Son su especialidad.

También como el helado, las paletas.

También yo fui a Mexico enseñarme a hacerlo.

Este tomé unos cursos allá.

Para pues para poder traer más el sabor mexicano mexicano.

Y si no quiere romper la dieta, también hay opciones para usted.

Si quieres algo saludable.

Ah, también tenemos los licuados verdes que llevan este frutas y vegetales.

Y pues también pensando in this type of personas también por eso tenemos el ceviche.

Ya es como quiera el cliente.

O sea, como que aquí vas a encontrar una variedad bien grande como para todos los gustos.

Además, puede ordenar elotes preparados, tortas cubanas, milanesas, chicken nuggets, platano frito y muchas cosas más.

No es solo paletas andas.

No tenemos una variedad bien amplia para toda la gente que quiera visitarnos.

Para Rosa y su equipo de trabajo, lo primordial es que el cliente salga de la paletería satisfecho para que regrese por otro antojito mexicano.

Gracias a la comunidad.

Gracias a toda la gente.

Es porque nosotros estamos aquí.

And drywall people and building these giant laundry, especially in Texas, because it's so much work.

Scott got some.

Okay.

Ready to welcome the world for the FIFA World Cup twenty twenty six, and that means making our city look its best.

I'm Jay Warren, and in this episode of Arlington Welcomes the World, we're talking beautification and sustainability.

The work happening right now to prepare our parks, streets, and public spaces.

Here from City Leaders, and a special guest from the North Texas FIFA World Cup Committee about how Arlington is getting ready for the global spotlight.

And we appreciate you guys being here with us to talk a little bit about beautification here in the city.

This is an important topic for our residents year-round.

An important topic now is we've got a World Cup for our visitors also to see how Arlington looks and how we can really dress up the city.

I know you guys have been working on that quite a bit.

Give us the broad picture.

We'll break down some of these kind of smaller things, but the broad picture of what the Parks Department's been doing as we prepare for the World Cup.

We actually started a couple years ago when we first heard that we're gonna host the World Cup.

And so it's a matter of going through all our um parks and making sure that we do light audits.

We look at all our sustainability for our planning plant material, um, taking a mainly in effect, Robert Cluck and Richard Green Linear Park because they're right there in between the two stadiums, and making that to-do list of what we need to do over the next couple of years to really make this place shine for our visitors.

Yeah, so Gary, what specifically Michael mentioned the linear parks that we have out of the airtainment district.

So specifically, what what have you all done in that area to improve it?

Well, uh, we looked at improving our fencing, and we we moved some old fencing in there.

We improved our mowing and tree maintenance in that area.

I mean, things we do every day, but with just a little bit more of a spit shine to hey, the world's coming, companies coming, we need to be ready.

Um, and then we even put in a sculpture la earlier this year to kind of highlight what's going on in our community and and celebrate.

So, what kind of like and tree initiatives, tree plannings or floral initiatives, other things will we see between now and the start of the World Cup in what about six weeks?

Yeah, on March 27th, we're working with the World Cup.

They're gonna be donating trees to our community as that legacy project, one of many that we're doing in our park system.

Uh, we'll have trees planted in Robert Cluck Linear Park on the west side of Johnson Creek.

Uh, we'll be celebrating that.

Volunteers will be coming down at 11:30 on the 27th to plant the trees and I can use it for okay.

We'll go ahead and call the afternoon session back to order.

Uh we're gonna move on down to three point one and ask Chief Al Jones to come on up and talk to us about the annual use of force reports.

Good afternoon, Mayor Council.

I'm Al Jones, Chief of Police.

Uh today I'm here to uh present the department's annual use of force report for 2025.

Uh to guide our discussion today, uh we'll discuss our participation with the FBI use of force collection project, uh, the existing use of force policy, our documentation and review process for all applications of force, and I'll provide some highlights and key analysis of the annual uh use of force report for 2025.

Since uh 200 uh 15, the FBI has been collecting national level statistics on use of force.

Uh participation in this project is voluntary in Arlington.

We have supported this initiative through our regular reporting.

Reportable incidents to the FBI must result in death or serious injury or serious bodily injury of a person, or discharge of firearm by law enforcement officers at or in the direction of a person.

And 2025, we reported one incident to the FBI which met this these criteria.

Um I don't know if you recall council back in January 10th, 2025.

Our officers responded to the uh business off of West Pioneer Parkway where two subjects had attempted to commit an aggravated robbery at the location.

Uh, when our officer set up the location, one of the gentlemen ran out the back door.

And as our officers were setting up the perimeter, the second guy came out and he actually discharged his firearm at our officers.

Our officers returned flyer, but luckily no one was uh hit struck that day.

Um the subject made his way back into the location, and uh as a result, he actually surrendered and he complied, and that was the positive outcome of that incident.

Uh Arlington uh PD uh exceeds the FBI collection standards.

Uh we collect more comprehensive use of force information for train analysis for training listed on this slide.

As use of force report is required when an officer takes action that results in or alleged to have resulted in injury or death of another person.

As you can see on this slide, there's this robust criteria about uh reportable incidents of force, which we codify in our policy.

It's consistent with industry standards and best practices.

Our use of force policy is governed by the application of force in response to the resistance level exhibited by the suspect.

Uh de-escalation, after care, and duty to intervene.

Preserving of life is sanctity, uh preserving of sanctary life and human rights is the forefront of our standard and is reflected in our policy.

Our policy also defines the reporting requirements and the multi-level supervisory review process.

Operational enhancements.

We're always looking for ways to do things safer and better here in Arlington.

In 2022, the department uh began tracking residency information on subjects who had force used against them to provide better data where uh they're living in our whether they're uh residents of Arlington, visitors, or unhoused.

In 2023, uh we began the deployment of the 40 millimeter uh less lethal launching system, which provided patrol operations as a less lethal option.

And in 2024, we improved training by um by the proper utilization of body shields, uh instructing our officers on ways to carry and deploy the uh body shields.

Uh in 2025, and thanks to council, uh, we were able to upgrade our uh upgrade to taser 10, which gives officers a more effective and versatile less lethal option by providing more accurately, uh extended our range, and uh for a greater reliability.

Uh this provided uh uh this reliability uh is much better than the other uh um weapon we were carrying.

So uh our use of force continuum to provide a fame framework and visual representation to officers, which uh consider reasonable force options available to them.

The totality of circumstance model allows for reference points when comparing the subject's level of resistance to available options to the officers.

It considers the severity of the incident, the immediacy of the threat, the level of resistance, or evading action of the subject.

Now the red box highlights the level of force applied by an officer, which requires us to complete a use of force report.

Each of the use of force incidents has a documented review process.

It's reviewed all the way up to the level of deputy chief to ensure there is no deviation from the policy during the use of force incident, and that officers in compliant with training, best practices, and what is required by law.

This information is included.

The information that is documented is the reason for the contact, the subject's resistance and the subject and his resistance level, witnesses, all employees involved, the type of force used, injury resulting from the application of force, and the subject's disposition.

Our use of force tactics unit reviews each use of force report, and for a trend analysis, training adjustments, and any process improvement that may need it that may be needed.

In 2025, officers worked nearly 253,000 calls for service, which is about a 4.5% increase from the previous year.

Now, out of those 400 out of those 253,000 calls for service, our officers used force on 1,094 incidents, which involved 1,594 subjects, and five of those subjects were animals.

When you compared it to 2024, this translates to a 3.9 use of force incidents for every thousand calls for service.

This shows that in 2025, we handled nearly 13,000 more calls for service while experiencing a significant decrease in use of force incidents.

The overall in about 99.99.6% of all calls, no force was used.

As we evaluate the application of force, it is important to analyze the volume of cause types wherein force was used.

Were initiated by officers investigating possible crimes.

In 2025, only 97 out of 1,000 and 3,000 traffic stops resulted in force.

That's less than a 10 tenth of percent.

This side also illustrates the majority of the calls, which is 82% involving use of force incidents were initiated by our residents calling 911 for help or officers investigating some type of criminal activity.

As previously on the other slide, Arlington PD worked over 13,000 additional calls for service in 2025.

Despite the increase in community contacts, the use of force decreased by 11%.

I would like to highlight the efforts of increased public safety on the roads.

The charts is significant as it shows that our officers are responding to calls which are violent in nature.

Calls solely related on behavioral health subjects in crisis comprised of 5.2%.

Force applications for subjects in our jail comprise of less than 1%.

We uh evaluated the compliance level by race and compared it to the force application by race.

In 2025, the most frequent level of resistance experienced by our officers was active resistant, which was 47%.

Most frequent level of resistance or failure to uncomply by race was black, followed by Hispanics, followed by white.

And response to resistance.

Again, this is which individual failed to comply.

The incident of force was applied.

We are more frequently applied to blacks, followed by Hispanics, followed by whites.

And I just want you to keep in mind 47% of our use of force incidents.

If we go back to slide seven in that red box, we were talking about active resistance, and that's only hands-on or OC spray.

So in 47% of the time, our officers using hands-on to use force to take the person in custody.

This analysis also highlights our ongoing need for open conversation within our community about use of force, about response to resistance, and to underscore the importance of further community engagement with our communities.

And comparing 2025 to the previous year, there was a 10.5% decrease in the total number of individuals against a whom force was used.

Even with the increase of encounter, we saw a total uh decrease between Hispanics, blacks, and Hispanics, we saw a 20% decrease in use of force.

In 2025, 64% of the individuals whom force was supplied were Arlington residents.

In contrast, 25 were not Arlington residents and approximately 8% were unhoused.

To put this slide into more of context, it's important to note that out of 400,000 residents and a million plus visitors, less than 1600 uh 1,600 were involved in use of force incidents with our officers.

Our community overly well uh overwhelmingly support and respect our officers, understand the work that I'm in and when we do, and we really do appreciate them for that.

Uh starting in 2024, uh, we partner up with UTA Criminal Criminal Justice Department to help us evaluate our use of force and application data.

I'd like to introduce Dr.

Jaya Davis, professor and graduate program director of criminology and criminal justice for UTA.

Dr.

Davis.

Thank you, Chief Jones, and good to be here with you again this year.

Um, as Chief Jones says, we have been partnering for the last few years in an effort for many initiatives across the city, but certainly to support APD's collection analysis and reporting of use of force data.

This in this collaboration, our role really is to review and analyze the data that APD already collects in order to help identify opportunities for additional analysis and reporting that can enhance transparency around officer use of force.

We also have examined data from previous years to identify patterns that relate to APD's continued adherence to its use of force continuum, as uh Chief Jones already um uh showed.

So, as part of this work, we reviewed use of force data for the current reporting year, met with department representatives to discuss the data that has already been presented today, and conducted an independent review of the information.

There are a few trends that I think are particularly noteworthy for the city to consider.

Um, as Chief Jones has pointed out, calls for service have increased substantially over the past five years.

Specifically, they've risen about 17.5 percent, and most of that has occurred actually in the last three years.

From 21 through 24, use of force incidents represented at or below one half of 1% of all calls for service.

In the year that we're talking about today, 2025, that portion returned to approximately the same level that we saw in 2021, about 0.43% of calls.

Second, when we examine use of force by race and gender, we focus on categories that have at least 100 incidents per year in order to ensure stable comparisons.

While the total number of incidents increased during the period reviewed, the during all the period reviewed 21 to 25, the patterns change when those incidents are examined as a percentage of calls for service.

So when we compare 21 to 25, use of force as a percentage of calls for service decreased for white males, increased slightly for black females and Hispanic males, and remained essentially unchanged for black males.

Importantly, these changes are very small, occurring at the hundredth of a percent level.

And again, this is only in categories with a hundred or more use of force subjects, subjects for whom use of force was applied.

Finally, of course, there are many possible reasons for this.

Seeing this recent decline in use of force, even as calls for service continue to increase, continued improvements in supervisory view of use of force incidents may help identify opportunities for coaching, training, or corrective action that support deescalation practices, as Chief Jones already uh showed the uh cycle of review.

Ongoing community engagement efforts, particularly APDs programs that work with our youth in Arlington through local high schools, can contribute to safer interactions between officers and community members.

And it's also possible, of course, that this recent decrease that we saw in 2025 could be a statistical fluctuation after years in which both calls for service and the use of force incidents increased.

At this point, of course, with one year, it is too early to determine whether this recent decline represents a substantial trend.

We will continue to work uh with APD to monitor and ensure transparent reporting to track these patterns over time.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dr.

Davis.

Um we appreciate the partnership and continue to I look forward to continue um our partnership in the future.

Uh with that, I open it up to any questions.

Any questions from counsel?

I think it was just really rude of Chief Stedham to send the fire trucks by during the police department's presentation, to be honest with you.

Um Dr.

Odom Wesley.

Thank you, Mayor.

And thank you, uh Chief and UTA for this report and for the analysis.

So my takeaway, it seems like use of force increases directly with the level of resistance.

Is that a true statement?

Yeah, yes, ma'am.

So what I have been saying for the last five years, every time I give this presentation.

Um, if we have our citizens comply with our officers with the lawful order of saying, hey, I knew you're under arrest.

Uh, can you put your hands behind your back or or whatever?

Um, we won't have any level, we wouldn't have any force if they complied.

Um because I I just point out I wanted to point out that that incident back in uh January where we had these subjects shooting at us.

Once they gave up, um once they complied and they came out the door, there was no force used.

We took them into custody, took them to jail, and everybody went home safely.

And that's what these outcomes about, and that's why we're asking our citizens to really comply with us.

Do we have any data on verbal abuse by our officers?

Verbal abuse.

That doesn't happen.

Um verbal abuse.

Uh we we document, I don't we don't document verbal commands if that's what you're asking.

We don't do that now.

So our officers are trained not to verbally abuse our citizens.

Our tra our off our listen, our officers receive uh de-escalation training very often.

Uh we also um receive the procedural justice training, um, where we want to make sure we're treating everybody with fairly and respect.

Um, and as you know, as I keep saying, as long as our citizens comply with us, we're fine.

We won't we won't have this discussion.

This the compliance level.

And when they don't comply, that's we have to actually deal with that, unfortunately.

Thank you for that.

And um, I know you're still using the comment cards, right?

Where the citizens can I guess react to their stop.

Yes, yes, ma'am.

Um, so every interaction, um, whether it's a stop or contact out there, our officers are giving uh a card, giving the residents a card.

It has it's a Q QR code on there where you can make a complaint, or you can make uh a compliment.

So um it's out there, there's avenues for them to complain.

So it's not that we're hiding any of that.

So no.

So we're not seeing any complaints about no, we're not.

Uh I like I said, I think that um uh as uh Dr.

Davis alluded to.

I think our officers, our supervisors are doing a great job in reviewing our use of force reports uh that are coming through.

Uh the reports make it all the way up to a deputy chief's level.

Um, and then it goes over to the academy where we have specialized people who trained in force and tactics, and they review the uh the report to make sure um that you know there's nothing unusual about it.

Thank you, sir.

Sure appreciate your leadership.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments from council, Councilmember Galante?

Chief, thank you so much for the hard work, uh men and women in the police force do congratulations for the 11% reduce reduction in uh user force as as is being stated here.

So there's a direct correlation of a compliance and user force, right?

That's correct.

So when we look at the graphics here on uh on the compliance by race, and you and you said uh you guys have an education program, right?

I'm sorry, education program, education, how to comply.

Yes.

Okay, can you highlight uh a couple things about this education program?

What do you do?

So we we get it's not so much of an educational purpose.

We have different types of programs that we educate.

So uh for example, um they can actually our citizens can attend our citizens academy, um, where we talk about uh uses of force and how you know and we we talk about that.

Um, but we also get out in our community.

I think that's important.

Um and and it's not and what the idea is to get in the community that um we traditionally haven't had great relationships with, so that we can talk about uh use of force.

How do we limit it, the use of force?

How do we get our community to be more compliant to uh lawful orders?

And if we can get that, um, and I think we're starting to see the numbers tick down because I think we're out in the community doing that.

Um, but also too, I think it's important is the community engagement.

Um we have uh numbers, I think hundreds, so close to five five hundred events a year between national night out, faith in blue, and our cooking with cops and uh you name it, we do it across the city.

Um and I think it's about engagement and building trust with our community.

Um as long as we can continue to go down that avenue and continue to build those relationships.

Um we also have been working with the elementary schools in mentoring those kids.

I think once we start there, I think that's the foundation where we can actually start seeing that.

We probably won't see it in our lifetime, but we'll see it eventually, where we're getting to zero use of forces in our city.

Is a generational change, right?

Yes, sir.

Yeah.

And uh just uh following up of what you said.

So we when you talk to the community, when you engage with the community in those uh uh block parties, cookouts, and and everything else, do you tailor the message of how to comply and with the benefits of complying or de-escalation?

Do you tailor the message differently to to different races?

Because we see different numbers here based on the race.

Do you tailor the message differently or have one message?

It it's it has to be one message because we want uh you know it is one message.

If you comply to an awful order, well, we won't use force.

Um I have great faith in my officers.

Um and we teach them that everybody goes through de-escalation training, so they know what the expectation is, and everybody understands what our policy is.

Um we also have the able training that we put our whole organization through, and able uh the able training is about the duty to intervene.

So if our officers, somebody is really going down the wrong avenue, our guy is supposed to grab them saying, Hey, you step back, you don't need to be on this call, we got you on.

Yeah.

So it's about making sure that we're taking care of everyone.

Okay.

Thank you so much for the explanation.

Congratulations again for the numbers.

Thank you.

Councilmember Hogg.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor.

Um, Chief, thank you so much.

And thank you for, you know, as you look, what a 4.5% increase in stops and traffic stops and everything over the year.

And um, we always we've all talked about the Safe Streets initiative you put on, and it's uh it's working, I believe.

Um, a better complaint we get than citizens are like I got pulled over for speeding or running a red light.

It makes my day um when that occurs because it is keeping everyone safe.

Um Chief, as you talk about this, you mentioned it.

Um I just want to commend your staff and and your leadership and your entire senior leadership team.

Um you talked a lot about the training, you know, the de-escalation training, and I know that's a huge element.

And then I feel like we didn't give this report didn't give enough credit to some of the training that's occurred.

It's a hard time to be an officer.

Um it's a hard time you're doing some of these stops.

And as you see, you know, there's kind of the bot you see some policy highlights and in the bottom two paragraphs on page four, talk about some of the less lethal.

Um I know you're doing a annual review.

If you just talk a little more in the future, um, and our next time you're coming up and and doing that of the training, because uh y'all commit a lot of time to training.

Sometimes it's like, let's get them on the street.

But I think the training is valuable on what you're doing, and it's really showing in some of your stats across the board um from racial profiling to this to the review um to say streets initiative.

So I say it and I see some of this and I see some of these pieces and the policies you made and I think they work.

I I would just making the comment of promote your training more, because I think y'all do a lot, and I think it's doing really good work for y'all.

No, no, I agree.

Uh I can tell you, Arlington, uh, we do more training than most agencies here in Texas.

Um academy for the B POC, uh, the basic academy is 32 weeks.

Uh that's a lot, and that's a long time.

Um we also put them out on field training with another uh supervisor or corporal for 17 weeks.

So the men and women, when we return, we turn them loose, um, they understand um what is the expectation of them and for them and what the community expects from them.

Um and I think that's important.

So yeah, I would do a next time I'll do a better job of going further into detail about training, but I can tell you we do a lot of training here in Arlington.

Any other questions or comments from council.

Thank you, Chief.

I appreciate it.

3.2, Sarah Stubblefield.

Um, good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

I've got some more data for you.

Um this is our annual socioeconomic profile that is from the release of the American Community Survey data.

We usually bring this to you a couple months earlier than now, but we had a delay in the data due to the government shutdown last year.

So we just got this data at the end of January.

Um but the ACS is the largest demographic survey that's conducted annually by the Census Bureau.

And so these um estimates are some of the most accurate data that we have to do ongoing analysis when you guys ask us questions.

We use this data um to give you answers most of the time.

And the five-year estimate data that we'll be presenting today is um the most accurate of all the data that we get from the ACS because it's got five years of that sample data, and so we're able to really give you um the most accurate information that we can.

And we bring this to you every year in the form of our socioeconomic profile.

Um it covers everything from population, race and ethnicity, age and gender, educational attainment down to employment.

Um, we produce both a static report, but we also have a socioeconomic profile dashboard on our open data center that's got um even more detail and can drill down to the census tracked level.

Starting with the highlights, uh the number that everyone looks for this year we rank as the 51st largest city based upon this data set.

We've seen an increase of 3400 since 2020, the decennial census, higher levels of educational attainment, um, decreases in poverty, more housing units, lower unemployment, more jobs, more people working from home, and more people who are staying in Arlington to work.

From a very high level, the average Arlington resident is a 33.7-year-old female white non-Hispanic who was born in Texas.

She's got a high school diploma and an income of 75,000 and travels about 26 minutes to her job outside of Arlington.

The population number that we get with this data set is 397,742 with an average household size of 2.74.

Although we're not in the boom of the 90s that we had in our population, we are still kind of ticking upward and seeing growth in our population.

And the map over here to the side kind of shows the distribution across our geography by census tract.

When we look at the rank by population, kind of wanted to explain what was going on with our peer cities around us.

Last year we did rank at number 50, which is sort of that area where we're used to being.

What we saw, everyone kind of ticked up a little bit around us, Bakersfield, Wichita, Tampa, Florida did kind of leapfrog us, and they saw sales saw a bigger increase and jump from 51 to 49.

The only other interesting piece that I'll share on this slide is that both New Orleans and Cleveland last year and this year are seeing declines in population.

So there are some changes happening with those kind of peer population cities.

From a race and ethnicity perspective, our largest increase since 2020 has been in our Hispanic and Latino population, which has increased 1.5%.

Our white population has decreased slightly, 0.8%.

Everything else has stayed about the same since 2020.

When we look at age by gender, the story is what we're kind of seeing in the news.

Same here in Arlington.

Our older populations are growing, while our younger populations are getting smaller.

We're seeing the largest increases in age cohorts 75 to 79 years, 65 to 69 years, and 40 to 44 years old, where those decreases that we're seeing is in the mid 40s, mid-50s, and those under five.

Forum born nativity is important when we look at how our population is shifting.

Almost a quarter of Arlington's population is foreign-born, that's 88,000 residents here.

That's an increase of 6.8% since 2020.

The largest share of these folks are from Latin America, and we've had the largest decrease in our population from Africa.

Our population is getting more educated.

We've seen increased levels of educational attainment since 2020.

More residents are acquiring associates, bachelors, and graduates' degrees.

This number has increased 2.5% since 2020.

Our median household income, when we present these figures, we adjust for inflation.

We've seen them relatively flat, right around that 75,000 mark, which is, I think, an encouraging point in our recent number inflation numbers that we're seeing across different purchase prices for goods and services.

When we look at this in a geographic way, our household income, highest incomes are kind of in that western sea, going from Viridian down to our southeast corner, with our lowest incomes in the central and east Arlington areas.

Despite that, our poverty rate is decreasing.

It's decreased 1.3% since 2020.

For children under 18, we've actually seen it decrease 4% from 17.7 to or from 21.7 to 17.7.

However, our poverty rate for seniors has increased since 2020 about 2%.

We look at home occupancy and ownership.

Our total housing estimate is increased by 7200 units.

2,000 of those are owner-occupied, with 5200 of those renter occupied.

We're still over 50% owner-occupied, but we are kind of still seeing that start to balance out.

We're also still seeing pretty high home sale prices, 363,000 295 in 2024.

That's not ACS data that comes from our Texas AM real estate center, but it really helps to tell the story about housing in our city.

Home ownership rates, also interesting and very similar to where we have our incomes, higher higher home ownership rates are in that sort of western sea with lower home ownership rates in the central and east Arlington, save for the census tracks kind of right there in the middle with our kind of core GM neighborhoods.

We're still seeing really high home ownership there.

A little bit of a misnomer since that was the year of the pandemic where we saw a spike, but in general, pretty level unemployment rates while the total employed population has been increasing.

From 2020 to 2024, that number jumped from 2020 employees over the age of 16 to 26,000.

The types of occupations and employers that we've seen in the city, the largest growth there has been between production, transportation, and material moving occupations, up 12%, while we've had a 9.5% decrease in our sales and office occupations.

Here we have a list of our top 10 employers in the city.

It represents 48,000 jobs, almost a quarter of our jobs from these 10 companies.

And then finally, looking at kind of where people are going, how they're getting to work.

Residents working in Arlington has increased 5% by 2020.

We've seen that big shift in working from home, which is kind of staying steady since the pandemic first started in 2020, which has increased from 5.7 to 13.1%.

Seeing less people using their car truck to get to work.

Seeing very slight decreases in the amount of time people are traveling to work.

And I think this map on the right here is interesting is which census tracks have a 60 minute or longer commute.

Happy to answer questions, but before I do, I'd like to publicly thank Laura De Vila.

She's sitting over there behind Marty.

She's been with us for three years now.

She's um me and her together make our research analytics team, and she helps us put this report together every year.

So I wanted to give her a thanks.

And with that, I'll answer any questions.

Thank you, sir.

Any questions or comments from council?

Yes, Councilmember Boxel.

Thank you for this report.

I just want to say thank you for putting all this information together.

I'm gonna have to study it very carefully.

But there were some interesting, some surprising things in there.

So thank you very much.

I'm a little bit upset because the mayor of Tampa is a good friend of mine, and I know I'm gonna catch a lot of grief from her about them passing us up.

So we'll have to do better.

Keep you asking Wichita.

Any other comments or questions?

Thank you, Sarah.

Appreciate you.

Okay, we're gonna move on down the 3.3 on the form-based code.

Good afternoon, everyone.

For the record, Tarani Devi Palma, principal planner with the planning and development services.

Today, Jay Naraina from the consultant team and I will be providing an update on where we are in the process and also highlight some of the discussions that we had with the municipal policy committee last meeting.

After almost 18 months, we are almost at the finish line.

On March 4th, 2026, the planning and zoning commission unanimously recommended approval of the Unified Development Code Amendment and also the zoning map amendment for the adoption of form-based zoning.

At the meeting, we received eight speaker cards in support and four in opposition.

Most of the concerns were related to the eminent domain, and people wanted to know if the city is taking the property away from them.

But we did clarify those questions.

We let them know the difference between what the form-based code zoning is and the eminent domain.

Form-based code zoning is simply a set of regulations that apply when a property is to be developed or redeveloped.

And the adoption of this code does not grant the city authority to take the private property.

So we did clarify those at the meeting itself.

And after clarification, most of the uh speakers who came in opposition, they said they were not concerned about it.

And these are some of the other frequently asked questions that we've been hearing throughout the process.

Um, so we wanted to bring it to you all to our attention.

Will my property be taken through the imminent domain because of the forum-based code?

No, the adoption of the forum-based code does not authorize the city to take private property.

Forum-based code regulates how a property may be developed in the future.

It's just a set of uh development regulations that will be adopted in the unified development code.

It does not involve taking ownership of any private property.

Will my short-term rental be affected by the form-based code?

This is something we've been hearing too.

Um, no, if you're currently having a valid short-term rental permit issued by the city, you may continue operating under the permit, and also if you live within the short-term rental zone, uh, you can continue to apply for the permit and receive them.

What is the impact on properties and businesses?

Form-based code only applies when a property owner chooses to make significant changes to a building use or site or develop a waken property.

We also send notifications.

This is according to the state law, to 965 owners, property owners within the boundary, uh, and also the 200 food buffer and to the 63 properties with the total of 168 notifications to both the owners and the tenants, and also 12 PDs property owners within the form-based code boundary that currently have PDs within their location.

Out of those notices, we received 17 in support and nine in opposition, and the opposition was mainly of the short-term rental concerns of the eminent domain, and we clarified those.

And the opposition was mainly the short-term rental concerns or the eminent domain, and we clarified those.

Of the 12 PDs that are existing in the area, four have not been built.

We did receive consent from two property owners to change their PDs to a form-based code zoning so far.

Those are indicated in the map here.

This property right here and this property right here.

And I'll hand it over to Jay to go through the rest of the presentation.

Thank you, Tarni.

Jane Araina with Livable Plants and Codes.

Again, I just want to hit the highlights.

This will be the new chapter 13 in the Article 13 in the UDC that will lay out the overall framework for future farm-based code.

Article 13.1 provides all the general standards, and then Article 13.2 will be the downtown district, and then 13.3 will be the future districts as the city may implement future farm-based districts in other areas.

It also kind of gives you the toolkit for what's required in the regulating plan, what's mandatory and what are optional elements as the city kind of identifies future locations for the farm-based districts.

And then you have four farm-based base subdistricts that are established.

It's kind of like your zoning districts, but they're already kind of pre-established that can be taken and applied in different locations to create the regulating plans, the traditional neighborhood.

And then the urban neighborhood that's a little more intense.

And then you have the corridor mixed use to address some of the corridor frontages along arterial roadways.

And then you have the core, which is the most intense mixed use neighborhood.

And then you have building design standards, some standards that would apply to all building types.

And then you have residential building types.

Then you have standards that apply specifically to residential building types.

We know that it's more than just density and lot size.

You want to address garage placement, architectural elements, roof types, dwelling unit entries, porches, etc.

So you want to make sure that you're addressing compatibility in the neighborhood.

Accessory dwelling units is another important element that we know makes it a compatible issue in the neighborhood.

We want to make sure that is adequately addressed in the design standards.

Cottage coat, we want to make sure that we have right standards that make sense within this district, that we don't write a set of standards that can't be used that cannot be applied.

So make it easy to implement this.

Parking garage standards are also important because we know that at the end of the day there will be a lot of multi-story parking garages.

And we know at some point you also have to address some drive-through standards because that there are going to be some of these parking needs and also the drive-throughs and gas stations and canopies that you'll have to address because we know that some of the arterial roadways will still have these gas stations.

There are some cities that have actually done this well.

We know in some cities like Fort Worth that have seen quick trips that have actually been able to implement this in some to some success.

So we want to kind of take some of those examples and actually apply them here as well.

Street and sidewalks, again, this is really about relating the public realm street and streetscape standards to the private development and really uh bringing those two together.

Um that's the important element of the farm-based code that's really critical to the implement uh to the success of uh of development and redevelopment, especially on existing streets as uh redevelopment happens.

We want to make sure that there's some consistency as for sidewalks and streetscapes to be implemented.

But we know that not all redevelopment will really make sense in terms of sidewalks to be implemented.

Maybe there's some exceptions, especially if the lot is less than 50 feet in width.

So there are some waivers that that may make sense, but that's really an administrative function.

So we are allowing some flexibility for the administrator to make those kind of decisions as well.

Parking is another element that was a different approach that we uh took that we did recommend a blended ratio.

Um especially in the in a mixed use uh area, we want to make sure that as users change over time that you don't burden um uh the building and the development with additional parking requirements, so you have the same parking requirement regardless of the use.

So all non-residential users will essentially have the same parking ratio, and so that way as users change over time, you you really kind of facilitate that uh highest and best use moving forward, and we actually reducing the parking requirement for all users, and the other thing that we the municipal policy committee identified is really kind of um uh waiving the first uh I think 2,000 uh square feet of um non-residential square footage from the parking uh requirements.

So all the smaller um uh tenant spaces can actually uh not be burdened by the parking requirements.

So that's really um uh an essential tool because that's something that we learn from a lot of other communities in in downtowns, especially that's uh very successful from a parking um space.

Um, this is where uh less is more.

We kind of took an approach of the 5% of the gross site area and any development that's over 20,000 square feet.

Um you do have good metrics in your current open space standards uh that we're using 60% of that is required to be uh common open space, and 40% can be you know in the form of private open space that can be either amenities, um patios, rooftop terraces, et cetera.

Uh so it's really flexible, but 60% is required to be common open space.

Um and the idea is um also um looking for paseos that can actually divide the blocks, and these can actually become open spaces, can um they can also function as a way to divide the block, but they can but the idea is that you could get credit for open space by providing these passeos as well.

Um those so they could actually um be uh a twofer if a developer actually provides them, they can not only get the benefit of the block definition, but they can also get the open space credit for that, and they can really activate uh a development if you think about it.

And you can also also have them for commercial development, you can you can have them for residential development as well.

Um signage, uh, you have good standards in Article 7.

It's really trying to calibrate them in the right way for the form-based code, and that's what we recommended doing in the form based code.

Um, so when we get into 13.2, um, we are really looking at how do you calibrate 13.1 standards, and um one of the things we did we did talk to the municipal policy committee at length is is this idea of existing um stand existing uh sites and structures and how the standards would apply to them because we know that there are a lot of existing uh structures, for example, a lot of the suburban uh development along Division Street, the car lots, etc.

The minute this is adopted, a lot of those will become non-conforming, and we know that the market may not be there for a lot of those to be scraped and rebuilt on day one.

It's gonna take a while for the market to evolve.

So we want to make sure that people can still use their sites, and um uh the standards are um applicable only to the frontages that are the A frontages.

So we want to apply them to where the most walkable frontages are prioritized.

And so that way the standards are not applicable to the whole site, and the market can drive when the whole scrape and rebuild really happens.

And let them, you know, we are not forcing developers to kind of choose make those choices before the market is really willing to do that.

And there are options for developers to actually come to city council and make the case for some of those standards to not apply just given certain conditions on the property because there could be you know a tech start roadway frontage or existing utilities or grade issues that really make it challenging for some of those frontages to be uh redeveloped.

So we uh we just want to have those uh standards in there that can be um you know um flexibly applied in those conditions.

So the regulating plan uh again shows how those uh um four subdistricts and the special district, which is the gateway subdistrict along Collins really would be applied.

Uh that's um that's the vision for uh the special subdistrict, which is uh the downtown gateway, which is a connection between the entertainment district and downtown, which is this uh vision for this wide uh promenade along Collins that's really um uh looking at maybe entertainment, um more lodging type uses, uh, restaurant uses with a very wide pedestrian uh walkway that's almost 20 feet wide with active uses along it.

Um maybe even protecting the pedestrian uh realm along the the roadway uh with some of these um planters, etc.

Uh along the roadway.

Um the other thing we did talk uh to the municipal planning uh committee is the density bonus program.

We know that uh downtown is uh the ideal location for additional density, and uh we created this tier system approach because we know that um uh because of Senate Bill 840, the density is limited to 36 dwelling units per acre citywide, and the first tier would be um uh density between 36 and 60 dwelling units per acre.

Um, that projects would be eligible for that tier one.

Um if they did 80% of the parking, that's either in a parking structure or some type of combination of surface parking or shared parking uh with improvements to street parking in some uh fashion similar to the Balford Lofts project that that they would bring forward.

Uh and then so that would be the first tier uh projects, um, and then the second tier would be anything between 60 dwelling units per acre and a hundred dwelling units per acre.

Uh that would again be 80% of the required parking would really have to be in a parking structure because at that density you really have to have a parking structure because uh it would be hard to surface park that um uh that much density, and then the uh other thing that you would also have to do is some um improvement uh to the on-street parking to get credit for that, and then uh 50% of all the type A designated frontages to be built to commercial ready ground floors, again, not requiring that you put retail day one, but at least building the ground floors to um commercial ready standards, so when the market's there to at least be able to accommodate that because we know that when the density is there, at least there's uh potential for that market to evolve, and then uh developments over 100 units per acre would then have to come to council for a major modification.

So those are the three tiers that have been established uh for the density bonus program, and this would only only really apply to downtown, and the first two tiers would be by right, and then um with the density bonus program, there is also the requirement for projects to contribute to to a uh downtown beautification fund if they um want to get this density bonus, and this um contribution to this downtown beautification fund is gonna be uh this fee that's determined by city council.

This is gonna be another program that's established by city council.

I think it's uh coming to you all on April 21st, and then the administrator is going to make a determination that some projects, if they're doing some kind of public art improvements, they could get up to 50% credit.

I think the city is currently kind of working on determining what the fee structure needs to be, and I think Ginsi can answer any questions on that as well.

Um so, in addition to the base subdistrict standards, the uh in 13.2, you have supplemental standards for height.

Um so you can kind of see what the height standards are uh in the different uh subdistricts.

Uh we also ended up um adding some special street standards.

We know that there are um street standards that are geographically defined.

Um, for example, Division Street and Collins Street have unique uh standards because they are in downtown, and those standards are going to be related to 13.2, so they're in uh in the downtown section as well.

And we know uh we have the uh concept of the shared street, which when we went through the community um uh uh workshop, uh people really love this idea of the shared street where you'd have no curbs and the street can be closed for public events, and we identified a couple of locations uh for that, which is West Front Street and East Main Street as these uh couple of locations.

Uh we originally looked at Eastfront, but since that was already developed and redone, we kind of took that out because the city had already put a lot of investment in it.

So we we just said that didn't really make any sense at this time for the city to kind of redo that.

So we're really focused on where the city could put in new investment, um, especially West Front and East Main for those uh for the shared street idea.

Um and the city is currently also working on the streetscape design manual because we know that there's a level of detail that'll have to go into things like selecting the street light um and the trash cans and you know the the street furniture, a lot of that um doesn't really need to be in the zoning code, but it really needs to be in a street design manual.

Um that um the city can work with uh downtown Arlington Inc.

and kind of really come up with a way um um the city can um kind of implement that on a block by block basis and work with the developers as they redo each block or um each lot frontage.

So it's really uh working with uh it's a cooperative agreement between the city and and downtown Arlington Inc.

on on uh working on this design manual as well.

Um and uh one of the things we are working on is really coming up with this step-by-step manual, and we won't be going through this, but it's really helping developers, property owners understand how this code would work and everything that we're doing, including the um documents that were shared with you, is to really make it easy for people to understand how this code would work.

It's to um make the um development predictable, it's to help staff not only um make it easy for them to apply the code, it's for neighbors to understand what is expected in terms of development next to them.

It's for developers to also know you know if that if they build um what's expected that they'll get their project approved.

And so it's really about adjacency predictability that if they go to the bank, they know what the um uh the bank can approve in terms of their loans, and so it's it's it's get making sure that everyone understands the playbook um that they're working uh from.

So these are uh some of the guides.

It's uh it's really um we're gonna have these series of series of guides that um staff will have available, and we're currently kind of working through them.

Uh you have some of the examples uh uh in front of you, um helping uh um helping everyone understand what a regulating plan is, um, what each of the subdistricts does, what what are the building types and how would you apply those development standards to your particular lot, uh, whether you live you're in the neighborhood or whether you're in one along one of the corridors.

So the idea is that uh each of the subdistricts uh would have uh one of these um uh these um uh uh cheat sheets as I call them that you could apply.

Um so that's um really the goal.

Um would that I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Any questions or comments from council?

Um Councilmember Peel.

I just like to say thank you for the hard work you've done on this.

The key issue for me, as you know from our prior discussions has been the particular guide page that says simpler, easier, faster.

Because as you review and listen to presentations on the stuff, it still seems quite hyper technical and uber detailed and itty-bitty brains like mine sometimes have a hard time figuring out how this particular change will unleash economic development potential in downtown Arlington.

I think one of the things we always hear is we have a bunch of old ugly stuff in Arlington that needs to be torn down and go away and replaced with newer, nicer stuff.

Why doesn't that happen?

And what I try to explain to people is that this is one of the things that makes it more likely it will happen in this area that's very important to the city.

And Gensi, I was wondering if you could stand up just real quick and talk about some of the things in this plan that real-world developers say are examples of why it'll improve their oper their ability to uh redevelop land in Arlington.

Some like real-world basic stories that normal people probably could understand.

Sure.

Um so I I think in this code, what we have is um all provisions to make the development uh fit in a site more easily.

Umified development code would have standards that fits a more suburban type of environment, but we are in the downtown area, we have an urban environment.

How does how do developments fit in right here in this context is what this will do.

So, for example, many of the PDs uh or the planned development rezonings that you have seen for any type of uh housing project.

Um, why did they have to go through a planned development process is because they couldn't fit in within the uh codes that we have come up for the rest of the city.

Um, and so they would ask for deviation from this standard, this standard um example is the density also.

Downtown calls for a little bit more uh higher density than a 22 units per acre.

So how do you get there?

Even though we were allowing previously uh mixed use developments by right, but still having a development plan, with we said that all street frontages needed to have retail uses.

There's not a demand for that.

So realistically, at this point, we don't have that.

And so what this code does is only create certain street frontages, the prime street frontages like type A streets, where you can have commercial ready storefronts, meaning you don't have to have a retail use at this point, but make the provision for the building to be built in such a way that when the demand comes, it can become a commercial use.

But they can still have living units today.

Uh density bonuses, most of the projects that we have seen in downtown have all been more than 22 units per acre.

Uh, 36 units per acre also.

So we are giving another tier, 60 units per acre by right, 100 units per acre by right.

But if you meet these standards, which again, the standards that's put in this ordinance is much more realistic to happen right here.

Uh, we have compared this code with many other municipalities that have downtown form-based codes, and we and they have been successful.

So we have taken good examples to fit in right here.

Uh so we we've tested that with other markets and other uh cities and use the best ones that fit uh create success stories.

So those are some of the examples, but I I could go in a lot more of them with single family also.

And an even more uh simpler uh explanation we discussed during some of our committee meetings was that if you had to make a stack of everything uh people had to read to do a development in Arlington was this big, and with form-based code, the stack of things people have to absorb to do a development will be about this big.

But I can't remember the specific divisions we had.

Was it like an inch and a half to a half inch?

I can't remember.

So we have about 275 pages that they will have to read today to get to what they need to build.

And we have reduced it to 80 pages, but now that 80 pages code is also now reduced to what you're seeing, the guides.

It's going to be that simple to understand the code by just looking at the guides.

And I think that's really critical for people to understand the necessity of this type of work is faster, easier, simpler.

That's a metric.

We're gone from 280 pages, 21.

75 pages.

275 pages down to 80 pages to get uh unleash economic potential in property downtown, increase the property tax base, have more tax revenue to pay for police and fire in West Arlington, North Arlington, South Arlington.

And uh I think that you know, simpler, easier, faster is the kind of uh initiatives that people want to see from their government these days, and I really am impressed that you were able to succeed in this effort, even though sometimes when you hear the initial presentation, it still sounds pretty detailed.

It really is a revolution in how much easier and simpler it is going to be to develop in Arlington.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Councilmember Peel.

Any other questions or comments?

Dr.

Odom Wesley.

Thank you for making it easier, simpler and and faster.

Uh, but that seems to apply to developers.

Could you speak to the benefits for the rest of the residents?

Right.

So I do remember um at the planning and zoning commission uh meeting, there were a few residents who came in opposition, like they had signed the opposition card, and when we tried to understand what their concern was, um many of them just said, okay, I have this house in my lot.

I am thinking of adding more to it, but looks like this code is not going to allow me to do that.

And like, no, actually, this code is going to help you in your edition because now your setbacks have reduced.

This is what this is.

And once I went through what it's actually helping them with, uh, it becomes much more easier to like, oh, okay, I'm fine, I'm good.

There was another property owner that um just had the lot sitting, has not developed yet.

And uh the the couple asked me, you know, I had contacted you uh a year ago.

I wanted to do this, and you said I cannot do that.

And I'm like, I'm sure I said that at that time because the code did not allow you to do that.

But here now, with this code, this is what you can do.

So we have another meeting that's set up with that couple to go over their plans.

So I I just see set several different examples of how what they dreamed about might happen now.

And I think one of the things we talked about in the committee was predictability, so our residents know what they can expect in the future in their neighborhoods.

That's true.

Uh so another example is in the traditional neighborhood subdistrict, which is the north side of this uh downtown form-based code uh zoning district.

Uh, that neighborhood who had gone through a whole um neighborhood master plan and had uh were in the process of trying to get some conservation district created.

Uh we worked with that neighborhood and uh looked at what the conservation district standards call for.

Um, one of them was they didn't want to have uh the uh uh homes or uh buildings built too tall to them next to them.

So they wanted to keep it to a 31 feet high uh as the maximum building height in that uh area, and so this specific subdistrict calls for a maximum building height of 31 feet or two and a half stories.

So that's another way that the neighborhood feels a little bit more assured what's going to come around them.

Anyone else?

Thank you, Jency.

Thank you.

Appreciate you.

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

Everybody's had an opportunity to review the staff reports for the sake of time.

Well, address any questions you may have about a particular staff report report without going through a full presentation of them.

So we'll start with 4.1.

Anyone have any questions or comments on capital improvements program advisory committee?

Seeing none, we'll move on down to 4.2.

Any questions or comments on informational update on Arlington smoking ordinance?

I I just have question for council on this.

Y'all have had an opportunity to look at the staff report.

Are y'all comfortable in moving forward with an addition to the smoking ordinance on this?

Or what do you all have to say on that?

Mayor, I think sorry.

No, please.

Yeah, I think it's a great idea.

I think it's a good thing to add.

What what's our time?

I didn't read in the report.

What's our timing of when we do this?

I don't think there's any specific time period that we have to do.

It could be as ready to go on your agenda as early as the next meeting.

So just right when we put it on the agenda.

That's it's an ordinance, so it takes two readings.

Um but it could go on your agenda as early as your next meeting.

Okay, perfect.

Is is everybody comfortable with getting it on the agenda in the future on uh on the what was included in there?

I think that's where we'll need to go with it then.

Okay, discussion of committee meetings 4.3 finance and audit.

Uh was anybody filling in for council member Hunter.

Mr.

Gonzalez.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh yeah, uh Councilwoman uh Hunter was not able to attend, so I stepped in as the chair.

Um we met, we had a quorum.

Um Nikki was the only one out there.

Uh they gave us a it was a great report, especially after what we went through last year with our budget and everything else.

So I'm I'm I'm happy to report a lot of great stuff.

Uh you know, last year required significant and tough financial adjustments to ensure we ended in the block.

Uh that plan work is reflected in the 20, yeah, in the physical year 25 audit, uh, which y'all can look online.

Uh we're now moving forward from a stable position, and the strength of this plan is evidenced in the uh first quarter budget analysis report, which is included in your uh attachments.

Uh we did get a report from Forvis Mazars.

Uh we got a clean audit, no issues, uh, no exceptions.

So we had an unmodified clean opinion on the city's 2025 financial statements, which is great news, uh, which not many cities can say that how many times we've gotten that.

So congrats to everybody.

And the audit came back with zero material weaknesses or significant findings.

Um that's a direct reflection of consistent discipline work by the finance staff throughout the year.

And thank you to our staff, Amy and others who helped with the uh the audit and gave them the information.

He was very complimentary of our staff and saying that we're, you know, he's really impressed with what we do.

Um a big highlight is our financial highlight is our pension.

Uh it's 99.75 funded.

So let me repeat that again.

Our pension uh TMRS is 99.75.

That's among the strongest pension funding levels in Texas, which means Arlington's employees have a secure retirement and cities' long-term financial obligations are well under control.

So even though you might hear other things or see other things that we're not doing what we're supposed to be doing, let me tell you this this reports just show exactly what we're doing and what we did last year and how we're gonna benefit from it.

So once again, our pension is uh 99.75% funded.

Uh we received all six transparency stars from the Texas Comptroller.

Uh Arlington earned a perfect score, recognizing um commitment to keeping the city's finances open, accessible, and accountable to the public.

Uh excellent our bond ratings came back.

They're excellent bond ratings from all three agencies.

Arlington holds among the highest credit ratings available from all three major rating agencies with SP awarding us their top triple A rating.

So that's another great news.

Um reserves, the city closed physical year 2025 without utilizing any of its reserve funds, ending the year above its target balance, and maintain the consistent level of liquid for future requirements.

So that's that's great to hear.

And then finally, uh, we had a uh uh uh report for the first quarter of physical 2026.

We're on track.

First quarter results are positive through the first three months of the physical year.

The general fund is projected to close in the year in the black, and departments are managing their budgets well.

So it's kudos to the city staff to Trey to everybody for um you know seeing what was coming over the horizon and getting this ready for you know for what was on track and and keeping us on the loop.

If many of you have read in the paper or seen other cities, they're having to make cutbacks and everything else, but we were ahead of the game and we did what needed to be done, and thanks to our taxpayers.

Uh, without our taxpayers, we weren't able to do this.

So congratulations.

So anybody have any questions or any committee members have any questions?

I just second your comments on on our city manager and his team and on Spencer and his team over there.

Um just incredible to see all the accolades that have been coming down regarding the financial situation and status of the city of Arlington.

So and I forgot I forgot to mention to graduate.

I mean, we all know here, but the public might not know, but we uh we got to congratulate Spencer Slider, who is recently appointed as the director of finance, our CFO.

So congratulations and looking you've got a great staff and looking for great things from you all.

Anyone else?

Okay.

Thank you, Councilmember Hunter Hunter, Gonzalez.

Oh man, oh man.

Oh Lord.

Okay, I am never missing the hair.

You're never gonna let me live that one down, are you?

I am the ninja city council person, so Lord help me.

4.4.

Councilmember Boxel, please save me from this, okay?

All right, Mayor.

Um the community and neighborhood development committee met today to discuss three items.

The first was the multifamily inspections public uh public transparency section.

Uh that the committee is looking at various aspects of this initiative every time we meet, and this time with public transparency.

Uh staff shared information about scoring systems used by other uh metroplex cities, uh, where it was discussed that um that only most other cities use different software systems than us and and create internally created by their own checklist and grading and scoring systems.

Um public access to information staff described and showed where on the city posts information about multifamily inspections, scoring systems, and scores on the city website.

Um there's also multifamily inspection maps that the public can access.

Um on February 24th, the request was filled that staff provide previously requested printout of the lowest scoring properties, which have a risk rating of three or four.

Uh going forward, the CND committee will have another meeting to discuss the internal property uh international property maintenance code.

That'll be our next topic.

Um next topic we discussed in the committee was the getting a homelessness update.

This was follow-up to council's fall retreat in November 2025, where the need for additional 75 beds in Arlington's homeless shelter capacity was discussed.

Staff shared some information about the following information.

Point in time counts and existing shelter capacity, additional beds needed at this time.

The estimated additional beds needed is 75.

Uh work with the unsheltered homeless, both the city and downtown Arlington management provide services to connect with unsheltered homeless people.

The teams work together to collaborate on making referrals and solving problems.

And at this, I'd like to just come uh commend uh downtown Arlington for stepping in and really helping us out on this issue, especially in the downtown area.

Um cold weather shelter capacity.

Uh the recent cold snap we had in February uh included a new temporary shelter at Nations Church, which sheltered an additional 72 people at its peak, in addition to the 45 to 55 people who sought cold weather sheltering at the Salvation Army and First United Methodist Church.

We also discuss encampments.

Staff reported on the work done to clear encampments from private and public party property.

Trends from the past three years show that the cubic yards of debris moved from the encampments is decreasing due to the quicker response and reported uh cleanup of encampments.

So um additional we also discuss additional homeless shelter capacity, the cost to stand to set up a standalone shelter with approximately 75 beds is approximately 1.2 to 1.3 million dollars per year.

The committee was interested in exploring how to encourage the Arlington Life Shelter to return to its original capacity of 155 beds, and also reaching out to the faith community to see if they are able to help with the need for additional capacity.

If an additional shelter needs to be created, the committee was supportive of finding some other support for the entity that makes it on its own.

So the executive session in the we also had an executive session, and in that session, the committee um discussed items related to affordable housing.

Uh that portion of the meeting was reported out in executive session.

That concludes my report.

Do any of the committee members have any additions or quite or other counselors have questions?

Questions or comments for council member Boxell.

Thank you, ma'am.

Appreciate you.

4.5, Councilmember Gonzalez.

Thank you for conversation and municipal infrastructure committee mentioned.

We have form all members of the present.

We see the presentation on several hand updates.

We only had 30 minutes, uh, but we accomplished a lot.

Uh there was uh we all met uh a gentleman that's now working with uh Leecha, his name is Wallace, and I can't remember his last name, but he's over there, so welcome to the city.

He's a great addition.

If you have not known him, uh he's got a lot of experience with this with school districts and with special ed and everything else, so he's really it's he's really gonna be an asset to the city.

Uh staff breeze the briefed us on the recent fare change and said the implementation process went straight extremely smoothly.

They also announced a new caregiver app that will allow caretakers to track their loved one's rides and cancel.

I need my glasses and cancel upcoming rides that are no longer needed.

So, you know, if you've got uh relative and you want to know where they're at, um you've got this app now.

So uh next staff presented proposed updates to the handy tran policies and procedures.

Uh they plan to begin requiring the handy trans clients to renew their handy trans status every two years.

There will be no additional costs, and this will allow staff to maintain updated client information, which is important.

Um, also proposed is moving from a two-week booking window to a seven-day booking window.

Uh seven-day windows are common practice in paratransit, and staff believes this change will reduce late cancellations and no shows and increase system efficiency.

They showed us how many lates and how many and and how many uh cancellations at the last minute, and it it was it was quite a bit, so hopefully uh with these changes it'll it'll help.

Um the committee did not have time for a detailed discussion uh on the on these um proposed changes, but can provide feedback in an upcoming committee meeting.

Um we also discussed the outstanding client balances.

Last September staff began requiring that all clients had to pay before they could take a ride on Handy Trans so in the old days you could ride with no money and they would put it on your tab.

Uh so that that ended um with requiring it in September.

Uh but before that, there um as of today there was over 800 riders, and this is going back before September, owing a total balance of 65,000 of the 800 plus riders, 444 riders with a balance total of 31,000 have taken rides in the past year.

So 31,000 out of the 65 are for people that are that have taken a ride in the last year.

Uh 372 riders with a balance totaling 33,000 have not ridden uh since at least January 2025.

So it's been a year.

Past efforts to obtain payment have been moderately successful but extremely timely and resource intensive.

Uh they mailed out cards.

Uh you know, I think the first time they mailed out postcards, they got 300 back because the addresses were incorrect, and then they mailed out again, and then they got another 200.

So that's the reason they're changing uh where you have to update your information.

Uh we had a long discussion on what we should do.

We had different options, you know, go after it or whatever, and we just looked at it and said, okay, with everything that's happening if with all the great things that are happening, uh, we had a good discussion, agreed a recommendation to forgive all the past debt and just move on forward and just you know go from there and let's learn from our past and and just make what we have better.

Anybody have any of our committee members have any comments on that?

The last topic was related to the potential reduct.

Did you say something?

No, go ahead.

I thought you were done.

No, it Nikki still has something else.

The last topic was related to the potential reduction of Handy Trans service boundary.

Uh the current service area includes the Arlington city limits plus 1.5 miles outside the city limits.

So 1.5 miles all the way around the city.

Uh, it's almost a whole additional Arlington.

That's a lot a lot of miles.

Over 50,000 trips of the 132,000 trips taken last year, had a pickup or drop off outside the city limits.

So in order to do Handy Tran, you either have to start in Arlington or end in Arlington.

So you could live outside the city within 1.5 miles, and you could call Handy Tram, and you come in and uh go where you need to hit Arlington.

And that includes Dal Wardington Gardens and Pantiago.

If you live in those towns, you have to go from there to something in Arlington.

Uh initially, initial committee conversation focused on the desire to look at the rights taken by non-Arlington residents and potentially ask those cities to contribute financially.

Uh the committee plans to just continue discussion of this topic at an upcoming committee meeting.

Umbers or anybody have any questions?

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Mayor.

Appreciate you.

Appreciate you 4.6 Madam Secretary, any appointments to boards or commissions tonight.

We have no appointments on tonight's agenda mayor.

Thank you.

Council members do y'all have any questions or comments on the evening agenda items.

Seeing none we'll go down to 4.8 any questions or comments on issues related to city or textile projects.

And 4.9 council external committee and training reports will start with uh letter A partnership home continuum of care board Dr.

Odom Wesley Thank you mayor and I'm sure you know we've heard a lot today about homelessness our services for the homeless and what we're doing moving forward.

So there was a lot of concern expressed at the last continuum of care board meeting because of funding money that has been withheld by Hood or funds that were allocated and then withdrawn so there's a lot of uncertainty and I guess stress is the best word for funding our homelessness services.

However HUD is expected to release the funding notice of opportunity by June of 2026 and that means the awards will be made in December of 2026.

So until that funding is received um we are experiencing a reduction in services and resources available to care for the homeless the COC expects a major policy priority shift away from housing first and that's been the policy by the continuum of care um services as long as I've been on the board for at least seven years and now there's a there's a shift and this could this comes from the federal government away from housing first and requiring homeless individuals to actively participate in various programs before they're eligible to receive housing assistance.

So the agency is gearing up to meet that need these programs again funding continues to be a challenge so in the coming year they will be working to rebuild the system to meet these new these new needs and new requirements for our communities and the changes in the policies so that's uh continuum of care that's where they are that concludes my report for council member odin wesley before we go on to B Trey reminded me on the evening agenda items I'm going to be pulling item number 8.13 from the consent agenda and we'll make a motion to continue that at the request of staff for an indefinite period of time until they are ready to put it back on the agenda letter B RTC Councilmember Gonzalez.

Thank you Mayor the RTC the Regional Transportation Council met on Thursday March 12th during the meeting the RTC approved several items including funding for pedestrian connection to Fort Worth Heritage Park to funding for regional traffic signal improvement program three the 27 the 2027 2030 transportation improvement program which outlines all projects with federal or state funding and then for the reinitiation of McKinney passenger rail corridor study which was has been on hold since November of 2025 before the regular RTC meeting Council of Government's COG staff conducted a workshop for RTC members to discuss the roles and the responsibility of the RTC and the COG executive board this topic was also addressed during the RTC meeting particularly regarding the hiring process for the COG Transportation Director for the excuse me regarding the hiring process for the COG Transport Director according to Text Ot, Texas Department of Transportation documents establishing the MPO or the Metropolitan Planning Organization structure the COG executive director is responsible for hiring the transportation director who works for the RTC.

However there is some ambiguity regarding the roles of the executive director on the RTC when their interests may conflict over the transportation director position.

Ken Kirkpatrick, general counsel for COG, and he was also representing RTC sent a letter withdrawing from legal representation on RTC as required by the Texas disciplinary rules of professional conduct for Texas attorneys.

So RTC will now be searching to uh have a hire an attorney or get some attorney to represent the RTC.

The next RTC meeting is scheduled for April 9th, 2026.

Anybody have any questions or anything to add, Mayor?

Oh, I have stuff to add, but I don't think I will right now.

Um so we'll just move on.

So anybody else?

Uh C.

The transit vision subcommittee, Mr.

Gonzalez.

Yes.

Uh the RTC transit subcommittee met in person on Thursday, March 12th.

Um during the meeting, we received a presentation from the three regional transit agencies, DART, Trinity Metro, and uh DCTA.

These agents have committed to serving as a subject matter experts and providing technical support for the RTC and the Transit 2.0 subcommittee.

In collaboration with COG staff, uh they're there to advance the subcommittee's interest in exploring the delivery of regional high capacity transit.

All three agencies indicated they will not pursue transit litigate legislation during the 2027 season because all the things that are happening.

Following the presentation, Michael Morris and Carla Windsor provided staff feedback and recommendations and recommended a path forward for the RTC to consider.

The next meeting of the RTC Transit Vision Committee is scheduled for Wednesday, March 25th at 11 a.m.

And that will be uh a virtual meeting.

Anybody have any questions or seeing none?

We'll move on down to the National League of Cities Congressional City Comp Count Conference.

Mr.

Gonzalez, Mr.

Pham, and Councilmember Odom Wesley, which one are y'all gonna do this?

I'm kicking it off.

All right.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh last week we did attend the um National League of Cities Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.

And I also want to mention that Jay Warren accompanied the council members.

It was Raul Gonzalez, Longfam, me, and Jay.

So Jay would did an excellent job of hurting the cats, and so we appreciated all of all of his assistance.

The primary purpose of this meeting of NLC is to deliver our legislative priorities to our congressmen.

So we got a chance to visit with um Congressman VC, Roger Williams.

We met with the staff of John Cornen.

Who else did I miss?

Uh and yeah, I got to meet with Jasmine Crockett on Wednesday along with the Dallas City Council.

All the rest of the Arlington people deserted me.

So that's another story.

Um so the uh the federal priorities that we discussed with our Congressman reauthorization of the uh basics act, which provides some bridging, some road repair infrastructure, and community success, which is also a priority of the National League of Cities.

So we were all delivering that message up on the hill.

Um we also talked about some assistance in hosting the World Cup.

There's a fund that was previously appropriated, and we are just asking that the funds not be held up, that they not be withdrawn, because we do need those funds uh to assist with hosting the World Cup.

We also registered our report for Road to Housing Act that would provide some additional housing options, modernize our federal housing programs, and encourage redevelopment of underused commercial buildings.

So we were looking at um supporting that.

The Senate has already passed the Road to Housing Act, and now it is going back to the House.

So we asked for approval and support uh from from our representatives.

Another priority was um HR 2289, which was the telecommunications policy, and what this does, and everybody said it looks like the telecom industry actually wrote the bill because it would allow them to put their cell phone towers wherever they decided they wanted to put cell phone towers without the city input.

So we wanted to express our opposition to that so that the city would maintain some control over our rights of way and where these telecom cell towers are allowed to go.

We talked about appropriation priorities for CDBG funds, which again that's housing, our home investment partnerships, as well as security, the UASTI funds, the urban area security initiative.

And in closing, we addressed our 250th anniversary celebration that's coming up.

And we delivered stickers and pins to all of our congressional representatives, and let them know that they'd be receiving some invitations to come to Arlington to celebrate with us for our 150th.

And we delivered a proclamation to Congressman Vese thanking him for his decades of service and just congratulating him on the work and thanking him for the work that he's done on our behalf.

Anyone else have anything to add?

I do.

First of all, I want to thank Barbara Odin Wesley for her leadership.

She's always the one, she's the natriarch of our uh senior council, city council.

She was always the one that spoke, so she did a great job.

She gave the presentation uh to Miss Congressman BC, and he was really really happy.

It's very obvious that he was just really taken by that.

So she reported everything.

The only thing I did different was I was part of the fair uh committee.

Uh and so we had different discussions.

Uh two most important things that we had, it was a two-hour meeting uh feedback of the municipal finance 101 playbook.

And if you remember when I reported that last time, uh it's basically uh teaching new city council members about finances because you a lot of these people go in there and don't understand uh how all these budgets work and everything else, and that's the number one complaint.

Uh city council uh and mayors uh when they go in, they don't realize how that works.

So that's something that they're working on their their training, and then they um demonstrated a new tool, it's called know your city tool.

Uh right now it's not part of NLC, but it will be soon.

So when you go on the NLC website, you can create your own reports.

Uh you put your city, and then you can put like uh housing, and then you put different criteria and they'll pull up a report.

Uh I did I did a test and I sent the uh report to Jay and myself.

I never looked at the report, but um Jay, maybe the report I sent you wasn't any good.

But it was really good conversation.

I I love that committee.

Um, you know, it's it's it's interesting to hear all the uh it's proud to be from Texas.

I'm proud to be from Texas from Arlington because some of these things that people discuss is like I can't imagine living in those cities.

So uh we're blessed to be where we're at.

And and Jay, do you have anything to add?

I mean, I I know Long's gonna do something, but the only thing I would uh add to the council did discuss the World Cup funding as Councilmember Odin Wesley uh mentioned with our delegation and the need for those dollars to be released, and they were released on Friday.

So $650 million went to 11 different cities across the country, I believe it is, and of that 51 million went to the Dallas area, of which Arlington will get its share of those dollars, uh certainly to make sure our large share of it to make sure that we're hosting a safe World Cup here.

So take all the credit for your your leadership on that because three days later they were released.

So that's great.

Well, that irritates me because I've never had that type of success in Washington before, and now Barbara gets it all.

It wasn't just me.

Were you gonna add something?

Council.

Thank you all for that.

Well, Mr.

Mayor, if you were to show up for last Christmas party, we could get a money law sooner, you know.

I would add just uh one other thing that the board of directors discussed, and that was political violence in today's climate.

And we went around the table, and there were a number of council members that had experienced various levels of threat because of their service on on their city councils in in their city.

In one case, a council member had to go to court to get a restraining order on one of the residents in that city because of because of threats.

So as a result of that conversation at the board of directors, we circulated uh a resolution for um dignity.

I forgot the other word, dignity and civility in our deliberations in in city council, and every member of the NLC board of directors signed off on it, and I think it's gonna be circulated to cities to encourage the civil dialogue and bring the temperature down a little bit and eliminate the uh political violence that we're experiencing.

And I think it's going to be circulated to cities to encourage the civil dialogue and bring the temperature down a little bit and eliminate the political violence that we're experiencing.

And I would just say Mr.

Mayor and to the city it's been my honor to serve on the board of directors for NLC and to attend those conferences and this was my last one.

So now I'm sad.

It'll be all right but I um I hope that our council members will step up and become champions for NLC.

You see the resources that are available you see the benefits to our city and in my absence carry on.

Well you've done a wonderful job in representing uh the city yourself and the state of Texas at NLC so thank you so much for everything you've done we really do appreciate you okay future agenda items anybody have anything for future agenda items council member Pham.

Yes sir thank you Mr.

Mayor uh I would like for our uh CD to in the office to uh we're looking at city ordinance uh the two chapter then one chapter 5.07 parking of certain vehicles and then the next chapter called tow authority the chapter 4.24 record operation that authorized towing what happened recently we have um 18 wheel it's sometimes they call it tractor trailer they park in the city not even registered and no license play and the police officer put the red sticker on there giving a warning that means you have 72 hours to move it and then they didn't move it so then um they scrape it up and they took off and came back later and um the officer wanted to get a vehicle tow but uh the high echelon commander won't allow that because they say oh city owner not clear so I wanted the city attorney to look at it and maybe we can revise if tow would not include we need to put that in there to eliminate all this stuff because I see it happen a lot in District one district two and district three I see that all the time and uh recently I got a couple photo and uh text from uh my colleague uh council member vellante and I told him we need to get these things out so I checked I look it up through two chapters so that you can look it up and maybe uh we relook at it if towing requirement we need to vote and put it on revived a city on and so that way we can make it stick because if we don't they keep coming back now this a play on Web Lynn Road down South Arlington they got a lot of uh spaces but you gotta pay but nobody want to pay because I see a lot of trailer drop off in there attractive parking there.

So I I want a city attorney office to take a look at it and give us an update on it.

Thank you.

Thank you I think what we can do is get the police department or somebody to sort of give council member fan an update on this if if the clarification doesn't help then we can put it on the agenda to talk about it in greater detail and uh I I just know we have a very robust parking ordinances in various departments and I want to make sure that we don't already address some of the your concerns on that anybody else council member Gonzalez yes thank you mayor I I'd like to look at door to door solicitors we're getting a big increase in a lot of complaints and I know Fort Warchist will get some changes so we can look at that look so I'm not gonna tell you what to do I just I think we need to look at what we're what doing there's a lot of people just knocking on doors and even if it says no solid or whatsoever so thank you.

Okay.

Councilmember Odom Wesley this is probably on the city manager's agenda already but just to to follow up that we get a report on the Grand Prix somewhere in the future um I I've heard good things and I saw good things but what does it look like on paper there's a lot of good articles that were written about the success of the Grand Prix and um it was pretty exciting event made a believer out of me anybody else okay with that we're gonna go ahead and adjourn the afternoon session of the city council meeting and we'll see everybody downstairs at 630 appreciate y'all