Good afternoon, everybody.

Welcome to the Arlington City Council.

It's three thirty.

We'll go ahead and get started.

We're going to jump right into the work session at two point one, talking about everybody's favorite topic this time of year budget.

A couple of follow-ups.

But let me hit just a couple of highlights.

Quick reminder where we've kind of been and where all the work that we've done is resided.

It's out there on the budget twenty twenty-six web page.

But to uh address a couple of follow-ups that I've heard about and that were asked about uh last week a little bit on some of just our financial strength.

Uh always get this question as you have a you have a city that's having a financial challenge, uh, kind of really kind of through no creation of our own, but through structural changes that are happening uh outside of us that we are now trying to manage.

It's a it's kind of a logical question to talk a little bit about what you know our financial strength is.

And I would tell you it's it's you know, left to our own devices, it's really really good.

Uh addressing with uh some of this some of the things around us, uh, it's a challenge, but we're working through them and we're working through them in a way that are responsible, right?

So a couple things uh along this line.

Uh I alluded to this last week.

Um, we just got our bond ratings uh reaffirmed for our general obligation debt, all with full disclosure of all the challenges that we're having to deal with with the budget.

And standard and poorers and their commentary on maintaining our triple A, they reflected a stable outlook with strong economic growth and robust liquidity and a sophisticated management team, which really isn't about the management team, it's about all of us.

It's about all of our work together, our staff's work together.

Uh, you all's fiscal policies that you create, that whole system coming together is what earns that uh credential.

Similarly, Moody's AA1, strong financial management, adherence to formal policies, and multi-year forecasting.

Those are things that we do with you all for you because your policies dictate that we do that, right?

So these things help assure investors, those who are investing in our community every year buying tens of millions of dollars of bonds, they rely on the advice of these two agencies and others, and this is what their observations are, not from two years ago, five years ago, or 10 years ago, but from last month, right?

This is what's going on today.

So additionally, what some of the others are saying out there, uh, government finance officers association, GFOA, Arlington is one of only 28 Texas cities that have been recognized as what they call a triple crown winner.

That means we have uh been achieved been recognized for excellence in financial reporting, popular financial reporting, and distinguished budget presentation.

Um in 28 in the whole state of Texas uh recognized at that level.

In the comprollers office, we're known as a trailblazer for transparency.

And we are one of only 20 local governments that have achieved all six transparency stars, and there is only six.

They expanded one last year.

We have them all and have had them all as they've evolved over time.

So we've committed to putting our information and data out there, and the comp troller's office had our finance team down in Austin three or four months ago and provided a um uh a nice award uh in that sense.

Outside of that, uh nonprofit group, Truth and Accounting, just this past year recognized Arlington as second in Texas uh to Plano for having a financial condition that is continuing to improve and has quote more than enough money to cover its financial obligations.

So responsible financial planning that we can take care of the business.

Many of the other cities in this analysis showed that they were upside down in various things that they owed more than they had the resources to do.

And then in a more kind of more populist kind of scenario this past year, Wallet Hub uh recognized Arlington as the second best in Texas, I think, compared to Lubbock as having effective, high-quality uh financial security, education, health safety, transportation for its residents.

So just running taking care of business, right?

So you um don't necessarily have to take uh our word for it.

Other people who are looking out from accreditations and just popular and financial business organizations are you know making commentary along those lines.

Um, and and if that really weren't enough, I've got uh a little bit of breaking news for us.

Some of you I've talked to about this, but one of the things that really kind of demonstrates our commitment this week, the first bullet.

This week we will pay off our obligation to um uh regarding ATT debt.

So it'll be a decade early and 150 million dollars more affordable than what was originally told to voters.

So 10 years early saves you a lot of print, saves you a lot of interest and a lot of fees, and we'll make that final payment of around 22 million dollars on Friday.

Um, and so that's um that's great news for what we've how we've structured things, and because of how we structure things, we're able to pay them off early, and because we're paying this one off early, uh, we continue to be in a good position for Globe Live Field.

For this, it's it's a dedicated fund, and as that dedicated fund has performed well over 20 years of good sales tax times and good hotel tax times, we've been able to early redeem bonds and are in a situation where good tangible evidence of kind of how we're running uh our stuff around here as well.

So uh good info there.

And um a follow-up to Miss Boxall's question about roads, and I apologize for not getting this to you sooner.

We had it, but I just hadn't pulled it forward.

Um, when we talk about roads, um, you know, the the map that we showed the other day, uh all the white roads are essentially our roads.

The blue roads belong to the feds, the red belongs to the state, the rest are our roads.

So we did some benchmarking and some analysis on this thanks to uh Sarah in strategic initiatives, and what they basically concluded uh, and this is this part is no news that we have about 3,000 lane miles of streets to take care of.

About 61% of that is residential streets.

Uh 15% belongs to collectors, which are kind of like you know, smaller you know, connections between that and our materials, which is another 23% or so.

On average, that works out to be about seven and a half lane miles per 1,000 in population.

So as an as kind of an index, that's kind of what we've identified.

So this is pretty much just an inventory, and then related it to our population.

So then what we do is we compare it to others.

All right.

So just taking a benchmark of a lot of Texas cities and some other cities that are comparably positioned us around metro areas.