All right, folks.

We're gonna go ahead and get started.

It's Tuesday, October 21st.

Well, okay.

I didn't know we were this popular in the afternoon.

So welcome y'all.

We'll go ahead and call the afternoon session back to order and we'll move on down the three point one.

Sister Cities of Arlington update, Mr.

Garcia, or no, Miss Landry.

Well, economic development services.

Uh pleasure to be here this afternoon.

So have a little bit of a treat, as you know, the Office of Economic Development is the liaison to the sister cities initiative.

I know this is uh something that the council has wanted to revitalize, if you will.

And today we have a special treat.

The chairman for the board, the new board is here to give a presentation for what's been happening and and where it's going.

So thank you.

Um, for our contract.

And so now I wanted to let you know a little bit more of what we've accomplished and let you know where um the funds that have been allocated towards sister cities have been going, and um give you some updates on our accomplishments.

Uh so first of all, we have expanded our executive committee.

Um you see that listed on the document with that you have in the packet.

I've also given you a full list of the existing board now.

We modified our fiscal year to match the cities to go from October through September.

Um so you'll see all of that there.

Um we currently have some guests from Badkonics Hoffin in town right now.

Um, so working to entertain them before we have our Octoberfest with the Germany committee this Friday.

Um, we're working on our fundraising efforts um and looking to work with a grant writer to find alternative sources of income as well.

And we have also worked on our circle of giving, which you'll also see in that handout.

We are working on what uh that's going to look like for the community and for potential partners and sponsors moving forward.

Um and then we are also working to develop more marketing materials for education purposes.

And we have developed our weighted criteria selection for cities.

Um this was a really important effort that our board put together.

Um, and that was spearheaded by Aaron Perales and Michael Jacobson to give a kind of an analysis on where we think the priorities of the community are right now and how to find the correct sister cities to partner with Arlington so that there are really good matches, not just um on a humanitarian level, but for economic development, for cultural exchange, to make sure that there's true matching on that front.

Um and so that criteria is also included in the packet that you've received.

Um this is something that will be it's a live document.

So as we start going through countries and cities, we're going to be fine-tuning this.

But this was what we thought would be a really good starting point to begin with.

Um and I just wanted you to have an opportunity to review that criteria accordingly.

Um does anybody have any questions on on those documents before I move forward?

No.

Okay.

Um so for the next steps, uh, based on our bylaws and the rules uh governing sister cities.

I need to get approval for um researching cities in the listed countries that you see, the countries that we're considering right now are Mexico, Japan, Canada, Brazil, Italy, France, Korea, Vietnam, Grenada.

Um, and then are there any others that you have um a preference on that we could add to this list, but we have to get approval first to start researching before we can get going.

The the only thing I would ask on that, Valerie, is out of this list here, what are the top three and priority?

What ones are you closest to getting a deal with and what happened to Morocco?

Oh, um, we can certainly add Morocco if you'd like us to.

Um, we're closest right now with Mexico and Canada with Windsor.

We've got a delegation coming in January, so just needed to get it officially approved that we can start really researching and partnering um with them to go forward.

Um, we've had some discussions with Carretero in Mexico.

Um, and those have gone well.

Uh, they did just sign a sister city agreement with San Antonio.

Um, so mentioned they were more interested in a friendship city right now, and I wanted to get your feedback.

Is that the direction we want to go with Mexico?

Or would you prefer for us to find another alternative there?

I know role you were in on some of those conversations with them.

Yeah, I think I mean, just uh I appreciate you being here and everything else.

Uh the discussion really led with Pedro Arveo, the bomberos, how they donate equipment, and that's one of the things that they were really interested.

Uh, you know, what how we could work together for our firefighters and their firefighters.

So it wasn't just a friendship, it was to work some type of, but it was pretty complicated.

They wanted stuff from us that I know Pete wasn't gonna be able to go without getting it to the committee.

So it's sort of of a you know it was a good conversation, but it was nothing was committed.

So I'm not opposed to any friendship city as a whole, but our intent in doing this sister city board is to develop those strong ties with cities around the country or around the world that have a good exchange of economic development and education and culture and things such as that.

That a friendship city doesn't necessarily get us there for those things.

And being that Mexico is our closest neighbor here, I think it's really prudent for us, if it's not this city, it's someplace else to look strongly at getting a quality sister city in Mexico, um, considering the large Mexican American population that we have here in Arlington.

And um the fact that we haven't ever really explored that in the 70s something years that we've been doing sister cities.

My personal preference and would obviously be if it's not that city, if they're not interested in a sister city and they just did San Antonio.

I don't want to be the second person that gets turned down to dance or something at the prom.

So uh I'd I'd be interested in looking elsewhere.

And mayor, I mean they that nothing about Friendship City came out.

I just know Eric Parales and Pete, they we did they were still feeling out, they didn't know what direction since that was the first time they've done that.

And so you can just tell the conversation was not really moving anywhere.

They were trying to get stuff from us, and it sort of hung in the balance, but they were interested in a sister city, and that's what they were asking.

You know, what can we do?

What part, you know, education.

So but yeah, the friendship never came out.

Something like that.

That's fine with me, and I'm all about the.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe what they reported to you is different, but me being in there, I did not I didn't that sense friendship.

Well, thank you for that.

Um I would say in general, what that has been our priority is to focus on creating sister city relationships, not more friendship cities.

I think that would be fine once we have a few more sister cities and strong relationships building, but that's certainly not our priority uh to just do friendship cities.

So that I wanted to make sure we're we're clear on that front.

But that's what's been relayed thus far.

And so if there is talk to go back to sister city relationships with Carretero, then we certainly will.

Cool.

All right, Miss Boxel.

Thank you.

If you're asking for preferences, um, I would prefer um to look at countries within our Western hemisphere, particularly Latin American countries, Central and South America, as well as Canada.

Um, but I think we need to focus on things that are at least um North and South America to look for a sister city.

Absolutely.

I I don't disagree.

I just think we it here's the reality.

How do I tactfully say this?

Um in the US conference of mayors, we deal with North American cities on a regular basis, and especially the problems associated with the tariffs assigned to the North American cities.

Creating sister city relationships helps further um our commitment to those relationships uh in North America.

I don't mean that we should not continue to look outside of North America.

I just think it's it's it's critically important that we also have those relationships here in North America because just like most of the trade is done with Mexico and Canada, most of our dealings is with Mexico and Canada.

When we're looking at places like General Motors, a lot of the stuff that's coming into the General Motors Assembly plant comes from Mexico and from Canada.

So I I would look at Central and South America too.

I don't disagree that we we shouldn't look at all there.

Don't we have uh a visit scheduled for Windsor coming up soon?

Windsor's coming up in January, like I had mentioned, so that is coming up very closely, and especially with opportunities like the FIFA World Cup coming up to have North America united, especially in Arlington the nine matches that we're going to have.

Our board is really aware of the opportunities, and we want to make sure that we're representing our community really well.

And that's one of the biggest priorities, I think, of Sister Cities of Arlington is to make sure that there's really good community support because if it's just on the board's connections, if somebody moves off of the board for some reason, then that connection is really hard to maintain.

And so our goal is to use the studies that the city has done and the information that's available to us to verify where are the strong ties in in Arlington and how can we represent those and make sure that our community feels ownership and feels empowered to draw upon these relationships to further you know their own American dreams and and what's going on around the world.

Dr.

Overwatch.

Thank you, Valerie.

What's our relationship with Sister Cities International?

And do we get any guidelines?

Yeah, we follow all the guidelines.

And then um Sherry Cape Hart is the vice chair of the Sister Cities International, and so we get updates from her about what's happening at the high level and how that's gonna impact us and um apply those accordingly.

So do they advance any ideas for cities that are ripe for this relationship or no, they don't they don't do specific uh like here's who you should be going after.

They have um just set protocols of this is how to go forward in the process of getting your sister city, but they don't necessarily make recommendations on what that looks like.

Okay.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Mr.

Gonzalez.

Thank you, Mayor.

Valerie, does anybody I mean, and I'm not being critical, I'm just just from that conversation with Quitero a Catherine.

Do we have anybody that's involved that has done a sister city somewhere else?

Because it's pretty complicated because when Ecuador came in and spoke to the mayor, they know what they're doing, and we're like, uh, yeah, we want to have one.

And that's how I felt with Getro.

It was the same thing.

They know what they need.

They're asking these formalities or asking for this form, they're asking for this, they're asking for some type of, and I felt with Aaron and Pete, and I'm not being critical of them.

It's just they were put in a position, and I was just there listening.

I couldn't add anything to it.

They wanted me in there because they want to know they had an elected official that could, you know, be part of the conversation.

But is there anybody that's leading?

I mean, uh Gus, have you had experience with that at all or anything on Sister Cities that could help?

And maybe I'm off, but I just feel like, you know, the way we're talking, it's just like, okay, how do we get to the next hump?

You know.

Uh hello, Gus Garcia, Office of Economic Development.

Um, yes, I have had experience with Sister Cities.

We play just a liaison role.

So when we're asked to assist, we we step in to assist.

But typically the sister cities organization, it's on its own engages with those.

So we wouldn't be necessarily involved with those discussions unless we're asked to be a part of it.

But uh we do have we do have relationships with Mexico, several.

So we'd be more than happy to help any way we anyway we're asked.

And I guess I'll ask Valerie.

Do you feel like you need something?

I mean, what I just said, do you feel like or are you feel comfortable that you all know what you're gonna do to the next step?

Let me let Trey way in a couple of things.

I apologize.

That's okay.

So I I think there's multiple things that are here that are that bring the resources.

You know, first we got to make sure we have a group of leaders that are committed and connected and understanding and passionate about the role and scope of sister cities, right?

So we've got people who have a belief and a will and a purpose that this is an important thing to do.

Then we've got to make sure they have the tools, right?

Which is a little bit about what the contract support was about was making sure that they had some resources to draw upon, more training, more preparation, more materials and those kinds of things.

Um and the membership and the support with Sister Cities International is important relative to providing that kind of structured leadership training and guidance on how these things get done.

And of course, Sherry's role in that is also very, very valuable.

From a from a meeting of the like you described, and I wasn't involved, so I don't know, but what we've got to make sure, and we have a little known office, believe it or not.

Um we need to use more of it.

It's really it's a protocol office, which is an extension of the mayor's office.

Anytime we have international visitors here, there needs to be preparation, not just let's get it on the schedule and have a meeting, but preparation about about the culture, the the traits, the traditions, the things that you do and don't do, right?

So that when you show up, you've prepared yourself in a proper way about what the asks are, what the points are, and then how to do it, right?

So to your point, I think all of these things come together.

A protocol office, which is really internet-driven support to an international sister city support training and support.

That's what those groups do.

When we get serious about it, they'll come in and help us, but they're gonna have to help the community leadership that we've tasked to go off and nurture these and to run the numbers and the the relationship side.

Is this really important and why and what's the connection and how will it sustain, right?

Because we all have our favorite places on the planet.

We really do.

And we would all love for that to be a connection to our lives here in Arlington.

But what we need to be thinking about, just like with BK, while it's small, we need to be thinking generationally, right?

Who's gonna carry on after us and the people who will carry on are people where you have depth of that culture within your community, whether it's your business community or your residents to sustain whatever relationship you identify, right?

So it's a number of things that need to come together, and Sherry was always our champion in that way in the in the in the past, and in her role now with the international, she can still very much be helpful to our local, but our locals are kind of getting their their act together, which you're starting to see kind of a report out, and I think that resource helps them do that as far as a brand and a process and places, and now they're looking to get feedback from you all.

And I would just ask that as you all have your meetings on opportunities that we make sure that Gus and others are familiar so that we can get the protocol support around you and and some others to help make sure that the best value of the meeting is is achieved, if that makes sense.

Yeah, well, thank you, Trey, for the clarification.

I just want to make sure they have the tools that they need.

I'm not being critical that I'm excited that they're doing this.

We have great people on the committee.

I just want to make sure what you just said that they knew that was gonna happen.

I didn't I'm just asking the question for me as a city councilman, so thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions for Valerie from Council?

Thank you.

You got more to add.

I just have a little bit more.

One of the um things that we need to have officially approved upon is to have an extension of our contract.

It was approved just for the 2024-2025 fiscal year.

Of that, we've used um $5,670 of the reimbursable funds.

We just wanted to have an extension into the 2025-2026 fiscal year.

Council, just so you all know this money is in the in the budget, so her contract, I guess, would have expired.

We would need to, if you were inclined, come back with uh an updated contract, which I think would be pretty similar.

The money that was saved would stay within the fund and from a practical purposes, most of it would be reauthorized with with a replacement fund of the $5,000 to a similar level.

That's how we would handle that if you're interested.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm interested.

Anybody not interested in continuing to take care of that?

That was easy, wasn't it?

Thank you.

And the last one, um, we would love for you guys to join us at one of our board meetings if you're so interested.

We'll certainly make sure you have that information available.

Um we also long term, as we go down the path of developing stronger sister city relationships.

We'd love to have um a city council representative serve on those country committees, um simply to be a conduit of information and to help establish more um engagement overall so that we know where the interests of our city council lies, and our city council has a good conduit to our community for where the passion lies.

I I'd take it even a step further if any of these potential sister city countries are of interest to any council.

Please reach out to Valerie or the rest of the sister city people, Henry or Linda Dypert, and let them know that you're interested and uh which city you'd be interested in.

Brazil and Vietnam.

Get on there before.

Get on there before those other two council members jump on there.

Yes, sir, Mr.

Hog.

Pretty fun to you, Mr.

Gonzalez.

Andrew, you can have Austin.

So Valerie, is is Gus your main city contact or who's the main liaison?

Gus has been my main city contact.

I think it's a good idea having council um involved, you know.

Like, listen, getting us to commit fully on another time commitment's always hard, but I think having a representative for each one of those is a critical factor to be a conduit on the whole thing.

So I appreciate the organizational structure.

And if you're asking me for locations, I'd tell you whichever one brings the most economic value to us.

Like there's an element of feel good, and I think there's good political will on there, but I think the bigger element is which one brings the most value.

So I don't want to even give you a city because oh, I well, I like to go to Italy.

Well, that doesn't matter if they don't bring us good value, so that's one thing I would just ask us to choose on.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Thank you, Valerie.

Thank you very much.

We're gonna move on down to 3.2.

Ms.

Mitchell, are you doing this one or are you putting your punting?

Okay.

Mayor Ross, Council members, uh, good afternoon, buenas tardes, boa tarde.

Ciao boy to you.

Greetings from the international corridor in Arlington.

And Cynthia Cruz, principal planner in the Office of Strategic Initiatives Neighborhood Initiatives.

Just in case y'all didn't get it, she said good afternoon in a number of different languages.

Yes.

I'm just helping you out here.

Yes, from your local sister cities.

So I'm Cynthia Cruz, Principal Planner in the Office of Strategic Initiatives, Neighborhood Engagement, along with Lindsay Mitchell, our director and Jacob Browning, our manager.

Today we're providing an overview of a project in the international corridor that began earlier this year.

As you know, um, the international corridor runs along Pioneer Parkway between Center and State Highway 360, and the north boundary is along Park Row and the South Boundary, Arkansas Lane.

In 2023, City Council adopted a vision for the international corridor based on a community-led initiative that produced an action plan, which is the international corridor visioning effort.

The visioning effort includes 13 improvement recommendations to promote the diverse commercial residential and cultural area of Arlington.

The recommendations cover the three following categories, which are to improve walkability and lighting, enhance aesthetics and identity, and build community capacity.

In November 2024, you appointed a 19-member implementation steering committee.

Their assignment was to prioritize the 13 recommendations in the visioning effort.

A little bit about the committee.

They dedicated seven months to this assignment, engaging in lively and spirited discussions.

I'm excited to report the assignment was completed successfully in July of this year.

I'd like to recognize the committee members joining us here today and online.

We have Alma Vasquez Chair, Stacia Barrett, Shelley Ann B.

Secker, Bridget Brewster, Joanna Cardosa, Norma Castillo, Jennifer Cathcart, David Dang, Ariel Davis Holloway, Harry Dunn, Alan Escotto Sanchez, Sherry Knight, Celia Guerra Letona, Michael Miller, Sue Phillips, Trevor Rice, Gabriel Rivas, Diana Servine, and Aftab Sadiq.

Our thanks to the committee.

Their deep interest in the international corridor community is at the heart of their efforts and they're motivated and dedicated to the corridor as a vital area in the city of Arlington and as a special place to live, work, and play.

The committee met monthly beginning in January, and at the July 14th meeting, they approved the prioritized recommendations and have also provided counsel and guidance, rather for city council consideration and future implementation.

Let's take a look at the first category of recommendations to improve walkability and lighting.

We had four recommendations in this category.

In order of priority, they include improvements to the aesthetics of the corridor and to safety, as well as traffic calming along Pioneer Parkway.

The second priority is installation of pedestrian scale lighting to achieve optimal visibility along New York Avenue to Sherry Street, Daniel Drive to New York Avenue, and Sherry Street to State Highway 360.

The third priority is to improve connectivity in the corridor beyond Pioneer Parkway and connecting neighborhoods throughout the corridor through sidewalk improvements.

Final priority in this category is to evaluate traffic signal improvements at intersections along Pioneer Parkway.

The committee has provided the following guidance to City Council.

First of all, they acknowledge that all improvements along Pioneer Parkway will require coordination with the Texas Department of Transportation and with Public Works.

That's because it's a state highway.

Secondly, they also recommend that Arkansas Lane serve as a pedestrian thoroughfare instead of Pioneer Parkway due to the high traffic volume and speed on Pioneer Parkway.

As planning for this initiative was getting started, the city was selected as a participant in the U.S.

Department of Transportation program called Thriving Communities.

This program provides technical assistance and supports community-driven transportation planning initiatives in East Arlington.

The timing was perfect, and we were able to merge both initiatives.

Recently, we also learned that Thriving Communities will award the city a $50,000 subgrant.

The subgrant supports temporary traffic calming solutions, place making activities in East Arlington, and possibly a mural along Pioneer Parkway.

To identify the subgrant ideas, we'll work with the city's transportation department and will reference designs in the 2018 Collins and Pioneer Parkway design guidelines and those submitted by our thriving communities partner.

The steering committee has also expressed interest in helping to vet and implement the project in the next year.

Now let's take a look at the second category of recommendations.

These relate to enhancing aesthetics and identity.

There are five recommendations in this category.

The first priority is installing large-scale gateway icons to define and brand the corridor as a destination.

The second priority is the installation of public art in key locations throughout the corridor.

The third priority expands banner placement in medians throughout the corridor, and the final two priorities improve private signage, building facades, and landscaping standards.

This serves to bring businesses into compliance and improve aesthetics in the corridor.

The steering committee has provided the following guidance to city council.

The committee recommends the development of a dedicated strategy to promote the area and build public awareness and to attract businesses and tourism.

There's also a need for permanent signage, gateway icons, and banners along major thoroughfares to help define the area and to direct visitors to the corridor.

For example, this would be along Highway 360 and other key entry points into the corridor.

The committee also recommends creating a new community group or a subgroup to promote the corridor's cultural assets and to engage the community through social media.

The final category is about building community capacity.

We have four recommendations here, and the first priority is supporting small businesses in the corridor and creating a pipeline of procurement opportunities with the city and with Terran County.

The second priority is about highlighting the unique character of the corridor through cultural events and activities to draw Arlington residents and visitors to the area.

The third priority is to leverage neighborhood enhancement efforts in neighborhoods within the corridor.

And the final priority is to create an area management association similar to the downtown Arlington Management Corporation.

The city has provided, or rather, the committee has provided the following guidance for City Council.

They ask that City Council endorse the international corridor as a city priority.

This will elevate the corridor's strategic importance as an economic and cultural district.

The committee sees strong need for city partnership with the small business sector to build and source future business opportunities.

And the committee would like to propose the formation of a new community-based organization in lieu of the management corporation in the corridor as referenced in the fourth recommendation.

A little bit more to expand on how the committee's vision is set forth for the proposed community-led organization.

The committee spent a considerable amount of time thinking through the purpose and the roles and responsibilities of this organization.

First, the proposed community organization would be self-led and an independent community voice for the independent international corridor.

Their role initially is threefold.

They'd monitor the progress and implementation of the original visioning effort and the newly prioritized recommendations.

They'd also serve as the promotional arm for the corridor, and they'd work with the city to implement the thriving communities subgrant project.

The organization would determine their own governance structure and their membership.

So this completes the review of their governance structure and rather the review of the prioritized recommendations by the committee and council's assignment.

So where do we go from here?

First, OSI, our department, could serve a limited role in formalizing the proposed organization.

We provide guidance through the initial startup phase of the organization.

We would also work with Public Works Department to integrate the committee's recommendations into the capital improvements process where feasible.

As we vet projects for the Thriving Communities subgrant, OSI could liaison with the city's transportation department and the proposed community organization.

We would also integrate the guidance in other adopted plans, such as the New York Avenue Corridor Study, the Collins Street and Pioneer Parkway Design Guidelines, and then coming full circle, the international corridor visioning effort.

So here are four takeaways from today's presentation.

The committee has successfully prioritized the recommendations in the visioning effort as requested by city council.

Number two, the committee asks for city council's endorsement of the international corridor as a strategic community asset.

The city has been awarded a 50,000 subgrant, $50,000 subgrant from the Thriving Communities Program for Transportation related projects in the International Corridor.

And the committee is proposing a new community-led group to champion the interests of the international corridor.

We've left a one-page flyer to summarize the committee's work.

And on the back of the flyer, you'll also find several branding, placemaking, and pedestrian safety initiatives in the International Corridor.

So to close, um, in addition to the outstanding efforts of the committee, this assignment required the collaboration of key internal and external partners.

We'd like to recognize the public works, transportation, planning and development services department, departments rather, and our thriving communities, partner equitable cities.

They've provided invaluable guidance to the committee in prioritizing the visioning efforts recommendations.

On behalf of the International Corridor, we extend our thanks for your support.

This concludes our presentation, and we'd be happy to address any questions from council.

Questions at all from council.

Mr.

Gonzalez.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mrs.

Cruz.

I really this is exciting.

You know, I like the branding and all that great stuff.

Um, you know, we're gonna need buy-in from the businesses that are on Pioneer Parkway.

Is there any discussion of those that were not on the committee uh how we're gonna get them to uh clean up their premises, paint the buildings, uh clean up the windows and all that.

I mean, is there any is there any plan of action?

Because that's gonna help you can put all this stuff up, but if all that looks the same, and I'm not saying it all looks like, but there are some things that need to be done.

Yes.

I think that that is a concern for the committee.

Uh, it's also a concern about neighborhoods as well.

Uh, we would look to partner with code compliance.

Um, if you recall the neighborhood enhancement team was suspended uh for a few months last year.

We would look to work with them to see about reactivating that effort, you know, as a primary source for creating a plan to address all these things.

So it would be internal work we would do.

And I think it's important that we talk to this business because I can tell you, uh, Mrs.

Phillips and Ms.

Hunter and Ms.

Boxall, they create uh they put this committee one day to clean part of Pollinar Parkway, and one of them was the bingo hall and the um I can't remember what the store next to it was, and there was a lot of trash there.

And uh we made a point to show the owners or the managers like look, look how much trash is out here.

And if you go by now those two places, you see very little trash anymore.

Right.

And you know, we we said we need your help, we're gonna start cleaning up this place.

So I think just little things like that, people don't realize it and and you show their appreciation and saying, hey, this we're all gotta be good neighbors, we got to help each other.

And like I said, I'm proud to go by those two places every single time and see what a difference from the day we were there, had to clean it up to now.

So thank you.

No, I think that's a very valid concern.

Um, it's a concern that the committee shares as well.

There's a variety of ways to approach it.

One would be through the subgrant by doing a neighborhood camp cleanup campaign.

That would be possibility.

Um, but I think that also the branding of the corridor really allows people to have a common point of interest and shared concern.

And those efforts really do a lot to help people identify with a location and hopefully buy in with keeping it clean.

Thank you.

Oh, Mr.

Peale.

Um, you know, I want to look on your your sheet here, build community capacity, prioritize recommendations.

Number one is highlight and support small businesses in the corridor.

You know, one of the greatest challenges a small business has, especially one uh with a background of diversity is accessing private capital in order to expand the business or fix up the building.

Or, you know, offer new offerings or expand a product line, you know.

Um was there ever any discussions in the committee about how to increase connections between stakeholders with businesses in the corridor and financial institutions like bank bank lending committees, uh, you know, private investor groups, that sort of thing, because you know, a lot of the stuff on here is public spending or volunteer or donor-driven, right?

But what really will make a bigger difference than all of that is if the owners of the businesses in the corridor who've built with their own blood, sweat and tears something very special, and probably are working so hard they don't have time to develop relationships with financial institutions because they got to keep the doors open, right?

Exactly.

But it you know, it really seems to me there needs to be a focus on the steering committee to maybe throwing a bunch of the members of the Frost Bank loan committee into a van and driving them up and down, you know, pioneer and introducing them one-on-one to the people running these businesses so that perhaps those people can access a line of credit or a loan in order to fix up and beautify their property and increase their their profit margins on their own.

Did y'all discuss that at all?

We did discuss it uh particularly in the vein of um improving the outreach uh to small businesses.

Um there was discussion amongst the committee about modeling uh on a City of Fort Worth program that covers a lot of different areas.

It's a very robust program, and I think lending is one of the categories of outreach that they do.

So it's really about creating a structured program with a very specific goal and the target, uh, which would be these small businesses.

I think as an aside, um, you know, if they're looking to expand or make major brick and mortar improvements, then TERS 7 could potentially be an option uh because it does TER 7 is tied to the corridor as well.

So those are some of the strategies.

You know, and I think one of the things, don't forget about the economic development corporations, right?

And part of the challenge is getting people who are really good at running a restaurant, are really good at running some other kind of business, comfortable with the idea of doing the paperwork necessary to apply for funding from the TURS or apply for funding from the uh EDC or apply for a loan at a fed that's those are can be daunting activities, especially for somebody who doesn't do it regularly.

Yes.

So, you know, part of what I'd like to see next time y'all report out is a report on the efforts that you have undertaken to connect stakeholders in the district to private sources of capital so that they can make some decisions on their own and not always be reliant upon the city spending money or donors or our uh you know regulatory things that we do, something that expands their freedom.

So if you could just make a note and tell the committee that I want them to discuss that, and I want them to make a presentation on the efforts they've done in that regard, because I think that's when some really special people who've done some really wonderful things can really grow into something even more amazing, and that's a link that unfortunately does not exist to the extent it ought to exist today.

Can we do that next time?

Yes, definitely, and uh we share your concerns, and we will definitely uh take them under advisement and come back with you.

Thank you for your hard work and thank you for the committee for its hard work.

Committee did the work, thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Boxel.

Thank you, and thank you to the committee for all your hard work.

I really appreciate it.

There are a lot of good ideas in here.

Um I would encourage the committee when they transition into a private um for lack of a better word, neighborhood group with international corridor, that you uh incorporate and get a um 501c3 status because um we learned that there are a lot of grant opportunities out there, but you can't apply for them without that status.

And we recently learned about, I didn't know about this um thriving communities grant, and I'm sure there's many more like it out there.

And part of what Mr.

Peel is talking about could also be put towards making workshops so that these small businesses could attend the workshops on various topics.

I'm sure there are grant opportunities for creating the workshops as well.

Um, so I just see a lot of opportunity out there uh going forward, and I really look forward to what this committee does in the future.

Thank you.

Very good.

Thank you.

Thank you, uh, Dr.

Odom Wesley.

Thank you for all your hard work and to the entire committee.

This is a lot of progress that's that's been made.

I was just wondering what kind of response have you received from the business owners and stakeholders in the international corridor.

They weren't actually a part of this committee process.

But I think they're forefront on the committee's mind in terms of outreach, recognizing that the demographics of the area are all very heavily small business in the corridor.

So in order to respond to that particular stakeholder group, I think the committee is very interested in setting up or working with the city to set up a curriculum for them.

The other thing that is important is, you know, uh through our consulting partner, the Thriving Communities Partner, we were able to create a tool that allows us to identify all the stakeholders within the area.

So that's something that we will be turning over to the committee.

So as they begin to do their work and their outreach, the business, small businesses in the corridor are also part of that engagement guide.

Thank you.

I think that's really critical to the success of all of these initiatives that you get to buy in from businesses that are already in the international corridor.

And I was thinking I don't know if you can use this grant or if you may have other opportunities to provide some incentives to these business owners to buy into the new signage and the landscaping and all these other, I guess, uniform placemaking kinds of things you want to do.

How do you get them right to participate?

Incentives or get them involved, or yeah.

So I like your idea about the outreach and getting all the business owners that are there involved.

Yeah.

Also very good ideas.

Thank you.

We've noted those.

Anyone else?

Thank you, Cynthia.

Appreciate you.

3.3.

Alicia.

Transportation services.

Right.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council, Alicia Winkleblek, Director of Transportation.

We are here today with a transportation services update for you.

Um, Dr.

Ann Foss and I are going to tag team.

I'm going to cover the handy tram portion of the presentation, and then Ann will get up and cover the on-demand portion.

Before we start, I wanted to direct your attention to two pieces of information at your place.

The first is, I know it's a bit hard to see, but the first is a comparison of our services.

We really now that we've got one transportation department and all of our services under one umbrella.

We really enjoy presenting to the community our transportation options.

So depending on who you are, where you're going, what your need is, we've got different options for you.

So you've got a comparison that tells you the differences between the on-demand and the handy trans services.

And then you also have an infographic that gives you some just kind of key metrics and pieces of information about both services as well.

So those are just takeaways, and we will have those on our website as well.

So jumping in, also wanted to note there were several items that came out of the recent budget discussions related to both on-demand and handy TRAN.

The first being fares.

And then there was also recommendation that we look at the existing handy Tran boundary, which currently is one and a half miles outside the city, looking at maybe shrinking that back closer to the city limits.

We're not talking about those items today.

We're really focusing on an operational update, but we'll be back to you in the near future on both items.

We will have a required public hearing and public comment period this fall on the fairs, and then we are planning on coming to the TMI committee probably in January to talk in a little bit more detail about the boundary change.

Okay, um, we've seen the slide before, but it's great to give an overview for our community members.

Handy Tran is a service that's for the elderly and disabled.

It's an application-based process.

Um, to be eligible, you need to be 65 or older or disabled.

Our service area, as I just mentioned, includes not just the Arlington city limits, but a whole one and a half mile radius around the city, which equates to an entire second city of Arlington.

It's extremely large area.

We also provide service to and from the Centerport and Hearstville TRE stations, and we require that one leg of the trip be in Arlington to ride the service.

Our hours are Monday through Friday, 7 to 10, and Saturday, 8 to 9.

Our current fare is $2 per person, or you can purchase a 30-day pass for $55.

We accept a variety of payments.

We have a variety of booking options.

You can book online through a mobile app, or you can still call in and book your ride with one of our schedulers in the office.

And we use a mix of buses and cabs.

We have about 34 vehicles total that we use to provide our service.

So starting with completed trips, this is a very basic metric that we use to kind of track how the service is doing and what demand is looking like.

You can see here we hit a peak of 151,000 trips back in FY19.

Then do during COVID, we dropped down significantly.

We've been working our way back up.

You can see that trend upwards.

In FY25, we were at about 141,000 trips.

So we we know our population is aging.

We know that we are only going to continue to get more demand in handy trans.

So while it's kind of a slow steady growth, I do think we are seeing a trend upward that's going to continue to move.

This slide also shows you the split of how those rides are given between buses and our supplemental taxi service.

We use our taxi service to provide about 80% of our trips.

The taxis are a little bit easier to maneuver, a little bit more efficient, and it's a cheaper trip for us.

So if someone is able to take their ride in a cab, we want them to be in a cab.

We do have a subset of our handy trans riders that require a lift or they have an oversized wheelchair and they need the bus.

We have the buses available for that.

So while it cost a little bit more, we want to make sure that we're meeting the needs of the community.

So our buses, which are driven by city employees, cover about 20% of the trips.

While the cabs are a contracted supplemental service.

We have nearly 4,000 handy trans clients in our database, but at any one point in time or any one year, we have somewhere between 1400 and 1700 active riders.

It ebbs and flows a little bit, but we've got a pretty standard grouping of people that ride the service.

If someone has not been active for quite some time, we will deactivate their file.

If they call back wanting a ride, we we activate them again.

No need to submit another application or application fee.

And then applications is also a tool that we use to look at growing demand.

You can see a trend upwards here as well.

Last year, luckily was a bit of an anomaly.

It was surprised us when we saw 680 new applications last year.

We dropped back down this year, but 400, 500 applications per year is not insignificant.

That adds up quickly.

Some of these people will apply so that they have it in place when they need it and may not ride right away, but many of these people are new riders who are learning our system and taking advantage of this advantage of the services that we can offer them.

So we definitely keep an eye on the growth in our client client base.

And then it's always interesting to look at how our riders are using the system.

We've got five buckets here of different types of riders, if you will.

Looking at FY25 is the most recent example.

About 30% 32% of our riders are riding pretty infrequently.

Over the year, they took 10 or fewer trips.

But on the opposite end of that, 26% of our riders took 100 or more trips.

And some of these are going to adult care locations that they go to three to five days a week.

There are regular dialysis clients.

They have a sustained need for the service.

So they're riding the service pretty often.

This is one of my favorite slides in the slide deck today because I think it shows a real technology success story.

This is looking at our completed trips by booking methods.

So when someone went to book their trip, did they call in?

Did they use the mobile app or did they go online and use the use the website online?

And you see in FY25, over 40% of our handy tran trips were booked either online or through the app.

And that's significant for us because that means less employee time on the phone, more time to dedicate to the customers who need the in-person assistance and more control in the hands of our riders.

They can get on that app or get on that website and book their ride in just a much quicker way.

Should they need to change their ride or cancel their ride, they can also do that much more easily.

So we hope to see that trend moving upwards, but I will tell you, we are we're ahead of the curve here.

If you look at other types of services across the nation, you don't see this type of booking through the app and the website.

So I think this is a real win for us.

We saw the big increase when we switched to the VI app.

I think people are just it's an intuitive app that people are able to use and they're they've learned to use it in our community, whether they're using it for on demand or handy tran.

And it's it's really helping us out.

And I think we'll continue to see benefits of that as we work to make our service more efficient.

In general, we are able to provide a pretty consistent handy trans service.

So in FY25, our pickup on time performance was at 91%.

There's a slight drop you see that I always like to note between FY23 and FY24.

We started calculating our on-time performance a little bit differently in the past with the older software we used to use.

Um, if you moved a trip because you had the ability to move it more into the right time slot, um, they would move it in the system and it would automatically show it as becoming an on-time trip.

Right now, the via system holds the uh original pickup time static.

So if you move a trip, um, I'm not explaining it very well today, but if you move a trip, this the via system's gonna use that original pickup time.

So we have a few less trips showing up as on time.

We're still saying in general, 91% of the time in our 30-minute window.

Um, and that's that's a metric that we focus on heavily and we work a lot with our drivers, making sure that they're being as efficient as possible as possible and providing good service there.

So utilization tells us the number of riders per vehicle per hour.

Um these numbers for the paratransit service might seem a little bit low.

So that's saying in FY25, we provided 1.7 rides per vehicle per hour.

But the industry standard for paratransit is just 1.8, and that's because paratransit transit trips take a little bit longer to perform.

Once you arrive, we provide a door-to-door service, so you've got to walk up to the door, get the client, get them back to the vehicle, and then get them loaded into the vehicle, which might require using a lift, it might require securing the rider, so it just takes a little bit more time and care.

So we're in good shape 1.7.

That's something that we're going to be looking at trying to increase.

Um the cabs specifically, it's interesting to see back several years ago we changed the way we paid the cab drivers.

We used to pay them per trip, which incentivized them to do a lot of trips, sometimes not being as safe as they should be.

So, industry standard is to pay cab drivers by the hour.

That's what we do now.

It caused a little bit of a drop in the utilization.

So, again, it's management of your drivers, contractor drivers, and employee drivers, making sure that they're being safe and following the rules and regulations, but also being timely and moving along and giving our customers the best service possible.

This slide shows the distribution of trips throughout the day, both on weekdays and on the week on Saturdays.

Um we generally have a pretty good spread of demand throughout the day, which helps us.

It helps us provide a better service for our riders.

We do have a few peaks.

We have a 9 a.m.

peak and around 2 p.m.

peak on the weekdays, and then we peak a little bit at 10 o'clock on Saturdays.

These are the times that are the most popular for people to get rides, they're going to a doctor's appointment.

Um we encourage our riders if they can to book outside of those peak times.

They're going to have a better service there or a better experience, they're going to have better luck at getting the ride they want.

Um, but in general, we've got really great distribution, which helps us serve a lot of people throughout the city.

And then this is another success story for us.

The this is showing completed trips, no shows and cancellations, and then trips that were denied, either we denied the trip or the rider did not accept the trip.

And the the positive story here is if you look over at FY25, 69% of our trips were completed compared to maybe FY18, FY19, where we were only completing 39, 38% of our trips.

And what's that showing?

What that's showing us is a significant decrease in the no-shows and cancelled.

Um, and I think a couple things are happening here.

One, via system does not allow you to book multiple trips within the same time frame.

So with our old system, we had some riders that took advantage of the system a little bit and they might book 10 rides two weeks out.

And as it got closer or the day of, they decided which of those rides I wanted, they wanted.

So they booked a 9, a 9:30, a 10, a 10:30, and an 11.

And then on that Tuesday, they said, okay, I think I'll take the 10 o'clock.

And they canceled all the others.

Well, that makes our system inefficient.

It doesn't allow us to provide rides to others.

And we also a lot of times ended up with no shows or trips that weren't canceled.

So the via software has fixed for that, which is is great.

It helps our system work better.

So I think you're you're seeing that in a drop to just 22% of no shows and cancellations.

The other factor I think that's at play is people are booking through the app.

It's much easier to cancel through the app.

I don't have to bother with calling and waiting for someone to answer my call.

I jump on, I cancel my trip because I can't take it anymore, and it opens it up for somebody else.

We're also seeing our trip distances drop, which is another good thing for the service.

The shorter the trip distances, the more people we can serve, the more efficient our trips.

We don't know completely what's going on here.

We think a lot of this is the Vega via algorithms are just more efficient in their routing.

Um so our trip distances are reducing.

But this is something that we we watch.

We like to look at this metric and see how it impacts the service.

But the longer your distances are, the less efficient your trips are.

So that is where when we start talking about what's the boundary of the handy trans service area, that's something to take into account.

The larger your area, the longer your trips.

And then looking at cost per ride and funding source.

Um, so we use four different funding sources to pay for the handy trans service.

In FY25, uh, we were paying an average of about $31 per ride, made up of the uh four service four sources of Fairbox, TechStot, FTA, and City.

So Fairbox covered about 5% of the cost in FY25.

Typical fare box for this type of service is four to nine percent.

So we're in the window.

We'd like to get a little bit more in the window, a little bit higher.

So that's something that um could potentially be impacted when we talk about a fair change.

Um eight percent of the cost was covered by some tech stop funding that the city receives.

63% is covered by FTA, and then the city paid a quarter of the cost.

And then looking at what that looks like in real numbers, FY25 cost us um just under 4.4 million dollars for the service.

So about 210,000 came from Fairbox, 341,000 from Text DOT, 2.73 from FTA, and then the remaining just over about a million dollars came from the city's general fund.

Um so you can see some cost increase over time there.

Most of that is due to increases in our contracted cab service, and then um some increases that come with just maintaining city employees, annual raises and that type of thing, cost of benefits.

Um, but what's interesting is as you see the cost increase, our city portion has really maintained pretty maintains pretty stable.

Um, it's been around a million dollars, give or take, um, with 1.08 being our FY25 amount.

So we do have we have um static resources and and growing demand.

So this is something that we've got to continue to look at.

Um we we are looking at different funding sources.

In fact, I'll go on to my my last handy trans slide here.

This is the same information just shown in a pie chart, so it's a little bit easier to visualize.

But um our our 2.7 million dollars in FTA funding is probably not gonna change.

Now the city gets a bucket of funding, and we can look at how we want to spend that on handy tran and on demand, but that's probably not going up.

But we are starting to look at some additional federal sources and seeing is there a way for us to use them on handy trans specifically since it's an elderly and disabled service, so we can either bring more federal funding into the city or get a better match ratio, potentially reducing our general fund.

Um but knowing that we've got um increasing demand and and a growth in this type of service, I think it's important that we not only look at funding sources, but we really continue to focus on the efficiency of the service.

And hopefully you could see that today, all those different ways and places that we do that.

Um mayor, this is when I'm passing on to Ann.

I don't know if we want to pause and take questions or wait till the on-demand question.

We'll see if we have any questions on the handy transaction.

Dr.

Odom Wisley.

Thank you, Alicia.

One question that comes to mind.

I know this is available to residents and visitors, right?

Do we have any information on what percentage of residents versus visitors are using the handy tran service?

We're acting I don't at hand.

Um we're actually doing some analysis right now, specifically looking at that for the trips that are happening outside the city boundary, but we could we could certainly look at citywide.

And I was wondering about marketing.

I know I still have experience with visitors that come to town, they stay in a hotel, they have no idea that we have handy trans or uh ride share program.

How do they find out about it?

How are we marketing to people?

Handy Trans specifically, we a lot of it's word of mouth, and then providers that provide services, you know, a doctor's office, our dialysis centers are our big locations where we've got a lot of movement.

Um we work with the adult daycare, some of the assisted living facilities are aware of it.

Um aging well, we were just at Aging Well last week.

That's a great place for us to get the word out.

Um so that that type of thing.

But if we have visitors to the city who need that service, how do they know?

We don't have a specific strategy for visitors.

Um, they're certainly welcome.

They've got they've got to put in an application and be accepted into the service, so it's not quite as quick as like an on-demand account where you can just download the app and ride.

Um we don't have a specific strategy on that, but we could work on something.

So our hotels don't have something that's sitting in the lobby available to visitors, so they know the services available.

Not right now on Handy Tran, okay.

Okay, thank you.

Anyone else?

Mr.

Hogg.

Yeah.

Let me just ask for and for handy train.

I think it's different on on demand.

Why would we provide this service for visit visitors?

What's the reasoning?

Um, because FTA makes us.

That's a good reason.

Um good old FTA.

Um as you look at this funding and you see, especially for Handy Tran, you know, almost 75%, 60% or so, and total more than 50%.

What happens if your federal funding starts dwindling?

Because that's a risk everyone, every department has concerns with right now.

I think if our federal funding were reduced, um, I think we have two choices.

We can reduce the level of service.

So these types of systems, much like the on-demand system, and we've talked about this for years on on-demand, is it's it's scalable and that goes both directions.

Um, so when we were in uh the COVID time frame, we didn't have as many rides.

We took vehicles off the road.

And we had a big success story on in the on-demand system back then because while every other transit system across the nation was spending money, um, we were saving money because we didn't have the demand.

So you can do the same thing.

Um it's a little bit more difficult when you have some of your clientele that are depending on it.

So maybe a dialysis trip or something like that.

I think the other side of that coin is um the city would have to look at how comfortable they were if city council wanted to put more resources into handy tran.

Um we could certainly do that.

Um we could also shift resources between the on-demand and the handy trans services if we wanted to do that.

Okay, thank you.

Anyone else?

Thank you.

Okay.

All right, and pass it off to Dr.

Anne Foss.

Good afternoon, Anne Foss, planning and programming manager for the transportation department.

Um, so I'm gonna pick up and cover the on-demand uh service update for this year.

So, as you know, the on-demand service provides an affordable public transportation service across the entire city.

It operates Monday through Friday, 6 a.m.

to 9 p.m.

and Saturdays from 9 to 9.

Single fare or uh fare for a single ride ranges between three and five dollars, uh depending on the distance traveled.

All rides to and from the Center Port TRE station are capped at $3.

And then we also have weekly and monthly passes available for our more frequent riders.

Booking can be done through the Arlington Transportation Smartphone app or by calling a local phone number.

Um, and payment is accepted as in the form of credit, debit, and prepaid cards.

So currently the on-demand fleet has about 60 vans in it.

Those are six passenger vans, about 10 of them are wheelchair accessible vehicles, and then we have a number of hybrid vehicles as part of that mix of 60 vans as well.

So I want to start my update with some information on the dynamic direct route pilot service, which is called Arlington Express.

So this service was designed to aggregate riders who are going between the downtown and UTA part of the city and the Center Port TRE regional rail station.

Um it uses shared vans for a direct travel experience between these common destinations.

So this offers a solution to replace a typical on-demand trip where somebody might hail their own van and go to and from Center Port with a more efficient solution where we're aggregating those riders who are taking similar trips in the same vehicle.

We're using this to test how this type of direct route works and if it can potentially benefit the broader on-demand service by taking some of these less efficient trips going all the way up to Centerport and aggregating them together.

The city did receive funding from the North Central Texas Council of Governments to pilot the project.

And we used data from the on-demand service to design the express routes and service times so that we were targeting to meet the most demands that we could.

So what we settled on is offering the service during commute peak commute times, Monday through Friday, 6 to 8 a.m.

And then again from 3 30 to 7 p.m.

The stops are right outside City Hall here in downtown, also outside the university center at UTA's campus, and then at the Center Port TRE station.

We do use larger vehicles, as you can see in the image here.

They can hold one wheelchair passenger as well as up to five ambulatory passengers at one time.

They are white, so they look a little bit different than our standard on-demand vans, but we've wrapped them so that they match the general fleet.

And so the way it works is when a rider requests a trip between downtown and the Centerport station and they're within a certain distance of one of the existing stops, they automatically receive a proposal for the Arlington Express service.

So we launched at the end of March.

We're carefully tracking the data to make sure that we're providing an efficient and cost effective solution.

And I've got a little bit more on that data and kind of how we're tracking here.

So we did launch in March, which is the middle of the semester.

We always hear from UTA that students set their patterns at the beginning of the semester and they can be hard to change.

So a mid-semester launch can be a little challenging, and we saw that ridership was a little bit lower through the spring months, certainly lower during the summer when there's less activity on campus.

But we have seen ridership increase pretty dramatically over the last couple of months during the fall semester.

Right now, the service is averaging about 66 rides per week, and we've delivered a little over a thousand trips so far.

In terms of marketing and outreach to make people aware of this service, VIA did some targeted marketing to riders who are already taking trips on the on-demand service between these destinations.

So reaching out to them, letting them know about the service.

City staff have done outreach at events at UTA, including their Earth Day event last spring.

And then VIA has most recently done a series of marketing events up at Centerport TRE station, talking to commuters, making sure they know about the service.

So when we started off, we had kind of a smaller radius around each of the stops where people would receive the proposal.

We've expanded that so people who are willing to walk a little bit more can get this express route option.

And then as we continue to move forward with the pilot, we'll be evaluating performance as well as other potential changes to the schedule or stop locations to make sure that it's functioning well.

While overall we are able to keep the on-demand fares generally affordable with the city and federal support, we know that the standard fare is too expensive for some of our riders.

So to address this need, we do have partnerships to provide free rides to both students and low-income residents in Arlington.

So Tarrant County College and Arlington ISD have both offered free rides to their students over the years.

These programs originally began with funding from the Council of Governments, and they have then, once that funding ran out, they were successful.

They've switched to being self-paid by TCC and AISD.

So TCC currently offers free rides to all enrolled students each semester.

And AISD has been a little bit more patchy, but they're getting ready to start back up again with free rides to at-risk students through their student outreach services program.

We also partner with about 17 nonprofit organizations in Arlington to offer free rides to low-income riders.

This program was originally started with funding through the community development block grant program.

That funding has ended, but we know that the free rides are important, so we've continued the program, and the cost of those free rides is now fully absorbed by the city budget for the on-demand service.

Right now, that program is providing just under a thousand rides per month for free.

Close to 67,000 rides have been provided at a cost of around 350,000.

All right, now I'll shift into more of the nuts and bolts operational update.

So on this slide, we have the annual total total completed trips since fiscal year 21, which is when the service expanded to citywide coverage.

Going back a little bit further, we launched the service in December of 2017.

Since then, we've provided over 3.2 million trips on the service.

Right now we're averaging around 11,000 trips per week.

There's definitely a peak in the ridership in fiscal 23, as you can see.

We believe that ridership this year was a bit artificially inflated due to the large number of free ride programs and promotional campaigns that were offered on the service.

We've scaled back some of these programs, and we believe that ridership has right sized so that we're meeting the demand that truly exists right now.

If a ride is free, more people are willing to take it.

But if they're paying that fare, we think we're meeting the people who really need the service.

And as Alicia had mentioned in her portion of the presentation, flexibility is a key benefit of these types of on-demand or demand responsive services.

So we are able to adjust our supply as necessary to meet demand, making sure that we're providing the service for those who need it, but also working within our set budget.

Returning riders are shown in the darker blue bar at the bottom, and then new riders are the lighter blue color at the top of the bar.

So as you can see, looking over the years, the number of returning riders has remained fairly consistent.

But we do see a significantly lower number of new riders in fiscal 25.

This is due to scaling back those promotional campaigns and free ride programs that we've talked about, so that we could better understand the true demand for the service.

However, we do know that it's important to continue to have new riders joining the service.

We want to make sure that people who need it are aware of it.

So we are phasing back in some targeted marketing and promotional campaigns to make sure that people are aware of the service.

They may be testing out the service, maybe it's a one-off.

So even though returning riders are a smaller percentage overall of the riders, they're taking more than 50% of the trips on the service.

And then one call out on this slide is our rider satisfaction rate.

This is tracked through an in-app pop-up that all riders receive after they've completed every trip.

And on average, we see riders rating their satisfaction 4.8 out of five stars, which we feel very pleased to see.

It's a high rating, and this high satisfaction rating has remained very consistent over the life of the service as well.

All right.

Similar side to the Handy Trans slide.

So this is looking at our riders and kind of grouping them into buckets based on how often they're riding.

We see, depending on the year, between 65 and 85% of riders tend to be more casual, riding 10 times or fewer.

In fiscal 23 and 24, we saw more of those casual riders, which is kind of in line with the other data we've seen, more newer riders, more of those promotional campaigns, people trying it as a one-off.

But if you look at fiscal 25, we see that 6% of riders took between 51 and 100 trips that year, and another 6% took over 100 trips last year.

So demonstrating again we have we do have a core group of riders who are using the service very consistently.

So one of those key metrics is the average estimated time of arrival after booking, ETA or wait time.

So again, it's an on-demand service.

Once you request your ride, you then wait on average over the life of the service, kind of between 11 and 16 minutes for that van to show up and pick you up.

This is below via's average of 18 minutes wait time for comparable on-demand services that they provide.

So we're pleased with this number.

We're pleased to see this number tick down a little bit in the past year.

We're also looking at efficiency of the service very carefully.

And one of the key metrics that we use is utilization, which again is the average number of riders per vehicle per hour.

So for fiscal 25, we saw a utilization of 2.9, which is just below via's average of 3.0 for similar services.

We are focusing on utilization and working to increase this number, making sure that we're filling as many of the seats as we can with the supply that we have available on the road.

And we hope to see a higher number in fiscal 26 here.

And that's shown by the green lines on the chart here, with the demand or the ride requests that we see coming in, and those are shown by the blue bars.

So these are the average supply and demand patterns for weekdays and for Saturdays over the past month, the month of September 25.

Overall, for the entire fiscal year 25, our met demand average was 96%.

So 96% of the time when someone requests a ride, we are able to offer them a proposal.

This is well above via's average of 89% for their comparable services.

We do see some peaks similar to the handy trans data, slightly different timing.

We do see peaks in the very early mornings of the service, the six to eight window, as well as in kind of the mid to late afternoon, so 3 to 5 p.m.

We are working we work hard to make sure that we have as many van hours on the road at those times and then scale back during periods of less demand.

But we do know there are times of the day when people request rides and they don't receive a proposal, and that's shown by the gray bar on the top there.

So you can see during those peaks there there is a little bit less availability than demand.

And then another performance metric is trip distance.

So this is kind of the opposite view of what we saw in Handy Tran where trip distances were decreasing on the on-demand side.

As we have seen the service continue to grow and riders all across the city utilizing the service, we have seen our trip distances grow pretty significantly.

So average trip distance was 6.8 miles for last year.

This speaks highly of the service and the amount of access that is provided across our full 99 square miles.

But these longer trips do tend to be less efficient and therefore more expensive for us to serve.

So this is something that we're tracking carefully.

All right, and then my final uh few slides here get into the the funding data as well.

Um this slide shows the average cost per ride, which has remained relatively stable between 14 and a half and 16 and a half dollars per ride from fiscal 22 on.

We also have the breakdown in funding sources that we uh use with Fairbox at the bottom, um, FTA funding in the middle, and then the city share at the top of the bar.

Um I just want to provide a little context for fiscal 21.

This year was a little bit different for a number of reasons.

It was the year that we launched citywide service, um about a third of the way through the fiscal year.

So the service was still growing, people were still getting used to it being provided across the entire city, ridership was lower, and therefore cost per ride was a bit higher.

Um, we did also receive COVID relief funding through the CARES Act, and that made up a very large portion of the funding that we use to pay for the service in fiscal 21.

Um then in fiscal 24 is another little bit of an anomaly.

Um, that year we were able to use transportation development credits or TDCs to help offset the local required match for our federal funding.

So you see that our federal share was a little higher, our local share was a little bit lower in fiscal 24.

Um we don't always have TDCs available, and this service is not always the best project to put them on.

We make that decision kind of across the city.

Sometimes they go to public works projects or parks projects, um, but we were able to use them in fiscal 24.

Um, however, if you look at 23 or 22, 23, and 24, um a pretty high degree of consistency regarding the percentage of cost covered by Fairbox, by FTA, and by the city.

So keeping those ratios pretty consistent.

Um here's the same financial data, uh, but with the actual dollar amount shown.

So the total cost to operate the service each year in the bars, and then the ridership in the blue line.

Um again, we we had that peak in ridership in 23.

As ridership has right sized, we've been able to decrease the overall service cost, um, again, trying to carefully match our supply and demand.

Um, also shown as the dollar amount contributed by each funding source.

So again, the city's contribution has been pretty consistent at 48 to 49% most years, but that actual dollar amount has changed as the total cost of the service has changed.

Um, and then just to wrap up, um, kind of simplifying it into one graphic that summarizes the past year.

Um, and this is also on the infographic that you have at your place that Alicia mentioned.

Um, but overall here we see that the on-demand service is able to provide an efficient public transit service within a one to two mile block across the entire city of Arlington for a total of 4.1 million in city investment, and the remaining 51% of the cost of the service comes from our fare box recovery and from the federal funding.

And that concludes our slides.

I'd be happy to take questions about on demand.

Mr.

Peel.

I read an interesting article in the Atlantic over the weekend on the number one reason why people don't use public transit and nationwide, and it was safety.

And it was safety.

And the article kind of talked about how safety is the main issue hindering people using public transit.

And I I did a search of the of the presentation and all the data you have.

Do you ever poll on safety on or ever ask customers what VIA could do to make people who use it feel even more safe?

I don't believe we've asked that specific question.

We we've done a number of ridership surveys over the years, but I don't think we've asked specifically about safety.

And those cameras one have been a great way for us to monitor driver behavior and safety as well as kind of in cabin safety.

And the the drivers also receive training from VIA to handle a range of different situations and de-escalate as necessary.

Does it say on the camera everybody in vehicle is being recorded at all times so that riders know that?

We do have information posted, I believe, about that.

So the other question I have is a little counterintuitive, I guess.

We have all this data, but I'm kind of wondering do we ever survey Arlington residents on two questions?

You know, one, do you know about VI and how it works?

And number two, why do you not use VIA?

And I I would really be interested in in knowing maybe in my city survey or something like that.

I'd really love to hear a broad group of Arlington residents, because I I think a lot of people really don't know about it, even still today.

But there are a lot of people who just flat out tell me there's no way I'll use that thing.

Well, they may be unfairly biased, right?

And I understand that, but I'm also curious to know why do people, if they're aware of VIA, choose not to use it?

Because I'm wondering if there's something that we just may not have thought of that might be an easy fix.

And I'd love to know that data.

I don't know how we would go about gathering it necessarily.

I do know we do a city survey every two years, four years, two now.

And I I really feel like I want to ask people in Arlington who don't use VIA, do they know about it?

And two, if they do, why don't they use it?

Um we do have a I'm sorry, go ahead.

Oh, well, so you does that make sense.

I mean, if you're always polling or asking rider surveys, right?

Well, you've already got a self-selected group that may not give you critical feedback necessary to truly improve the product, you know.

And I I I would like to, I feel like we need that in order to get real about some of the challenges the program faces if some of the colloquial critiques I hear, which I always kind of discount because I know people just are biased and sometimes you know are just stubborn or prejudiced or whatever.

But there might be something there that we would learn that would be an easy tweak that might be somewhat of a game changer, you know.

We do include a question on the um every two-year citizen satisfaction survey about the on-demand service.

Um, I think uh the we ask um them to rate the service, and then we also ask if they have used the service.

Um, I think there might also be an awareness question if if you've heard of it or aware of it.

Um so we are gathering data in that method, but we could certainly pursue uh a different um avenue for that information too.

Yes, I don't know.

Do they even still have survey monkey anymore?

Things change like every five minutes on the internet.

So uh, but yeah, let's ask the people why don't you use it?

Because uh I I just think that we're gonna get we would get some interesting answers, and some that might be ways to improve the service that we never thought of and might not be that difficult.

Thank you.

Dr.

Odom Wesley.

Thank you for this information.

I remember I don't know how long ago it was.

We tried some advertising on the uh on-demand vehicles with the video thing on the roof, and then we talked about wrapping, but I don't see that reflected in any of the numbers.

Did we discontinue that?

Was it not worth it?

Or we did have an advertising program in partnership with VI for a couple of years.

Um we they looked at both rooftop um signs as well as in vehicle screens to provide advertisement to riders.

Um I think VIA has worked with a couple different vendors over the years, and there was just not really enough interest.

Um, but it is something that's um actually we were just talking about it earlier today.

It's on our list of things to to discuss, especially with all of the big events we have going on next year.

Um so we will be continuing to discuss that and pursue that as a potential revenue source.

Do you um remember if it made a difference in the funding?

What percentage did you get with the advertising?

Um it is shown on this side.

Um for I believe we had a a little bit of revenue in fiscal years 21, 22, and 23.

Um in the you know, sort of 50,000 to 90,000 dollar range total.

Okay, thank you.

Mr.

Gonzalez.

Thank you, Mary.

Uh thank you, Ann.

Thank you, Lisa, for the presentation.

It's very interesting, especially being on the subcommittee with RTC.

Uh, they share with us a bunch of different uh information on all the transits throughout the Metroplex and how they're gonna work together.

So as soon as I get what we saw today, I'll be sure and forward that to you.

Um I guess one comment on Mr.

Peel's question is um, you know, why people don't use that.

I mean, do any of us use it for city council meetings?

I mean, we don't, and why?

It's because we know why it's like it's easier to drive here and everything else.

I think that's most of the people, but we need to try.

I mean, I think the younger people, you know, are using it more.

And so if they I don't want to cause any extra work, but I sure would like to see, you know, the people riding over a hundred times.

If we have any idea what age they are, because I would suspect it's probably the younger, uh, especially here at UTA.

Most of them do not have cars, don't have availability to cars.

So uh if you can get that, that would be, you know, not don't go out of any, but if you have that information, I would look to see it.

VIA doesn't collect that specific information on all riders.

So when riders sign up for an account, they really just need to provide, you know, name, phone number, email address, and payment method.

Um, the type of demographic data that you're talking about, we have collected over the years, it's in the form of a survey.

Um so we we haven't done a ridership survey in a little bit, um, so it might be time to do another one.

Um, and if we want to get that type of demographic data on our riders.

And the the reason I'm really curious is that micromobility didn't work because enough users at UTA didn't use it.

And so it was not feasible to keep that program going.

So I'm just that's why I want to sort of put two two and two together.

So thank you.

Mr.

Ogg.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Ann.

Let me ask a question.

I appreciate, you know, as I look at those free rides paid by TCC and AIDS.

I'm assuming free, they're reimbursing us, they're paying the fare rate.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

They're paying that.

And if you calculate that, that's about almost 8% of total rides is by those two organizations per week, right?

If you 11,000, 990 right around there.

Um let me also, I was gonna ask a second question on uh and Mr.

Gonzalez started going on that on demographic of riders.

Um we've done surveys.

Do we also use your vias getting their payment information?

Are we tracking any placer information to be able to see who these people are that are riding?

Do we have anything like that or is it just through surveys we're doing that?

We have not looked into place or data, um, but that is certainly something we can pursue.

Yeah, I would think we should do that as a requirement of via.

Like they don't get to just own all this data and not have any information back to us.

Um we are contracting with them, so I would think we should require to know who that is.

And and it goes even farther.

Do we know the socioeconomic status of riders that are taking via?

I think that would be a giant indicator of what we're we're working with.

Do we know that?

Again, we've collected that in the past through rider survey data.

Um but um Do you know that off the top of your head or ballpark?

I think the the last survey that we did, which was about a year ago, um 75% of riders were kind of in the low load or very low income categories.

And why does VIA not ask or find that information out when someone signs up?

That's a great question.

We have Vinity from VIA in the audience.

I don't know if you want to provide a little bit of context on the type of information that VIA collects, you can come on up.

Aren't you lucky you get put on the spot just like that?

That's why she's here.

That's why I'm here.

Hi, Vinity Potash with Via.

Nice to meet you.

Um regarding your question on the type of data that we collect on writers, there's really uh two main things.

One is uh respecting writer privacy.

So generally a lot of regulations uh ask that apps don't collect data that's not strictly necessary um to operate the service, so we try to keep that uh relatively limited.

Um and the second is on on writer experience.

Um you can kind of imagine if you have to input like 15 or 20 questions before you sign up for the service, it creates a little bit of friction in actually getting and booking that ride.

Um so that I think those are the two primary drivers.

Do y'all ever take the data and go back and cross-reference data with any data sources to identify who your customer base is?

Because that's a pretty common business practice.

Yeah, that's true.

We typically do that through um again through surveys, mostly because so that the writer has a chance to opt in to sharing that data with us.

Have you ever sent that data to the city?

You know, I don't think we shared writer survey data.

Um, if there's like specific writer data, I'm not sure that we've looked at individual riders.

I'd like y'all to do more with that.

Um, and the reason I'm asking this question is Ann and I have talked about this before on our fare rates.

I want people to pay a fair share.

I would rather have someone that can actually pay it to pay it, and someone that we need to supplement more, allow supplement more.

I know there's some federal regulations with that, Ann.

I know where that question comes in, but there's ways that is available, correct?

Um, so with the FTA funding that we use, there are a lot of requirements and and regulations that we have to follow.

Um, and one of those is that the fare needs to be consistent across the board for all riders.

Yeah, but we can provide free passes through offerings like Arlington Life Shelter, those type of things.

So you up that rate.

So then our folks that actually need the rides, TCC, AISD is providing that for free.

We could give more vouchers to the life shelter, Salvation Army, all those different places, and that supplements that ride while keeping our fares on the same balance, correct?

We can we can raise fares across the board for everybody and then offset with more of those free ride types of programs.

That is an option.

Um and as Alicia mentioned at the top of her portion of the presentation, we are planning to move forward with fare changes, so that information will be coming soon.

Okay, and then let me ask the last question.

We may need V also on our data.

Are we tracking because they put in a location?

They may get dropped off within a block or two of that location.

How many folks are going to the hospital or doctors' offices via on demand?

How many are going to the grocery stores?

How many are going to bars?

Like, do we know what this is being utilized for based on addresses from where that's being entered?

Do you have that information?

Uh I'll I'll provide my answer, and then if you want to chime in, Vanity.

So you know, we do have all of that data that's available to city staff for every ride that's taken.

We have the pick up and drop-off locations.

Um it is a what we call a corner-to-corner service, or you know, people walk a block or two.

So the exact location where they're picked up and dropped off might not be their the exact location of their destination because we're aggregating those trips for efficiency.

Um that said, we can look at heat maps and kind of see where you know we're seeing um higher concentration of trips taken.

Um and if we wanted to drill in and look at a specific location like the hospitals in Arlington, we certainly could do that analysis.

But Ann, let me ask when someone enters in the information, they put the address of where they are, the locator identifies where they are, and then they put the address of where they want to go to.

So that information is entered into the system, then it goes back and gives a general the most efficient way to pick up, which I think is a great model on there.

So can't we identify where that location is of where they're asking to go to see what that location is?

Yes, the via system captures both kind of requested pickup and drop-off locations as well as the actual pickup and drop-off.

I think that'd be valuable information to see what people are using this for um instead of just a feel good.

What are they truly using this for to make sure we're getting the right things and where we possibly need to expand or do other things or or provide more supplements?

You know, do we need to be marketing to doctor's offices?

Do we need to be doing those type of things to really enhance this business from where it's going?

Because I think we've got all this data, and I don't think we're getting use of the data.

I think VIA has it all, is what it seems like to me.

And it's their operation, we're just contracting with them.

So I understand that, but we can also in contracts require some of that data to come back to us because that data is very valuable.

We do have a robust data sharing um clause in our contract with VIA and the data that VIA collects about the service and is is available to all of us at the city too.

Okay, I I'd like to see more of that data when you can provide that on as we as y'all start evaluating.

Not need to rush on anything, but as y'all start bringing those things up, I'd like to see if we can identify what some of these things are as we go forward with multiple new contracts.

Anyone else?

There's a few jobs in the city that I would not want to have.

Y'all's jobs are safe from my involvement.

Um because it's gotta be one of the most thankless jobs out there because whether it's citizens, whether it's other communities, whether it's whatever, it seems like there's no really good answer for transportation.

Um I think I'm biased, but I think Arlington does a much better than average job when it comes to moving people around our city.

We don't have a perfect system, but when I look at what other cities are spending and doing and compare it to what we're spending and doing, we're light years ahead of where they are on things.

And I'm so appreciative of what y'all are doing.

I don't disagree with what Mr.

Hogg was saying.

I think that you know we can always look at other things and and gain information from that type of stuff, but I think culturally, we're in a different position than other places that have very robust public transportation.

I was in Japan recently where very few people drove anywhere, and there were trains and subways and everything to get everywhere, and it was second nature to people jumping on those things, and they were beautiful and clean and efficient, but it was like the communities were built around those um methods of transportation.

Our culture has always been about driving.

I think that's why none of us take via to work or to city hall, because we all have our vehicles and we jump in them and we drive here, and that's what Texas has been about.

But as we urbanize the metropolitan area, they start to come up with other problems like the regionalization of public transportation.

It's not just how do you get around Arlington, but how do you get from UTA or downtown Arlington or the entertainment district to downtown Fort Worth or downtown Dallas or to South Lake or to the airport, and how do you how do you navigate things regionally?

And we have three different transit authorities that really, as they sit right now, don't communicate well with each other, and we have a number of non-subscribers like us in Grand Prairie that aren't a part of that infrastructure as well.

So it's challenging, and I'm so glad we have y'all here to handle that because I sure wouldn't want to do it.

So thank y'all for the information today.

Thank you very much.

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

We'll start with innovate Arlington.

John, is he sitting out there somewhere?

There you are.

Good afternoon, Council members.

John Chapman, uh long-range planning manager.

At everyone's place, you have a pamphlet that identifies the five pillars of the Innovate Arlington Comprehensive Plan.

They include the vibrant and safe pillar, innovate and thriving, connected and walkable, sustainable and healthy, welcoming and community culture.

These uh vision elements were all created based off of community feedback primarily in phase one of our Innovate Arlington comprehensive plan public uh education sessions.

Uh that was primarily from March to May of earlier this year.

The committee has reviewed uh this framework during several meetings, both in June as well as their past meeting uh just a couple weeks ago.

So I wanted to bring this to y'all uh before it goes to um our public workshops that are planned in November just to get any preliminary feedback that y'all have.

Nothing is necessarily set in stone.

Everything is still very malleable, but if you see anything glaring that we need to modify before it does go out to our our citizens, I just wanted to get some feedback from y'all.

And then on November 4th, MIG will be here for a full work session, which will include a deeper dive and conversation into these vision elements.

Thank you, John.

Any questions or comments for John on Innovate Arlington comprehensive plan?

Uh MIG will be here in front of y'all at your November 4th work session.

All right, that was easy.

Thank you, sir.

Um 4.2.

Uh any questions, comments for uh Venera Flora, Stafford, uh the interim, but we hired now a parks director.

So is she in Rome still?

Okay.

I don't I don't even know what you are anymore.

You know.

I'm here at your service to answer any questions.

Any questions for Venera?

Thank you.

You did great.

Thank you.

Appreciate you.

Okay, Miss Boxell, community and neighborhood development.

Thank you, Mayor.

The community and neighborhood development committee met this morning and we went over the housing tax credit applications, which the new cycle is going to start up again in January.

So we in anticipation of that, we reviewed our policies.

However, the committee members did ask staff to encourage developers to include visitability standards to participate in Connect Arlington with the Arlington Police Department to be aware of the concentrations of multifamily in various council districts and to be cognizant of proximity to grocery store and other amenities.

Staff provided a briefing about a minor change to the state's qualified allocation program and reminded committee members that our applications will be received in Arlington in early January, and we'll be coming to the C and D committee for their consideration.

At present, we think there might be four to five applications.

So there's housing rehab program.

There's the tenant-based rental assistant program.

And I think that's it.

On the uh housing rehab program, there is a grant from the Texas Veterans Commission to provide housing rehab grants up to 15,000 uh dollars for veterans and/or their surviving spouses.

I know that might be of interest to you, mayor.

Um the total grant amount is 300,000.

Um so that's it for the for the update.

Thank you very much.

Any questions or comments for Ms.

Boxel?

Thank you, ma'am.

Um, Mr.

Beale, I know we talked on the executive session.

Do you have anything to add on economic development?

Nothing further.

Thank you, sir.

Ms.

Hunter, Arlington Housing Finance Corporation update.

Thank you.

The Arlington House and Finance uh met this morning.

We were missing one member.

Um, but we did go over um and approve two resolutions um that were related to the reserve um at Mayfield Apartments.

That was pretty much it.

We had a quick but productive meeting.

Any questions or concerns?

Anything from Ms.

Hunter.

Thank you, ma'am.

All right, let's move on down, Mr.

Buskin.

We got any appointments to boards or commissions tonight?

No, sir, we do not.

Uh am I the only one that's just excited for a real short evening tonight?

You know, I don't want to do it.

I don't want to jinx us, I know, but it it's looking good right now.

Um anything on city council external committee meetings.

We don't have any listed here.

Did anybody attend anything they want to talk about that we didn't that we missed?

I can do today's we uh we had a subcommittee for RTC.

We meet twice a month.

Today was our online one, and uh we know went over the surveys they gave us a survey, only five cities turned it in.

Arlington was one of them, so thanks to Ann and Alicia for helping me fill that out.

Uh it's pretty interesting when you can I'm gonna get some information on all the different transits, um, what other cities are doing, and like the mayor said earlier, we're way ahead of the game.

Uh one of the questions that they asked us is what do we not want to see each city?

And so we didn't know how to answer that, so uh, it's pretty easy to know what we don't want to see, uh, but we were afraid to answer that question without really knowing what they wanted.

So I got a commitment from them, but it's really interesting to see what other cities are doing.

Uh, one is the city of Mansfield.

They're banned land banking right now, and they're working to get uh the DART and uh TRE to go to Manfield.

So that's something I did not know, uh, but that's pretty public information that's been done, so it's pretty interesting, uh, but it's really exciting to see.

But uh of course, Steve Abeck was giving a lot of the mayor uh what is he, the mayor of City Councilman from Carroll Till.

Hilton.

Uh he really you know led the discussion and and Dart, you know, was in there and Dart just I don't think Dart really gets it.

So but it was really interesting.

So I'm proud to be part of that committee.

So thank you for that.

Uming agenda item.

Oh, Miss Odom Wesley.

I would just share with everyone.

Uh, I guess it's been two weeks now.

Uh I joined a delegation from Arlington sponsored by downtown Arlington Corporation.

A trip to Washington, DC area to look at urban areas.

We visited the National Landing, um, downtown Bethesda, Maryland, as well as DC area and George Washington University, looking at urban renewal and what they call urban walk-ups and um density, walkability, all those things that are important in placemaking, and came back with some ideas to look at our downtown and see what we could do to um increase the density, the walkability, all the factors that we saw in Washington, DC.

So now we're going to um look at some maybe recommendations coming from that experience.

Um, and we're going to do a walking tour now of Arlington, because we hadn't done that and take a look at our downtown and see where the opportunities are.

So there's a lot of possibilities coming out of that trip.

Thank you, Mayor.

Perfect.

Thank you for that.

Anyone else?

All right.

Evening agenda items.

Dr.

Odom Wesley.

I have one on my list, 6.18.

Um, and I just wrote the number now, I don't know what it was about.

Yeah, six six point one one eight.

We're looking at um updating our chapter 380.

Um economic development program policy, the business certification.

Um, what are we doing there?

Is is this removing DEI again?

Um actually, I think this is uh adding some items back.

So um, I don't know, a month or two ago as part of the uh adjustments that you've made on various programs.

You all made some edits to the 380 program to make sure that none of the existing providers fell into any of the DEI concerns.

These vendors that are being added back have subsequently changed their own programs and purposes and missions, if you will, so they no longer conflict with the uh standing executive orders or other guidance, so they're being put back in as are as it relates to being uh a vendor uh under the program.

So they were reduced and now they're being added back because they have adjusted to be in alignment with the guidance.

Okay, so there's no problems with 6.19, because um that's a veterans um uh assistance grant program.

So giving uh I don't know.

There's there's no directive uh against um assisting veteran-owned businesses, right?

Not that I'm good with veterans, but we're not good with minority groups.

This is a specifically I guess uh either federally or state authorized um program, and we're participating in that compared to the other, where it's a local program that's trying to be in alignment with state and federal guidance.

So if by definition a state program would be in alignment with their own guidance and we choose to participate, uh we're able to do so.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else on the evening agenda items boxel?

Uh thank you, Mayor.

Um, on item 6.26, um, competitive bid for repairs to 101 center parking garage.

Um, I don't have any particular questions right now, but uh as this moves forward, I would like to know more about what it says structural and waterproofing repairs.

I'd like to get more information about what that is in the future before we um when we get the contract and we get we get a contractor, find out what it's about.

So that's it.

Thank you.

Anything else on evening agenda items perfect issues relative to city and tech stop projects.

Anybody future agenda items all right, thank you.

I'll seeing none the afternoon session of the city council meeting is hereby adjourned, and we will see everybody downstairs at 6 30.

Thank you,

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