I gotta wait to the fair to get this again and blah blah.

So that's what prompted us to even initially start looking for a place and you know found all it's in.

Harrison and his family opened this storefront off Supplit Road in February of 2023.

We're known for the black cushion back potato.

It's how he got into the State Fair, Texas, and we thought it would be like our number one thing here, but our number one thing here has been all of our fried shrimp.

Our flavors, everybody loves our Zesty Cool Ranch, Cajun Buffalo, hot lemon pepper.

They love the different combinations.

Our maple cinnamon waffle, grilled shrimp with you know veggies and rice.

We try to have something so it's not just everything is not fries, and we've got a few extra things here that we don't do at the fair.

You get a little treat if you get to if you come in.

Even as the Harrisons look to expand their business to new locations, they're loving their community right here in the American Dream City.

Um we're seeing new faces every day.

It's not just within the community.

People are traveling.

Yeah, uh, the community, like she said, it's not just around in the area.

It's we get love here as well.

Um Arlington, but I mean they're coming from everywhere.

And uh it's it's it's been it's been good.

Arlington's really been a good place, and we really um liking it on to this exhibit is called the Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters.

It is on the labor union that was formed in 1925 by predominantly African American people, and it was mostly porters that worked for the Pullman Palace car, which is like a sleeping car train car.

This was actually a personal interest of mine because I had read um The Humanity Archive by Jermaine Fowler recently, and he had mentioned this labor union in his book.

I figured, you know, we have the Texas Labor Archives here in special collections, so I figured we would have something on the topic since it's labor-related.

The highlights are we have um a charter of the local union from Fort Worth, and it's dated 1929.

So this was fairly, you know, brand new to um the union's existence nationwide.

A Philip Randolph, who founded the union in New York City in 1925.

They held a convention here in Arlington, and it was the first Texas convention of the A.

Philip Randolph Institute.

Um and it was in 1974, and it was held at Six Flags here in Arlington.

This is really a really great representation of our labor archives material, and items like this were kind of hidden gems of special collections, knowing that these exist and their importance to our history as a country, you know, I just feel like people have to come see them.

The exhibit is on view until the end of February, and they can come to um UTA Special Collections, which is on the sixth floor of Central Library.

Making sure everything is just right for the collection trucks when they come by.

Come in just a few things you can do to make collection day run smoothly.

First, make sure that all of your items are out on the curb at 7 a.m.

on collection day.

Then make sure that your trash bags are inside the trash cart.

With the lid closed.

Got it!

And the wheels up against the curb.

And all of your carts, brush, and bulky items need to be three feet apart with about 15 feet above them, so crews have plenty of space to pick them up.

Go ahead.

Thanks.

That's easy enough.

Good deal.

Gotta get rolling.

Spread the word.

Alright, bye, Carter.

Hello folks, Arlington Mayor Jim Ross here, and welcome to the latest episode of Explore Arlington.

You know, if you're like me, you have a really hard time of keeping up with the New Year's resolutions of I'm gonna eat better and get fit.

Well, we're gonna come up with a plan today to help y'all do just that.

Joining me today is Mike Schick here, the facility manager at the Beacon in South Arlington.

Tell me what y'all got going on here.

Well, thank you, Mary.

We we have a lot.

Uh anything you kind of interested in, we have from pickleball to science camps to after school, hitting all those new years' resolutions you were talking about and stuff.

So we have all state-of-the-art equipment from ellipticals to treadmills, free weights, machines.

We also offer boot camp classes, strength classes, silver strength classes, Zumba classes, yoga.

We also offer child care for the little ones.

So there's really no excuse for you not to be here to really hit the New Year's resolution pretty hard.

So I understand that you may have something I've never tried before in a Zumba class.

Yeah, Zumba is a very popular, high-energy, aerobic kind of workout, a little jazz or size and stuff like that, too.

So we'll have an absolute blast with it.

Alright, we're gonna give it a try, folks.

Watch this.

I'm a little bit scared.

I have very little rhythm, but we're gonna give it a try.

We're gonna work on my New Year's resolution for one day in a row.

Good morning, ladies!

Good morning.

Welcome to Zumba class.

Please find your spots.

Okay, we're still having a regular class.

We do have a very special guest today, Mayor Jim Ross.

He's ready to come shake it with us this morning.

So y'all gotta show them how to do it.

She's gonna defend the pizza.

Are you ready?

Yes!

Hello!

All right, ladies!

Thank you.

Thank y'all for letting me come play, huh?

Folks, if you want to come out and have fun, get down here to the beacon and do some Zumba.

I've never done this before.

This is too much fun.

Ladies, thank y'all for letting me play with y'all.

And remember, Arlington, take care of one another.

I love you.

I'm going to describe it to me, I'm going to describe it like a soñadora empedernita.

The swing American for me is simply the possibility of converted in reality.

It's the process in the world and victories.

In this moment we're having other phase of the American which is trying to others.

Don't staffing empezation grace to a very accident.

And the chef said, okay, Maria, you can start again.

Tratamos to try to employ in many dignity.

Consider what is the story that we try to do.

There are gente that cancer and today the clinics in your place.

You don't study for this.

But one day I appreciate that never resolved nothing.

So when you work in the plate, and for this in what we are, because our clients can feel in us and in my employees.

My American trip city.

So Maria Allen and vivo my sweeper americano.

Hello folks, Arlington Mayor Jim Ross here, and welcome to yet another episode of Explore Arlington.

You know, one of the best things about being the mayor of Arlington, Texas, is all the incredible sports teams and events and concerts and everything that go on here.

Gives me an opportunity to sneak around a little behind the scenes.

We're gonna do something special today, and y'all come with me to see if I can get away with this.

I'm here at Choctaw Stadium.

We're gonna see if I can sneak on and play with the world champion Arlington Renegades.

Follow me, no death, be on way, no day, no death, no death.

Alright, guys, let's see what we can do here.

You you better be scared now.

Oh, buddy.

What do you think, brother?

You look good, looking good.

Guys, welcome to Mary America, everybody.

Ready to catch some punt!

Yeah, all right.

Right here, where's my pet?

Market, the man's ready to return a punt.

That's how you do it right there, right?

All right, folks, check another one off for the bucket list.

What an incredible experience.

Suiting up and catching a punt with the Arlington Renegades.

If you're looking for some fun stuff to do here in Arlington, come out, check out the Renegades, March 30th here at Choctaw Stadium versus the Birmingham Stallion, Defending Champions versus Defending Champions.

What a way to start the season.

Come out and let's support our Arlington Renegades.

You will not be disappointed.

What a great group of guys.

And remember, until next time, y'all take care of each other.

Welcome to another Arlington Eats.

I'm Cynthia Lemos with my Arlington TV, and on this episode, we are visiting a tropical paradise, Cafe Americana, the hardest new restaurant and bar in downtown Arlington.

We wanted it to be a very fun place to uh for people to come over in Arlington.

Cafe Americana is boasting international cuisine and original cocktails in downtown Arlington.

So we created a cohesive uh food and bar menu that focuses on countries that touch were touched by Spain.

It is the brain child of a collective of friends who wanted to bring their love of food and beverage from around the world to the community.

We all have different backgrounds and we all have different strengths and disciplines, and we we all got together and created this whole thing.

So my chef de cuisine is uh from the Dominican Republic.

Uh Greg, who is our in charge of all the bar program is from Jamaica.

Um we have somebody from Barbados that helps us with this one.

Um a lot of people from Venezuela.

Cafe Americana has influences from countries around the world with Spanish traditions with a unique exotic flair.

We added a little bit more components than just like the the normal.

Uh we have our traditional paella as well.

Um but we added some Texas flair to it.

Instead of Papa's bravas with the yucca bravas, instead of chips for the guacamole, we do plantain chips for the drinks.

Uh we created uh a cocktail menu that is very familiar, but it's also very very rooted to like Texas.

We wanted to bring what Arlington might not have.

Um so people in Arlington would feel that they are included.

A lot of this is our give back to the community from what the United States has done for our lives.

I arrived to this country with the dream to have everything that I wasn't allowed to have in my in my own country.

So if I have to define myself, I have to define myself as a drinker.

My American dream, it was maybe at the beginning having the house that you always wanted to have, wanted to have, but you couldn't afford in your country for taking your your kids to that college that you can now you can afford.

But the dream is not just making to that point, is the journey.

After having or being living my American dream, it became to help others to achieve their American dreams.

He was needing more this washers, and he was like, Maria, would you bring me more people?

And then he said, Maria, can you do this like a frequently deal, like can you bring me four people every weekend?

Oh that's a business there.

We are a temporary company who provides with temporary staffing for big companies.

What it makes done staffing different is that we understand our employees.

I was in their position.

You don't know how many times I cried.

I didn't went to the school to wash dishes, oh my god.

So we understand them.

We understand that it's not easy.

We understand that they come with uh with a story like they are here for a big reason.

So we tr we we treat them rightful, we are fair.

The library was my office for maybe four years.

So Arlington is always going to be the place where I have to say thank you.

The diversity in Arlington is amazing and I feel welcome.

I am Maria Allen and I'm alive with the American dream.

From a deaf perspective, things are a little bit different.

Which means that we have to learn everything by what we see.

So growing up, I didn't have access to overhearing what people were talking about.

I didn't always understand what was going around in my environment.

So I missed so much because of that.

When COVID happened and shut down the world, I decided that it was time to go back to school.

And so that meant that more accommodations were provided for everyone for everything.

There was more access, and that was the norm for people in general.

And so through that, I was able to be successful and I realized the success I could have.

And that gave me a passion to see what success could look like for me.

And I decided that my purpose for life was not only to figure out how to navigate the hearing world, as we call it, and who I was as a deaf woman in that, but also to have a life of service for other deaf individuals to help them understand how they can be successful.

I'm hoping that the deaf community will be seen as equals.

Sometimes it may be that people would identify as this disabled.

Maybe they would say, you know, you have a hearing loss, and that's a negative thing.

And some people may identify themselves in that way, and that's fine.

That's their perspective.

But for me, my life has been completely changed for the better in a very positive way.

And I'm alive with the American dream.

Not many people really get to do that.

It's very special, and I'm just happy to be able to do this for a living.

He got tongue cancer and then went through, you know, radiation, all that stuff, got through it the first time, and then was cancer free, and then it came back again and then passed away senior year.

He loved always saying can't went home, you know.

Don't ever say you can't do anything.

So that's kind of one that I probably always use.

You know, I live here, I'm from here, played college golf in Arlington.

I mean, I played at Rangers before it was Texas Rangers when it was Chester Ditto in high school, and yeah, just being able to compete in Arlington was special, had a bunch of people come out and it was a treat.

I turned pro and right when I graduated last year in 2023 May and had a lot of success kind of like right out of the gate.

One my US Open local qualifier got into sectionals and then got to Q school and went from pre-qualifying all the way to final stage and two out of 500 guys that signed up for pre-qualifying made it to final stage, so it was a pretty cool accomplishment.

After they built Texas Rangers, it's like you could hold anything here.

This place is amazing.

I hope they come here forever.

I'm Caleb Hicks and I'm alive with the American Dream.

We're back with another episode of Arlington Eats.

I'm Jeremy Thomas with My Arlington TV.

Most folks love barbecue, and today we're going to learn how to cook some hot quality barbecue and some brisket that I'm already smelling from the boss himself, the brisket balls.

Owner of Brisket Balls LLC, Royce Simmons says his dad and uncle started barbecuing as a side hobby.

But that love for barbecue or his family's legacy never left.

The recipe for this amazing barbecue, well, we can't give that away, but what we can tell you is what Simmons offers.

We do a lot of seafood.

So if you want Cajun, it's got occasion flavor.

It's got occasion kick.

If you want sweetness, it's got some sweetness in it.

So for good catering, for good barbecue, always contact the brisket balls.

And can range anywhere from activities such as swim lessons to youth and sports uh activities like sports leagues, soccer, uh, basketball, everybody needing to be an Arlington resident.

And it is based on uh federal income guidelines.

So on our website, you can go and see the HUD guidelines and see if your family is eligible.

There's not a limit on the number of children in the household.

And it's just one application per family.

It's very simple, it's all online on our website, naturallyfund.org, and there is a financial aid section that you can click on there.

And before each application period, which happens in January and July, uh, we update a link to go directly to the application for uh the applicant.

They just click on that, fill it out.

We do ask for a couple of additional documents that need to be included, uh, proof of Arlington residency, which can be just as simple as a utility bill attached, and then uh proof of income.

They get two activities per year or per application that they uh put in and they get to pick from any of our recreation centers that uh have activities going on.

We post those in our naturally fun magazine uh three times a year so families can look at that and see what there is to offer and they choose two of those activities to register for with their award.

Okay, we'll go ahead and call the afternoon session of the Arlington City Council meeting to order.

Okay, guys, we're going to go ahead and call the afternoon session back to order.

We're going to move on down to the discussion of work session items.

I'll start with three point one, Ms.

Susan Edwards.

Hi, I'm Susan Edwards, and I'm the city auditor, and I'm here today to discuss with you our proposed audit plan for fiscal year 2026.

The complexity of the operations in the various departments, the extent of laws, rules, and regulations governing processes, the number of grants and the value of those grants or contracts administered, and the length of the time since the last audit and results of prior audits.

In addition to that, our risk assessment process involves a survey of all department heads where we solicit information related to department information, department operations, as well as their thoughts on risk facing the department.

We also visit with city management to discuss their thoughts and seek input for our risk assessment and audit plan.

So after taking all of these things into consideration for the upcoming year, we developed an audit plan with the following projects.

The first is external audit assistance.

In this, we assist the city's external auditors with the financial audit.

We do this every year, and primarily our work is related to the single audit.

We've included an audit of Arlington water utilities, in which we're going to look at the processes that they use to assure the quality and safety of the water provided.

A civil service audit in which we're going to look at the process the city uses to administer the civil service program and evaluate compliance with laws, rules, and regulations.

We plan to conduct a contract management audit.

We've done a number of these contract management audits over the last two or three years.

In this, we'll select a contract administered in a department and evaluate the compliance with contract terms and the contract administration.

We plan to perform an information technology department audit in which we're going to look at the processes that the IT department uses to evaluate, select, and manage IT projects.

A segregation of duties audit in work day, in which we're going to look at the effectiveness of the controls in workday to assure the segregation of duties for critical functions within workday.

We plan to do a Texas interstate fire mutual aid system deployment audit.

In this, we're going to look at TIFMAS deployments and the related documentation to assure that the city has received the all reimbursements for applicable expenses.

We will be coordinating construction audits in this.

We'll be partnering with an external audit for construction audit firm, and we'll be facilitating the audits, handling the procurement and the reporting of the audit results for construction projects.

We will continue our fraud waste and abuse hotline monitoring that we do now and evaluate the reports that come in.

And then finally, we have a special assignments on here, and this is just a placeholder for a future project that we hold a number of hours in reserve so that if something comes up during the course of the year, we could perform an audit at the request of city management or council.

We do also have a couple of administrative related activities going on in our department this year.

We will be revising our policies and procedures.

The government auditing standards have been revised, and the new standards are effective December 2025, and so we'll be revising our policies and procedures to assure we are compliant.

And then in FY26, we will also be undergoing a peer review, which is required by government auditing standards every three years.

And finally, we will be performing four follow-up projects in which we evaluate the actions taken to address recommendations made and audits that we conducted this year.

In the coming year, we'll be following up on the fleet services audit, the Arlington Municipal Airport audit, the managed print services contract audit, and the real estate services audit.

And with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Any questions from Ms.

Edwards from anybody on the audit?

Dr.

Odom Wesley.

Thank you for this for this plan.

I have a question about external audits.

When is that triggered?

Under what circumstances do we do external audits?

It's the annual financial audit that we're assisting with.

And so we just had a kickoff meeting.

It starts at the beginning of August, I think is when we we had a kickoff meeting, and so that they will complete that by the end of March.

And so we'll in that time frame we'll be assisting them.

So it's only the financial audit.

That we assist with that, and then with the construction audits, that will be those will be external auditors that will be performing that construction work, and we'll be facilitating that.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Any other questions or comments?

Thank you, Susan.

Appreciate you.

3.2 Ms.

Mitchell.

Good afternoon.

Lindsay Mitchell, Director of Strategic Initiatives.

Today on your evening agenda, you have a series of actions related to the continued development at the west side of the Arlington Municipal Airport, principally with the North American headquarters of eSpace.

We have been working on this project for the past 18 months as an opportunity for the EDC to develop and own industrial real estate assets that help create community wealth.

In May of 2024, we executed a master agreement with eSpace.

They are a global satellite manufacturer, and they moved their headquarters to Arlington in October, and they'd like to develop their initial factory space here.

This project advances many of our goals in our adopted policies, such as the comprehensive plan, the economic development strategic plan, and the airport development plan.

ESpace will bring up to 2,000 high-wage high-tech jobs with an average salary of $95,000 over the next 30 years.

The project also initiates further development on the west side of the airport, which maximizes the economic potential of that major public asset.

And the facility design began last summer.

As I mentioned, this endeavor advances goals and many of our adopted plans, which helps us position Arlington to capture a larger share of high wage, high impact growth, develop the area on and surrounding the airport, and to create jobs and economic opportunity for Arlington.

The site is on the western side of the airport on currently undeveloped land.

The city has long had plans to build Dr.

MLK Jr.

Drive through from Bardin to Green Oaks.

That project will actually be complete this fall, and that will open up access to the west side of the airport.

The project does surround the air traffic control tower, but it leaves developable space for other projects.

As the project was originally conceived in spring of 2024, it was a three-phase project with a total of around 750,000 square feet, with the first phase being about 250,000 square feet of factory space.

A third party analysis estimated a total of over 3,000 direct and indirect jobs, 8 billion in salaries and wages, and 560 million in taxable sales in Arlington over 30 years.

The fiscal impact to the city itself is also notable, about 21 million dollars in net fiscal benefits over the next 30 years.

The city and the EDC's investment on and around the airport is unlocking the potential of that asset and helping to geographically diversify our economic growth.

So this is placing focus south of I-20.

Several examples of this recently.

Lincoln Properties has an industrial development underway near Bardon and MLK.

And Provident Realty has a 20-acre industrial development on the east side of MLK, just north of Bardin, there that is under development as well.

New hangar development is underway at the airport, and another tract on the south side toward Green Oaks on MLK was recently privately acquired for development.

So lots of things happening out here based on the investments that we've made.

So the space economy holds a lot of potential for accelerated growth.

Companies like eSpace are developing new technologies for satellites, launch systems, and communication systems.

SpaceX is going to try a third time to launch Starship later today.

According to a McKinsey report issued last year, the space economy is forecast to grow by over a trillion dollars in the next decade, which creates value for nearly all industries on Earth, providing solutions to many of our greatest challenges.

The growth will be associated with both defense and commercial applications.

New engineering innovations, manufacturing innovations are lowering costs and allowing the industry to scale quickly in a way that it has hasn't been able to prior to this.

Different examples here, the automobile, cell phone, internet.

You can see way over here on the right, this tiny blip is low Earth orbit broadband satellite technology.

That has just started, and so it's on its trajectory to really explode over the next decade.

And then this shows the different uh orbits around Earth where satellites are currently placed.

Low Earth orbit is, of course, the first orbital area around Earth closest to our atmosphere.

A little bit about eSpace over the past year here in Arlington.

They did lease 75,000 square feet of space over in the entertainment district in October of 2024 and moved their headquarters here.

They've made $7 million of space improvements and equipment relocation already in that space.

There are now 35 employees at that location, and they'll be up to 40 in the next couple of weeks.

So they're continuing to hire at a very fast pace.

And over that past year, eSpace has achieved new revenues and additional capital raise on an accelerated path to advance their technology even faster than they had originally anticipated.

And due to that growth, eSpace did request in December to consider constructing phases one and two of their facility simultaneously.

And after some discussion with the EDC board and you all, design proceeded on a larger initial facility at the beginning of this year.

And this is the concept for the current design.

So phase one is now comprising about 480,000 square feet here with a potential for phase two to the south.

And this is a slightly more detailed site plan that shows kind of the facility layout, parking, plus a hangar, and a potential future phase two.

And some conceptual renderings of the exterior of the facility.

ESpace has met all of them.

They moved their headquarters to Arlington last October.

They held a session with the city on municipal use cases for their technology last September.

They provided evidence of required spend on startup costs by January 1st of this year, and they are currently in conversations with UTA about talent pipeline development.

In addition, the master agreement required eSpace to achieve revenues of at least 30 million and execute capital raise of at least 25 million and demonstrate the capability to scale their operations through a plan for factory layout, and they have achieved all of those items.

And that brings us to today.

You have five actions to consider later today, which the EDC did approve at their meeting last week.

The first is a development agreement, which has manufacturing facility and hangar leases attached, along with a performance agreement.

There's also an initial construction package with Moss and Associates, which is the project's construction manager at risk.

There's a contract modification with Hill Building Group, which is the project manager relative there to the construction administration phase, so kicking into that phase of the project.

There's a contract modification with Gensler, who is the architect related to some additional MEP design and construction administrative administration fees on the hangar.

And then finally, there is a chapter 380 agreement between the city and the EDC for water utility funding to be applied to water and sewer utilities for the project.

So I'll briefly go through some of the major terms of all the agreements.

The development agreement establishes that the EDC will provide no more than 115 million dollars to defined project costs.

And eSpace will provide all of the tenant fit out to the space, which is specialized for their operations.

The city will waive development fees for both the EDC and eSpace.

Provide proof of funding for their tenant improvements to ensure that they can complete all of those, provide proof of additional revenues of 50 million beyond what has already been substantiated to date, and provide proof of additional capital raise of at least 50 million beyond what has already been substantiated to us.

On the leases, the the manufacturing facility and hangar lease each have 30-year terms with two five-year renewals, and they'll be triple net.

The base rent will be $9 per square foot with escalation every five years on the manufacturing facility and every three years on the hangar.

The EDC does have a ground lease payment to the city, and that will be passed through to eSpace.

In the performance agreement, the city will provide certain business personal property and leasehold tax rebates along with a quarter cent sales tax rebate on any sales beyond 100,000 annually.

ESpace does have to fill 400 jobs in the first five years with a total of 700 jobs over seven years with an average salary of 95,000.

And they also have to provide philanthropic support to Arlington organizations and promote Arlington to any of their investors, suppliers, and affiliates who may be looking for opportunities.

We do want to make sure that the EDC is protected through this venture.

And so to do that, the agreements contain several provisions in the development agreement.

In case of default prior to the time where we execute the leases, there's a penalty to eSpace that's a payment equivalent to two years' worth of annual lease payments.

So that's if something goes wrong in the period of time before we have an executed lease with them.

The leases themselves, um, eSpace has to provide a six month security deposit.

They also have to provide a letter of credit for two years of lease payments.

That's good for the first five years of the lease term, and that will be accessible to the EDC if there's a default.

The EDC will also file a uniform commercial code lien on eSpace's manufacturing equipment that's located at the facility to help provide relief in case there's insolvency or breach.

And then eSpace will have the option, but not the requirement, except in the case of IPO, if they choose to do that, to purchase the lease told interest of the EDC, provided that they pay the EDC an amount equivalent to any of the outstanding bonds on the project and amortize value of cash.

On the performance agreement, there is incentive recapture for the full 10-year term, and the agreement is cross-defaulted to the leases.

And probably most important of all, and to remember is that the EDC will own the vertical improvements, and eSpace is the tenant.

The total project cost estimate is $115 million, with eSpace providing approximately 100 million in tenant improvements throughout the space.

The EDC's financial advisor estimates an annual level payment of about 5.3 million based on a conservative six and a half percent interest rate, as these will be taxable bonds.

The $9 lease rate for the manufacturing facility and the hangar produces an annual average rent over that 30-year term of about $4.9 million, which does cover 100% of the vertical costs for the project.

Beyond those agreements you'll consider today, there are a few actions related to design and construction, as I mentioned.

The first is that initial construction package through the CMAR, Moss and Associates.

That package came in at $13.4 million, and that includes site work, utilities, drainage related infrastructure to start developing the land out there.

The final GMP will be determined when the vertical construction package comes in, and that'll be delivered in about two months.

There's also a contract modification for Hill Building Group.

They're the project manager to cover the construction administration phase of the project through to completion for an amount not to exceed 700,000.

And there's also a modification to the Genser contract, the architect, to address those construction administration fees on just the hangar portion of the project, as well as some additional necessary MEP design work for a cost not to exceed 436,760.

And finally, that last item on your agenda is a chapter 380 agreement between the city and the EDC to provide 1.2 million in water utility funding to the project to build the water and sewer utilities at the site.

So if today's actions are approved, it will bring the remaining funding on the project to approximately 89 million.

So should you all approve the actions this evening?

Project grounding breaking is slated for early September.

Also upcoming would be the consideration of debt approval documents for the vertical portion of the project, and then the vertical construction package would come forward in November.

Project completion is slated for spring of 2027.

And before I close, I want to recognize and thank the very large interdepartmental team who's been working on this effort for the past year and a half.

And with that, I'm happy to take any questions.

Questions from council.

So last week I had the privilege of going out to eSpace, meeting Marty and Lindsay out there, and I'll just say potential customers of eSpace to tour the facility and go to the airport and to watch a presentation about the capabilities that they have with their satellites.

I understood very little about what was being said.

It is obvious that the engineers at eSpace are off the hook brilliant, as is their CEO, incredibly brilliant.

But what was equally as impressive was after the presentation, the customers were coming up to me and the CEO was introducing me, and they were bragging about their relationship with Arlington.

And I know that that relationship stems from the work that you two in particular did, Marty and Lindsay.

And when they said they've never seen a city work with a company the way Arlington has worked with eSpace, it spoke volumes.

So thank you both for what you've done.

But this has the potential of being such a huge, tremendously great asset to Arlington.

I'm very, very excited about it.

Thank you for that.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

All right, we're gonna move on down.

Uh Deputy City Manager Randolph.

Uh, you're gonna talk a little bit about Fielder Square.

Yes, Builder Square redevelopment and the new directions.

Yes, ma'am.

Uh, thank you very much, Lemuel Randolph, Deputy City Manager.

And the the uh idea we have today before you uh is bold, it's evolutionary and transformative.

And I'll provide a little context.

About 11 years ago, uh the former police chief T Bowman initiated a study for all departments in the city to take a look at a census tract that was 1214.16 uh in which he had noticed through his data some significant uh criminal and uh law enforcement concerns, and he had a theory that those issues were beyond just uh from the law enforcement perspective.

And so, as a result of that study, departments reported back on their findings in terms of their department's interactions with this with this area.

And so items like um per capita, the the highest amount of fire and EMS calls, uh, co-compliance calls, um, the lowest participation in parks and recreation programs, the lowest um holders of library cards, uh just all of the metrics um that you would expect for a community uh that is is highly challenged.

And so that was 11 years ago.

Um the problems in this area predate that time, but it really illuminated the concerns that that we're building.

And so before you today, we have a proposal.

Um it's kind of two parts.

We have an interest in the redevelopment of the field or square area.

And so if you consider Fielder, the eastern boundary, Sanford, the northern boundary, division, the southern boundary, and then roughly McQuery, the western boundary, that's the area that we're we're speaking of.

And the interest is to transform this area through a catalytic uh project that we're going to articulate for you today.

And so why this project, why this time, and and why the city council.

Uh the council has established um a couple of priorities that that speak to this project, um, being strict in our economy, or excuse me, strengthening our community and growing our economy, as certainly too, but even more specifically through the uh comprehensive plan, valuing our neighborhoods and developing our land.

And if you look at the economic development strategy in particular, transformational redevelopment, which this is certainly an example of, and high impact uh community development being the the other.

And so specifically, this lays out kind of the geographic area that we're we're speaking to.

What we're interested in doing is purchasing the Arlington Village Apartments and demolishing those for the purposes of full redevelopment.

And so our goal is to redevelop into multifamily housing and developing a child care campus, which is designated in the blue the blue square vision being new housing and adjacent neighborhood child care.

And then future potential development is really important because we see this as a catalyst for other opportunities in the area, including potentially to the just to the west of the child care site, perhaps some retail or commercial opportunities there, as well as adjacent to the leases chicken, just north of Lisa's chicken.

There's another commercial area there that certainly is ripe for some redevelopment.

In additional, in addition, there's some opportunities for city investment in the road network, particularly Matthews Lane, which is that uh western boundary.

And so for this point, I'm gonna bring up Mindy Cochran, who's gonna provide some specific detail on the project that we're uh we're referencing.

So that with that, Mindy.

Hi, Mindy Cochran, executive director of housing.

As our deputy city manager mentioned, this is not just an opportunity to redevelopment a parcel, it's really a catalytic change for this neighborhood, an area that hasn't seen reinvestment in quite a while, not just the development, but the entire neighborhood.

Um it's not a development that doesn't have any energy behind it yet.

We actually have the future child care associates redevelopment center.

If you go out there and you look at it, it doesn't look like it's being redeveloped, and that's because the structure is being built off-site.

So it'll come up very, very quickly, and it should open in the second quarter of 2022, and it's gonna provide a lot of programming for the kiddos in that neighborhood.

Um, a lot of children in that neighborhood.

Um, and so early Head Start, Head Start, pre-K, some of those are just some of the programs that will be there.

Um, they'll also accept CCMS, which if you're not familiar with it, it's like a voucher for child care.

Um, the families that we're serving um through the housing authority, a lot of them have a barrier to employment because of the cost of child care.

So that CCMS is a huge benefit for them, and they'll have dedicated slots for low-income families at this location.

A little bit about the actual apartment complex.

Um, this was built in 1973, so it's a little over 50 years old.

We've talked quite a bit through C and D committee and the Housing Finance Committee about at what point do you redevelop and at what point do you demolish and rebuild?

And there's been a strong focus from C and D committee, this council, and the Housing Finance Corporation to look for opportunities for redevelopment, and we look for them constantly.

That's my mantra when I talk to developers.

Every November in advance of the tax credit season that I know you're all looking forward to.

We have a developer meeting, and we talk about what your priorities are, first and foremost being redevelopment.

The challenge is the properties aren't for sale because even though they may not be the most attractive in Arlington, they're still cash flowing and they're still making money.

And so they're simply not for sale.

We've reached out to a number of specific properties and have had zero interest in selling.

Um but this owner is interested in selling, so it makes it very different.

Um it is over 50 years old, 100 278 units, um, 91% occupied, which is pretty typical across Arlington.

Multifamily has about an 8% vacancy right now, and across affordable units, um, there's about a 10% vacancy.

Um the Terrent Appraisal District market value and uh appraise value was 32.3 million dollars, but there has been a protest, and that brought that down to 26.8.

Um, as you all know, Terran Appraisal District doesn't appraise property properties.

Um the city commissioned a real estate appraiser to go out and do an appraisal using the income approach and came up with a value of 32.6 million dollars.

So this is really an opportunity to redevelop older multifamily housing and bring in new housing.

Um, I would say better housing, housing with more amenities, um, um, and something that's more aesthetically pleasing to the neighborhood as well.

It will also allow us to bring in services that are needed by the community in this area.

The sales price for this is $32.6 million with a deposit due in September of 10 million dollars and the balance due in March.

The current owners agree to continue to operate the property until the leases all expire, the last of which should be no later than July of 2026.

With that payment, that final payment due in March, it gives us some opportunity to look for additional funding sources.

As an example, the Federal Home Loan Bank has a affordable housing grant program that rolls out in the spring.

So that gives us an opportunity to apply for funding such as that.

And I just use that as an example, but it does provide an opportunity for us.

And so the tenants will all have to move.

However, they won't none of them will have to move before their lease is expired.

All existing leases will stay in place until they're fully expired.

The city will also hire a relocation specialist, professional relocation specialist, who will work with eligible tenants for relocation services that they're eligible for.

We also have a number of nonprofits that are currently providing services out there, such as Why on the Fly and Mission Arlington, both of which have said they're very supportive of this redevelopment program or process, and would look forward to helping us help those families find additional housing to relocate to.

Next steps, we would have to continue to work with the relocation specialists to assist the tenants.

Yes.

I'm just please finish.

Oh, sorry.

Obviously, we would work with a developer to rebuild this in the future if this project went forward.

That could be a for-profit developer, it could be a nonprofit developer.

But we would want a committee put together to help determine what the needs are of the community, what you want this to look like to give city council some control over that.

So they they are not just selling the land in somebody's building, whatever they want to sell.

So that's my final comment.

Mr.

Peale.

The number one thing I get talked about, get talked to about at my constituent meetings over the past seven years of being on council is substandard apartment complexes in Arlington and the burden and drag it places upon this city.

This particular apartment complex is one year younger than me, and I ain't no spring chicken.

And I remember in the 80s that it already was in bad shape.

I think I've even heard testimony from prior Arlington police officers that this was one of the major places they used to go to to kick indoors to make drug busts.

This particular piece of property is like a black hole.

It has its own gravity.

It sucks in poverty and it holds people down.

We have an opportunity to address one of the biggest concerns that our constituents tell us about over and over again.

Arlington seems run down and decayed.

You've heard me say over and over again.

That has to happen, or the city dies.

On a major thoroughfare that gets a lot of attention is a drag on that happening.

Even better, if we do this right, the people there right now will have better lives.

And we will have a positive asset built to much better construction standards that won't hurt Arlington by its mere existence.

We all know this is what our constituents tell us that they want.

We need to man up and find a way to get this done to prove to them that we listen to them.

I feel very strongly about this.

I think it's very important for people who may hear this is that we're not going to be in the apartment owning business.

This property will be sold, and whatever money we make can come back to recoup something that any resources we put into it.

And we will have control to ensure that whatever goes there will be a million times better than what's there right now.

And the halo effect of replacing this negative complex with something better will further enhance property values within a quarter mile, a half mile, within a mile.

The neighborhood to the west could see a renaissance.

Once we got rid of this, that's dragging it down.

I feel extremely strongly that in order to do what my constituents have been asking me to do for seven years, that we need to pursue this opportunity to the greatest extent possible.

Thank you, Mr.

Beal.

Ms.

Boxel.

Thank you.

To um to continue what Mr.

Peel was saying, uh, for I've been on the council for five years now, and I always get questions about why can't Arlington buy these old properties or even vacant properties and land bank them and market them to developers for for redevelopment for that that goes for shopping centers, apartment buildings, all kinds of things.

Well, here is a case where we can actually do that.

Um so I would hope we would look at all the funding possibilities.

This is a great site, great location, tons of potential here for all kinds of things.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments from council?

Dr.

Odom Wesley.

Thank you.

And uh I appreciate you bringing this opportunity to us.

And I would just agree with with my colleagues that this is an opportunity for the city to demonstrate that we not only care, and when I say care, that means we're willing to invest our dollars in the entertainment district, but we also care about neighborhoods, and we care about providing affordable quality housing to our residents.

So this is an important opportunity to make that statement.

And I just would encourage us to look at all the possibilities to make this happen.

Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am.

Mr.

Elton, do you have something?

Yeah, just uh just to clarify for uh in particular those that are that are watching.

Um we had um had a I guess had a plan that we would we would work through the Arlington Tomorrow Foundation grant on this opportunity, and based on our meeting earlier today, um that's not gonna be the direction that we uh pursue.

And so uh while we've got less of a specific plan on how exactly to approach it, the the fact that you all are still interested in us trying to figure out how to do neighborhood renewal in an area um is helpful, and we will look at other tools that we have, um such as our housing finance corporation, our economic development corporation to see uh if those tools are able to uh able to be put to work here.

I'm not I'm candidly, I'm not optimistic that it's gonna be a real challenge, but nonetheless, we're gonna we're gonna see if any of those uh are able to work.

So I just want to make sure people understand that um while we're still gonna be um trying to figure this um project out that it will be with without a um uh kind of an opening grant or the the grant that was anticipated from the tomorrow foundation.

We're gonna go different different pathway, if if at all thank you.

Anyone else?

Any comments, questions?

Mr.

Randolph.

Just wanted to add so there are four items on your agenda for this this evening, and I believe the request will be to remove items of 13A through C, and then table item 13 D.

Thank you, sir.

Okay, we're gonna move on down the three-point four Choctaw Stadium update.

City Manager Elverton.

Thanks, Mayor and Council.

This will be a real quick update.

Um, as part of the discussion that uh has been going on with the payoff, the early payoff of ATT Stadium.

I know some of y'all have been getting inquiries about kind of the status of um the other stadiums.

And of course, Globe Life is in the queue to continue its um, you know, early early payoff as the Rangers and all their events do uh very well there the same way at ATT.

But the one where there's a little more, I guess, interest in is what's going on at Choctaw Stadium.

And a lot of this is stuff that everybody knows, at least in here that have been over there.

But I want to make sure the broader public is aware of the redevelopment efforts that are going on, especially on the ground level area at Choctaw.

So in the last year, year and a half, you will have seen on the west side across from the Lowe's Hotel, a Starbucks, the Casey Bootmaker, as well as Lone Star Dry Goods and El Tiempo Cantina, so a couple of restaurant services, as well as a couple of retail orientations.

And then on the southern side, you have uh hearsay up in the old Fridays area.

Both our economic development corporation as well as our convention and visitors bureau are in the old museum space, and we'll be looking to continue to renovate and update that space.

Later, uh probably in the next month to 45 days or so, there'll be a police storefront that'll be out there.

Uh nothing too extravagant, not a full police station, but kind of more of a relief center for while we have big events out there.

There'll be a place for police and fire to go out and refresh and recuperate while they continue to help us with events.

What's not on this chart is also a um uh a uh oh kind of a uh uh sports uh memorabilia type store that's coming in with um uh bat batting cages and digital ways to look at um uh baseball cards and value them and trade them and those kinds of things that'll be coming in right there next to the uh police storefront.

And then of course in the center field office space, uh continued uh effort and uh on Spark co-working and the other uh tenant finish outs in that in that area.

Um so uh it's really you know continuing to kind of uh infill down in that area and put feet on the street.

The little orange lines that are surrounding the perimeter are some signage areas, which people who've driven by may very well have seen some things, particularly on the southwest corner, the area that faces Texas Live is a uh huge new uh digital screen that um uh brings not only revenue but kind of that small time square kind of vibe into that intersection.

Uh and then on the southeast and northeast corner, there's some more signage.

Those won't be digital boards at least today, but they're more static signage that are part of the team's ability to generate revenue here as the the biggest um thing that we need to worry about in the near term is just making sure that they're able to generate the revenue and activity here to take care of the building so that we don't have uh you know challenges in the actual infrastructure.

So that kind of leads at least in in the near term, kind of what's going on in the field area in the configuration.

And so what we've been experiencing there is a lot of use with um smaller format type things.

So you've got AISD soccer and rugby and UFL have all been playing there.

They've all been playing there to really fairly modest crowds, right?

So you've started to see where the um the soccer has moved uh plans to move down to the Mansfield facility because it's a much smaller facility, gives them uh tighter experiences.

I think eventually when the uh the Glassby Stadium opens up down by Martin, you'll see the high schools move back into smaller format stadiums so it's cheaper to operate.

And I think you'll see continued of that effort as UFL uh kind of continues to find its footing and such that you'll be looking to see uh them and figure figure out how to optimize the situation.

So while we're doing a lot of good work around the perimeter of the building, the the actual interior of the building and what's going on in the 16 acres behind the four walls is still very much uh in effort between the Rangers and their partners to figure out the the long-term highest and best use.

We've been able to do some good short-term in fill business, but we'll continue to uh find the right answers uh down the road.

But I want to make sure you all kind of understood and the public understood some of the activity that's going on out here, and um that the continued effort to renew the interior concourses of the of the stadium are are still very much front of mind on the Rangers as well as everybody out here.

Any questions or comments for Mr.

Ellerton?

Mr.

Gonzalez.

Is there any discussion with with regards to parking lot B of doing something with the parking because I know it would help all those tenants?

Is there any anything at all with the Rangers on that?

Um I know that parking is a challenge over there for all these restaurants and all these retailers.

Parking lot B is when there's not an event, it's open and it's free of charge.

Uh unfortunately, fortunately and unfortunately, there's usually a lot of events.

There's you know 80, 81 baseball games and a lot of concerts and all that.

So when there's an event day, the parking is not open.

Um it's um it's more controlled, and that's part of the team's, I think, responsibility to their lenders to capture revenue that secured their loans on the overall development, but it doesn't make parking as convenient for areas here.

So uh they realize that's a challenge, and I think are thinking about some ways to that maybe they can come up with some other alternatives.

I would just say if you all are going to either of the hotel properties, uh, particularly for uh uh lunch or dinner or breakfast or whatever, any kind of meetings like that.

If you you park in the drive area, they will they will um validate your your ticket so you're able to go in and eat and pay the restaurant and the parking is free, but they'll they'll park the car for you and pull it back.

Um but as far as these retailers, I think there's gonna be some effort here.

The team has got still got interest in in kind of updating the Nolan Ryan area to create instead of what they've got now is that little what they call a valet lane.

I think they're wanting to go more diagonal to get 20 or more so parking spaces in there.

Right.

And they really want to figure out how this wide um plaza area really uh gets activated with landscaping and lights and flags and just things that really make it more vibrant, so that this walk here is not only cool because the way the hotel shades it, but it's cool as a isn't a as a nice factor.

It's attractive and it's vibrant.

So I know they're they're still focusing in on doing some stuff in that area uh to help help the parking situation, and then we still expect some plans long term uh to see development in the perimeter of the stadium for sure with the Cortish companies and the partners there.

I would expect to see things on the east and north in particular in the future at some point, whenever the uh economics and and the uh project financing can work, um, and we continue to work actively with those guys to figure all that out.

But definitely where the field is uh is as these smaller uh sports activities go to try to find their more comfortable size fit stadium.

There's still a need to figure out the the interior part as far as the main solution.

Anything else for Mr.

Ellerton?

Thank you.

Thanks, sir.

Okay, we're gonna move on down to discuss the informal staff reports 4.1, Ms.

Topel.

Jin C Topel, Director for Planning and Development Services.

Uh the report is in the packet.

There's one small correction we do want to make.

So Lari Davy Balba, who's our uh principal planner, will quickly mention that the map on um page number eight shows the current six-month activity, and uh for the roadway construction that's in progress, it indicates for the center street from Barden to Northeast Greenox Boulevard, but actually it is from the Bardin Road to Southeast Green Oaks Boulevard.

Um on page seven, we have the description correct, but then the map uh is incorrect, so just wanted to have that on the record.

Thank you.

Any questions from council on 4.1.

Dr.

Odom Wesley.

Yes, thank you for the report.

Looking at the um the the impact fees, my question is how does that compare with other cities in the region?

Are we competitive?

That is a good question.

I let Jency answer that.

We we do not compare with the other cities for our impact fees.

It's a six-month report.

Whatever is happening in our city related to those building projects, development projects is what is uh shown in the report.

So there's no real comparison that happens with other cities.

So do we have any indication as to whether or not that encourages or discourages development?

It this has been going on.

Uh we have impact fee program from a long time.

Uh the last update with the new impact fee fees happened in 2017.

We haven't changed the fees.

If you remember recently, uh maybe three, four months ago, we were here before y'all, um, stating that we are not going to do the other the next update because of the land use assumptions that we utilize to create the new update uh is not ready yet because we are going through the comprehensive plan process.

So once all that is done, and that's when we would be ready to again come back to y'all for an impact fee update.

So to date, we are using the 2017 uh program uh fees, and uh we haven't heard anything from our development community that this discourages or anything uh from their side.

It's a pretty normal thing that happens in every other city.

Thank you.

That I guess it does answer my question, but I thought I saw in the report that there was a hundred and twenty-eight percent increase in the fees.

Yeah.

So it again depends upon that sixth month period.

In that six month that we are looking at for this report, which is January to July of 2025.

We did have uh more development projects that went through, got a building permit.

So when they get the building permit is when they pay the impact fees, and that's what we collected at that time.

And then, yes, it's the collection that we have received.

Okay.

If I might just add, so yeah, that's an indicator of good activity that there's um people coming in and doing building permits and and paying.

And I do think that while we we've got a very reasonable plan and it's been in place for many, many years.

Um, the development community would tell you that uh any kind of fee they have to pay is an impact to their ability to do to do stuff, right?

It's a cost I'd rather not undertake.

At the same time, there is really impact to these projects that show up.

That's why they call it an impact fee.

And so it's a shift that the infrastructure is needed.

So it's a question of does the development project pay or do taxpayers pay?

And because we're at a 50% rate, this is a really balanced deal that it's a 50-50 thing.

It's a 50% taxpayers pay and the 50% the developers pay as new development comes.

That's how the cost share is really roughly proportionate to make it work for us.

Thank you very much.

Any other questions or comments from council?

Thank you, Jansey.

Let's move on down to 4.2 community and neighborhood development, Miss Boxel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um the C and D committee reviewed uh met today, and uh we reviewed the city's multifamily inspections program and a robust discussion ensued.

The presentation included the following topics city and state multifamily inspections, multifamily property requirements, current code compliance framework, overview of multifamily inspections, and current code compliance tools.

The committee requested that staff bring back information to the committee on several topics, including a full review of the city's current ability to require improvements and maintenance of multifamily projects, more information about the um IMPC, the International Property Maintenance Code, and how other cities have customized that code for their community needs.

Other cities have used different tools.

For example, we have not adopted the IMPC, and they gave us a list of about 20 cities.

Uh very diverse cities, large and small, um, that have adopted the IMPC, but that's just one tool.

Uh so we'll be looking at multiple options.

There's not going to be one single code that's going to cover everything.

If I answered your question, yeah, I just it it's just a personal preference.

I would love to be able to say that Arlington, Texas, has the most stringent standards for the operation and maintenance of an apartment complex in Texas.

That's what we're working towards.

Great.

That's all I wanted to hear.

Thank you.

Dr.

O'Neill Wesley.

Uh thank you to the C and D committee for looking at this.

There are a couple of things that uh caught my attention as I read the report.

Um, one of them, it says that the annual training, 66% of the multifamily uh, I guess administrators at attended it.

What incentives do we have in place to encourage them or require them to attend these training sessions?

Well, they're actually by not attending, they are not in compliance.

And technically, we could uh give them additional citations or even uh we're exploring whether we can even pull their certificate of occupancy.

That and that 66 number 66 percent number is actually improvement over several years.

So obviously that we need to do more to get them to comply.

Thank you.

And the other uh thing that jumped out at me, just a thought.

Uh recently we just we um I don't know if we're requiring it, restaurants to display their rating when they get an inspection.

Do we have any similar requirements?

No, on multi-family complexes to display their radio on their websites or someplace.

No, there isn't, but we also touched on that.

If we if there are ways that we can uh display their rating um and also notify their lenders and their insurance um providers and so forth of their rating, these we need more transparency.

Right.

Thank you.

Comments from council, Mr.

Hogg.

Yeah, and thank you, Miss Box.

Also chair, you've done a great job.

And and Mr.

Peel for this, I think there's a lot of discussion over carrot versus stick of which ones, you know, which developers and which apartment owners are trying to do the right things and ones that are completely ignoring uh policies and rules within the city.

So really trying to put that on there.

And I don't I was on that path also of which one's the best for city.

I don't think there's a city out there that's perfecting it, but I think taking balances of all, you know, you look at what Dallas has done and Fort Worth has done on some of those, and I think finding the ways and then also increasing the transparency of what we expose to residents that live there of what some of those apartment owners are doing, I think is a critical for the long-term path.

Yeah, we'd kind of talked before about how you know the Star Telegram always publicizes the health department's inspections of restaurants in Arlington, and and quite honestly, if you ask them, that's one of their most clicked links every week when they do that.

And long kind of teased me about it a bit.

But you know, um, I think that if we had a letter grade or easy to understand press release that we put out regularly that shamed some of these people who were failing Arlington with their properties, um, it would be a useful tool because it would impact them in the pocketbook.

They'd have to fix that to stay competitive.

Just suggestion.

Anything else?

Thank you, Miss Boxell.

Appreciate that.

Mr.

Peel 4.3 economic development, please.

Everything that the economic development committee discussed was reported out earlier today to the council and executive session.

Thank you, sir.

Mr.

Buskin, any appointments to boards and commissions this evening?

Yes, sir.

We have three appointments to boards and commissions this evening.

Thank you.

4.5 will do the external committee and training reports start with RTC, Mr.

Gonzales.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh the mayor and I attended the meeting, which was held on Thursday, August the 7th.

The RTC approved several items, a new disadvantaged business enterprise goal for COG projects, which is required to be updated every three years.

They also approved the unified transportation program and regional tenure plan, which includes 17.8 billion in projects across the region.

Uh they also agreed to send in a letter of opposition to Congress regarding language in the physical year 26 transportation housing and urban development appropriations bill prohibiting federal fronts from being used for Dallas to Houston Highway High Speed Rail Project, and they also approved forming a subcommittee to discuss transit in the region and acknowledging receipt of the results of the 2.0 study.

They asked for volunteers, and I've uh put my name uh to serve on that committee.

RTC also uh discussed several changes to state and federal funding stipulations and allocations to the region, which COG staff work closely monitoring.

Uh the next RTC meeting is September 11th.

So any questions, concerns the mayor behaved himself, so it was good.

Well, there's first for everything, Mr.

Gonzalez.

Mr.

Hogg, Arlington CVB board of directors, please.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor.

Uh Mr.

Gonzalez and Mr.

Yelberton and I were able to attend the last meeting of the official year for the CVB on that.

Um with that, um, some big things.

CV's had a almost a record year um on hotel rentals and and projects and programs, and it's a direct relation to what you see from uh from our developments in the entertainment district to really help them grow uh from what they're doing.

We then went over um so great financials, also preparing for possibly some dip in some sports as you know we have some big events coming, you know, you can imagine the World Cup's awesome, but it also blocks off some other projects that can normally go on um as they do total buyouts and with uh with some exciting things.

So good things happening, but change on there.

We also approved um our 26 fiscal year 26 uh budget um performance measures and then the big thing started working on uh looking through the strategic vision of how we're doing of building out a new strategic plan.

Uh because the strategic plan runs out in the end of at the end of at the year of 26.

Um so starting the preparation for that and welcomed uh a new executive committee.

That's it, Ms.

Mayor.

Thank you.

I I think what's exciting about the CVB is as Trey and I meet with Brent Gerard on a regular basis.

Not only are we doing well with what's going on, but the projections continue to grow and grow and grow.

So when you look at what's on the books for what's coming, it's surpassing everything that's already been here.

Yeah.

And uh their goals keep getting increased on how many hotel rooms they have to rent out.

So it's uh it's good to see their goals continually increasing from from the uh staff that's working.

Yeah, it's it's it's really cool and exciting to watch that.

Okay, thank you, sir.

Uh legislative update 4.6, Natalie Ralston.

Good afternoon, Natalie Ralston and her governmental relations manager.

Um I keep it brief this afternoon.

Um, since my last update, the legislature adjourned from the first called special session on August 15th, and the governor immediately issued a proclamation for the second called special special session that started this same afternoon.

Session two's agenda is I almost identical to session one.

It had uh 19 items, it added one item camp safety.

Um he's amended it twice since then to add five additional items.

So right now we're working through 24 topics.

There have been uh 379 bills and resolutions filed.

We are monitoring 188, and then I have 10 on the um update for you today.

I want to talk specifically but briefly about uh SB 10 by Senator Betancourt.

It would um it's a refile from last special session, and it would lower the revenue multiplier in the voter approval tax rate calculation um from three and a half percent to two and a half percent, and it was amended yesterday in the House to lower it even further to one percent.

It's um been sent back to the Senate, so we're waiting to see if the Senate concurs in that amendment or if they're gonna go um to conference committee to hammer out any differences between the two bills.

Um that's all I plan to to say.

I know you probably have a lot of questions, so I wanted to leave time for that.

With were there exceptions on that for police or fire?

I thought I heard there were some on there.

There is, but I'm not educated enough to explain them to you.

Well, that's like the blind leading the blind.

Exactly.

Yes, sir.

You know, finance is not really a language I speak very well.

So any questions for Natley on any of this.

Thank you, Miss Ralston.

Thank you.

4.7 fiscal year 2026 budget.

Trey Alberton.

Um thanks, Mayor Council.

Want to come back and continue the conversation uh regarding uh the proposed budget.

We've got a few updates that follow up some of the inquiries that you all have made.

Trey, how long are you gonna be on your presentation?

I'm just wondering if I need counsel to take a break before you get going.

Uh my sense is mayor based on what y'all might this might be 30 minutes of discussion.

So whatever y'all want to do.

Y'all need a break before he gets going.

Yes, did I hear that?

There you go.

It's a consensus, Ms.

Boxel spoke.

We're gonna stand in recess for 10 minutes, we'll come back in.

Okay, we'll go ahead and call the afternoon session back to order.

Trey, go ahead.

All right.

Uh, thanks, Mayor.

I just wanted to follow up some of the things that you all had asked about at the last meeting, as well as some of the town hall feedback and uh talk a little bit about some uh some additional information that we've gleaned to give you a status update, and I'm gonna rely on some of our team to help break break some of this up.

Um so let me just kind of just jump in on some of the prior um prior discussion.

One of the items that um Miss Dr.

Odom Wesley asked us about was uh memberships, and so I've put that uh out at your place so that you've got the detail of all of that just as a follow-up piece of information for you all to have.

If you want to talk about it further, I also want to remind everybody about you know all the previous discussions that we've had as far as benchmarking and all the budget updates going back to November, and we're just gonna continue um continue our discussion.

Um at the town hall meetings, uh they both I think were um, you know, relatively historic from a historical context, relatively well uh attended.

We were down south at the police station on the fourteenth, and here in the city council chamber on the twenty-first, together, about sixty employees, probably roughly thirty thirty.

Uh, there uh thought a lot of really good questions, thoughtful questions that came out of it.

A lot of us also thought very good understanding as it relates to what we're processing and how we're going about our business.

Uh uh didn't get any really uh minus a couple of thoughts, very uh any negative feedback.

There are like um there was a lot of concern kind of about the overall environment and how we're adapting to it.

But I think generally pretty good consensus that yes, we do want services, and yes, we do want it at an affordable price.

So let's let's keep going down that road.

So the couple of specific uh recommendations that did come up, though, was a little bit in the area of uh reducing the pay raise, which I've got some data for you here in a minute, as well as a specific uh feedback piece of feedback about um going further than what we've talked about on the health insurance going from 90 10 to 8515.

There was a suggestion that maybe we should continue and go to 8020.

So that was also one that was out there.

So let's talk a little bit about that.

Um at our last meeting, or as we get through all this, our last meeting.

We also talked about road maintenance and the significant road maintenance challenges that are there.

And I had this as really part of our topic today, but we're we've got one of these unusual circumstances we're meeting back to back.

So I've pulled all the road discussion from this discussion and giving us more time next week to have a deeper dive about that.

So I haven't forgotten about it, um, but we'll come back next time uh to dig deeper on that.

But some of the things that I do need to follow up with you all that you add questions about in addition to that starts with a couple of areas that Jay Warren is responsible for, and I'd like him to come up and talk uh to on a couple slides regarding our federal lobbying contract as well as public engagement efforts.

Thank you, Trey.

Jay Warren, director of communication and legislative affairs.

One of the questions that was asked uh at the last meeting is as Trey indicated was about our federal lobbying contract and the value there.

So we have some some data for you.

First off, we we have been contracting uh at least for the last 15 years with Capitol Edge.

It's a small um consulting firm in Washington, D.C.

I think all of you have met uh the staff there.

Uh, one of the interesting things that I think helps us uh in relation to this is that they also represent Austin, Dallas, and Ditton.

And so there's some really good synergies there when we're lobbying the Texas delegation.

Uh I'll cite one example, the National Medal of Honor Museum, as we were uh wooing them to come here.

It was our our Capital Edge group that was able to rally the entire Texas delegation behind a letter saying, please support having the museum here instead of in Denver.

And a lot of that was based on the connections they had, not only from our Arlington delegation, but the other delegations across uh the Metroplex.

A lot of cities in Texas do utilize uh federal consulting.

Um, and as you can see there, the a lot of the cities are listed.

Uh, this is coming from publicly available data, and so a lot of it's rounded to the nearest 10,000 dollars, but you can see even with that that Arlington's really at the at the bottom end of what we pay uh for our lobbyists, and some of these cities have multiple lobbyists that are there assisting them.

And and the reason is is truly I think distance in part.

It's just it's we'd be very expensive for us to go back and forth to Washington, DC on a regular basis, uh having folks on the ground, uh, eyes and ears, and then feet as well to be able to go to offices or to know the sprawling bureaucracy in a way that would be difficult for us to do.

And I think all these other cities are certainly in the same same category or in their thought process of that.

Some other benefits that we've received from this.

Um, I like this first bullet point I like to call kind of a west wing moment.

Uh back in 2017, during the uh first Trump administration when the Trump administration was pushing forward with its tax cut.

Obviously, they were trying to find some pay for's.

How do we pay for the cut that we're making in the in the federal budget essentially?

And one of those that was being discussed was the tax exempt status for municipal bonds and private activity bonds.

And uh we worked with Joe Barton very closely along with Capitol Edge to make sure that that we protected those exemptions, stayed in the House bill, fine, gets to the Senate, and then the last hour, the Senate dropped that provision, which would have put that that really in a critical position for us here in Arlington.

We were, by the way, weeks away from starting the sale of bonds for the Texas Rangers Global Light Field.

So it could have been really disastrous in terms of amount of money that we would have ended up spending.

Ralph Garbushian with Capital Edge caught it, and in the last hour was able to get with Senator Corning staff and be get that back in the protection back in for tax exempt status for those bonds.

It's a clear example of the value I think that they bring to what we do here.

Other examples, uh, maintaining uh via funding, all of our transportation funding actually at around seven million dollars.

There has been over the course of the last about 14 years, a time when handy our handy trans uh funding did get cut, and Capital Edge was able to work with Congressman BC to be able to get that back in the budget.

We had a near miss on that not too long ago, and we're able to make sure that we maintain the funding, which was helpful.

Same thing with our contract tower program.

They've helped us navigate certainly the federal infrastructure bill, it was massive.

There were some things in there that were not applicable to us, uh, and and a lot that were, and they could they helped us kind of navigate some of those waters.

Um, and then also the every year they help us with our community project um proposals.

Essentially, these are the earmarks that Congress has.

And one of the most recent ones we received a couple years back was 2.4 million from uh representative VC, allowing us to put uh Wi-Fi into un underserved uh communities and neighborhoods here in our community.

Um, and they advocate for a lot of different programs that help us.

The World Cup obviously just passed $650 million for security for the cities that are hosting uh COVID relief was a massive one.

Um, CDBG home, and then finally the UASI, and I'll give you another just quick example.

Uh, there was some fear as recently as a couple weeks ago from our EOC and fire staff that UASI, which is is federal funding for our security, which is particularly important as you look at all the assets that we have out in the entertainment district.

And there was some concern that they were gonna cut the funding for UASI altogether, which would be a major hit uh for us.

And so we started raising the flag with Capital Edge.

Um, and initially they were like, well, these are just rumors, but they they kept their ear to the ground and realized that this really could have been something.

So we were starting the process of drafting a letter, getting with our entire delegation to push this uh really hard.

Luckily, it did survive and it's in the budget, um, and so we're we're okay there, but there was even media coverage about the the potential for this being cut, and and and Capital Edge was really helping us that uh very significantly.

Um that was all I had on that topic.

If you have any questions, I can stop now or move on to the other question that had been asked.

Okay.

From a public engagement standpoint, I think that was one of the other questions uh, particularly relating to the citizen satisfaction survey and maybe other ways that we're able to collect uh the feedback from the community.

Um and we started collecting a list here, and if you start to bring in all the departments efforts, I think this list would be in the dozens of different ways that residents can express opinions or their feedback on what we're doing here in Arlington.

Obviously, on this list, this is kind of overall city things, the town hall meetings and public meetings.

We've been getting a lot of that recently, either with the mayor's town halls or with the the budget town halls.

Uh Teletown Hall meetings, uh, constituent communication that you're you would do with your constituents or with through our staff.

Um, social media is a great way for us to kind of hear from people directly and very easily uh in many cases.

Network and neighborhood network meetings for the comp plan.

We have a new platform that's called Arlington Listens through Granicus, and it allows us to really solicit a lot more feedback from people who are engaged, want to be engaged in that process in a way that we've never been able to do in the past.

The Ask Arlington App and our CityBot chatbot both allow folks to obviously to submit issues that they're receiving, but also to ask questions within the chat bot in particular.

Uh the annual citizen satisfaction survey, which we'll go to every other year if that's approved by you all this year.

Our boards and commissions process is another great example of your your appointments, being able to go out and work under boards of commissions, feedback comes back to us, we can react to that.

Um, and the department surveys.

So, as I mentioned, department surveys, you'll see some examples here.

Libraries in particular does quite a few from customer service to program, in-person feedback cards as well as online uh feedback cards, and then to suggest a program or suggest an item that they have there.

Transportation also does writer surveys and informal feedback too.

Uh the mayor's committee on people with disabilities is a classic example of a group that can provide feedback on how HandyTrans is doing is an example, and then we can make changes if need be to the service anyway.

And then other departments that are doing either user program or facility types of surveys, Action Center, uh Parks and Rec Planning and Development Services, uh, water to utilities, and 911 dispatch.

So I think it was also asked, well, how do we collect data from the Ask Arlington app?

And as you know, we just re uh launched the new version of the app.

Um, so we're still collecting data, obviously, and these numbers will fluctuate a little bit based on the time of year.

So you see here, this is the last couple of months.

Overgrown weeds and grass is our top concern that's coming in that people are posting on the app, which makes sense, right?

We're in kind of this was over the June and maybe May uh time period, it's wet, you're getting a lot of growth.

Um, and so that's the top concern.

That will slide down the list, and other things will move up as we go to the colder months when that's not as big a concern.

Um, but this is uh you know, a snapshot in time of of what we we've witnessed with the uh service requests there.

And we're able to use this data if we see a big trend happening and go back to the department and say what's what's happening here.

Um typically these kind of line out uh in a fairly normal pattern, but if something abnormal happens, we can we can kind of troubleshoot.

And then the same thing we can do on the website.

Uh now, these are uh Google is gonna probably have a lot more of this.

So I want to emphasize these are searches we got in the last month just on our website.

But it gives us in the housing uh credits went out, so I'm not surprised that this is the number one thing searched during that time period.

That will fade away and something else will come up July 4th and the July 4th activities is usually a very high traffic time for the website.

Uh Christmas and the Christmas parade, another typically traditionally very high traffic time for the website.

But we can utilize this data again to look at trends, and then on the new website, we have the hot topics section at the top of the website.

And so if some of these are getting a lot of searches, it can tell it can inform us that maybe we need to add that to the hot topics, an easier way for people to find that item, or if there's a topic that we want people to be very engaged with and they're not, but kind of based on these results, we can add that to the hot topics as well.

And that's a very fluid.

We're moving that as as quickly as we can daily, in fact, um, related to whatever the issues are that um people care about at that time.

And that was my last part of that.

Any questions?

Thank you, Jay.

All right, thank you.

Okay, um, we also had some discussion uh last meeting regarding volunteer efforts and what we needed to do to kind of rejuvenate it and how are we tracking it as well as kind of some market comparison data relative to compensation.

So I've asked Yvonne McCaney, our uh director of HR to come up and uh talk to you a little bit about that.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

Yvonne McCaney, human resources director.

So the city continues to rely on the support and help of our volunteers through our municipal volunteer program.

Um I believe Trey mentioned that pre-COVID we saw probably six digit uh six a hundred thousand dollars, uh hundred thousand hour volunteer numbers, but those numbers post-COVID have kind of cut in half, and we're seeing more along the 60,000 hour volunteer mark, but we continue to utilize those volunteers for support.

This current year to date, we're at about 53,000 volunteers.

In this chart, you can see that parks and recreation, the police department, the library, animal services, and municipal court are our primary users of the volunteer program.

The other departmental opportunities are gonna be inclusive of smaller departments that don't have department specific initiatives that they drive through our platform, which is Better Impact, and those department opportunities are gonna come through uh programs that the HR department is managing for that group because it's a smaller group of uh people participating in that.

So all this together gets us about 53,000 hours from about a a little over a thousand volunteers.

We view our volunteers as invaluable, but to put a dollar to it, we took the amount of hours that we've seen this fiscal year and we equated that to a full-time FTE, and that translates to about 25 FTEs, 25 and a half FTEs for just about one point a little under 1.4 million dollars.

So not as great as pre-COVID numbers, but still pretty significant.

I'll pause there before I switch to compensation to see if there's any other questions.

Any questions for Yvonne?

Ms.

Trog.

Yvonne, volunteers are critical.

There's also a huge element of volunteer management that takes a lot of time and energy from staff.

Do we have enough or is that taken from some of our staff to be able to manage that?

And and as that's adjusted, have I mean our staff's already doing 300 things, but in the future, I don't think we can add it now.

Do we need new more volunteer management in the future?

So that's a great question.

So we have nine employees throughout the city that are designated volunteer coordinators, but they do that as a part of their other duties.

Um, and so what we're doing to try to provide support to those individuals, and we've had some turnover in those roles too, which we think translates to some of that decrease that we've seen.

However, we're creating some coordinated efforts.

So through HR, we're increasing our outreach.

The platform we use is Better Impact.

Better Impact allows us to post the volunteer opportunities as well as market those opportunities.

So we know that we can increase that.

We've also created a consolidated uh volunteer calendar, an event calendar for people to be able to see, and we're upping that outreach to the volunteers to get that participation back up.

Um, in addition, providing kind of a playbook, what we call a volunteer playbook for those volunteer coordinators, so that when they come in or when they assume those duties, they can continue and kind of pick up where the last person left off, and there's not a lag in in knowledge of how the programs work.

Anyone else?

Okay.

All right.

Compensation is another area that was brought up.

Just a brief reminder of what we've done over the past five fiscal years.

Fiscal year 20 uh 21, we did a mid-year amendment of a 2% recurrent and a 2% one-time payout.

In fiscal year 2022, we did a 3% ATB or across the board.

In 23, we did a 6% COLA and then a mid-year adjustment that included a 2% across the board, and then 7.5% was given for admin clerical.

In 2024, we had a 2% COLA for all personnel except those listed on the screen.

And then in 2025, we did a 2% COLA and then an additional 2% for sworn police.

This year we're proposing a 3% across the board.

Our market data shows that as we sit currently, we are about 0.14% above the market average.

And that's a little bit down from where we were in fiscal year 2024 when we set it about 2.8% above the market average.

With a projected three, or with the proposed 3%, that would put us just below the market average at about uh 0.9% below.

And if we were to proceed without that 3%, then we will fall behind about 3% in the market.

And that 3% will just generally keep us in alignment with the market conditions as they sit right now.

And if you um know our plan, we're kind of in that match lag position with the market.

So we try to match the market when it's time for the budget, and then we understand that we'll fall behind, and then we try to kind of catch back up when it's time to make the new proposal.

Our market data show that the average of our base 10 cities, the market pro the proposed market raise is about 3.63%.

So our 3% is pretty much right on par with what those cities are gonna do.

And we also pulled out the Tarrant County cities, and on average, those Tarrant County cities are are proposing about a 3.4%.

So again, pretty much right on target with the proposed three percent.

I'll pause there before Trey comes up to talk about scenarios to see if there's any questions.

Any questions on the compensation?

Thank you.

Thank you.

So some of the scenarios that we we talked about a couple of meetings back, you know, we one of the one of the pathways was about not about doing less for compensation.

Um so um, and you know, the the first kind of two columns there represents not doing any raise at all, kind of like you know, Grand Prairie.

For honestly, if you looked at that chart, Grand Prairie is doing no raises this year.

Um we didn't choose that path to start with, but 6.9 million is the the dollar amount there.

Um we then talked, uh, Mr.

Hogg suggested, well, may hey, maybe we delay it a little bit because we've done that before we have, and so the next stack is a delay of uh three months.

It saves you about 1.7 million dollars.

The fourth stack is a delay of six months, so you just kind of double that.

It would be a savings of 3.4 million dollars.

But the reason I've stacked these this way is I want to kind of make make a point.

Um, if if we're gonna do anything in the compensation area, I think instead of deferring, I think we just lower and keep it consistent, right?

Because if we do something that discounts now but has me pay more later, it just creates a problem next year, right?

So I just assume do you know one and a half for everybody now, and I've got the one and a half baked in next year as opposed to doing a uh a stair step of some nature.

So you know, we recommended to stay current, you know, with uh the market data that Yvonne presented from the various cities that are out there.

We're kind of um like what you said, the catch-up lag, keep you know, keep caught up with the lag or whatever.

We're kind of just you know, treading water right here as it relates to this.

And so the question is do we want to stay treading the water or do we want to make some other kind of modification in uh our scenarios?

Questions, and we don't have to decide it on us.

So I'm coming to an end, so we can come back and revisit all of this if you'd like.

Oh, Ms.

Fox.

Thank you.

You're comparing other cities, but um, have we looked at other cities that are impacted by the the TADPAUS, such as the school district and what they're doing in terms of raises and also um UTA?

I know they're doing some things also.

Have we looked at that?

We we really haven't, because by and large, those employers are not our competitive set across most job families.

They are in some, like administrative, clerical, and technical craft, there's some, but we hire more engineers, we hire more you know, IT and different kind of managerial type skills based on whatever.

So we view ourselves the marketplace as a municipal uh marketplace, and so we've compared ourselves to the regional cities as well as the ones that we've kind of stuck our plan to, which is these are these top 10 are kind of peer set that we're tracking to, and then to your point about what's going on in Tarrant County, we tried to break that out to show.

And so this relates to my question the other night about inflation because while the appraisals are paused and the income is paused, then but costs keep going up.

So there's a mismatch there.

That that is gonna be a constant mismatch.

Okay.

Constant that that is gonna be the story of every budget from here to eternity because of wage and wage pressure and CPI pressure on a flat revenue base, and how does that get redistributed and how does that get managed?

Okay, thank you.

Um let me hit a couple other things, and then we'll kind of come back and kind of see summary where you're where you're where you're interested in.

Um, we talked about was code compliance.

Uh, and I want to clarify something that I again I got I might have got confused about it a little bit, but Mr.

Hogg, I think was asking about the 100% cost recovery.

And then I and I think answer it, but I'm not sure I answered it right.

So I'm gonna be take a step back and answer a little more globally so that I can hopefully hit the right spot.

The area that I was specifically talking about was the multifamily property inspection program, because it is specifically a fee for service.

We are offering that service as part of the community uh neighborhood integrity effort, and how do we keep people in safe, decent housing?

So here we charge those multifamily complexes a fee.

Um those fees generate the cost to cover 100% of our inspector program.

So it's a self-funding process.

The neighborhoods aren't having to pay, or the general taxpayers aren't paying for multi-family inspections, the multifamily community itself is paying for multifamily inspections through this program.

That said, I think maybe the the broader question that Mr.

Hogg was asking had to do with more about fines and other kinds of issues.

So we pulled out a little bit more in the multifamily area in particular, 343 properties uh in this last uh fiscal year to the current from FY25 to current 456 citations have been issued, and about $56,000 in fines collected.

That is not tied to the fees.

The fees cover the cost of service, the fines go into general court revenue, right?

Similarly, the area above when we say neighborhood code compliance that has 30 uh FTEs that are in just all the neighborhoods, roaming all over our area, working uh commercial neighborhood, multifamily, you name it.

Almost 30,000 calls for service, over 60,000 inspections.

They issued 8600 notices of violation, about 2600 citations.

Abatements are kind of a term, just so everybody understands what it means.

Uh it basically means we're the property manager.

We went out and fixed it.

Um we gave the property owner notice to mow the grass, and they didn't, so we did.

We gave the owner property to secure the property, and they didn't, so we did.

When we do that, we incur an expense and then we lien the property so that at some point down the road we get the money back.

And over here, this past year, so far to year, $16,000 has been spent on abatements.

We'll attach them with a lien, and then at some point when the property changes hands and the liens get cleared, we get repaid.

Um, so that's a little bit about how the money works there.

And again, on the uh citations in the neighborhood code compliance, it goes into general court revenue, and just just for the sake of um symmetry.

When we were talking in committee earlier today about multifamily inspections, and it really applies to all citations, whether it's a speeding ticket or a code compliance ticket.

What happens is the person who's writing the citation is citing the infraction, what happened.

And then it's going to court and the court and the judges over there set what's called window fines, which usually start as an entry-level amount towards what a state law maximum would be.

And depending upon the the violation, some things are limited at $500, and some things are limited at $2,000.

But typically, a first-time offender is going to get what's called a window fine, an earlier kind of low cost fee.

But if they come back, then the next time it kind of usually gets ratcheted up, ratcheted up a little bit until you can charge the maximum fine.

But it's a bit more of a progressive kind of situation.

We also have an allocation of an FTE to our dangerous substandard properties.

Um, I think those that have those in your district, you know what I'm talking about.

It's really an intensive case management.

Uh, trying to uh candidly get people what I like to say was going to get you to invest or divest.

And uh and a lot of these end up in rehabs that the owner does.

Some end up in in demolitions that the owner does, some end up in demolitions that the city does, and then we lean the property and down the road the money comes back.

And then we lean the property and down the road the money comes back.

So those are intensive case management.

And we've got a couple other dedicated specialists into the short-term rental property inspection.

There is a fee offset here.

It does not cover at all what it we thought it was going to be when STRs were really the thing.

We thought we had thousands of them.

We really don't.

We have a couple hundred.

Um and so when you charge whatever a hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars per on an annual for that license, it really doesn't cover the cost of the one FTE, it does cover the cost of going out and inspecting it.

But I've got a person who's not needed to be full time in that role, so they end up splitting some time into other neighborhood type enforcement in that case, as well as our homeless encampments.

And interestingly, so far this year, 19,800 on um abatements of homeless encampments.

Uh that's candidly kind of low.

Last year it was much higher than that.

Hopefully, it continues to get lower as we try to find these spots and find them early before they get very kind of heavy, heavy infrastructure put in place where there's almost like a house and working plumbing and stuff like that that's uh that's gone on.

I've seen some of those uh in the past, but that's also an expense factor in the code compliance area.

And then a couple other areas in the code that are worth mentioning the graffiti abatement, those guys are on it.

If there's a spot of graffiti, they're out taking care of it and covering up ASAP.

The goal is kind of as soon as it's seen, get it down so that it doesn't perpetuate itself.

And if um the Scarlington app is perfect for that kind of thing.

Tool sharing, where we're kind of uh as talked about earlier about carrot or the stick, tool sharing is a carrot.

You we here's some help, here's a weed eater, here's a mower.

It's all free of uh charge for people who can use these uh tools to help remedy their um property violations, and then uh the commercial code inspectors.

This program was suspended um last March as we tightened up the hiring process.

This was an area that we kind of let go of, um, but we're starting to try to get back in the hiring and and turn that back on, which is really uh I would think of it more like a desk auditor.

It's really intended to be a uh a data and administrative process and less of a field process.

How do we affect compliance through communication and documentation and um using it in that way?

So that's a little bit about what's going on in the code compliance, and I wanted to I wanted to clarify the fee cost recovery and citation revenue and how those are different.

Um so as we move forward, we're all on the same page.

Any questions?

Yeah, Ms.

Trock.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor.

Trey, thank you for that extra detail on that.

On the neighborhood code compliance, you know, with voluntary compliance.

So with those citations, how much is being collected?

Um, I believe that the like what and I guess bigger question, what percent of their job is being covered by the issue of citations?

Uh not a ton, not a ton.

Most people, when you go out there and you tell them there's a problem, they're not happy to see you, but they'll fix it.

Right.

Usually get it.

The first time, hey, here we go.

But it's the habitual offenders that we have to worry about.

Exactly.

And what we will typically do is we'll give someone, and I get this question often, and I'm sure you do too.

We have a what we call a notice.

We'll give someone a notice, and we worked with Jay Warren's team to make sure that these notices were attractive and friendly and warm from a neighborhood improvement perspective.

It's not a, hey, we're here to just, you know, cite chapter and verse of what law you're not you're not following, but we're here because we care about the neighborhood and we want it to look better.

So, but I but nonetheless, I'll still get calls and say, I was written a code citation.

Uh where are you really?

Tell me about it.

Well, it's this blue piece of paper.

No, no, no.

You just got to notice.

It's a warning, it's a communication.

Um, and if you don't, if you don't address what's in the communication, you might get a citation the next time, right?

So we try to minimize that.

We'd like voluntary compliance, we'd like people to know the rules.

We we believe most people want to follow the rules and and left to their own devices will do so.

But um they're not out writing tons of tickets, you know, that won't just go right down the street writing tickets.

It's gonna be case managed on a on an individual type basis.

The term we've used a lot today, I think we're overusing it is the carrot and stick, and I think we've got to live by that on that neighborhood co-compliance FTEs.

If I remember we had two being pulled off that were unfilled, is that is that still the case of what we did?

I can't just can't remember.

No, it was.

It was on the list.

Uh, and based on some feedback that I got during the process, we put them back on the list.

Anybody else?

Ms.

Hunter.

Thank you.

And sorry for um, I know you talked about citations and fees, um, liens.

So for the frequent offenders that we have, for instance, with mowing of the grass, and I think you know what I'm talking about on there.

Um, do we have a process in place to collect those extensive fees that they've built up over the years?

So I probably need to spend maybe a little more time with Molly's staff to see if there's an option because in some of these properties, and I think like the one you're talking about, they're just in perpetual no man land, and they belong to a LLC that is defunct.

There's no one there, right?

So as I understand it, the law requires us to go out and post the property that we're gonna mow it.

Um, and then we have to do that once a year.

But then after we've noticed it, and it and it I hate it, but this is how it works, you know, when it gets over 12 inches, we can notice it.

And then if say they don't fix it, we go out and we mow it, and it looks good for a little while.

It's got to work its way back up to 12 inches again before we're back out there.

So it doesn't start to get maintained perhaps to the standard that we want.

It's still a nuisance standard of 12 inches.

Um in this case, maybe we need to do some digging to go find if we can find anybody who's still alive or still connected to this LLC, and if nothing else, it's in an area of land that I don't think is very developed developable.

It's kind of in a weird spot.

How do we get it cleaned up?

Might we get it dedicated to to either the schools or the city as open space, so we don't have to play this game, and we can just put it on a maintenance plan and take care of it to the proper standard.

So that's probably our biggest problem in the city is finding these properties that have what I call no man's land status.

They're just these fragments and pieces that no one's accountable for, so it all falls to us.

Any other questions or comments?

Okay, let me uh talk about the next one.

I think Miss Boxall asked about park staffing, and uh her observation was there's a fair amount of people in the parks, and maybe we ought to you know, maybe consider doing something there, even though everybody's given.

I just want to I do want to clarify that uh in the parks general fund area, there's 115 employees as part of the proposed budget.

We did eliminate nine.

Five of those, and they're all vacant positions.

Um five were landscape technicians, one was an athletic field maintenance supervisor, one carpenter, one administrative uh services coordinator, and one park manager.

What we did do, which is different, and it's one of these cases where technology does help us, is we use some one-time money to buy um some autonomous mowers, and you see a couple of images up here.

And if any of you have like a Roomba or something at the house, I wasn't convinced they had to show me how this stuff worked, but these are our Roombas for the parks.

Um, and they can particularly on ball fields that need a uh a very easy uh to to manicure kind of situation.

It just takes a guy with with the phone or the radio equipment to go out there and turn it on and it gets mowed.

It does you don't need the manual technicians there doing it.

So we're gonna um kind of pilot this autonomous mowing so that it can lower our costs, and if we can find more and more applications of it, we will.

It still does require one person to operate the equipment out there, but it's but that's fewer than what we we have today.

So it's a one-time investment to reduce the ongoing operating investment.

We also have uh just to confuse things a little bit, uh, we have what's called a park performance fund, and in that area we have 96 employees.

Performance fund is really very much what it says, it's for performance, and we have in that certain assets like rec centers, golf courses, tennis center, those kinds of things where they are they are expected to make back as much money as they can uh to offset the cost.

Um, not everything is full cost recovery.

Golf is full cost recovery, tennis is close but not complete.

Um, but we have 96 that are in that park performance fund.

And what we do is we monitor revenues, and just like you would it's in a small business, if revenues are down, we don't hire.

If revenues are up, we hire, and we make sure that the park performance fund stays um in the black uh as we can in the last few years in particular.

Parks has done an incredible job of keeping that in the black.

There have been times where we had a really bad golf year or a really bad recenter year, and there was the general fund had to support it, but in the last handful of years, probably the last four or five that I can think of, we've not had to do that.

They've very much managed uh their area.

And then in uh animal services, there's 24 employees there.

We did reduce one uh one position.

Um that has to do with the drop-off hours that we're gonna reduce it uh by a day.

Just a benchmark, because you all know we like doing that, right?

Taking a look at other cities again in the region, our peer average of employees per 10,000 residents is the red line.

If you were to follow the national parks and recreation uh average, that's the green line.

So the green line is uh eight and a half per 10,000.

The local peer average is 6.85, and we're running at 5.34.

So you can see, I mean, comparable to what Fort Worth, McKinney, and Irving, but less comparable to Grand Prairie, Plano, and Mesquite on a on a head count, right?

So we're we're kind of already lower mid, and we took we took a reduction here as we did some autonomy kinds of work.

So I've I feel pretty good about where we're at in that area right now, unless you all have something more specific you want us to take a look at.

So in general, say we're below both national and local averages.

Um we don't want to, you know, if we can avoid it, we don't want to try to create less gap in services out there.

But these things that we've done seem to be achievable and prudent with our situation.

Um then uh Mr.

Hogg asked about federal grant funding and kind of um uh risks and kind of things that we were doing to align there.

So city receives about 65 million dollars annual grant funding, uh, largely tied to things like UASI to uh housing assistance, to transportation assistance, some road money, you know, those kinds of things.

So it's a large amount of money, and and as we all know, there's been a lot of directives that have come out relative to federal or state um guidance as it relates to prohibitions or things that are perceived to be promoting DEI or any kinds of other things that have some kind of racial bias in in place.

So what we've been working on with Molly and finance and such is to identify the various things that we need to align to all this to make sure we're in a good spot.

And so, as part of this budget budget process between now and the end of September, here's kind of the things that we some of it we've done and some of it we still need to do, and it will start showing up on agendas for you as soon as next week.

But in the current budget, there's actually two uh actually three changes on the redesign area.

So the redesign is uh eliminating the role of chief equity officer and converting it to a community development director, which would I think help advance some of the public engagement, some of the uh project development and neighborhoods that we've been talking about.

We've also redesigned the Office of Business Diversity to oh, there's a movie that came out a year or so ago, a kind of funny name, but it really applies here.

It's everything, everybody all the time, or something like that.

And that's what we have to do here.

We can't be selective in how we approach services, but the services are provided for everywhere, everybody all the time, right?

It's not segmented in any way, and so that's how the business outreach program will go is it will broaden to veterans, to seniors, to others that we might need to do things with.

We also uh would look to take, oh, and and I'm neglected to say we did as part of our mid-year adjustments, we did eliminate the MWB coordinator.

That that one FTE elimination is in the budget as proposed, but we don't have any other further budgetary impacts anticipated.

Policy-wise, there's a number of things you all have taken action on over the years, you and your predecessors that we need to go back and and and modify, and those things include suspending our MWBE policy in favor of a future small business uh policy.

So we'll we'll kind of sunset one or put it on hold while we spend the next couple of months refining what a new policy might look like, and we'll bring it back to you probably early next year.

Um also needing to broaden the unity council's responsibility and objectives.

Um they've done a lot of great work, um, but they also have a purpose that we think might be inconsistent with some of the guidance that we're receiving, and so we need to make sure that that also that unity is applying to all people all the time, everywhere, and not in any kind of proxy or uh other kind of market segmentation that would be perceived as having some kind of preference.

We also have an anti-discrimination chapter that's in our city code of ordinances that has similar language that needs to be addressed, and so uh we would recommend that we suspend that so that we're in alignment, and then same thing uh modifying the 380 policy so that the MWB certification reimbursement program is in alignment, as well as even as simple as our speaker decorum guidelines, which uh you all hear every Tuesday evening is actually adopted by resolution and has wording in there that needs to be modified.

So to accomplish all this, we would be bringing this in a series of uh summer ordinances, some are resolutions, and we'll bring it to you starting next week and again the following meeting, and maybe one, maybe one other, and then we'll be in, we think in pretty good shape as it relies as it relates to alignment with state and federal guidance in this, and we'll come back and refresh the policies to where um you all can be more specific about what the proposed new activities uh may.

Um so in summary, uh we've we've we've done a we've tried to follow this up.

I've also got a little bit of good news here that uh I'd like to convey to you guys of things that have come across since the budget was presented.

And uh one was Chief Sitham came back after a review of some of his fire inspection fees and made some recommendations that if you all are agreeable that there's some fee adjustments that he believes that he can make that are in alignment with market uh and comparable to what other cities do, and that would project enable us to project about 146,000 dollars of extra revenue into the budget.

We also got um some updated word from the Terran Appraisal District.

They had previously given us a number that was gonna be a 40, 45,000 a year increase.

I think they got a fair amount of feedback from everybody that um that that's really not the direction they needed to go while everything's going on.

So they've revisited that and not only uh eliminated the increase, but actually reduced it just a little bit.

So instead of a 45,000 dollar increase, it's more like a 42,000 dollar decrease.

So it's actually an 87,000 dollar now swing in the proposed budget.

And then the downtown uh corp uh had some uh some modifications in what they did.

It's a small modification, but nonetheless, about 11,000 that they think they can save us relative to this.

So if you take all those, it's about 244,000.

That's equivalent to about 0.07 of a cent on the tax rate.

So we could do a couple of things if you're inclined, we could go from three down to two, two ninety-three as it relates to the rate, or we could take these dollars and and plug it towards streets, right?

Because we've been talking and we'll talk next week about streets, just put it in the street budget because that's a never-ending situation.

So you all can tell us how you want to do that, or if it's fleet or if it's um buildings, whichever um area you'd like to do, or if you just like to leave it with taxpayers, any of those would be would be fine.

But I wanted to make sure you had uh a little bit of an update there on some things that were different than the proposed budget.

Um so speaking of the budget, uh again, here's kind of the rate continuum of of kind of where we where we sit uh relative to uh state law, kind of minimum and maximums of what's out there.

And of course, my little favorite pyramid that they've helped me create about what's what's built the budget and kind of where we're at on all that.

So we're at a point now where we've um we've done our you know presentation, we've had our our one work session, now another work session, we've had our town halls, we've got another work session we'll be able to do next week.

Um, and then on September 9th is when we need to be in a position to be close to where we think we need to be um so that we can do the tax rate public hearing and consider a vote and then a second vote on the 16th.

So those are the those are the steps or where we're at.

So let me see what um questions you have or what other things you'd like us to drill on or find options on and go from there.

Ms.

Boxel.

Thank you.

I had a question about your uh small business um designation.

Is there some way we could um further refine that to help first-time businesses similar to how in other programs we help first-time home buyers with mortgage help or down payment help that we could tailor that instead of to specific uh demographics, but just to for business businesses that are just starting up first-time businesses.

I believe so.

Help them with um, I don't know, uh business plan development.

Business plan or just other uh, you know, tax reductions or uh other incentives to help them get get their feet going, getting the feet in the door and get started.

I think we can, and and that's the kind of thing that I'm talking about that here in the fall when we suspend the one program, we'll be working on developing program rules around that that we'll bring back to you and ask you to adopt an updated plan.

Okay, thank you.

Mr.

Pham.

Well, sir, Trey, you mentioned earlier about the three percent pay raise, this option that we can uh play with.

I should at least stick with the three percent, you know.

I I don't want to mess that that could be morale killer for our city employee because right now we barely get caught up with inflation.

So I believe the three percent and the tax stuff uh that we had to put in, uh support that, and I I I would encourage uh my colleagues go ahead and support that because uh we all in it together and uh you know I say you know the the dollar amount is small.

I understand that people live in fixed income, but uh in the day, you know, no during the uh town hall meeting, so but your meeting, no nobody want to cut any program, they want to keep everything, but it's a cost.

Nothing is like free, you know.

So that's why we have to do it.

And I believe uh hopefully we my colleague would agree with me and we get to think taking care of the next couple weeks.

Thank you.

Any other questions coming, Mr.

Gonzalez?

Thank you, Trey.

Appreciate everything you've done, the whole staff, and I keep saying it over and over.

You did a fabulous job at the town hall in South Arlington.

You answered the questions.

It was people most people after the meeting came up to me and said, You guys do what you need to do.

We want our services.

Their concern were the streets.

You know, that's the one that they're saying we're really worried that what's gonna happen because if the money's not going there, it's gonna get worse and worse.

So let me ask you a question.

Being involved in different, like the convention visa bureau and uh the chamber, I know we give them money, but their budgets increase and they gave raises and all that.

So how does that play with us?

You know, I know when I saw the convention visible bureau budget, it's like wow, we gave them more money and everything else.

So how does that all play?

I know and I know it's not a lot of money, but it's still, you know, being in that meeting, and then the meeting that we have, it was a totally different feeling.

Yeah, so I do think that uh in a lot of times uh, particularly the the convention and visitors bureau, um typically would kind of mimic and follow what we do uh with kind of ours at the same time.

Um their budget stayed the same.

So last year it was seven million dollars, it stays at seven million dollars, so they didn't ask for an increase, but I do think they are redistributing to to be able to get salaries competitive for their marketplace, which is a little different.

There's not a rule that says they have to do it uh that way, and it has been generally a past practice, particularly for somebody like us that provides 90 percent of their funding compared to someone like the chamber, you know, we're just a member, right?

There are our while our money is significant and we're an investor.

They're they're raising a whole lot more money to do the things that they need to do out there.

Um so we could certainly suggest to to Brent that that would be something he might want to do to align with us, but I'm I'm not sure he's that far out of alignment, and particularly when he kept his budget flat.

I'm kind of partial to if they can make it work and keep strength in an area and keep their people.

And I'm gonna be be honest with you on this um on this comp comp thing.

It's always difficult.

Um, but in this past year in particular, it seems like even maybe in the last six months.

Um the uh the competitive market for our talent is very strong.

Um they uh they're after our folks.

I keep some, I don't keep some because I can't compete with everything, but it's um it's it's it's rough out there to keep high quality people and the quality people that you all see are the people who get things done, right?

They're the ones we gotta keep things moving here, and it's a challenge.

So um I believe we gotta stay relevant in that in that space.

Uh otherwise we're gonna we're gonna be going downhill.

Um, and and our ability to keep up with candidly high expectations of of me and you all and our public, it requires people who are passionate about this work, who are willing to put in the extra effort to make it happen, as opposed to just doing a job.

And I feel like we've got a lot of people who are like that here who who believe in Arlington, who want to be on our team, and are willing to put the extra discretionary effort in because they're highly engaged in what you all are about and what our community is about, but you can't get to that point if you can't stay competitive at the base wage, right?

I totally agree.

I mean, the the people that work here, they're happy to be here.

They love coming to work.

I I rarely see an employee coming here dragging their feet.

They're looking forward to working and working with the people.

So uh the salary, you've got to keep it.

And I guess what I meant by the convention of Reasons Bureau, we didn't see anything where they cut, you know.

I mean, I know they kept the budget the same, but it's like did they have the same discussions that we had to have?

You know, it's like anything get cut, you know, every every program they have, uh the things that they come, and you know, they came to the tomorrow foundation for some money.

And so I'm like, okay, wait a second, let's look at that whole situation.

So I appreciate it.

We can we can see we can certainly work.

I don't know specifically if they made any cuts.

I would tell you that I do have a little bit of a bias in the sense that the part of the organization that has this challenge or kind of this weakness at the moment is the general fund funded portion of the budget.

But that said, I've got employees across all enterprises that we need to treat equitably, right?

But but I've got other places that are really healthy, and and convention event services is an area that's really pretty healthy.

So I don't want to weaken myself unnecessarily, but I need to stay equitable at the same time.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Nobody better does it better, Trey.

Appreciate everything you're doing.

Thank y'all.

Okay, we're gonna move on down to evening agenda items.

Anybody have anything on 4.8?

Dr.

Odom Wesley.

I had a question on um, hold on one second, Dr.

Odom Wesley.

Mr.

Pham, did you forget to tell Trey something?

Or okay, all right.

Go ahead.

I had a question on 8.22.

Uh are we gonna have an opportunity to have a presentation on the UDC?

Because I know there's a list of changes.

Is are we having a presentation tonight, or do we have to just vote on this?

Is this final reading reading of an ordinance?

Are they gonna update us?

Oh, there's Gen C okay.

Uh Gin Zobel, Director for Planning and Development Services.

This is the final reading of the UDC amendments.

We had a presentation before y'all before the first reading.

Uh these are minor adjustments to the ordinance that y'all approved for the first treating, very minor, uh, but we got a few of those cleanup items that we wanted to include and finish it off.

So we don't have to reveal the cleanup item.

So it's it's included in the staff report.

Which if you all would like, I can read it out at the hearing or it's available to the public.

That was that was my question.

It is okay.

Any other questions, any other comments on the evening agenda items?

Mr.

Pham.

Yes, uh I uh I'm uh I'm requesting uh uh Linda Mitchell if she can come up here and explain to people on 13.2 Shade Valley Gup Corporation.

The uh you know the the uh the money that we we helped them to fix up the GUP course and they would allow that for 10 years and and what happened if they don't on the ODS within the 10 years period, what would happen?

So I want to have to explain that so I want my call at the heal that and plus people watching this they can know what's going on, Ms.

Petrol Matt.

Are you able to unhide a slide?

I do have a slide on this question.

Um because it's probably easier to see visually than then verbally, kind of go through it.

So that's what I'm trying to get to.

Because I believe the question is a clarification on how the recapture provision plus the penalty for taking it back to a fully private operation would be, correct?

Okay, so do you see here um a couple of several conditions that uh indicate a default or a breach becoming insolvent?

They cannot sell the property without consent of the city, and they can't return to a fully private operation at any time during the term, or they'll be considered as being in default.

Um so if they elect to return to a fully private operation at any time during that term, there's an extra penalty of 650,000 that's due on top of this incentive recapture schedule.

So during construction, they just would owe the full refund of any grant payments made to that time, and then it scales up from there throughout the term.

Thank you, Lindsay.

Thank you, and thank you to my colleague, Mr.

Pham for uh initiating this discussion um in the work session.

Um what percentage of this project do you estimate is the stormwater and drainage improvements in terms of cost?

Not just our cost, but their overall cost that they're going to be spending.

What percentage do you think of the whole project will be drainage improvements?

I'm still confused about that and whether how much of those drainage improvements are helping not just the golf course but the whole area.

Right.

I think we've got um representatives from the property ownership here who might be able to answer that more specifically.

So could you reseat your question once more?

Right.

Part of your your overall project includes new buildings, new facilities, and but there's also a line item called drainage improvements, and I was just wondering what those were.

What percentage of the overall project was the drainage improvements?

Yeah, so our property has a floodway and a flood plan.

We have already kind of mapped out what we need to do in order to control the overflow of water onto our property.

So that would be about a sixth of your overall budget then.

No, no, it would be around a tenth.

A tenth.

Absolutely.

Yes, because we're we're going to be contributing eight million dollars into this project, a minimum at least.

Okay.

And do you know what those drainage improvements are?

Do you have any idea what they are?

Yeah, so um well, the number one thing is um the main river that what's the main river called?

Rush Creek.

Uh Rush Creek runs through our property, uh, the entirety of our whole entire property.

Um, so definitely the the cleanup uh of that whole entire creek.

So removing brush and debris and things like that.

Yes, brush and debris um and definitely utilizing the improvements of the correct drainage on the course itself, um, making retention ponds, um, those those kind of things would be in the line items.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions or comments from council on this one?

Ms.

Hog?

Yeah, thank you.

Um Lindsay, do we uh maybe answer?

Did their board vote on this?

Do they know that this is being approved?

Philip come back up.

Don't worry, I'll repeat it.

I saw you sitting down talking while I was I was asking.

My question was has your board um voted and approved?

Because this is I'm assuming y'all are taking this out of your capital fund, but there could be assessments on the members so far we've we've gotten very good positive feedback from all of our members.

Uh we just recently announced that we were in the in the plans of undergoing this project.

Um, but we've we've gotten very good feedback.

We had a board meeting um last Tuesday, so they're they're fully on board, and we've gotten nothing but positive feedback from them.

So your board has approved this.

Um it's not like a full approval or denial that they've said yes, but go forward and yeah.

So then they will have I'm assuming your board will have to approve when you come back with capital renovations and showing all the entire project of what will be done when it's all bid out.

Um our our board does not need to approve or deny on those capital funds.

Um but you know we most of the projects that we undergo uh we always try to delegate to our board and and see what kind of feedback we receive from them.

How will you disclose to us all the projects that are being completed once you have it drawn out and everything written up so we can see exactly what is being completed?

Yeah, so uh we're working closely with LBL.

So they they assist us on our rendering plans and and all of our blueprints um uh on this particular project.

So you know, when the when the time is right and everything is finalized, uh we we do send an email blast and also um we would announce it to to our membership and and our community.

And and I would ask Tom and team to connect with Lindsay and find a way to report that back to us so that this council is fully aware of ex if this does pass tonight exactly what the project timeline is, exactly what perform procedures are being completed across the board, so that as Ms.

Boxell said, it's not just being asked on one thing, but everything that's listed in this document is actually being completed.

That would be my ask.

Sounds good.

Any other questions or comments from council on this particular item?

Yeah, don't run and sit down yet because someone might come up with some.

Okay, go ahead.

All right, thank y'all.

Anything else on evening agenda items?

Okay.

Let me get back.

Issues relative to city or tech stuff.

Not saying future agenda items.

Yes.

We have a Senate Bill 857 that changes the session of the transportation code that addresses uh towing of vehicles in a highway in other locations.

So can we have a staff report of how we gonna impact our policies on towing vehicles in the city to address this SB 857?

That'll be great.

Thank you.

Okay.

All right, anybody else on future agenda items.

Perfect.

All right, well, thank you all very much.

Afternoon sessions adjourned.

We'll see everybody downstairs at 6 30.7 million and budget reductions and the elimination of 42 vacant positions will help close part of that gap.

A recommendation for a three-step property tax adjustment will help ensure the city's financial stability as well.

Well, thanks for joining us for this episode of Pising It Together.

There's always more to learn, and you can do that by visiting Arlington TX.gov slash 2026 budget.

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