Councilmember Hogg, do you mind turning on your camera, please?

Okay, well good afternoon, everybody.

You don't wreck your car as you're driving down the road for this stuff.

So everybody's doing well.

So everybody knows we're rebooting our computer system, so I'm waiting for a purpose.

Thank you.

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

We've just completed our executive session.

We're gonna move on down to three point one.

Ms.

Ann Foss, how are you for the transportation department?

I'm here today with the first annual report on the Safe Streets Arlington Plan, which focuses on improving roadway safety across the city.

So the Safe Streets Arlington plan was adopted in December of 24, and it used a foundation of both in-depth data analysis and extensive stakeholder engagement to develop a vision of safe streets for all roadway users and a goal to eliminate fatalities and serious injury crashes on Arlington roadways by 2050.

The plan uses something called the Safe Systems Approach, which was developed by the U.S.

Department of Transportation.

And it focuses on five key elements of roadway safety safe speeds, safe roads, safe road users, safe vehicles, and post crash care.

Some of these elements are more within the control of the city, such as the way we design roadways for safety, but other elements are really outside of the city's control, such as the design of vehicles.

But together, these elements demonstrate that roadway safety is a shared responsibility across our entire community, and it prioritizes a holistic approach to improving safety, where we dedicate city resources, we also build awareness from our residents, and we partner with community stakeholders to help incorporate safety throughout.

Just a quick recap of the plan itself.

And that's shown in the map on the right hand side of the screen.

This map identifies the roadway segments that have a higher likelihood of a fatal or serious injury crash, and this allows us to prioritize locations where safety improvements can have the biggest impact.

While we do see variation from year to year, overall we have seen an increasing trend in these fatal and serious injury crashes.

This chart focuses in just on the roadway fatalities.

Again, we see variation from year to year.

Unfortunately, I do have an update since these slides were posted last week.

We've had two more fatalities reported.

So the total to date for 2025 is 29 traffic fatalities.

We do hope that this number remains as low as possible as we finish up this year.

And then also to provide a little bit of context, this chart puts the Arlington fatal crash data from 24 into context with several other Texas cities.

So in 24, Arlington had 37 traffic fatalities, which is just over nine per 1,000.

I'm sorry, 100,000 population.

And so you can see how Arlington stacks up compared to some of the other large cities in Texas and some of our peer cities here in the Metroplex.

One component of the plan and of improving roadway safety more generally is enforcement of traffic rules.

This helps to ensure safe speeds and safe road users as part of our safe systems approach.

As council has seen previously, the Arlington Police Department has increased enforcement activities in recent years, as well as significantly in this current year to help improve safety on our roadways.

And so the next part of the presentation, I want to move into a review of the progress that we've made so far on implementing the action items recommended in the plan.

One of the key deliverables from the plan was the creation of a publicly accessible safety dashboard.

There are four different interactive pages on this dashboard.

There's a page that has the high injury network, so you can drill in and see all of those roadway segments that have a higher likelihood of serious crashes.

And there's also an interactive crash map.

This now contains all crash data from 2018 through 2024.

The data is very interactive.

You can click on each dot and get a lot of information about an individual crash.

You can also filter using this map tool and a lot of different characteristics from the crash reports.

So if you wanted to look at all crashes that happened in your neighborhood on Saturdays in dark conditions, it's very easy to click a few buttons and see that data on the map.

Additionally, we have a page that has public comments that we received during the planning process last year.

If you want to drill into some of the feedback that we got from the community.

Some of these are annual items, like this annual report to council, as well as updating the safety dashboard with each new year of crash data.

Some of these are actions that city staff have incorporated into business as usual, such as using the high injury network to prioritize projects and using crash data to direct enforcement activities.

Others are things that are ongoing and being folded into the work that we do, such as education and outreach events and social media posts about roadway safety.

We have also formed an implementation team, which has representatives from 15 different city departments, and this group will be meeting quarterly to guide implementation activities and ensure that safety is considered throughout the organization.

Just to highlight some of these specific activities, city staff have applied for a total of four safety-related grants so far this calendar year, including a safe streets and roads for all implementation grant that would allow us to construct safety improvements at the Mansfield Web and Silo Road Intersection Project.

We did just find out yesterday that we were not selected for the TechStot Transportation Alternative Set Aside program that's listed here, the fourth bullet, but we will continue to target this opportunity in future years.

We have a package of several different proposals that we'll be submitting this week for consideration.

I also want to highlight some of the events and messaging that we're doing to outreach into the community about safety.

City staff have attended several different events to promote safety education, including an Arlington Police Department drive safe event, UTA's Earth Day event in the spring, and a white cane safety walk in downtown Arlington with Arlington ISD students and teachers, as well as the mayor was able to join us, and he's here in that top picture.

The North Central Texas Council of Governments is also funding two roadway safety audits for some of our priority road segments.

One is Collins from Randall Mill to Brown Boulevard, and the other is Cooper from Arkansas to Division.

So City Staff is working with COG staff, TechSdot, and a consultant team to identify safety concerns on these roadway segments and recommend improvements.

And then finally, the Office of Communications is leading efforts to promote roadway safety through social media posts and news stories that come out regularly.

So continuing on with the short-term implementation action items, these are all the ones that are currently in progress that we're working on now.

Um so we are working to ensure that safety recommendations are incorporated into your council priorities and into the comprehensive plan update that's currently underway.

We're also working on gathering additional data that can help us with our safety decisions.

And we're researching speed education campaigns and seeing if that might be a useful tool to deploy in Arlington.

Public Works is leading a series of safe routes to schools projects, starting with sidewalk and other improvements on the roadways around Thornton Elementary, and then that will be continued at with improvements at the Crow Leadership Academy and Webb Elementary.

The city has also been awarded federal funding to work on a citywide safe routes to school master plan and demonstration projects.

And we are working with uh the federal highway administration to get that grant agreement executed as quickly as possible.

To wrap up the short-term implementation items, there are only four that we have not yet begun, but these are top priority for us to dive into at the start of 2026.

So we plan to schedule a meeting with our external stakeholder committee group in early 26 and also begin doing outreach with the school districts in Arlington regarding youth safety education programs.

And then I just want to briefly review the midterm implementation actions.

Um these are designed to be completed again in three to five years, which would be by 2029.

Um we have begun integrating safety language into relevant procurements and also providing enhanced safety training for our city fleet operators.

Some of the additional midterm action items that we'll be working on in the future include updating city plans to align with the roadway safety goals, updating the Safe Streets Arlington plan itself and the high injury network within five years of adoption, and then working with medical providers to share safety data to better understand how post-crash care and other elements are progressing.

A few additional midterm um items that will be tackled in the future include incorporating safety and new development plans, developing a city traffic calming policy, exploring the potential safety benefits from connected and automated vehicle technologies, performing bike safety trainings, and doing safety demonstration projects.

And then finally, there's a review here's a review of the four long-term implementation actions in the plan.

Um these are designed to be completed within seven years or by 2031.

One of the ongoing actions here is using the countermeasures recommended in the plan to identify locations with increased crash potential.

Some of the additional long-term actions include conducting before and after assessments of completed safety projects, considering safety updates to the design criteria manual that we use here, and considering a speed limit setting policy for the city.

So as we move into 26, uh staff continues, we'll continue working on all the short-term implementation activities.

We'll begin work on some of the midterm implementation activities as we strive to make safety improvements across the city and our organization.

That concludes my presentation, and I'm happy to take any questions you may have.

Questions or comments from council.

Councilmember Goante.

Thank you, Anne, for putting effort in uh implementing the plan we approved last year.

Uh, what does the the residents can access the safety dashboard?

What's the website they can they can have access?

What is that?

Um it's on our city website, so if you navigate to the transportation department webpage, there's a link there to it.

All right.

And uh and this data is on the open data portal also.

You can also link to it from the open data.

It doesn't matter on the on the city website or open data.

Um it is on both, but I think it's hosted through the open data.

It doesn't matter where you access okay.

Uh and uh and the implementation actions also uh are on the uh open data portal, right?

Yes, the implementation actions and the tracking progress on all of those as part of the safety dashboard.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Councilmember.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor.

Thank you for this.

And and since listen, I've been myself and some others have been harping on this for a while because I still would probably lean with the most dangerous place to be in Arlington is going through an intersection.

Um it and and it has been you've already seen some impact from this.

Um the best complaint I get is from residents that say they got pulled over for speeding.

And I'm probably not super sympathetic right then because we did not have the amount of patrol.

So and we've seen our number of stops from officers increase.

Have we tracked any data to see what the reduction is from those in this last year?

Because we had been on a trend going down, and then other cities were going up.

Um everyone went down after 2020, 2021, right around there, and everyone's trending, and then all of a sudden, about I think 23 or four, and I may be mixing it up.

Others started trending up, we're down, and now we've started having a trend back up.

Have we seen any data from that increase from more patrol um from our officers?

You're talking about the trends in um enforcement activity.

Yeah, and and also with some of those intersections, because I know they're patrolling, and and you I talked to our beat officers, and they are definitely patrolling high risk areas even more.

Yeah, we have um Chief Dishko here, so I'll defer to him to talk about the these activities.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

How are you?

Kyle Dishko assistant chief.

Uh yes, what we've done is uh you can see from so the traffic unit and the patrol unit are two separate entities.

Both have increased significantly over the last two years.

And uh this year traffic the patrol unit is over 50,000 traffic stops so far this year, which is a significant increase.

And yes, so we track from year to year, we can go back all the way to the 90s and tell you exactly how many traffic stops.

What we're seeing is we're back to our pre-COVID numbers.

We're on pace to have over 100,000 traffic stops, which was what we were making prior to COVID hitting.

And so that has reduced this year.

We last year we had 37 fatal accidents.

We're we're at 20 currently at 29 with six weeks left in the year.

We hope to finish, you know, under what we had last year.

If you look three years ago, we had 52, which was the most our cities ever had.

And so we we are on the fatals, we're having a trend down, and I think that has a direct correlation to the amount of traffic stops and the uh the visibility of our officers, our our officers are strategically placed.

We do run our operations on our major arteries through the city, including the highways, to try to slow people down.

And thank you, Chief.

And I uh it's been a bit since a little bit since I've looked at the data, but I know it was I was picking it looking at real clear, and if you take out pedestrians and motorcycles, our fatalities are definitely very down.

Though the pedestrians are always alarming, and those have increased some and it's been a little bit since I've looked at them, and then motorcycles are major incidences where they come.

So I appreciate that.

And the more patrol we have um from all sides, uh, the better for what we're seeing.

I'd be interested to see that most recent data that we're back up before COVID and you can say COVID, it's also the George Fullett incident um as the chief is explained.

Chief Jones has explained to us before was a major driver of that, which totally makes sense and is logical for what's happening.

So thank you for that, Chief.

That that's perfect.

Yeah, if you would like us to, we can provide you some more expanded numbers of where we were pre-COVID to where we are now and kind of show you our trend line up and down.

I think most of my colleagues will say it's probably one of the number one things we hear from residents is the amount of people running red lights.

So I think it's uh the more emphasis we have on this better.

And let me ask you one more question.

Um and I see Keith Brooks back there.

When we're looking, and I know we've had some discussions, and as his bonds come up, we're talking about expanding some few roads or lanes.

Does that go through this safe streets initiative for review before we get to that stage of those?

Because sometimes expanding lanes, it helps traffic, but it can increase danger on that.

Right.

So yes, we have folded the recommendations from the the Safe Streets Arlington plan into those roadway design or rebuild um activities.

So um me and my team are meeting with Keith and his team and looking at safety improvements that we can make as part of those larger projects.

Perfect.

That's what I want to know.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for all your work.

This is maybe one of the most important initiatives we have because it uh it affects every single resident in Arlington and visitors um in Arlington.

So we appreciate it.

Certainly.

And I just want to make note of one particular slide you had in here, and that was on slide 18 where you did the Pierce City comparisons showing the number of fatal crashes per 100,000 population.

And when you look at that slide as a whole, Arlington's sitting pretty good.

But when you add in the fact that we bring over 16 million people to this city every year that are coming and going out of our entertainment district, and that we're increasing that pedestrian traffic tremendously out there.

I think that skews Arlington statistics substantially different than what you typically see per 100,000 people in that population.

So I think that's a tremendous credit to the Transportation Department, Public Works, and the police.

And I appreciate the report.

More importantly, I appreciate what y'all are doing.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, Raul, I'm sorry.

Thank you, uh Mayor for that insight.

That's I'm glad you mentioned that.

Um, you know, along with what Councilman Hawks said, running red lights is just notorious.

I go up and down Cooper, and I I know I'm just I want people to hear that we are talking about it because it's amazing.

And I'm I'm thankful for public works for having the lights uh off because when it turns yellow or red and the other one doesn't turn green right away, because if you did, I mean it's amazing how many times it'll be two cars that will run the red.

I mean, right behind each other.

It's just it's amazing.

So uh I just want people to know that we are looking at that.

It's it's uh the officers are doing a better job.

Uh we can always do better, but it it's it's critical, and you know, knowing how many people go through the city, I I think it's a great job.

So thank you to public works, thank you to APD, and thank you to Ann.

So appreciate it.

Thanks, sir.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

Thank you, and I appreciate you.

We're gonna move on down the 3.2 Spencer Slider.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

Ethan Close, City Treasurer.

Wanted to bring to you, we have three projects that have come up earlier than our normal CIP cycle.

So we wanted to bring an initial FY26 capital plan uh project planned for you.

Um, the first is a water PFAS or or permanent um chemicals migration project.

The 7.2 million has actually already been awarded to the city from the federal government.

Uh, and they're wanting to start putting this uh project underway.

So we're needing to get authorization to do that.

Um, another is the public safety training facility.

Uh, there is another land purchase that we're looking at.

And the third is fire vehicles.

We know we are going to be spending in FY26, but there is uh an expectation that prices are going to rise before the end of the year.

So we were hoping to get those in before that time.

Um, we have a little bit more detail from the water department about the migration.

And you can see the proposed schedule.

Again, this is for authorization for Capital Project with the beginning of a preliminary design and a final design.

We'll be using that 7.2 million that we've already gotten as a settlement.

Um we have no idea what construction cost is going to be, and that will be out several years from now.

Uh, we do have Alx Whiteway here from water if you have questions specifically about that project from the public safety side.

We have already purchased three parcels of 2.4 million dollars.

We're looking to purchase another parcel of almost 21 acres at around 1.2 million dollars.

This was part of an overall uh bond elected project back in 2025 for a total of 5.7, which included some design.

So this is just a continuation of that uh project.

Um it is not meaning that we're going to start construction anytime soon.

That is years and years in the making, and as well as on uh following bond elections.

Um, but this is assemblage of the land.

Uh the fire vehicles we purchased just a couple of months ago, the FY25.

We purchased three engines, a ladder, an R for brush.

The lead time on these are 18 months to over two years.

Um again, we're hoping to do an FY26.

We have scheduled two engines and a ladder.

We're hoping if if y'all approve this, we'll get those ordered before the year end so that we don't see a price increase on those.

Here is the land assemblage where we've already done these three parcels.

And we're hoping to do this bottom one in the yellow.

With that, the next steps is we'd actually bring the CIP to you on the December 9th with reimbursement resolutions.

And then we would actually have our normal capital budget cycle in February, March time frame.

We would see what our property tax values are from TAD in May, and then we'll go to the rating agency presentation and sell the bonds in our normal cycle of July.

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

Any questions from counselor for Ethan?

Perfect.

Thank you, sir.

Absolutely.

We'll plan on bringing that to you on December 9th.

Okay.

Are you gonna do 3.3 as well?

I am.

All right.

Which is always the favorite topic.

Uh TAD board appointments and nominations.

So where we currently stand in this is we've gotten uh we we had our nominations for all the different entities.

The um large entities are voting right now.

They are required to vote by their second um meeting after they received their ballots, which was October 30th.

So a number of them have already voted.

Uh we're still waiting on uh a number of them, but your vote is due by December 9th.

Um by sorry, by December 15th.

So we will do that vote on December 9th.

Wanted to show you the current vote totals of what has already happened.

Um so you can see, and I've placed this uh as a handout for you so that you have a takeaway as well on paper.

So we have uh 802 votes already cast, so that's roughly 40 percent.

You can see the distribution and who voted for those, but it so that's roughly 40 percent of the vote total.

What's important to note is that no one at this time has received enough votes, nor has anyone been eliminated from this.

It is very capable that any of these four still have plenty of time for votes to come in from all of the remaining entities.

You can see we are still the fourth largest at this point who is not yet voted.

We're anticipating by the uh 1st of December that we'll have the results from Arlington ISD, from the college district, and from Keller ISD, so that when you're making your votes on December 9th, you'll already know where those votes stand.

Um, but at this point, the smallest number of votes that any of these people would need is still roughly over 600 votes.

So I also wanted to bring up to you if you've seen in the news that another um board member Alan Blaylock has resigned.

That is effective immediately.

He was at the last TAD board meeting, that was his last TAD board meeting.

He is not a part of this process of who is being uh elected.

This is a completely separate process.

Since it is a resignation, uh the replacement, the way it works is that you as an entity, all the different entities have the ability to nominate up to one person.

All of those will be due by December 26th.

Um, and then you do not vote.

That the board itself will then appoint one person out of all the nominated people from the entities.

So, and they will do that sometime in January.

So, next steps are for the two seats that currently we're hoping to have your votes on December 9th.

And then, depending upon how and what you want to do, we can either take nominations on December 9th or on December 16th if you want to nominate anyone at all.

And with that, I'm here to answer any questions.

Councilmember Pham.

Uh Ethan, uh, can you uh go back to that slide show the current vote vote uh totals?

Yes.

Okay, yeah, I would like to share this with uh most of my colleagues here because uh the past two years, you know, we appointed people that uh I know we don't have enough vote, but they uh they did the uh text, they do the appraisal for two years.

And uh these current years, uh fiscal year 26, we have 26 million dollar shortfall.

And uh thanks to our city management, uh Mr.

Trey Yeah, can we work real hard and make some tough decisions we're able to balance our budget?

So all I'm asking my colleagues is don't look at these lists and tell me that these person got no chance because it's not like some of us around here we're leaving popularity contests, you know, oh at least put so many vote we've got to give.

But some of the people on here, I questioned about their character, their integrity.

I'm the man with integrity integrity and character.

So when I want to somebody vote, I check their character, their integrity, make sure I got the right people in there, do what's right.

And I know that there are uh Miss Sayed in here.

Every year she put a name in, but nobody give her a chance.

I would like my colleagues, you know, give her most of the vote.

You know, everybody else can get one vote.

So that way we show the TAD board that hey, we got somebody can come up there and tell their colleagues in the TED board director that hey, we need to do this once a year.

Look what you done to AISD and look what you've done to um uh Kesselberry School, look what you've done to City Arlington.

And uh that's that's what the whole decision to do the bud this year and explain to our constituents.

So that's why don't look at this number, do what's right on December 9.

Don't sit there and then just do all because this person is only vote, okay?

Do some background.

Some of these people in the tab board could don't read the tax law.

And some of them got elected, never owned a home, still live with the parents and sit here and regulate my taxes.

You know, just like me, you never go to law school, but the law school AM law school hired me to be professor of law.

You see what I'm saying?

So that that's that's what I want to explain to all my colleagues.

I'm upset because what the TAD board of director done to the seat of Arlington in fiscal year 26, and I'm still upset.

So I'm gonna ask my colleagues, do your homework, talk to these people, ask people do you believe in one year pleaser, or you do every two, three years?

And look what happened to us.

But lucky that uh we're able to manage to balance our budget.

That's all I have, Mr.

Mayor.

Thank you, Ethan.

Any other comments or statements from council.

Okay.

When when are we going to see some of these other votes roll in, Ethan?

I will send a memo out uh roughly December 1st.

So we should have AISDs, Tarrant County College, and Keller ISDs by then, and some of the other smaller ones may have voted at that time as well.

Um, this was as of this morning.

I just checked, and there's actually another um 21 votes that have come in since this morning uh from two of the smaller entities.

I believe it was ASL ISD, and I can't remember uh can't remember the other one, but so people are uh voting as they so choose.

Some will wait until the last minute, others will uh will vote early.

So okay.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

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

Council, y'all have all had an opportunity to look at these.

We'll take them one at a time, see if you have any discussions.

It looks like we only have one that we're dealing with here.

Are there any questions for Lindsay Mitchell on the Anthem Public Improvement District, the PID petition?

Any questions for Lindsay on that?

You lucked out.

All right, let's move on down to 4.2.

Ms.

Nikki Hunter.

Uh finance and audit, please.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, this morning we did meet for the finance and audit committee.

Um, we did an overview of the annual FY25 uh audit with Forvis.

Um we went ahead and outlined this year's audit scope, responsibilities, and timeline.

Um, the internal audit, which we'll be assessing Forvis um and conducting the annual audit and testing.

So basically, the major timeline is in August of 2025.

We did the audit kickoff between Forest and Finance.

Um August to September of 2025, we conducted an audit planning and risk assessment.

Um, right now, November until January of 2026, we'll be conducting single audit testing, and then in January to March of 2026, we'll be doing the final field work, which will be completed.

So there's a um completion date, expectation of early March, um, which is targeted for insurance of the final audit report.

That's pretty much it.

Does any committee members have anything to add or questions?

Questions or comments for council member Hunter.

Okay, thank you, ma'am.

I appreciate that.

I'm assuming municipal policy was unable to meet today, or did y'all meet?

Did not meet.

Thank you.

Uh Mr.

Buskin, any appointments to boards or commissions this evening?

No, sir, no appointments this evening.

Thank you, sir.

City Council External Committee meetings and training reports, Mr.

Gonzalez, RTC, please.

Thank you, Mayor.

I attended the RTC or the mayor and I attended the RTC meeting on Thursday, November 13th.

The RTC approved several items, which included funding the FIFA World Cup operational elements, including translation services for 911 call centers in rural portions of the region and the TRE plant train sets.

Also approved a regional traffic signal improvement funding program and the DFW air quality improvement transportation elements.

RTC had a uh had a lengthy discussion on high-speed rail uh topics related topics resulting in a vote to move forward with the required federal railroad administration quarter ID and federal transit uh administration environmental review process.

Um it was it was it was discussed quite a bit and the vote was 26 to 9.

Um RTC also voted to uh to table further discussion of the McKinney passenger rail corridor study until more is known about the potential changes to Dart City members um cities.

So um after that meeting we had or before that meeting we had the transit um vision subcommittee, uh the submit subcommittee uh discussed several items, including going over the visionary survey sub um results.

Uh we then worked on developing a vision statement for the subcommittee.

Uh they presented density roadway and transit future indicators that will be used in developing the new transit service boundary for 2025.

Uh we also discussed future upcoming elections in May uh 2026 for Plano Farmers Branch Irving, Highland Park, and other cities that are thinking about leaving Dart.

Um it was agreed that the subcommittee should not be engaging with cities uh to assist them in this process, so we're staying out of it.

Uh the next transit subcommittee is scheduled for November 20th.

Since the RTC meeting, the RTC members have been made aware of an agenda item that is being released uh that was released last Friday for the COG executive board meeting this Thursday, November 20th.

The agenda item is an executive session item regarding the director of transportation, Michael Morris reports of that Todd Little Executive Director of Cog is asking for the removal of Michael Morris.

So yeah, I've been involved in the discussions with Michael Morris.

I've spoken to Councilmember Hogg and Councilmember Gonzalez and Trey Elverton about this.

Um the new executive director of uh North Central Texas Council of Governments apparently is looking to at some point in the future to remove Michael Morris as an MPO and as a part of COG.

Michael Morris, I've spoken with, does not wish to be removed.

Um he has been a vital part of what goes on throughout North Texas, not just Darlington, but all of North Texas for decades and decades.

Um my discussions have included county judges, Fort Worth's mayor, Grand Prairies Mayor, Mansfield's mayor, the head of our FIFA committee and executive director of the Dallas Sport Authority, Monica Paul, all of whom are on the same page that we need to do everything in our power to convince the executive board that Michael Morris needs to stay, period.

Uh there is nobody more valuable from a transportation perspective than Michael Morris.

It's not to say that everybody's not replaceable, but he brings immense value with him and what he offers to North Texas.

And I'm I'll be candid.

I'm concerned about any attempts to remove him and where those attempts are coming from and how that's happening.

And I'm not the only one concerned.

Uh the cities that I've spoken with also have tremendous concerns.

So RTC has put together a letter that's going to be given to the executive director of COG advising against such removal because we're very dependent upon them.

I don't know, Lisa or or Anne.

Y'all have dealt with Michael for years and years.

Do you have anything to add about what we need to know about Michael?

No.

Yes.

I think we said it.

Um, so I'm I'm concerned.

I'll be candid.

It bothers me that someone who's been in that office for a few months is looking to remove somebody for this, and I'm not fully understanding the reasons why.

And that's problematic for me.

Um so council member hogg, you're welcome.

You you know more of the intricacies than most of us.

And you're welcome to add whatever you feel is appropriate.

And I know you're on the executive board, and there's certain things you're not doing.

I'm gonna be very careful about what I say.

I I will just say uh we've worked extensively with Mr.

Morris, and uh we have a thorough discussion plan tomorrow um to understand some reasoning, some how and uh future of what happens on that.

So uh I'll take that.

Um I'm also uh a believer is as we have, you know, let's hear the reasons, but also from a governance versus management standpoint.

Um we have to walk that fine line of where it is.

So I look forward to hearing and having a thorough discussion, and uh I'm not gonna say anything more than that.

Um I would just argue I I think one of the important things here is to have an understanding of what direction Arlington wants to be.

That's my personal opinion about Michael Morris and his contributions.

I'm not trying to speak on y'all's behalf, but I'm saying that I am concerned when someone is wanting to remove someone of such value from what's going on in North Texas.

And um, I wouldn't love to hear what any of y'all have to say, Councilmember Gonzalez.

Thank you, Mayor.

Yeah, I find that also very problematic because I mean he he's been a staple.

Um if you ever get to watch the RTC meetings, it's quite contentious.

And there are some bullies in that room, and you need somebody in there that knows what they're doing and has the ability to manage and control the meeting, uh, even though he's not the chair, but he, you know, he gets he gets attacked quite a bit in those meetings, uh, which is I I think it is a shame.

And some of the things that are going on in DFW are uh, you know, he's trying to resolve and get done.

Um, I don't, you know, there's uh all the members from RTC have received an email asking, like the mayor said, if we want to be on this letter, I have put my name on that letter along with many, many others.

And I think it's important that we, you know, um that we do what's right.

Um, especially right now with FIFA and everything coming in.

I mean, a change in in what is happening, I think it's a bad timing.

I understand, you know, from the executive board with the new person coming in, they have the right to use things, but I think with everything that's happening, I hope they really look at uh what this is all about, and it's not just somebody or something or some group wanting to get rid of this guy and bring the person in because uh that's not what we need.

We need somebody that can represent all of us.

So council member Peel.

Yeah, you know, I was uh president of COG and uh served on the board for many years as a council member, and I can say that Michael is probably the most skilled and talented transportation expert in North Texas.

I don't think there's anybody um better.

I also think that he has very high emotional intelligence, and that goes to what Raoul was saying.

He's good at corralling the cats, right?

Hurting the cats.

And we have lots of personalities, a lot of disparate interests in North Texas, and he's able to build a consensus somehow, all right, and move us forward in that regard.

And y'all recall when he spoke at our council retreat last week.

I mentioned that just a few days before, Text Otta had released a plan uh saying that more mass transit is necessary for the Arlington economic miracle, jobs growth, economic growth to continue.

And we even there was even a state senator that spoke in support of it.

Um, you know, Arlington is never going to participate in Trinity River Metro or Dart at a cent or half cent level.

Okay.

We're gonna participate at some other level, but the door has been shut to us because quite frankly, members of those entities have been so angry at us for not making the commitment that they deem they must make and that they have made for many years, and that many of them are starting to realize might have made an error, Plano Addison, other country, other cities.

Uh, that we've never been able to have a seat at the table when it came to regional transportation discussions.

Uh alluding to what uh Mayor Ross was talking about, having Arlington participate in regional transit discussions has been something that Michael has worked very hard to ensure occurs.

And you know, to a certain extent, we're being blamed by legacy transit, which is dying in my opinion, for being one of the first people to start using ride share, which they are all using now and wanting more of.

And having somebody who can get past those hard feelings that these other cities and transit agencies have for us because we innovated and went a different direction, that I would argue is more fiscally responsible with the taxpayer dollars and more scalable.

Uh having Michael in that position has been critical to ensuring Arlington plays a role in regional transit going forward into the future.

Now, I think that eventually, and I know I've talked to some of y'all about this, eventually the Texas legislature is going to have to step in and create a regional transit authority.

You know, merge Trinity Metro, merge Dart, merge all the cities and just put us all into one where everybody can participate at a lower financial level, but that we're all coordinated.

As we look towards that future, which has to happen for Dallas Fort Worth not to choke on its own growth.

Michael Morris's guidance during this critical time is extremely important.

So if it sounds like I'm saying Michael should stay at COG for just Arlington's own selfish reasons, it's more than that.

Somebody who has an understanding of the federal grant dollars that come into this area, has the relationships in Washington, DC to ensure those continue to come.

Someone who understands how to stand up to bullies when they're bullies and make the trains run on time to use a cliche, it might be appropriate.

Um, I'm open to hearing what the new executive director over at COG, what his plan is and what his purpose is behind this.

But I'm also concerned that he comes from Dallas from Ellis County, where nobody in Ellis County likes high speed rail because it would take land between here and Houston, which I think high speed rail is a critical to the future of Arlington, its residents, and the residents of North Texas.

And I am worried quite candidly, that he's trying to set up a situation to sabotage high speed rail, of which Michael Morris has been a shepherd of for a long time.

And in that, and in doing so, hurt Arlington and the people of Arlington.

And that really concerns me.

So I ask uh Bowie that they let you come back next time, whether it's an executive session or not.

I want to hear what what he has to say.

You know, I'm not going to prejudge him.

I have my concerns, but I'd love to hear his side of the story.

Because I also think he's a good guy too.

I like him.

Okay, I like Todd Little.

He's a good guy.

But we all the best among us, including myself, make mistakes sometimes.

And I do need to hear what he's thinking and what his plans for the organization and regional transit in the future are if we proceed down the path he apparently wants, which is to separate Michael Morris from Cog.

And I know I talked a lot, sorry about that, used all my words today.

And uh I'm gonna shut up now.

I would just tell everyone be careful that we're we're taking one side.

We haven't heard it, and so I'm always gonna sit there and listen, let's listen to both sides, and I hear it.

I think we all have to, but we're going on some rumors, some one side of this, so let's hear what is going on.

Um the plan, and I think we have to sometimes let's go through the process and figure it out.

But I hear all the feedback, and um, I represent this council on that cog, not myself on that.

So that's where I will be very focused on how I represent.

And I think that's a good point.

Um, however, the process is flawed when we get information like we've gotten about the attempts to remove Michael over the last several months.

Um, and I've gotten that from Michael and and how he's been handled by the executive director.

So I'm very interested in hearing from the executive director and uh from my perspective.

You're you're welcome on behalf of me to invite him to come talk to us about this.

That I would love to have a discussion with him because I don't know the guy from the Man in the Moon.

Uh he may be the nicest thing since sliced bread, but I I question the process on how this is being approached, and I question the decision-making capabilities of the leadership there when you look at the things that Michael Morris has done and is capable of doing is in the process of doing to make a decision to try to remove him now.

Um so I I agree we need to hear both sides, but unfortunately, the way this process is played out has been problematic in and of itself.

Anything else on RTC, Raul?

Um can we move on to Texas?

Okay.

Uh Texas Municipal League annual conference.

Uh report on that.

I'm just gonna say that uh it was a P Day conference that was really good at a bunch of seven different sessions.

Uh you are saw the city.

The city of Arlington was presented the award.

Um the municipal excellent award for the taste project.

So it was nice to to be on stage with my fellow um uh members and accept that on behalf of the city of Arlington.

Uh so there was a lot of good um um classes.

I think I I talked about effective engaging uh your community about the Texas legisl legislature.

I think that's something we really need to look at.

Uh but I strongly suggest, you know, next time that uh if you all uh have an attention uh have a chance to go, I really find these sessions very informational, and you learn a lot from talking to other city council members, especially in Texas, because when you go to NLC, you've got them from all over the country, and you've got you know, Texas is Texas, and so it's important that you you you know you go to this and meet the people and everything else.

And this year it was in Fort Worth.

Uh so it was that long, tiring day for me, so I did not go to any of the events uh because I just wanted to get home and get to my bed.

So but it was good, and uh I want to thank the uh citizen for allowing me to to do that and and learn on behalf of the city.

Thank you.

Mayor, I'll add a couple things.

I attended also.

It is uh is exactly as Mr.

Gonzalez says, you have to be very particular about which sessions you go to because sometimes um the average city in Texas is small.

Um and so make sure we're but watching uh the city island, the city of uh Louisville present on what they're doing on some of their uh through the parks and rec through some uh I can't remember what they officially called it, the uh the some tree items they're working on, and so you start seeing that.

There was one from Allen that talked about uh, you know, sometimes we think these problems are only ours, and you quickly find out other cities are facing many of the same challenges.

Um I talked to council members that talked about traffic safety constantly.

Um Alan talks at the city of Allen in their growth, and everyone thinks, oh, just nice high-end houses.

Well, they're having a major problem with hemp stores and THC stores going in across there, and so they talked about and luckily I think we're taking some of those challenges.

Um, and it seems like they've taken some of the ideas from us um to be able to get to those.

So um, as Mr.

Gonzalez said, the biggest value I think there is connecting with our colleagues from other cities so that um we don't always have to recreate the wheel.

Um, sometimes other cities have really good ideas.

It always makes staff worried when we come back with ideas.

Um, but that is part of what we do.

So I think it's worthwhile.

The only thing bad about Fort Worth, um, and it's good.

We didn't spend any money on hotels or things, but it also makes going back and forth a little a little more difficult, and you don't have as much time with uh colleagues for learning.

You know, this isn't part of um Mayor.

Just one more go ahead.

I I'm sorry.

Um, one interesting one, and I know Trey would like this, and and Mr.

Hog and I have talked about governance.

Well, we were on school board, we were trained on what our role was and where we should be doing and what we should be asking not getting into the weeds, and that's one of the ones they had is whose role is it anyway.

They discussed the laws, rules, and best practices for dividing up the work between the mayor, city council, city managers, and city employees.

So basically it was showing governance and staying in your lane.

Uh they had a game that they had a mayor and three city council members up there, and they brought up questions.

Who's in charge of this?

And it was really amazing how many of them did not get those questions right, including the new mayor who got every question wrong.

He didn't know whose job it was.

He thought it was his job and everything he did.

So it was very interesting.

But I I I wasn't even there, all right.

It wasn't you, no.

But but it but it I did put on my on my survey that they need to do more of that governance because it really would help some of these cities.

So thank you again.

Sorry.

No, that's okay.

You know, Mr.

Uh Councilmember Hogg made me think of this when he talked about the relationships.

I'm not gonna say where or when anything, but we're gonna be hosting about 20 mayors and their spouses from North Texas here in Arlington on Thursday, with no particular agenda other than to develop those relationships, and I think that's critically important to spend time with fellow mayors to talk about common interest and issues that we're struggling with.

Evening agenda items.

Councilmember Boxell.

Thank you.

Um I would like to uh the staff to look into an increase in uh APD bicycle patrols downtown, especially or future agenda items.

This is future agenda.

Okay, we're on evening agenda items.

Okay, sorry.

That's okay.

But I'm gonna come back to you, I promise.

Anything else on evening agenda items?

Um Mr.

Buskin, I'm gonna take one thing out of order this evening so you're aware I'm gonna move 12.1 up in the order and ahead of 11.1 and I'll be moving on eleven point one to continue that until December 5th.

Council can discuss that if they choose so more detail at that time, and we'll explain why during the evening session.

Um just so you're aware.

Anything else on evening agenda items?

Uh issues relative to city or tech stop projects.

Yay.

Um okay.

I would like to s uh to look into an increase in APD bicycle patrols downtown, particularly during public events like Levitt events or farmers market.

Um this presence is well received and it appears more friendly and peer-to-peer for when people are on foot than in patrolling in cars.

And I think it gives opportunities for the public and more public and APD interaction, which furthers the objectives of community-based policing.

So I'd really like to see an increase there.

Okay, anybody else on a future agenda item?

All right, with that, it is a little bit after five.

We're gonna go ahead and adjourn the afternoon session of the Arlington City Council meeting, and we'll see everybody downstairs at 6.30.