Arlington City Council Special Meeting - August 5, 2025
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Arlington City Council Special Meeting - August 5, 2025
The Arlington City Council convened in a special meeting on August 5, 2025, at 12:30 p.m. in the Council Briefing Room, 101 W. Abram Street, 3rd Floor. The meeting included an executive session lasting from 12:30 p.m. to 2:38 p.m., followed by open session work and issues discussions from 2:49 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Key topics included flood preparedness and emergency response, the FY2026 proposed budget, a Unified Development Code (UDC) text amendment in response to state legislation, and various operational updates.
Executive Session (12:30 p.m. – 2:38 p.m.)
- The council convened in closed session under Texas Government Code Sections 551.071 (consultation with attorney), 551.072 (deliberation regarding real property), and 551.087 (economic development negotiations). Topics included the Fredrick Evans v. City of Arlington lawsuit, property acquisition for affordable housing, property acquisition for parks, and offers of incentives to business prospects. No public discussion or decisions occurred during this session.
Work Session Items
3.1 Flood Preparedness and Emergency Response
- Amy Cannon (Assistant Director, Public Works), Irish Hancock (Emergency Management Administrator), and Jay Warren (Director of Communication and Legislative Affairs) presented an overview of flood risks, mitigation efforts, and emergency response protocols. They reviewed historic floods (May 1989, Tropical Storm Hermine in September 2010) and current systems: a Class 5 CRS rating (25% flood insurance discount), 55 outdoor warning sirens, a 24/7 duty officer, and 22 functional emergency management plans. Councilmember Andrew Piel requested a worst-case 20-inch rainfall simulation coordinated with police, fire, Arlington ISD, and UT Arlington. Fire Chief Bret Stidham committed to incorporating such a tabletop exercise into upcoming EOC training. Councilmember Raquel Gonzalez emphasized coordination with regional entities. The presentation underscored that the city's infrastructure protects 698 structures with $200 million in projects completed, and an estimated $400 million more needed through 2040.
3.2 FY2026 Proposed Budget
- City Manager Trey Yelverton presented the proposed budget, highlighting a $20 million shortfall driven by structural changes: the end of ARPA funding ($3.8M), senior tax freeze growth ($1.9M), appraisal district changes, traveling housing finance corporation revenue losses ($1.7M), and pending state business personal property tax exemption impacts ($2M). Proposed solutions include eliminating 42 vacant positions (plus 22 more restructured via a challenge grant at eSports stadium), $7.7M in departmental reductions (e.g., limiting Action Center Saturday hours, closing Animal Shelter one additional day, ending state lobbying contract), and a recommended 3-cent increase to the maintenance & operations tax rate (to $0.6298 per $100 valuation), estimated to cost an average homeowner $12.28 per year. The budget funds a 3% employee raise, maintains all benefits except a phased healthcare shift for spousal/family coverage, and keeps step increases for police and fire. The council expressed general support for the plan, with Councilmember Boxall noting the need to separate known and unknown risks. A public hearing on the tax rate is scheduled for the next meeting.
3.3 Unified Development Code (UDC) Text Amendment – Multi-Family, Mixed-Use, and Small Lot Use
- Gincy Thoppil (Planning Director) and John Chapman (Long Range Planning Manager) presented amendments required by Senate Bills 840 and 15, effective September 1, 2025. SB 840 allows multifamily and mixed-use by right in non-residential zoning districts (excluding industrial/manufacturing) with a maximum density of 36 units per acre, minimum 1 parking space per unit, and setbacks no greater than 25 feet. The city's proposed design standards include a tiered amenity system, increased tree preservation (35% for multifamily, 10% for mixed-use), step-back height transitions near single-family neighborhoods (max 45 ft within 75 ft of shared property line), 6 EV charging stations for developments over 60 units, and limits on cementitious fiber board (max 25% of elevation, none on street-facing elevations). SB 15 permits small lot single-family development (as small as 3,000 sq ft) on unplatted parcels of 5+ acres, with standards for rear-loading garages, 60 sq ft front porches, and common open space. Council discussion included clarifying that traffic studies are permitted for new development but not for adaptive reuse; adding requirements for painting fiber board every 10 years; integrating the Universal Design standards in future code updates; and exploring higher EV readiness (staff noted a building code amendment for 15% EV-ready spaces). The first reading of the UDC amendments was on the evening agenda.
3.4 Council Priority – Enhance Regional Mobility
- Lemuel Randolph (Deputy City Manager) updated on the 10 business plan items, noting the Southeast Connector is on schedule, the Turnal Warnell project recently opened, and 27 more lane miles are expected to come off the pavement condition index in Q3. HandyTrend/HandyVan on-time performance showed a slight lag.
Issues Session Items
4.1 Commercial Motor Vehicle Parking Violations
- Police Chief Al Jones reported enforcement efforts: officers issue warnings first, then citations, and tow vehicles after three violations. Enforcement occurs on city-maintained roads. Councilmember Pham requested permission from TxDOT to place no-parking signs at the Abraham exit at 360, which would allow enforcement. Councilmember Hogg urged continued vigilance.
4.2 2026 Neighborhood Matching Grant Call for Projects
- Not discussed; referred to committee report.
4.3 Community and Neighborhood Development Committee Report
- Councilmember Boxall, Chair, reported the committee heard a presentation on the FY2026 Neighborhood Matching Grant Program, which has $88,000 in gas wealth funds (leftover from FY2025). No new funding was allocated. Workshops will be held to assist neighborhood organizations in applying.
4.4 Appointments to Boards and Commissions
- City Secretary Alex Busken noted eight appointments were on the evening agenda.
4.5 City Council External Committee and Training Reports
- Regional Transportation Council: Councilmember Gonzalez reported that on July 10, the RTC approved the Unified Planning Work Program, a call for electric vehicle charging projects (city staff identifying sites in Arlington), and $3.5 million to continue the Heartland Flyer train service for one year.
- North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) Executive Board: Councilmember Hogg reported discussions on flood initiatives, water quality, sanitary sewer overflows, and World Cup bus scheduling.
- Tarrant County Mayors Council: Mayor Ross reported a bird flu update (4 cases in Tarrant County), homelessness decline, and a roundtable with HUD Secretary Scott Turner who stated that CDBG and Section 8 funding impacts from the federal budget are uncertain.
4.6 Legislative Update
- Natalie Raulston (Intergovernmental Relations Manager) noted 18 items on the special session agenda, with two weeks remaining. SB 9, which would lower the voter-approval tax rate from 3.5% to 2.5%, is moving and could cost Arlington $1.5 million. Most other bills are pending until the House organizes.
4.7 – 4.8 Evening Agenda Items / TxDOT Projects
- No discussion.
4.9 Future Agenda Items
- Councilmember Gonzalez requested a report on commercial vehicle parking in residential areas.
- Councilmember Boxall requested (1) consideration of a design review committee for downtown Arlington with an incentive program for voluntary participation, and (2) discussion of potential city royalties/revenue from new federal trade deals (e.g., natural gas exports).
- Councilmember Pham requested a study on creating a police impound lot.
Key Outcomes
- No formal votes were taken during the afternoon session; all actions occurred during the subsequent evening meeting (not included in this summary). Key directions included:
- Staff to develop a 20-inch rainfall simulation tabletop exercise with emergency services, schools, and UT Arlington.
- Staff to incorporate Universal Design standards into future UDC updates.
- The proposed FY2026 budget, with a 3-cent tax rate increase, will be the subject of a public hearing on August 12, 2025.
- The first reading of the UDC text amendments (SB 840 and SB 15) was on the evening agenda; second reading expected at a later date.
- Staff to explore a police impound lot and a downtown design review committee.
- Staff to evaluate revenue opportunities from new federal trade deals.
- The meeting adjourned at 6:00 p.m.
Meeting Transcript
Alright, we'll go ahead and call the afternoon session order. Check one, two. Okay, we'll go ahead and call the afternoon session back to order. Uh, we're gonna move on down to our work session items three point one, saying you can assist director of public works. I'm here today with Irish Hancock and then Jay Warren to do a joint presentation on how we get ready for floods and then how we handle the emergency response related to floods. And so the important part is it's never if a flood occurs, it's when a flood occurs, and that we've done the work beforehand to get the city ready. And then that we have the staff in place to be able to monitor and respond and to adapt to the situation as it unfolds. We're in the northern end of Flash Flood Alley, but we're also in tornado alley, which leaves us susceptible and at risk of experiencing severe weather at any given time throughout the year. And so just to kind of help paint the picture of what like types of flash flooding we experience in our section of Flash Flood Alley, kind of want to walk us back through some of the major flood events that we that we've had in history, starting with the first one that's May 1989. Uh, it's not our first flood ever, but it's probably our most notable flood that we've had in the history of the city. In the fact that over a course of several weeks, we got storm after storm after storm of two, three-inch rain events that weren't necessarily intense, but it was a lot to soak the ground and basically put us at a significant flood risk whenever an intense rainfall happened to where everything was just basically directly runoff and caused a rapid rise in creeks. What I have up here are uh clippings from the Star Telegram the day that the Lake Arlington spillway started to overtop. The notable thing is is that through May 16th of that year, we had received about seven and a half inches of rain in the region, but then it was just one evening in Burleson, Crowley, and Everman, our upstream neighbors in the Village Creek watershed, that they got around six to eleven inches of rain in a very short period of time. But we also got about six, six point three inches. A flood happened on Johnson Creek, the water went up, rose, and we had about three to four feet of water in houses along Johnson Creek and in Rush Creek and in portions of Village Creek. And then over the course of two days, that water that hit our upstream neighbors in Village Creek started to work its way down the creek into Lake Arlington, and the lake rose 12 and a half feet in a matter of two days, causing the spillway to overtop. The most notable thing about this is that this was not our hundred-year water surface in the lake, and it was doing this. And so that resulted in about 400 homes needing to be evacuated along Village Creek and Lake Arlington. The thing about this flood event is that most of the time in May, spring, we have similar rain events where it's just storm after storm after storm of rain here, rain there, and then we get a deluge somewhere. In May of 2015, we had 15 inches of rain through mid-May, and then we started in the east side of Arlington getting six or seven inches. It is very common for us to have this situation where it's just a substantial amount of rain over a few weeks, and then we get the big the big storm somewhere that impacts us. And so when this happened in 89, these are pictures from the Johnson Creek area. On the left, this is the Abrams Street buyout that we did, and then the other two pictures are actually now Julia Bergen Park, where the homes had about three to four feet of water in them. There is a debris line on that Ford uh truck right there that is uh shows the debris line is on the hood of that truck. This is pictures of Village Creek. Uh that this is off of division to the left, and then right is the actual spillway overtopping here. And then this is after the fact, so this is what water utilities had on file of the damages around the pump house after the water started to recede and go back to normal lake levels. There was extensive erosion damages around the spillway. Now, the other kind of gulf-fueled storm event that we really have to get ready for that are major is during our hurricane season. So in September of 2010, we had tropical storm Hermine make landfall along the Texas coast and go straight up towards us. And over the course of a 24-hour period, set parts of Arlington got six to twelve inches of rain. Most notably Rush Creek received nine inches of rain. And the reason why we had such severe flash flooding is that the storm basically followed from the headwaters, the southern part of the city, all the way up to the Trinity River. And so the rain bands were going from south to north, which basically had severe significant amount of rain basically following the creek. And when you have that happen in Rush and Johnson and that some of the other watersheds we have, you end up with quite a lot of flooding and quite a lot of large flood wave that comes through. And so in this case for Tropical Storm Hermine, we had over 250 drainage concerns from residents, 150 homes reported structural flooding, and 90% of those damages were concentrated in the Rush Creek watershed. And so here we've got on the left where the Rush Creek buyout was, where we have Clarence Foster Park, you know, the Rush Creek Dog Park on the left. And then on the right, we have the Rush Creek Reef Channel that runs in between Shady Valley Country Club as well as the Shady Valley neighborhood. That's this is at the 100-year level in this area for this flood. And then we also had flooding on Johnson Creek. It's not as kind of reported out on on it, but this is Collins at Johnson Creek that was overtopped where we closed it down. And to the right, this is actually Meadowbrook Park to the left, Meadowbrook Rec Center is just off the picture, and then the neighborhood is to the right. And so we had we had overtopping of uh Abram Street at the time, you know, we've gone through and we've raised the streets since then. And so that those are kind of some of the severity of flooding. But the most notable thing was the emergency response that we had to do, particularly within the Rush Creek buyout area, where fire had to go and do several swift water rescues because when the water started to rise, there were people at home. We had we have stories of people needing to crawl out windows, climb up retaining walls, basically to get out of the way of the flood. And our fire department was there to help get people to safety in that very dangerous event. And so, how do we get ready realistically for a flood? We start at the basics, which is to identify our flood risk. And so we have the comprehensive stormwater plan that is focused on the worst first.
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