Arlington City Council Special Meeting - September 2, 2025: World Cup, Street Maintenance, and FY2026 Budget Discussions
Arlington City Council Special Meeting - September 2, 2025
The Arlington City Council convened in a special meeting on September 2, 2025, at 2:15 PM in the Council Briefing Room. The meeting began with a closed executive session (2:15–3:54 PM) to discuss incentives, real property, and economic development negotiations. After a short break, the open session reconvened at 4:01 PM and adjourned at 5:13 PM. Key topics included preparations for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, a comprehensive street maintenance report, a legislative update, and the Fiscal Year 2026 budget.
Discussion Items
2026 World Cup Update
- Deputy City Manager Jennifer Wichmann presented an update on preparations. Key dates: volunteer registration opened in August 2025; ticket sales begin September 10, 2025, with a phased approach; the team draw on December 5, 2025, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. will trigger cascade of decisions on base camps, ticket sales, and travel plans. The city launched the "Arlington Welcomes the World" website with sections for residents, visitors, and permits. The volunteer program includes a full outfit (shoes, hat, backpack, shirt, pants, jacket) in exchange for 8–10 shifts of 8+ hours. The North Texas Business Connect program helps local businesses connect with FIFA and the host committee. Wichmann announced that staff will soon propose a temporary suspension of permits for special events and temporary outdoor events within the stadium footprint (bounded by Center Street, Lamar, Ballpark Way, and Division) on match days and the day before, to ensure public safety resources are not overstretched. The city has held monthly town hall meetings, which have been well-attended.
Street Maintenance Discussion
- Keith Brooks, Director of Public Works, presented a detailed analysis of the city's street maintenance program. The quarter-cent street maintenance sales tax, first approved in 2002 and renewed every eight years since 2018, will be up for renewal in May 2026. The city maintains over 3,000 lane miles: 1,846 residential, 1,171 arterial/collector, and 165 lane miles yet to be built. The current street condition index (OCI) shows 20% of streets are red (OCI below 50), 40% yellow (50–70), and 40% green (above 70). Residential streets have an average OCI of 58, significantly lower than thoroughfare streets.
- Current funding (sales tax + general fund) provides $25–$30 million annually; general obligation bonds add $27–$38 million. Without increased investment, projections show red streets will continue to increase. To flatten the curve, an additional $30 million per year is needed to maintain yellow streets, and $135 million annually would be needed to stabilize the system. Brooks proposed a strategic shift: focus future bond elections on residential street rebuilds (81% of red streets are residential) rather than arterial capacity projects, and increase preservation measures for green streets. He also mentioned exploring options to reduce lane miles by converting some streets to private.
- Councilmember Boxall questioned the wisdom of shifting focus from arterials, noting that arterial streets support the tax base. Councilmember Hogg asked about funding mechanisms, including a potential street fee similar to a stormwater fee, and suggested exploring all options. Councilmember Gonzalez asked for clarification that the street maintenance sales tax is funded 50% by non-residents, which City Manager Trey Yelverton confirmed. Councilmember Hogg requested a future work session to further discuss strategy. Councilmember Odom-Wesley asked about street repairs related to the Grand Prix, and Brooks confirmed event organizers pay for any damage.
Legislative Update
- Natalie Raulston, Intergovernmental Relations Manager, reported that the conference committee on SB 10 removed House amendments and sent the report to both chambers; the House failed to adopt it, effectively killing the bill. No other updates.
City Council External Committee and Training Reports
- Councilmember Hogg reported on the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) Executive Board meeting. Key items: a fire code policy change was approved that gives the city flexibility; NCTCOG is embarking on a new strategic plan under new Executive Director Todd Little (former Ellis County judge). Councilmember Hogg also noted he was selected to serve on the RTC transit subcommittee, representing non-member cities.
Fiscal Year 2026 Budget
- City Manager Trey Yelverton presented the final budget discussion before the first vote. He highlighted that code compliance cost recovery is 37% overall, with multifamily at 100%. Positive news: Republic Services reduced the garbage rate from $0.99 to $0.91 per month. A savings of $244,000 from the Tarrant Appraisal District budget reduction was discussed. Council agreed to apply this savings to street maintenance, keeping the proposed tax rate unchanged (effectively $0.6298 per $100 valuation). Yelverton summarized the budget process: maintaining $51 million in property tax exemptions, $8 million in fee adjustments, $7.7 million in expense reductions and 64 positions eliminated (42 general fund, 22 other funds), and an $11 million tax increase to close the gap. He emphasized that this is a fundamental restructuring, and future years should not require such large adjustments. Councilmember Hogg asked about the $550,000 police hiring cash match, the $4.7 million in one-time IT projects (including Amanda replacement for $3.8 million), the shift of $3.7 million in SRO costs to AISD, and changes to Arlington On-Demand fares (proposed increase to $7). Yelverton clarified that the Amanda replacement is critical for modernization and efficiency, and that Arlington On-Demand ridership is declining due to service constraints.
Evening Agenda Items
- Council discussed items 6.2 (concrete repair services contract), 6.9 and 6.16 (Pierce Birch water treatment plant backwash improvements – two separate contracts for construction and inspection), 6.18 (relocation of field/square project – to be pulled and tabled), and 6.25 (extension of interlocal agreement with UTA for the Rapid Project research, no cost change). Councilmember Boxall requested more specificity in future agenda item descriptions.
Future Agenda Items
- Councilmember Pham requested a report on requirements for online food sales, citing concerns about unlicensed home cooking businesses that avoid permits, inspections, and sales tax. He suggested possibly seeking state legislation to address the issue.
Key Outcomes
- Council agreed to apply the $244,000 savings from the TAD budget reduction to street maintenance, keeping the proposed tax rate unchanged.
- Council directed staff to explore additional funding options for street maintenance, including a potential street fee, and to bring back a more detailed strategy discussion.
- Staff will bring a proposal to suspend temporary event permits around the stadium during World Cup match days at a future meeting.
- Item 6.18 (field/square relocation) will be pulled from the consent agenda and tabled.
- No formal votes were taken during the work session; the first official votes on the FY2026 budget and tax rate are scheduled for the next meeting.
Meeting Transcript
And we will now go into an executive closed session pursuant to be TCA Government Code Chapter 55. Okay, we're gonna go ahead and call the afternoon session back to order. We're gonna move on down to discuss the work session items. Uh starting with 3.1 with Deputy City Manager Jennifer Wick. Thank you, Marin Council. Jennifer Wickman, deputy city manager. I'm here to bring you an update on where we are with our preparations for the World Cup. So you can see this is a lot of the information that you've seen before. So match schedule, the venue, base camps, and all of that. One thing I did want to point out is under the um the fan activation locations, it says TBD. Um on the map, FIFA's been circulating. There are a couple of fan activation spaces that are on the map now. One is at Sundance Square and one is in our entertainment district. We're not sure what that uh means yet, but we're certainly going to keep an eye on it. So that might be an additional element that would be coming to Arlington. This is information that our folks at the CVB and also Carrie Parker Berry, who's at our eSports um uh stadium are very familiar with. These are sort of stats on how long people stay, where they're coming from, the demographics in general. Um the probably one of the most important things in that chart is the 9.7 days on average of international, you know, sort of visitors are staying, because so many of our folks will be internationally international visitors traveling uh to Arlington for this, they will tend to stay longer. We're working to see how that compares to a typical stay, but I can tell you on the general, um, generally looking at it sort of hits the higher end of the length of time that people will stay. So this is very this is very encouraging. We're excited we want to retain as many of those folks in Arlington as we can. So some important dates, some of that have already passed. Uh this last month, the volunteer registration has opened. Um should be a really exciting opportunity. I'll have a little bit more on that later. Uh September 10th, you may be seeing um information about tickets go on sale at that point. What happens at that point is there's sort of a nine-day period where people affiliated with the visa credit card can sign up for a pre-sale draw and that will give them the opportunity to buy the tickets. So things that are for sale now are hospitality um deals that you may see out there. So this will be a long and phased approach to purchasing tickets for the world cup. So there may not be there's not really gonna be a single date we'll probably be able to point to that says here's where they went on sale. But one of the most important dates that we have on there is December 5th, and this is where there's going to be a big event in Washington, DC at the Kennedy Center, and they're gonna draw for which teams are playing in which matches for all the group the group phases, the group uh team stages. So this is when if I'm a fan of Iceland, I will know where my team is playing during the whole uh event. At that point, that really kicks off a cascade of decisions. Uh base camps will be selected. Ticket sales will be will be um tickets will be uh purchased by fans of of these teams. And additionally, they'll start making travel plans, lodging reservations, all of that. So a lot of things are gonna come from that December 5th deadline or date, and we'll know a lot more. Things will really start picking up speed as if they you know there are they're pretty going pretty quickly, but they'll go even faster then. So I want to give a brief tour, and Matt's gonna be my um my mouse on this one. But Arlington Welcomes the World is the website that Cynthia Lemus from our office communication has set up. We showed this to you recently, or we talked about the concept and you were asking many things about will this be included, will that be included? You can see it's a it's a great looking website. Um it has really three categories. If you scroll all the way to the bottom there, uh Matt, it has all of our all of the news that happens, um, videos that have been loaded, all of that. Uh Cynthia tells me that the our World Cup articles when they are published are consistently the week's highest rated article, most clicked on. It's this is a high um high interest area uh for a lot of folks. So you can see uh the they have a uh page for residents, you can click there, just talks about city services, um safety information, scroll down if you want to volunteer, what to do with short-term rentals, the schedule, all of that. Um and then if you go back, Matt, and then we've got um visitors information. This is great because it not only talks about cat um schedules and matches, but how to get around, what to do, like how to explore Arlington. This is really keying in on how we want folks to connect with and be a part of Arlington when they're here, spend their dollars here.
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