, for customers so that each of these support itself. The one difference here from fiscal year 23 that you can see there's a big difference there in that increase, and that was when we increased the rates on the additional carts. We do have quite a few additional carts. We have about 6,000 additional carts and it went from $5 to $6.50 for those additional trash carts. We also have 280 additional recycled carts out there. So that change is what that was about. And looking to fiscal year 2028 and beyond would be purchasing a rear load truck and a brush truck after this year. We also anticipate having this 20-year landfill contract done by then and implemented. And we look forward to a new solid waste building. We are fantasizing about all being in one building someday. So, that is all for me.

Any questions? Gilbert said that was a better word to describe it since there's no money for it right now.

That's why we put it out there. Fantasize, right?

Chrissy, I know we ordered the garbage trucks because of the lead time, and we approved them and ordered them back last year, I think, or earlier this year. We did. What's the timeframe on when we're getting them?

Well, surprisingly, in the past, it took so long to get them, and we ordered them for the past years, and they would come late. They're already here.

Oh, awesome.

But we can't take them until October 1st. So they exist and they're waiting. So we'll have them October 1.

And are those going to replace existing trucks?

Yes, we have at least two, at least two that we're looking to get rid of. Now, we always like to keep backups. Yeah.

Got it. Okay.

All right. Thank you.

Any other questions? Christy, in regards to the contamination rate for the recycling, what are the main culprits?

The main culprits are, a lot of times people just put trash in there, basic. But the other big culprit, probably besides that one, would be plastic bags. People do not understand you can't put plastic bags in there. So we'll work on it.

Okay, thank you. Very good, thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. So we'll keep it going. Um, now we're going to get into some of our internal service centric departments and or administrative departments. And so to kick those off, I'm going to turn over Ashley to hit on communication, public affairs. Good afternoon, Ms. Stribble.

Good afternoon, mayor and council. I'm excited to be presenting our fiscal year 27 budget for communications. Our department can be depicted on the right through five core functional areas in strategic communications and interdepartmental support, public outreach, media relations, digital content production, and stakeholder relations. Through these core functions, the department keeps residents informed, connected, and involved with their local government. Our organization chart will depict two primary reorgs. If you look at the multimedia manager position, that used to be a multimedia producer, and now would hopefully formally oversee the videographer position. And then on the far left, formerly an admin assistant level three, now a communications and engagement coordinator level role. Talk more about that in a few slides. So our department has not changed in count. It will remain eight, team of eight, small but mighty. And we hope to potentially grow in the future. Our mission remains the same, and that's to inform and engage residents through effective communication, meaning outreach and public education that supports an informed and a connected community. All right, let's talk goals. So to meet that mission, we try and achieve through three primary goals, informing the community with relevant timely information. I say that a lot informing the community, but we do it creatively and we want to engage the community and we do so through community outreach campaigns, which I also will talk about in the next slide. And then overall our goal through interdepartmental support is supporting the city's overall mission and strategic priorities. So highlights from 2026. We couldn't look at 2026 without of course mentioning the first ever Growing Victoria Summit, spearhead by our mayor and city manager, and of course in tandem with our economic development department and city manager's office staff. This was a really impactful event to be a part of, from concept to development to promotion and even production during the event, and it really made an impact in the community, so we were grateful to have been a part of that. Some other strategic information campaigns throughout the year included the public safety headquarters. Our community had a lot of interest in that building, and so we were there ready to share information proactively and respond to media inquiries. And we actually did some pretty creative stuff with VPD command staff at the helm. A lot of it came from them. We continue supporting public safety, including fire, but specifically lately, Gabe has been supporting with VPD's recruitment efforts. So that continues to be at the forefront of our efforts. And then some continued efforts for the remainder of the year will be the stormwater drainage utility fee program and reminding residents about the tools and services that we provide and that are available to them, like the city app and our city alert center. We also earned some statewide awards. The thing that I love after six years, seven, six or seven years of being here now is not just reveling in our own awards, but this was actually in tandem with departments. We couldn't have done this without the first of all the communication goals of the departments themselves. So starting with VPD. Beetlejuice Halloween PSA. It's become a staple every year, y'all. Like, it's expected. We already know. When we look at our project management queue, insert VPD's Halloween PSA video. And we did earn third place producing their video and helping with script and maybe even some acting in the use of humor category. And then SpongeBob Fire Prevention, we did support FIRE's promotion and production of their show this year. And then finally, as you heard from Christy, we supported their Waste Wizard campaign, which was great and well-received. If you look on the lower right, we have a little clip right there. I'm not going to play the video, but it's a picture. Familiar face over here, Mr. Daryl Lesak. Is he in the room? Did he already leave? He stepped out for a reason, because I was going to throw him under the bus. He's becoming a local celeb, so we're going to continue to use him in future campaigns, right, Christie, if you're in here? She stepped out, too. They both knew. Town Talk also earned two statewide awards, one of which was different. It was for the area of innovation, which was getting ahead of a crisis, really, and just sharing critical information with our community. Okay, performance metrics. So we always like to look at our social media impressions. This tells us the amount of content really that we're producing in a year and how often it's getting seen by our community. This is always going to fluctuate as we can't control what circumstances go on in a community, but we can say after looking for context, and in case some of you aren't familiar, back in 2022, this was really the onset of that Victoria Retail Village announcements that we were helping really get ahead of. That coming soon to Texas did not beat us on that one. So that's primarily where a lot of that announcement came from, like Boot Barn in Burlington, as well as affordable housing like Fish Pond. I think that was the first time our community heard about that. Development announcements continued into 2023. A lot of more city-owned projects like the Duck Pond, De Leon Plaza Performance Pavilion and expansion. Some similar events like that. And then in 2024, of course, was our bicentennial. I think that was also when we hosted our DJ Daniel ceremony. A lot of this, by the way, let me put a pause. A lot of this is sourced from our data analytics software that we use to look at what were the top stories and posts that we made in a given year and which ones garnered most of what you're seeing up here. So that's where I'm getting all this information. And then in 2025, which was last year, we did have a few incidents that garnered a lot of attention, but most of all was that community center renovation and expansion project venue tax. So going into 2026, we're talking about the stormwater. We expect to continue to talk about it, and we anticipate a little bit more in impressions because of that, because we'll continue to talk about it. And did I mention the Brother Gary naming garnered a lot of attention as well? Website visits, a completely different medium, not apples to apples comparison, but it's also consistently viewed and visited. That's specifically the amount of visits that we had to a website in a given year. We like to see this number consistent because that's our central hub of information of city services, if you will. And for those who may or may not have social media as much as we love it, we like to make sure that everyone has access to our information. My favorite metric is the project requests, because this tells us over the years, as we have grown in staff count, slowly but surely, we also are growing in project requests completed. That is everything from our core five function areas I mentioned in the beginning. A lot of it is behind the scenes, but a lot of it too is what you'll see in the community. And coming from different departments, the departments, by the way, do an amazing job on their own at communicating. to the public and outreach. But we do support them with a lot of different items that helps them reduce costs for outsourcing. So we expect that to continue to increase just a little bit this year as we did have our new staff member come online halfway through the year. And is she still here? Ms. Talitha Gillespie, y'all.

Thanks for being here.

All right, grants. We don't necessarily receive grants nor see any forthcoming for our department specifically that we would qualify for. However, we do have a dedicated revenue fund source called PEG. And if you haven't heard of that, that stands for public, educational, and governmental. And really what it is is a franchise agreement between the city and local cable providers. We earn for the use of our rights-of-way, and we earn 1%, which goes into a dedicated fund used for capital and infrastructure. Really, it's primarily equipment. And we've taken a pretty conservative approach in storing that up. I'll mention why in a few more slides as well. I feel like I'm previewing everything. And then that graphic in the center is really just to tell the story that while we don't get grants for our department, we do support those who do. Christie mentioned earlier they earned a grant for Waste Wizard as an example, which we earned an award for. But we help her be able to amplify her dollars elsewhere to really get that content seen in our community through advertisement. So she can use the funds there versus outsourcing video, social media, and other communication efforts.

And then finally, we do use AI as we need to, as appropriate.

Really, we produce all of our own content, but we can use it to repurpose things like Town Talk, for example. You see the promos that we use on social media. There's a software called Caption AI. and you plug in our originally produced content and it whips out 30 to 60 second clips for us. Sometimes we do have to go in there because it gets a little wonky and edit it. But the point is we're looking for ways to expand our services and really be more efficient, as well as our project management tools. So the new program, speaking of capacity, is really to prioritize the reorg of our two positions. I mentioned earlier the multimedia manager position and the community engagement coordinator and communications coordinator. The role is to really be more proactive in those two areas. And it'll really improve our organization and provide better service delivery to our departments and then ultimately to our community, especially during crises. So we're really... Looking forward to implementing that. There's our other new staff member in that photo, Kevin Harkins, right here. All right, our total budget is $912,374 this year with a variance of $112,475. And that is a 14% difference. And that's primarily due to both the citywide pay program and the two departmental proposed reworks. There's also a few recurring, such as educational development needs and anticipated software cost increases. As you can imagine, we are a department who does have a lot of software. Like Everbridge, the mass notification system for our city alert center. What was that word Christy used? Fantasizing. Two of our goals that we want to continue to prioritize going into 2028 and beyond will be primarily two things, staffing, and facilities. And so with PEG funds, I mentioned that earlier, we want to be able to utilize some of that to reduce the impact to the general fund to be able to be part of the construction and build out, really, of our team workspace, which will be the first time ever that we will be housed in the same area, as well as a dedicated production studio. So that would be part of the overall city hall renovations that city manager's office will be leading. And we would just be one of those departments who would move over there. PD's move to the new public safety headquarters did free up a lot of space, and so we look forward to that. And then just here's a final slide concluding my presentation about the communications embedded model. You notice I keep touting partnership. The most important thing about our department as an internal service team is to provide excellent services to our departments. And we can only do so at capacity. So looking forward to seeing where we can strategically reorg, grow, whatever we can to better meet the needs of our organization and our community. And I will take any questions.

Any questions on communications?

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ashley. And so we'll keep it going. And I believe Roger is next to talk about billing equipment services. You know it. Good afternoon.

Welcome. Howdy, y'all. It's good to see you. Mayor and Council, thank you for having us all here and listening to our hopefully not so long-winded presentations. So for the fiscal year 27 building and equipment services budget first, we'll start with our department description We kind of have three divisions building services maintains city facilities including the structural electrical plumbing and HVAC systems Custodial services maintains clean work and public areas and city buildings to ensure a pleasant environment for our staff and visitors Lastly, the Fleet Services Division operates the city's central maintenance facility and manages the light duty vehicle lease program, which will come up again here in a second. Some changes to our organizational chart. We had some pretty significant changes this year that the city manager highlighted earlier. this morning, resulting overall in some savings for us. But the main ones are that we had budgeted for a planned new position for fleet manager. We did fill that position and the gentleman is here with us today, Mr. Randy West, sitting over here in the crowd. So welcome him if you see him around. He's doing a great job for us. So we filled the fleet manager position at the same time our project manager and building services position became vacant So we decided to reorganize and we were able to add a custodial crew leader position and then that opened up a custodian custodian position which we were able to backfill so we have one more team member on the custodial team and we reorganized our administrative assistant who's been with us for a long time into a project coordinator. So she's kind of taken on some of the roles of procurement and contracting for the construction projects. So our employee count as you can see went up with the planned new position in fiscal year 26 and it will remain the same for fiscal year 27. The mission of building an equipment services department at the City of Victoria is to ensure that all city staff have safe, functional, reliable, and comfortable facilities, vehicles, and workspaces. And there's a picture of our team. As you can see, I have a little bit more hair now than I did then, which is fun. So our goals remain the same a lot of the time, but we're focusing on proactive maintenance. I have a really great metric to show you guys coming up. Regarding that, we implement sustainable practices and energy efficient technologies, reduce equipment downtime, optimize vehicle utilization, and create opportunities and motivation for staff development. Some of our highlights, one of the biggest ones. I'm so proud of it. The roof at the Victoria Public Library has been replaced, and it has been tested. Lately, as many of you know, we've been getting a ton of rain, and it is holding up beautifully. We also completed an energy efficient lighting upgrade at the Victoria Library this year using grant funding. Thank you to Katie Connelly and the library staff for pursuing that grant, and we were happy to be able to help them carry that out. Some highlights for fleet are that we launched a new fleet management software in the city's first ever fleet telematics program. You've probably been hearing me talk about that for the last nine years. I've been talking about it since I got here and all it took was hiring a fleet manager to get it done. So his life will be a lot easier than mine was. But we're also transitioning from the enterprise lease program to outright vehicle purchases for our light duty fleets. The lease program, I think the idea of it when it was proposed to us was good and the business model was good. However, soon after that COVID came and changed the effectiveness of that model and we weren't able to keep up with the program. So we were gonna kind of move back into purchasing our vehicles outright and hopefully come up with a nifty funding mechanism to have kind of a seeded fund to be able to afford those vehicles and replace them on time. And our new fleet manager will have direct involvement in the acquisition and management of public safety fleets, which is a large undertaking. They have a lot of vehicles and they're very special to use vehicles and specialty specified vehicles. So it needs more attention than I could give it. So we're very happy to have Randy here to look after that. Our final highlight slide is for the public safety headquarters. We closed out construction and commissioning of the new public safety headquarters building, which is wonderful. It's a beautiful building. We moved all sections of police, fire administration, dispatch, and municipal court into the facility, so everyone that is supposed to be there is there now. The move was pretty major and I got to shout out Chief Fetters and Chief Gomez. They were a huge help. Everybody pitched in and helped. We got it done very quickly and in a very organized manner. So it was pretty painless overall. For some of our metrics, this is the one related to proactive maintenance that I'm very excited about. As you can see, the last year of hard data is 2025, and we reached almost 50-50 with this metric. We've been shooting for 80% preventative maintenance over 20% repair work, and that means that you're... That's kind of the industry standard. That's where you want to be, but that means that you're... you're focusing your efforts in the right place. So you can see when we started out, we were pretty well the exact opposite of that. And we've started to really trend in the right direction. And I'm shooting high, hoping we can keep that trend going. For fleet, we changed the metric this year. We're looking at vehicle life cycle. Instead of downtime, so as you can see, the dark blue is our vehicles that we have in-cycle, and I'll explain the difference between in-cycle and out-of-cycle. In-cycle is defined by the American Public Works Association, and it has some guidelines of how you classify vehicles, and the most basic classification would be 10 years of age in service or 100,000 miles. So we have... a growing fleet of aging vehicles. Right now, we're at about 318 vehicles, and a little over a third of those are, by that definition, out of life cycles. Our capital replacements haven't been keeping up probably as well as we need them to, but this is something that we need to start focusing on and try to get that ratio back into a livable state. Yes. This includes public safety. This is the entirety of the license-plated vehicles driving around. Yes, but it does not, this number does not include the already purchased new ambulances and fire trucks that are not in service yet. We're still counting the old units there. Yes, thank you for, it will, yes, it will change. Strategic innovation and funding initiatives. So for now, with our grant opportunities and external funding, we have no opportunities or external funding that have been awarded or are pending. Although we do enjoy helping our partner departments implement any grant funding or any projects that they are able to do with that sort of funding. So we try to be as supportive as possible. For AI and operational innovation, We are excited about this and have used some of it even to create our budget this year. Automated work order prioritization, so which ones are more important than others? Smart energy management initiatives, predictive maintenance, simplifying compliance and reporting, and asset replacement forecasting. Just with a little bit of information input, AI can kind of turn out a pretty good product on what needs to be focused on, so it's pretty neat. New programs and initiatives for 27 is that we are very excited to begin the community center expansion and renovation project because I want to go to the rodeo, man. I'm ready. Are you going to participate? I'd love to. Can we do like the thing where you put the shorts on the goat? I like that one. So... So... Anyway, I just couldn't come up with anything else. Sorry.

Of all the events, that's the one you've been.

I'm an old school goat roper. You know, I don't know what to say. Anyway, we're also... You did. We're also planning for the renovation of City Hall and the old police department facilities, the facility we're in now. We're already in the beginning stages of that and it's looking very promising, very excited about that as well. We'll also continue evaluating employing our own mechanics rather than using the vehicle maintenance contracts that we currently use. Something we've been looking at over the last year or so and the feasibility is looking pretty good, but we have some more things we need to run down before we try to pull the trigger on that. So for our budget overview, we are going down about a million bucks. It's not all decreases, but the majority of it is in our capital replacements for this year compared to last year. We did a big push in public safety last year, if you remember. So we don't have quite as much this year in capital replacements. So our fiscal year 27 pay program is one of the increases, small increase. M&O, we have a fairly significant increase, about 330,000. We have some new fleet software costs. We have the telematics cost. It has an annual fee associated with it for cellular service. And then we have increased cost of vehicle maintenance contracts. As you know, as we talked about, the fleet is aging. Cost of maintenance is going to go up. Our decrease is, as I spoke about, in fleet asset replacements. And we have a few one-time items. We have some software implementation costs. We need to get a new scissor lift for our building maintenance crew. And we have some consulting manager services contingency put in there. Our revenues don't mirror exactly, but are pretty close to our expenses. We are internal services, so anything that we're spending is coming from other departments in the city, so it's pretty straightforward. fiscal year 28 and beyond. We're looking forward to the city hall complex renovation that we spoke about. Also, evaluating and planning for 700 main centers future use. We'll be vacating some spaces in that building and potentially even more with possibly a solid waste building or relocating the service center or things like that. It's yet to be seen what was the most valuable use for the 700 main facility, but we'll be evaluating that. Also, additional custodial staff to maintain our new facilities is going to be something we're going to need to think about in the future. Also, additional facility maintenance technicians. One, because we have more facilities, but also because we have newer facilities. A lot of the new equipment is much more efficient. Just for instance, mechanical equipment, HVAC, outdoor units have a new type of cooling coil that they're using called a micro channel coil. Micro channel coils are about 40% more efficient on cooling and electricity usage. However, they need to be touched by a technician and cleaned once a month. So that is a lot higher frequency than we're used to, so that's gonna take some more staff. That concludes my presentation. Happy to answer any questions. Any questions?

Not about the rodeo event. I mean, that's the obvious subject. Thank you for the information. Appreciate it. Thank you, Roger, I appreciate it. And so we'll continue with another internal service fund, everybody's favorite.

Let's turn it over to James. The villain of the budget process.

I do wanna first start this off, and I really love how nobody really just picked out on IT, but it's IT versus internal services, IS. That's sort of a subtle hint there. lot of those charges you'll see it did come from my department as usual all the techie stuff so good afternoon mayor council I'm happy to present our 2027 radio and information technology budget I am going to do a little different and I'm going to have Sam took over portions of it she's going to handle the highlights metrics and the initiatives and I'll follow back up on the budget So on our description, I'll change a little bit on what the other ones had, but of course obviously we're enhancing, empowering all of our city services through technology. One of the things I wanna bring up that's a new one that we added in there is actually just what we're doing as far as with cybersecurity. So if you notice the third section there, 1.6 million emails that we filter out annually, 9,000 links blocked from these people back here that keep clicking on links that they shouldn't be clicking on. and 1.5 thousand vulnerabilities that are reported by our computers. So that's basically all of our computers. You know when you get your Windows update, well ours is 1.5 thousand monthly is what we run through there. One of the other things I really want to point out here is that in conjunction with our upcoming merger with TxDOT and DPS, if you'll notice that our subscribers have greatly increased. We've gone up to 1,500 subscribers on our radio system, and that is just basically we've gotten a lot of other state agencies on board. Yesterday, we actually provisioned over 80 of the radios for Texas A&M to be on our system.

The local University of Texas A&M.

Texas A&M, University of Victoria.

Thank you.

Thank you. Actually, though, I will make a point of that is because they still have not finished that yet, all of the Texas A&M police radios are provisioned on our system because they're going to be rotating them through here. And so that's why there's so many. Eventually when they're all done and they have a full staff here, we only anticipate probably about 10 radios on the system. So that's why there is a high number.

And what he's talking about, just for context, is that it is the goal of the university here to have their own police department. But in the interim, the mother campus Texas A&M College Station Police Department is going to be providing police services in Victoria. And so James' comment is that all of the radios associated with that personnel are having to be reprogrammed. Eventually, when they establish their own police department here, it might only be a police department of 10 people, and it won't be as many. But that's what we're referring to is that that police department plan.

Thank you. Here's our org chart. We did do a reorg this year. One of the things that we did was we took one of our positions in the support side and moved over into the network administrator. And then we also have highlighted the part-time radio position. As you can see, for 27, our numbers are still going to be the same at 12 and one. Our mission statement is to deliver exceptional support and innovative technology solutions and power city departments to provide efficient and effective services to our community and safeguard those services through proactive, high-quality cybersecurity practices that protect city infrastructure, residential data, and the continuity of essential government services. So our goals and objectives, modernize and maintain critical infrastructure, improve public safety, public-facing technology services, support departmental efficiency, ensure business continuity, and then strengthen the cybersecurity posture, city cybersecurity posture. I want to basically from here sort of break off a little bit from our standard budget because every year you'll hear us talk about cybersecurity. And you all have been very, supportive as far as funding our cyber security initiatives And so I wanted to just talk a little bit about why that's so important So I want to go on this next slide and show you what the cost is what we've seen typically out for a typical cyber security cyber attack and And this isn't just the ransom. I mean, a lot of people associate there's ransomware, we gotta pay the ransomware. Well, it's not necessarily the ransomware that's all part of that. So as you can see, Sophos listed that the mean state is $2.83 million for cyber recovery. And so it's just not just the ransom that's occurring. If you can see Abilene and Dallas, Dallas was really a big one. Fulton was really huge, 10.2 mil. So when you get in there, it's just not the ransom. It's a bunch of invoices. So you've got the incident response and forensics. You've got your hardware, software rebuilds, service restoration, overtime, temp staffing, legal notices, monitoring, emergency modernization. And these are just the cost that you're seeing the dollar side of there. There's still those soft costs that we're not even taking into consideration. So for instance, if someone was to attack our SCADA system, and God forbid something like that happened and it would cause something, that would cause loss of life or something to that effect. That would be something that's a cost there. Another hidden cost that people don't think about too is once you get a hit like this, how does that affect our revenue bonds, our financial rating? Do we get a hit on those? So it's just something to consider and look at. And so y'all been very supportive of helping us out. So last slide on that one is actually just our decision as far as I mentioned, we've been doing controlled investments. and we hope to continue doing controlled investments versus the reactive spending and to keep a lot of that money in the vault. Okay, I'm gonna transition over to Sam and let her handle the highlights.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council. So to start with our fiscal year 26 highlights, we successfully helped with the relocation of public safety departments to the public safety headquarters facility. We implemented ADA compliance on our city web pages and public facing department forms for resident requests. We also conducted a SCADA assessment that identified different areas of improvement and we assisted with the migration from SAP to Tyler ERP.

How many computers do you think you and your team helped set up at public safety headquarters?

Probably 200 to 300.

Yeah, it was a lot.

Yeah. So in addition to the computers, we also had numerous network requests and critical servers, especially with our dispatch move that we completed a couple of weeks ago. Do you want me to elaborate on dispatch?

Just the fact it was a part of just what it took us to do.

Yeah, so just to elaborate a little bit more on the dispatch move that happened a couple of weeks ago, we started at 4 o'clock in the morning one day. We had to work with our EOC and the sheriff's office to make sure that all of our phone calls were rerouted appropriately. We had dispatch staff and IT staff At the EOC, we started at old dispatch, moved equipment. We had several vendors involved to get the radio switched over, make sure that the phones worked appropriately, and that all of our software, all of our critical software that dispatch uses was working before we switched it over to public safety. It took...

I was going to say, 5 p.m.?

Yeah, we finished about 5 p.m. that day with all of the critical pieces, but the rest of the work took... we really finished last week, so a lot of work involved in that. Anything else?

Thank you.

Yeah, okay, all right. So to continue with our fiscal year 2026 highlights, we did have a major focus on cybersecurity, as James alluded to earlier, and we're going to see this continue throughout every year, especially as the landscape just evolves. So we, a few of the things that we did to protect the city in terms of cyber security is we implemented a fully managed backup and disaster recovery service so that in the event of a cyber attack we're able to recover more efficiently. We deployed remote monitoring and control solution We updated our incident response plans and policies to ensure that we're prepared to respond quickly and that city staff is prepared as well. And we also established an interlocal agreement with the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley to strengthen the city's overall security posture, which I will elaborate on a little bit more here later. So we have some highlights from our radio system. We significantly reduced our Motorola maintenance costs through the TxDOT and DPS partnership. We also had some upgrades and replacements that enabled future connectivity to the Gator system, which is the greater Austin, Travis, regional radio system. If it's not, it should be, because that matches perfectly. We had the microwave link replacement. We also implemented Smart Connect, which extends our public safety radio coverage. And we applied for a Siri grant to replace some more end of life equipment, which I will also cover a little bit more later. So for our performance metrics, these are the volume of our IT help desk tickets. You'll notice that 2026, we're projected to have quite a few more than we've had in previous years. This is largely due to the move to the public safety headquarters. And we do anticipate the volume to stay a little bit elevated in future years, just because we have some initiatives to track more of the work that we're doing around maintenance and responding to security incidents in following years. This is a breakdown of the volume of the IT Help Desk tickets this year by department. You'll see that our police department, fire, human resources, and public works enter most of our IT Help Desk tickets. Just a note about the human resources one, that's for onboarding and offboarding of staff. So it's a little misleading there. This shows our radio call volume. So this is radio calls utilized by both the city and the county. And then the total of both is illustrated with the line at the top. All right, for our strategic innovation and funding initiatives, we, as I mentioned earlier, applied for the CERI grant funding this year to replace one of our GTRs. Our GTRs are a core piece of our public safety radio system. The cost to replace one is about $1 million. If we are awarded the CERI grant funding, the city will be responsible for installation costs of up to $200,000. By 2030, both of our GTRs and six console dispatch positions will need to be replaced because they'll be end of life. There is a current approximate cost total for both GTRs and the six dispatch positions of $2.8 million. We are eligible to apply for CERI grant funding every two years, so we will continue to apply for that to help offset the cost of these. We also entered the interlocal agreement with UT Rio Grande Valley. This provides for state funding for cybersecurity initiatives. The great thing about this is that there are some services that we currently pay for through M&O costs, recurring M&O costs. Sorry, my voice is like super shaky.

You want some water?

No, I'm good. I used to work remotely. It's been a while since I stood in front of people and talked. I don't need more coffee. Thank you. Anyway, the great thing about this is that it has the potential to reduce some of our recurring M&O costs in fiscal year 27 by about $73,000 because there are services that we're currently utilizing for cybersecurity that they provide under the state funding. There's also additional monitoring services that would cost us about $75,000 to sustain independently. They are on our roadmap to use. It just happens that UT Rio Grande Valley is going to support us with that. So for AI and operational innovation, we automated the import of citizen data into the mass communication system Everbridge, which Ashley mentioned earlier. We have some cybersecurity automations. We have auto enrollment for when staff members fail simulated phishing attacks. We're going to be implementing Darktrace, which is a network monitoring solution that uses agent tech AI as part of the UT Rio Grande Valley agreement. and we also are automating reporting and alerting of potential security issues. We've also been reviewing our AI policies and protections, and then we implemented mandatory AI training for city staff this year. for our fiscal year 2027 new programs and initiatives due to rising costs of our virtualization platform. So many of our servers are virtualized, basically means we have physical servers and then we have software running on them that's running our programs. So there's a service that provides that virtualization. It's been increasing in cost over the years, so we're going to be looking at migrating that or potentially consolidating it. for cost savings there. We will be looking at relocating fiber from Stroman Middle School due to the planned demolition of Stroman Middle School as part of the VISD bond. We will be consolidating local telephone billing from individual departments to IT and streamlining our computer replacement plan for consistent and more predictable budgeting. And then we'll be working to implement new CAD, RMS and alerting solutions for police and fire. We're also looking at more cybersecurity. We'll be looking at implementing a secure password management tool, additional staff training to increase cyber awareness. That's going to include simulated attack exercises for emergency cyber incident preparedness. We're also going to be doing that increased network traffic monitoring and automated responses to malicious detections. And then hopefully contingent on a Siri funding will be replacing one end of life GTR at boat tower and then purchasing a radio tuner to extend radio operational life. All right. Thank you. I will hand it back to James.

Thank you, Sam.

Thank you so much. Uh, okay. So for 27, you can see our budget, uh, increased three to 3,387,000 or 507,000 increased 17.63%. So if we look at, as I mentioned earlier with the reorg, and the radio technician position. The radio technician position wasn't fully funded in this year's budget, so it's also, we'd like to reflect you on that, and of course the pay program. M&O, as Sam had mentioned, the consolidation of departmental telecommunications expense. Prior to that, what we were doing was having to Break that out to each of the departments and send that to them. It was very time-consuming, and so this way we're just going to be putting it all in in our budget and passing it back out to them. Vendor price increases, of course, always going up every year, but this averaging out about 5% to 10%. We have capital replacing of servers and computers and a typical replacement policy. And then the one-time purchases of a Motorola radio tuner. We have four mobile radios, Motorola radios for PD. Council, as y'all are aware, that y'all did approve, thank y'all very much for the purchase of the portable radios. Now we have about 100. of the mobile radios that are the original ones. And so while they're so good and they're so functional, we need to start that process. These four new radios are actually for the new vehicles as we're recycling them out. But that'll be something else we have to look at in the future. And then replacement time clocks. As we're migrating over to Tyler on the HR side with our timekeeping, we have to get some new time clocks that will be compatible with Tyler. And our revenues, and this is an important part, this is the first year that they've actually included the radio portion of that, so thank you for including that in there, but we are internal services, so the majority of our money does come from interdepartmental, but the radio does come also not only from internal, but also from the other agencies that use our radio system. So that's a great opportunity that we're able to use those funds to be able to fund those additional equipment that we need to look at, like the console positions and the GTRs. So hopefully we can, if we run into a situation where we're not able to get anything with Siri, hopefully that money will be there to help us offset that.

And is that a standardized fee structure for each one of those? Yes, it is. Okay.

It's based upon the number that costs the dollar cost per radio, and it's billed out quarterly, but it's on a monthly charge.

Got it. Okay. Thank you.

You bet. And 20 and beyond. So we're going to continue to explore our comprehensive 311 call center system that Mr. Garza is... Yeah, that's been something, what was the word?

Fantasized?

Fantasizing about.

I've been fantasizing about a 311 call center for seven years now, since 2019.

It'll happen.

That's your way to keep me here, I think.

That'll work. We need to upgrade our infrastructure to a 40 gig backbone. One of the things that we noticed off the bat was when we brought over public safety headquarters, just how much data was going back and forth between there. So we actually had like a one gig connection. Immediately had to upgrade it to a 10 gig just to happen. So as more and more video Goes across the network. We're going to really see a lot of a huge increase on that So that's something we need to really be mindful of we're going to continue to explore AI powered predictive analytics Explore inquiry chat box. I think that's really a part That's really going to be important that if we can offer that to our citizens some type of chat box on our web page payment portals with SMS The fun part that they're going to really love is multi-factor authentication at the desktop player. That's another layer of cybersecurity. But basically what that means is they've got to have something else just beside their password that they have written down on a piece of paper somewhere. I know. Self-service options for a staff. That's what they forget their password They can reset their password on their own and not bug us about that And of course we are like everyone else looking forward to the City Hall remodel and the community center tech refreshes for those James real quick just go back to that so I can go off on a tangent real quick on my three one one

Vision. But for the benefit of those that might be watching and haven't heard the talk about the 311, really the vision and the dream with the 311 call center is that people literally call 311 and there's a centralized dispatch customer service representative that takes our residents call and is able to process any requests that they have. One of the hiccups that we ran into when we started to explore this concept was that we had several departments utilizing different work order systems, and that having somebody answer the phone would necessitate one person having to have open four or five different systems on their computer. And so one of the first undertakings that we embarked on was consolidating four or five departments into utilizing one centralized work order system, which we did. And so we sort of passed that hurdle, for lack of a better word. But that's the vision. We, of course, rolled out the app, the 311 app, as a precursor to that concept to start to get the public accustomed to there being a centralized place where they can submit a complaint, or not necessarily a complaint, but feedback or a request. But the idea is that this be a human operation that somebody answers the phone. What also adds to the complexity is that we know that not every call that we will get is something that we can control as the city. Animal control is a perfect example, right? We know that if we were to roll this out, we would get calls related to animal control centric things. So we would like to work collaboratively with animal control to figure out some back end system to be able to send them these work orders or these these calls. Um, and so there's still work to be done, you know, in that regard. Uh, but that's ultimately the vision. Um, this will not only help expedite our response, um, and our customer service, but we'll also prevent or alleviate somebody needing to memorize 10 different phone numbers, um, depending on what their issue is. It could just be something you just call 311 and you'll reach city customer service to address your needs. This also can come in handy during emergency type situations. During certain disasters, the pandemic, I'm sure it happened to some extent during Harvey as well. There's this idea that, hey, call this number to get some information or if you have an issue. During an emergency type situation, the 311 system and the staff, would already be in place and the backbone would be in place in order for somebody to call to solicit information during an emergency crisis type situation. So there's a lot of benefit to it. Some people deem it to be a little bit old school because of the human element to it. And we see it happen in a lot of other areas where automated systems have become a thing. but I think nothing beats that human element and that human touch. And I think that that would go a long way in our community, right? To have that human touch. So anyway, that's the vision. That's the pipe dream. That's what I fantasize about. And so James, you can't retire until you make it happen.

And I agree.

Gilbert said, we got Sam.

No, it's like really the bus again, we're bringing up the bus. And I agree with Mr. Garza about that. It's like I hate to get an automated attendant on the line, and I can't. I'm immediately like, oh, come on. Give me a human. Give me a human. OK. And of course, we're going to continue on to what happened on my. Oh, there we go. 2820 on on our radio system obviously like we had mentioned earlier about the GTRs Base stations repeaters and the console dispatch positions also want to mention like said these are all in their life in 2030 the Sheriff's Department also I believe have four console positions that they will have to look at replacing those two And I mentioned earlier about the radio replacement in car for the police and fire And that is it if I have any questions any questions

Yes, recently in DeWitt County, they had a 911 outage. Yes. Is there anything to learn from that? It was like AT&T equipment or something like that?

Yes, but there was some situation so basically my understanding of how this all occurred Was there was and this was occurring also during the event during this dispatch move but there was new equipment that was put in service by AT&T and that some of that new equipment caused some routing issues and So basically just for people who don't understand is that with the Golden Crescent Regional Planning Commission, basically we have two PSAPs, Public Service Answering Points. Victoria is one of the primary PSAPs and then the secondary is DWIT. And so what happens was there was a routing loop between Victoria and County. So basically, lack of a better term, the two devices kept arguing on who was in charge, and they finally just gave up. And so what happened was all these phone calls pretty much was just routing through the system, ending up in Jackson. And so there was actually some calls that was from Victoria that was going to Jackson County. So they determined what the issue was. It was a routing loop. They shut down DeWitt's equipment. So we were running on Victoria's PSAP until they could work out the issue. Took them a couple of week or so, but then they got it resolved. Everything's back and now we're running both PSAPs without any issues. So hope I said that right with that and kind of political. We were back up and running.

Nobody would have picked up on the political part until you said that. Yeah, OK. Sorry.

But yes, when it did, when we did have an outage, we were out for, I mean, where we had those in, I mean, there was never a part to where the 911 calls were not being answered. They were being answered. It was just very... Sometimes it would go to the SO, sometimes it would come to us, sometimes it would go to Sheriff's Department, to Jackson County. But it was probably within, I would say about three hours, three to four hours before it got resolved where they shut it down and then everything returned to normal and then once that's done and then they didn't turn it back on until they were sure that the routing issue was resolved. So thank you.

Thanks for the information.

Appreciate it.

All right. Thanks, James. No, you're good. Don't listen to Gilbert. We're going to keep it going, and so we'll turn it over to Nina to hit on HR. Yes, you know what? Good afternoon. Welcome.

Mayor, council.

Can you adjust the microphone? I'm going to. Thank you.

Rude, the harassment around here. All right, focus everybody, we're almost done. Okay, so I will move through this quickly, but tell you a little bit more about HR. I know that you all have been really instrumental and participated in a lot, compensation, civil service, so we've had a lot of updates. But department-wise, a little bit about our department. Of course, it's about strategic partnering with attracting, fostering, inspiring, cultivating, championing, and sustaining workforce development relationships. With Wanda leaving in May, it gave us a chance to really look at the organizational structure of our department and see where we were doing really well and where we had a few gaps. Operationally, we were handling the HR and risk operations daily. But there was some opportunity in strategic workforce and development, retention, leadership pipeline planning, and then, of course, enterprise-level change management. So we made a few changes. As you can see, we have the director and assistant director We split the department a bit. Caitlin, who's one of our long-term employees, was able to advance to a supervisor position. And that's a great example of succession planning as we have her continuing to grow and develop so hopefully she can move into a management role eventually. So she handles the daily supervision and the quality control for both the HR and the risk side. We have two HR partners that focus on recruitment, onboarding, and outreach. And then we have another of the two that focuses on recruitment, onboarding, and program development. We have one that focuses on organizational development workforce strategy and change management initiatives. And then we have our risk management records retention employee programs partner. And lastly, our total rewards, which focuses on compensation, benefit, and retirements. So our goal was to make sure that we're hitting every piece of HR and that we had the attention that it needed and that our employees had a resource and a person to go to when they had questions about those specific areas. This year we have six full-time employees. Our mission is to partner with departments in the community to attract, develop, and retain a diverse, future-ready workforce, driving innovation, fostering relationships, and delivering excellence and service to the city of Victoria. We build trusted relationships across departments and the community to deliver effective workforce solutions and support organizational success. We uphold high standards of ethics, transparency. We embrace innovation and empower employees to grow, thrive, and succeed. Some of the highlights of this year, as you know, we talked a bit about creating a culture of commitment and retaining the employees that we do have. And one of the pieces that we really focused on was utilizing our wellness and support funding to focus on not only the employees helping employees, but also just creating some perks that don't necessarily tie into compensation, but do make a difference for the employees. So we did what we called a restroom refresh. And in all of our employee bathrooms now, we have just a little area where they have access to some commonly needed items. We had really good feedback from all of the employees. We even got some personal thank yous just for making that a little nicer and for getting them some of the things that they don't realize they need, but then they do. We also have a hydration station. So one thing that we wanted to create was an environment where our office didn't feel like the principal's office or the nurse's office, but more like a place where they can continue to come when they have questions, need assistance, or maybe just want to learn more about the benefits that they currently have. So our hydration station has done really well at attracting more people to come visit us. We do have healthy drinks, some healthy snacks, bottled water. and some coffee. So that's been a really great addition and the employees have given really good feedback. And then our Oh Baby campaign, we had a lot of babies this year. And so what we did was we had some wellness funds that we could have lost if we didn't utilize them. So with the new babies that we had, we allowed our employees to find a baby gift that they felt would be beneficial. And then we purchased onesies. So now every time one of our employees has a baby, they get a onesie that says welcome to the team. We have one for police or fire and then one for the city. So that's been really positive. We've got a lot of really good feedback on it. You may recall we also divided up service recognition and our Christmas party this year. We wanted to see if we'd have better participation and really focus on those who have been committed to the city, and then also celebrate for Christmas festivities with all of our employees. So we had a great amount of attendance. We had several employees participate in the service awards. For the Christmas party, we had 412 employees RSVP, and we had a full house, so that was nice to see all of them join us with their families and friends. And then for the service rewards, we had a 65% participation. So all of our employees that could be there were there and the reason that was a little lower than expected was because we were short in PD at that time and so we did have some officers who were unable to make it but we did get them their gifts and make sure that they were recognized. We've also had TML come in, that is our insurance provider, to provide some trainings. So they've done a class on harassment prevention, performance management, and then they're going to be doing one specifically for first responders later this year, just about resilience in the workplace and getting through some of the situations that they have to go through. In the corner, you can see we had promotions. I know it's a little tiny, but I did want to highlight on that as we continue to try to work on- Is that what that is? Yeah. Sorry. Workforce development and really building up our employees. As you heard earlier, we have a few new leaders here. Jesus picked on poor Jonathan but he is one of them. We had 53 promotions this year so far. The most in police followed by fire and then public works. So it's really good to see that we're not only hiring but we're also developing and growing from within to build future leaders for positions that may become vacant. Civil service. So we've had a lot of activity in that area. As you can see, we started in January with the initial formation of our civil service commission and moved through that. We updated you on the reviews and red lines of the rules that we were getting through. But as we started civil service, the commission part, we also started collective bargaining a few months later. And so now we are working through those articles. So that has been a big project that we've all been working on. It's given us a lot of bonding time. I don't know if that's good or bad, but we've definitely gotten to know each other a lot better from FIRE and our leadership team. Two of our big initiatives this year were for NeoGov and Tyler. So NeoGov is the platform that we currently use for payroll, recruitment, and our HRIS system to store all of our employees' information. We have gone in and really began to utilize a lot of the features that we had not yet turned on for NeoGov, including self-scheduling. So now we're able to put in time slots for managers of when they may be available, and the candidate can go in and self-schedule We can text message candidates through the platform if they have questions. We can use the platform to actually tell us what websites may be more beneficial to recruit for a specific position. So if you have, let's say, an accounting position come open, it would give us not only the general sites like Indeed and Google, but also some specific accounting associations that we may want to partner with. And so it helps us to really streamline that promotion as far as the position goes and get those positions posted not only on the organic pages, which are further back in the queue, but more to the top. So we've definitely had some fun and we've found that really helpful in some of our initiatives as far as utilizing the NeoGov. Tyler is a platform that's gonna be replacing NeoGov for payroll. We are in the implementation part, so right now we're building a lot of the back end pieces, so positions, pay grades, different codes for holiday and PTO and everything that we may need on the back end so that once we go live in January, we will be ready to roll that out seamlessly. We have one of our HR partners actually focusing on a lot of the how-to guides already so that when we are ready to roll that out, we have the resources and materials available for managers and employees so that they're not stumbling through the process and they have some guidance from day one. Again with the tiny, my apologies. So turnover, we are actually at 11% right now, which is really good from where we've been in the past. And we're hoping to continue that trend as far as retaining our employees and as police Chief Fedders told you earlier, we're doing a great job with getting more police. And I know Chief Gomez is also working on- Can you go to the next slide?

Next slide's the one that talks on turnover, unless you skip the physical copy of- This one? Yeah.

Okay. So the turnover rates are there, but- Go back. Go back? Can you go back here? So as you can see on the left side we have full-time eligible employees eligible to retire and right now we are at 11% there and then on the other side we have the turnover rate so that's not saying that everybody who is eligible to retire is going to but as you can see we've talked a lot about having a less seasoned workforce as we've had some people leave with a lot of experience so we do have a younger workforce that's here. And so we are working to find ways to get some of that knowledge from our more experienced employees over to our newer ones before they leave.

I'll just add on the turnover rate that specifically with public safety, we've seen as Chief Federer's alluded to, since the pay program went into effect in October, we are seeing so far, the data is supporting that we are losing less people. Which of course was a big reason right why we did that pay program and so we're very hopeful that That continues and that we can slow down that turnover but as everybody has alluded to it's led it's leading to having a younger workforce which necessitates you know, more intentional effort in professional development, you know, and so on and so forth. And obviously HR plays a role in that as well. And then on the full-time employee eligible to retire, once Ken Gill retired, that dropped by like 10%. And once Daryl and Gilbert retire, I think it goes down to zero. So, you know, and James, sorry, James. My bad. Yeah. Anyway, all right, carry on.

So moving on to strategic innovation and funding initiatives. Grant opportunities and external funding, we do have Blue Cross Blue Shield Wellness Fund, which provides us $50,000 to put towards our employees' wellness programs. And we're continuing to look for different grants that focus on workforce development and training. And also, what has come up through civil service recently is there are specific grants for funding of police and fire workout areas and equipment, so that's another area that we'll explore as we continue to move forward. As far as AI and operational innovation, we do utilize AI within the department periodically. We understand that it's not always correct, and so we definitely rely heavily on legal. When you have things come up that we have questions about that may be questionable that we get from there. But we also are finding a lot of softwares that are helping us to develop tools for education and training. We have one in particular that will help us in developing how-to guides. So as we're working through a process on our end, let's say for our Tyler implementation, it will track our movements and create a how-to guide instead of having to do screenshots of where we've clicked and why we've clicked it and the how-to notes on where to do that. So we do utilize those tools now and in the future to continue helping us in those areas. New programs and initiatives, of course, workforce development and leadership is always a high priority, expanding those development, mentorship and training programs to not only build an internal talent pool, but also to make sure that we're setting our employees up for success in whatever role that they decide to pursue today or in the future. Modernizing recruitment and employer branding. We are working on various recruitment campaigns to make sure that our jobs are not only getting posted, but they're getting promoted. That individuals that we want to see our jobs are seeing them. So we're doing some targeted marketing. We're doing some cost per click campaigns. We're doing some search engine optimizations. Really taking that to the next level to make sure that we're not just posting jobs, but we're really trying to attract and find the talent that we're looking for. And then, of course, employee retention and wellness initiatives, always looking for ways to strengthen retention, build those relationships, create a culture of commitment, and then, of course, promote wellness through programs that we have here in-house, and then also Blue Cross Blue Shield offers as one of our partners. So our budget overview, you can see that we did have a variance of $51,000. That's largely attributed to the added position. And so the capital part was also that we had the increase in some computer program replacements. The one-time expense, we did not have one this year. That was actually for a badge machine purchase that we had made last year. And we are utilizing that badge machine now, and it does help us with the new building access as well. Kinda, James likes to lock people out sometimes, but that's a different story. All right, so as far as FY28 and beyond, of course, we're utilizing a data-driven HR strategy to make sure that we're not only doing the things that we've always done, but finding ways to do them better, and really using analytics and workforce development tools and research to see where we are, where we want to go, and how we're gonna get there. Automation and self-service is important and we are utilizing that to the best of our ability as far as having access for the employees because we do have a 24-hour workforce. But we also are working very hard to make sure that we don't take away that personalized piece of it, that our employees have a place to go. They're taking care of our community and our HR department is taking care of them. it's a fine line between offering that automation and making sure that we still keep a personal touch with those relationships. And then of course the future ready workforce, making sure that we're not only building a resilient team but an adaptable one because as we run slim on some days, it is important that all of our employees have the tools and resources they need for the job they're doing but also so that they can help out others when they need to. Thank you. Any questions?

Move your questions. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Nina.

And we are almost done. I promised the next two are probably the shortest ones for the whole day, so we saved them for last. But I'll turn it over to April to speak briefly about her department budget.

Is it ready to go? Yeah.

OK.

OK, so my presentation will explain the proposed budget for the city secretary's office. It is the smallest department budget within the city, so this should go fairly quickly. So our responsibilities are varied. So we house the permanent records as the official repository for the city, do a lot of meeting minutes and agendas. I am the local registrar for all of Victoria County. sell different licenses and permits. I always like to say we do the ones nobody else wants in the city. And we, of course, I'm the administrator for the city elections. And again, all the agendas and notices that we do. So our org chart, there's four of us, myself, Assistant City Secretary Sandra West, and Jackie Pettis and Marisol Garcia, our two administrative assistants. So we're a force of four. And our department mission, of course, is to support government transparency by recording and maintaining all official city documents and city council legislative actions to provide courteous and knowledgeable customer service to all citizens and staff and to fulfill all of our responsibilities in a professional manner. So there's a couple of pictures of our office staff. Our goals are always to administer a fair election for the city that does result in the wishes of the community being heard at the polls a high-level customer service Provide staff with professional development to register record and issue all vital statistics in a timely manner and to maintain their security So our highlights. The next request public information software that I brought to you guys a few months back has not quite been implemented. It'll be implemented in mid-July when I come back from vacation. And then the myGov licensing and permitting software will be implemented shortly after that. Metrics. OK. It keeps changing when I'm not pushing it. And the performance metrics, public information requests continue to maintain about 2,300. Again, that big jump from 23 to 24 was just because we did a better job of entering all the requests into the public information software that we currently have and so keeping better track of them. Most of those requests are PD requests. The garage sale permits that we issue are maintaining at about 1,400, between 1,300 and 1,400 yearly. The vital statistics, so there's two different statistics on there, the registered vital statistics and then the ones that we actually issue. So again, the registered ones are maintaining at about 3,100. The ones that we issued did go down after 23, During COVID, the state had a little bit of an issue of issuing those types of records, and so the local funeral homes were coming to us for those records rather than going to the state. And that continued until through 23 when the state kind of beefed back up their process and were able to handle that a little better. Then the total monetary transactions, that's not the amount of money we collect, it's not the revenue, that's just the number of transactions that we do, mostly vital statistics, permitting, things like that. So as far as strategic innovation and funding, my department is administrative, there's not really grants for that, so we do not have any grant opportunities or external funding that are pending or awarded. AI implementation and operational innovation. The implementation of the new public information software will improve efficiency, saving a lot of staff time and providing both an effective system for tracking information and will help with staffing for both the staff and requesters. And then we mostly use AI in my office to assist with proclamations. So we always will write the proclamation or it'll be submitted by an outside group and then we'll throw it in there to kind of polish it up and shorten it up sometimes. Sometimes with the same thing with agenda item memos and with presentations So We know new initiatives or new programs, but mainly maintaining what we already do which is filing and issuing, you know vital statistics Enhancing our administrative administration of the citywide records management program possibly reviewing some agenda management software to make a change in the future on that and then training our staff to maintain a high level of customer service. And so again, we have the smallest budget in the city at $498,079. So the changes there, personnel program, that increase of $55,578 is about 12.05%. Most of it's from the pay program. Increased fees for professional services, that's the bulk of it right there. $40,000 that we increased for specifically for the May election. Historically, we'd always budgeted $60,000 for election. Last few years, it's cost us over $100,000 or at least $100,000 to administer an election. So we decided to go ahead and put that in the budget so we weren't searching for money at the time when the bill comes in. So it's a little more transparent. Educational development, there's a slight increase. There's an international municipal clerks conference that I'm asking to go to next year. It's December or January, so that's an opportunity I don't often get because I don't think the city's going to fly me to Paris anytime soon, but it's going to be held in Texas for the first time in many years.

Hey, April, and is it fair to say that this upcoming election will be the first one we do with the new elections administrator.

Yes, sir.

And so there's still, so there's a little bit of, I don't think uncertainty is the word, but because it will be the first one we, we partner with the new election administrator, we're not certain, you know, if the new election administrator is going to have the same philosophy that the previous one did in terms of number of machines or otherwise. And there's a direct correlation, you know, between polling sites and number of machines and cost, right? So we'll find out.

Yeah, and you never know who you're going to partner with because, you know, we have four positions up coming in May of 2027, but they may be all unopposed. You know, part of them might be unopposed, so that, you know, cuts out different sections of the city that we have to have polling places in or BISD might, you know, they might be able to cancel their election if they don't have any opposed races. So those are the big partners that we partner with to share costs for elections. So depending on who's there, it could mean a big difference. So there's a decrease in the capital just because we only needed one computer this year and then in one time there's a health fund transfer. So revenues, the revenues for my office total about $507,000 as projected or preliminarily for 2027. So we kind of basically pay for ourselves. And if we're 2028 and beyond, we would love to have one additional staff member. This is my attempt at AI.

Is that the city hall renovation? It would be nice. That's pretty impressive.

Looks nice. So we would love to have an additional staff member.

I think she's moving above facades.

I would love a window. I really would like a window in my office. But we would love to have a staff member that's devoted specifically to public information requests and records retentions. We don't have that opportunity right now because we just don't have room for them. And so larger and improved office space would be great. additional professional training for our staff and then improved point of sale software and permitting software we're hopefully getting later this summer so that could be taken off. We do need some new digital bulletin boards. We've had those for I think since 2022 and they're just getting kind of end of life. So we would love to have some new ones of those. And that's all I have. If you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them.

Any questions for Ms. Hilbert? Thank you very much.

Thank you, April. All right. Last but not least, the last department to go is finance. And so I'll turn it over to Wesley to hit on that.

We're bringing the closer out of the bullpen. Here we go. All right.

Well, good afternoon, mayor and council. I'll be presenting the finance department's budget request for fiscal year 27. The finance department's mission is straightforward, safeguard city assets and ensure financial transparency. We do that across the following functions, accounting and reporting, payroll, utility billing, purchasing, budget operations, debt management grants, accounts payable and accounts receivable. These functions touch virtually or most every other department in the city, which means finance operates somewhat like an internal service fund. Our team is organized under myself, the director, with an assistant director who oversees day-to-day operations. Reporting to her are our budget analyst, accounting manager, and grant administrator. And the accounting manager is supported by an accountant and two finance specialists. And the grant administrator is supported by two grant specialists. In addition to that, UBO and the purchasing department also report to finance. Finance has maintained a consistent staffing level of 10 full-time employees since fiscal 2023, and there's no changes to that for fiscal 27. Our mission statement guides what we do, accurately and fairly manage and present the city's financial affairs, protect and advance the city's financial position through proper internal controls and sound financial policies, and provide quality service to residents, bondholders, and employees. Our goals for 27 build on that mission across several areas. We'll continue providing high-level treasury operations, cash management, debt management, and investment oversight. We'll deliver accurate and timely budget information to support good stewardship. We'll work to identify and secure financial resources for the city, pursue efficiencies and cost savings, prepare and monitor the annual budget in ACFER, seek out grant opportunities, and provide financial and treasury support to the city's departments and related agencies. Fiscal 26 has been a pretty busy year for us, so we went live with our new ERP Tyler Technologies. We also received the GFOA Distinguished Budget Award for the 41st consecutive year. We received the GFOA Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting for the 42nd consecutive year. And we also received the traditional finance star from the Texas Comptroller. And we'll be pursuing additional stars in the future.

Fantasy number two, since I got here in 2019, is to get all of these transparency stars. Correct?

Yeah.

All right.

Thank you. Got one. All right. All right. Four to go, four or five, something like that. So we've maintained our bond ratings, both on the general governmental obligations and our utility system revenue bonds. These ratings directly affect the interest rates the city pays on its debt, and maintaining them requires ongoing discipline in our financial management. You've heard about grants in each of the prior presentations. In total, Katie and her team have helped secure over $36 million in grant awards across transportation, parks, infrastructure, and public safety. And finally, we implemented the venue tax and brought hotel and venue tax collections in-house and are currently looking at options for an online payment portal. And performance metrics, you'll notice kind of a shift there in our accounts payable entries and journal entries. It's just due to when we switched to Tyler. All of our P-card entries now are, they're not entered manually as journal entries anymore. They're all imported into the system and they go through our accounts payable process. So that's the reason for the change there. It's been a big help to the department and the timeliness of those postings. That's fine. Looking beyond the day-to-day finances pursuing two strategic areas in fiscal 27. First, we continue to support the grants or the organization's grant pipeline by helping departments identify opportunities, structure applications, and manage awards. And second, we are exploring how artificial intelligence can help support our operations. There's a few ways that we've been using it, probably similar to what other departments have been using it to assist us in drafting narratives, develop and standardize internal procedures and training documents, and then to support professional communication. For fiscal 27, we've got a few things that we'll be doing. Currently, we're in the process of implementing the payroll and timekeeping through Tyler and plan to go live with that January 1st. And then we will start in fiscal 27 on implementing the utility billing. We have approximately $14.5 million in grant applications currently in development across multiple departments. We'll be implementing DebtBook, which is a debt and lease management platform to help improve our audit efficiency and provide more structured tracking of the city's leases and subscriptions. We're planning a $27 million certificate or COI issue to fund CIP projects, which include the community center and street reconstruction work. Like I mentioned earlier, we're going to pursue additional transparency stars, and then we'll be implementing the new stormwater drainage fee if that is approved. Overall, our fiscal 27 budget request is an increase of $80,000 over the prior year. And personnel is going up by $39,000, primarily driven by the fiscal 27 pay program. Maintenance and operations are increasing by $9,000. This is due primarily to internal service charges. And then our one-time expenses include a portion of the audit services that we added increase there, depending on the results of our RFQ on that and the new fee. And then also an amount for our health fund transfer. Looking ahead, we'll continue to identify more efficient processes as we get more acquainted with our ERP system. We'll be involved in planning our eventual move back to city hall complex, and we'll continue to proactively monitor and respond to changes in state law, which include areas of property tax, municipal finance, like our bonds, and reporting requirements. Happy to answer any questions.

I like how you hogged that entire entrance just for yourself, by the way.

Well, it's in keeping with April's office. Yeah, yeah. Keep up with the Jones. Any questions on finance? All right. Thank you, Wesley. Much appreciated.

Thank you, Wesley. I want to just take a couple of minutes just to kind of wrap up the day. But I hope you can agree that every time that we go through this exercise, the presentations get smoother and smoother. I continue to be impressed with just the continual progress that each department head makes. I'm very proud of the fact that you heard for the first time from some folks today, right? But everything kind of just trend continued as normal, right? And so I'm just very proud of just the work that the team has put together into the running of their departments. I think that's why I get very passionate about the somberness of our financial situation. I know that we began the day with a combination of some somber news with the fact that we're eating into cushions and just a fear and a concern that we're gonna have to make some adjustments at some point. And really that stems from the fact that every department is doing an excellent job. And if we ever did get to a point where we had to reduce service, it would be very, very difficult for all of us to decide which operation is the one that takes the hit if we ever get to that point. And so that's why I try and focus on balancing the reality of the amazing work that we do every day with the reality of our holistic financial position. And so I hope that all of that together can lead to a fruitful conversation moving forward on just what we'll do and what we want to do to ensure we don't have to reduce services and everybody can continue to just progress in their respective departments. But anyway, with that, I just appreciate you all spending the day with us. The next touchpoint related to the budget, as I alluded to this morning, is going to be at our next regular council meeting where we'll hit on the stormwater utility. Throughout the month of July during our one-on-ones, I'll also take a deeper dive into the budget, answer any questions that you might have. There were a couple of operations that you didn't hear from today, economic development, and neither my office or the city attorney's office, and so we can get into the weeds of those during our one-on-ones in July. But please take the time to think about, review the presentations, think about any questions or feedback you might have. July is a very important month, so that come the first meeting in August, I can present a budget that is hopefully as close to final as possible. because then it just makes life easier for all of us, you know, the rest of the way, right? But anyway, so looking forward to the conversations.

Thank you so much. Well, let me just say on behalf of Council, thanks to everyone for their work on these proposed budget. We know these numbers don't just fall out of the sky on paper. There's a lot of work and effort that goes into them. Well, maybe for Gilbert, but not for everybody. Thanks to everyone, Wesley, your team in finance, and we know that this doesn't just happen, neither the budget nor the presentation. So thank you all, and we will look forward to working with you guys to finalize this. So with that, I think we are out. Thank you.