Good morning, everyone.

We are going to get started with our work session.

Good morning, Miss Bryan.

And good morning, everyone.

This is a work session of the El Paso City Council for Monday, September second, twenty twenty-five.

It is nine oh five AM.

Mayor, we have a quorum.

It looks like we're up.

Okay, uh, once again, Nicolas Rada with Environmental Services.

I'm here to provide a update on the median maintenance activities through uh environmental services.

Um, this is part of strategic goal three to promote the visual image of Al Paso.

Um, this is per council direction at the council meeting on eight nineteen, twenty twenty-five to provide a presentation on city existing schedule, priority list of weed abatement, number of crews currently assigned, and geographic coverage estimate timeline to clean citywide and staffing.

It provides a visual image of media's walking paths, islands, downtown trees, and cul de sacks.

So it's not just the meetings that are maintained by our meeting group, it's also these other items.

Um, every time there's an island, you know, at a traffic uh intersection that has um any landscaping, um, also walking past that are designated as walking past throughout the city of Al Paso, we assist with the maintenance of those.

Those are the islands when you're in the different neighborhoods that we maintain.

There's also often landscaping associated with those.

Um into miles, but technically, we run uh it's about fifty two hundred fifty two thousand eight hundred square feet per mile if you think the average mile um or c uh median is about ten feet wide, but uh my presentation's gonna be in square footage because that's what we actually work with when it comes to is there still an echo because we have a lot of people.

All right, Nick, let's give another try.

Is there still an echo?

Is there an echo?

No.

Okay.

Okay.

Back again, like I was mentioning, we maintain the the medians, walking past islands, downtown trees, and cul de sacs.

This equates to approximately 18 million, uh 18 million 18.3 million square feet of coverage that we currently have throughout the city, which it grows every year as we accept um uh improved the medium city projects and through uh state projects through Techstot.

Um that's an estimated through uh Text uh maintain state roads, that's about six point two million square feet that the city uh of Al Paso maintains through the the partnership with TechStot.

Um this is a complete map of all the medions, islands, um, walking past uh everything that uh the median groups does throughout the city of El Paso.

As you can see, um it covers a great portion of the entire city.

Um Text Ot medians, I wanted to include those in there to let everybody know that we maintain those also anytime they improve those.

That would be Alameda, Saragosa, North Loop, Montana, McRae, Mesa, Dyer, MLK Jr., Baisano, Gopia, Pershing, Delta, Transmoun, Donovan, Socorro, and West Side.

A lot of these uh within the past few years have been updated through Techstone.

So they have a brand new um mediums placed in there with vegetation and and additional irrigation that we must maintain through the the con the agreement that we have through TechStat.

Um so the ESD maintenance staff currently has 47 full-time employees uh with seven vacancies currently, and we have uh sufficient equipment for six crews deployed throughout the city to maintain the mediums uh year round.

These employees are funded through the environmental fee.

Uh currently, so right now, since you know once the rainy season starts, we do start overtime at those times.

So they work Monday through Friday, 6 a.m.

to 4 30 p.m.

And then we do voluntary overtime on Saturdays for those that want to come in and do additional work uh to earn additional overtime.

The majority of the time we do not get any volunteers on Saturday because in speaking to our staff, they they prefer to have the two days off in order to recover to come back in full force on on Monday to do the overtime throughout the week.

So automatically they're already getting 10 hours of overtime during the week, and they're out there every day doing the best job as possible.

We also have additional crews that we brought in through our beautification group, which I'll mention in future slides, and then a third-party contractor that assists us.

So the regular maintenance activities that our media maintenance groups do is we we cut grass, pull weeds, remove any dead plants, collect trash and debris.

A lot of the trash and debris gets collected in the in the bushes.

That's where the majority of the debris is that you might have seen driving throughout the city.

Uh we poon trees and prune uh bushes, perform minor rock wall repairs because um some of the mediums throughout the city do have rock walls, and we we will have issues where the concrete wears out or the rocks move or even an accident that we'll we'll manage and take care of.

We'll blow out all the landscaping rock too to make sure we try to get as much dirt as out of it.

So the the one issue we see is that during those windstorms in the the spring months of Al Paso, it'll blow in a lot of dirt into the medians, and that's really the the breeding ground for weeds.

That dirt, you know, all you need is a little bit of dirt to see.

They blow in the seeds also, and when the rainfall occurs, that's when we we do see sprouting of weeds in the in the medium.

Uh we inspect and repair irrigation and we spray herbicide during the spring and summer months because it's heat activated, so we only spray during those months, and then during the fall and winter we spray pre-emergence.

So if there is weeds in the medium, it'll reduce the amount of growth that we have starting in the springtime.

In addition, uh starting this year earlier, um six months ago, we were able to get two additional vehicles.

So we do have two crews that just go around the entire spirit city, and all they do is spray herbicide and all the medias to try to prevent growth as much as possible.

So it's just two crews that are just constantly driving around trying to get ahead of them.

Um what they typically do if they know we're gonna be, let's just say on dire, they'll go to dire ahead of time, spray it so they could kill the majority of the weeds before our staff gets out there and just starts uh pulling them or mowing them down.

So we're getting ahead of it before we get out there, and then you know, and then once we're done with the the cleanup of the median, the actual crews also have herbicide uh canisters on their vehicles, and they spray the median afterwards.

So we're getting it before and then we're getting it after.

The the only restrictions with the herbicide, which is it's hard for Alfasos.

If the wind speeds over 10 miles an hour per per state law, we're not allowed to spray because it'll travel past the medians and we're not allowed to do that.

And then also if rainfall is forecasted in the day, we won't spray that day either because it'll dilute the the chemicals to a point that they're not even going to be activated in any of the heat.

Additional median maintenance activities that not many people know of is uh we do vehicle um accident cleanups.

So on an average, as you've seen throughout the city, there will be accidents where vehicles end up on the medians.

Uh that we typically have one to two on a weekly basis, which pulls a crew off and we'll send them to the median to provide that cleanup.

Uh typically takes anywhere from two to four hours for our crew to go to the site.

It usually involves uh returning rock into the median, repairing rock walls to at least being visual, uh visually acceptable for the residents, uh fixing irrigation lines, and just overall just clean up to make sure everything's back in order after an accident.

Then we also remove visual obstructions.

As you can see in the picture below the visual obstruction, um, we typically have uh vegetation in the first 20 feet of a median, which we often get complaints from from the residents where they're trying to make a left or right turn and they see those uh well, actually it's left turned in the median.

So they see those uh bushes and they call in and say, hey, I can't see oncoming traffic.

Can you please send staff to remove the the obstruction?

So we do take care of those also uh through uh through the the process the the reporting process through 311 and through 2126,000.

And then we do post-weather cleanup, so after rainfall events, you do see a lot of rock wash off into the streets, so we'll send staff out there to go clean up after heavy rainfall events of any rock or anything removed from, and we'll even have trees fall down during during rainfall events because it'll loosen up the soil enough for some trees will knock over, and we'll have to go maintain those right afterwards.

Um, this includes illegal dumping.

We'll have um people throw mattresses, trash bags, and different items within the medians.

We'll send staff to go clean those up as soon as possible to make sure there's no any vector growth uh possible in the medium.

And then last uh we do downtown trees also.

So there's a little over 200 trees in the downtown uh district that our mediums group takes care of.

This is a full-time two full-time staff members take care of this on a daily basis.

They trim, they do weed abatement, and they do hand watering because none of the trees in the downtown district have irrigation due to the amount of concrete, so there was really isn't a way to install irrigation when these trees were were first planted.

So it's our staff that does all the watering throughout the downtown district.

As I mentioned, we uh moved over some of our beautification staff currently under beautification.

There's 26 FTEs, there's six crews of approximately four.

Uh two crews stayed back with beautification, which they do property cleanups.

So as we spoke in it uh before on our one-on-ones, they do all the cleanups uh that the code department goes to property for weed abatement and uh different issues of trash, and those staffs will do the cleanups after all the legalities of code and and informing the residents.

And then we have one crew that does bulk pickups, which is the $35 service that's provided by environmental services uh to the residents if they need have any large items that they want picked up at their home.

But we do have three crews assisting the median maintenance group right now.

They're working the same schedule as the median group, six to four thirty Monday through Friday, and then voluntary overtime on Saturdays.

As mentioned earlier, we do have a third-party contractor that does the top 20 medium, most traveled medium with uh medians.

They cover approximately five million square feet.

They're contracted for four cycles annually, but historically they've been able to complete three to three and a half cycles annually.

Um their annual contract's 1.2 million.

Um, like I mentioned, they're they're only gonna complete about a million dollars worth of work this year, so they've been trying hard to complete all four cycles, but they've had issues with with hiring and just the amount of vegetation that they've had to deal with on this uh annual basis.

These are the top 20 uh most traveled roadways.

They include Alabama, Fred Wilson, Country Club, Edgemere, George Dieter, Hawkins, Lee Trevino, McCombs, Mountwood, Bellagano, Red, Wrestler, Rich Blee Rich Beam, uh Salt Climbfield, Sean Hagerty, Shadow Mountain, Sunland Park, The Reste, Viscount, Westwind, and Yarborough.

This is the district breakdown of how many square feet that we manage per district.

It ranges anywhere from 3.5 million at the highest to approximately 1.4 million on the low end.

Um it's pretty spread out throughout the city, so we see um uh a good breakdown throughout the city of the amount of mediums that are updated and maintained throughout the city.

So currently uh environmental services, so our median crews are at Alameda and Delta, Edgemere and Richbeam, Styles and Boucher, Silver Springs, Dyer, Gopia, and then the downtown area.

Our beautification crews are at Fairbanks, Ungorio Loop to Railroad, Magnetic, and Hondo Pass.

And then our third party is currently at Hawkins and Shadow Mountain.

So overall it takes uh environmental services, uh week and a half to two weeks to complete one mile.

As I mentioned, it it's not really a mile, it's 52,800 square feet of cleanup.

I just have the mile in there just to give you a general idea of the length and distance that's we're dealing with, but it's 52,000 square 52,800 square feet.

So it takes about anywhere from a week and a half to two weeks.

In addition, uh we're we're partnered with Code um to help with the assistance on the double frontages.

Um so they they it's the property owners' responsibility to maintain all the parkways and sidewalks above abutting their property.

All sides of the residential property, including parkways, sidewalks, uh must be keep free of trash, debris, overgrown vegetation at weeds over 12 inches.

Uh double front properties are located on uh street corners between two streets and must be maintained on the parkway at all sides.

So we do work with code frequently to get the word out there and provide information to the residents to let them know that that is their responsibility because um a majority of the complaints we do get are on the parkways, and we work with code to inform them that that is the residents' responsibility.

And then we've been working with the PIO office to increase our communication.

So we've developed the six-month uh community cleanup campaign, uh hoping to start in uh next March to August.

This is to provide public awareness campaign to encourage uh public participation in enhancing the visual image of Al Paso.

This includes a city code regulation and for maintenance of double fronts, our community tool sheds at all citizen collection stations.

So we do have a community tool shed at each of our five citizen collection stations.

So if you need to borrow rakes, brooms, shovels, any of the equipment to help clean up yard.

We do have those uh tool sheds to lend out for free.

We do have our uh special collection services, which is our bulk pickup, our citizen collection stations, and our country store.

Um, all median maintenance activities, um, ESD cleanup coordination with the neighborhood associations and council, as many of you know, uh September 20th and October 1st, uh 4th, we're gonna be having our community cleanups uh for all the districts so we could uh uh provide an extra cleaning opportunity or uh a location for residents to dump any waste that they have at their house or any cleanups that they're doing at their own property.

With PIAO, they'll be doing this through email blast and neighborhood associations, city uh city employees, community partners, guest speakers uh for city reps meetings at community partners, info shared at city facilities as rec centers, community events, and with education partners, news releases, paid media, and social media.

I think this is gonna be a great opportunity to get the word out there a little earlier when you know everybody knows it rains uh during the the summer months, but also we want to get the the word out there uh just to be kind to our employees.

Um I've mentioned this to the city manager and to my DCM.

Our employees have been getting a lot of um backlash in the medians, uh either getting um we've had an incident with a BB gun and one of our trucks, they throw trash at our our um media maintenance groups, uh they yell at them, they complain about the TMAs, which is the traffic uh mounted attenuators slowing down traffic.

So we just want to get the word out there that we're out there working hard and making sure we're doing as much as possible to make the city look look better.

And I'm open for questions.

Well, Nick, thank you for the uh presentation and and first and foremost, the safety of your crews and our employees is is paramount.

That's the most important thing, and we do want the public to make sure that they are are are treating our employees and and not you know attacking them with BB guns or any of the things that you you just mentioned.

Uh Nick, I'm gonna start off and just with a few comments.

And a lot of us on the dias here have been getting a tremendous amount of calls about this issue, and and whatever questions you can answer would be great.

If not, maybe uh the city manager can can jump in.

But I know that in 2024 the amount of rain was about 4.7 inches.

Fast forward to 2025 through August 13th, it's been about 5.58 inches of rain, which is still below our annual amount of eight to ten inches, and forecasters are not anticipating us hitting that that uh rain amount uh this year.

Cities like Phoenix, Albuquerque, Tucson, and many others experience the same uh type weather pattern that El Paso does with the monsoons.

Knowing that others have the same weather pattern that El Paso does, why are we experiencing such a overgrowth of weeds and specifically in our median areas?

And did we spray a herb uh herbicide to try to knock this down before it got to this level?

Um so it's answer multiple questions.

So yes, there has been a rate increase, and I do track multiple rain gauges throughout the city.

Though the overall main rain gauge in the city does say 5.3 inches, but there has been some areas in the city that has reached over eight inches already in rainfall.

So there has been certain areas, because you could tell in El Paso we don't get rainfall throughout the entire city, it hits in certain locations.

So there has been almost double the amount of rainfall in certain uh areas, which include the the Far East and the Northeast that have received that.

Um yes, we do uh have the same similar uh weather as other cities like Phoenix and other desert areas.

I've I've visited those cities um on vacation on personal time to see what the difference is.

The medians are practically the same, just with a little bit more trees.

But I do see weeds in other cities also.

I I've driven around and they they they get the same amount of weeds we do.

Uh I don't want to say the same amount, they do get weeds like we do.

It just happens after rainfalls.

You know, that that's just the thing.

Um a lot of the the median uh landscaping that we have is rock and they have rock, and then like I said, when the dirt comes in, it it breeds a perfect breeding ground for for weeds to grow in there after any rainfall.

And yes, we do.

We spray continually throughout, I want to say starting in March and ending in October, because like I said, the herbicide is heat activated, so we want to get in those warmer months to make sure we're getting the full full use of our herbicide, and then we continue spraying with pre-emergent during the colder months because it it doesn't require the heat to activate, and that pretty much acts like a deterrent.

If there is weeds in the median, they'll stop them from growing and keep them at the same size until the springtime when we could get them with herbicide or before they get cleaned.

Okay, so taking that for fact that the rain rains more in other areas, but we're we're measuring from the airport is how they come up with the with the data.

And I spoke to TechStot.

So looking at some of the Text dot uh right aways and in the rock areas that they have, assuming that they're getting the same amount of rainfall that other parts of El Paso is there is no weeds in a lot of their areas.

So they've done something that has treated the the weeds in their area to where it doesn't look as bad as it does in in the city.

Mayor, I just want to make sure that we you know that prior to 2018, we didn't have did not have responsibilities for tech stocks right-aways and medians.

That contract changed and over with that came two million dollars worth of responsibility.

So we have been putting a lot of effort into maintaining the medans prior to 2018.

We only had city medians, tech stock paid for their own right-away.

And so it really has stretched our capacity to really focus on what has historically been our own.

Um, as you've heard the team say, you know, we've thought about whether you can add more people, whether you can add more capacity to contracts.

You're hearing that even the contracts that we have are not able to pull at the rate that allows us to be able to do extra.

So it doesn't make sense for us to add to a contract that's not even sort of hitting its capacity.

You know, certainly not making excuses.

We know that this is an issue for us.

It was a huge issue for us in 21-22 when we had huge rainfall.

I think this year, the combination of the wind, you know, and the sand and everything that went with that in addition to these pieces are certainly adding to it.

And the staff are committed to making sure that we can be more proactive and thinking about some of this.

Some of what Nick has been thinking about is you know, do we talk about designs that look different for these areas that still respect um having beautification in our city, but have some um elements of that that helps us to be able to reduce you know some of the weeds that we might be experiencing?

But I just wanted to make sure I put on the record for the tech stock piece because that that was huge for us.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm talking mainly more along the freeways when you drive out to the east side or to the west side, the areas that Techstone is maintaining doesn't have the overgrown uh weeds like we do on some of our medians.

The the other concern is that you know there's been a you know, economic development is is a big big driver of one of my biggest pillars, and there's been a number of companies come into town, and when we drive down certain certain uh roadways here, they're seeing the overgrown medians.

I think it's been there for for quite some time.

You'd mentioned three and three and a half cycles uh uh annually is what a contractor can can do, Nick.

What metrics do we measure the contractor by?

Is it I mean, how do you measure to know if they're doing what they're supposed to be doing?

So we have staff office staff that goes out and inspects uh prior to payment.

So we'll go out and inspect the meetings to make sure they're meeting the standards that our staff is meeting by pulling the weeds, playing uh cleaning everything out, make sure everything is to meeting the standard that we're doing with uh our city of Al Paso staff internally.

So we do have inspectors that go out and make sure prior to payment that they're meeting all standards, and if they're not doing all the work within the meeting, we'll have them go back to make sure they're completing everything as properly as possible to meet the standard that they before they get paid.

Okay.

Um there's this thing is lit up like uh a Christmas tree here.

So the the last comment that I'll have is I've been here you know my my whole life, and I don't recall it being you know this bad.

And and it's you know, all of us have received texts, calls, you know, and you know, one of the comments was how do you expect us, the community to be responsible for weeds when we can't maintain our own?

So we're gonna have to figure this out because it is becoming uh a much bigger issue because we're all filling it uh here on the dias.

With that, uh Representative Brown.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Nick, for the presentation.

I really appreciate the um the detail on here.

Just a couple of questions based off of um what was on the item.

The schedule, I know that the schedule says March to August for next year for the cleanup campaign.

When can we expect or what's the timeline that we can expect the weeds to be cleaned up this year?

Um I don't I don't have a finalized timeline because like I said, um we we just have six crews right now.

Typically it takes us uh pretty much the entire year of continually rotating through all the meetings to get everything completed uh um throughout the year.

Like I said, we're we're continually rotating through all the streets, so I don't have a finalized timeline.

It's just we're we're going through the entire rotation of the cycle, which should take us a few more months to get through the cycle again before we get to the start and be restarting the medians that we worked on beforehand.

The the thing is what we've seen also, you know, we've had we've completed medions and it rained, and we had just completed that meeting and we've seen growth already pop up.

So we we've had issues with you know, should we move on to the next one or should we start the same one over again before moving on to the next one?

So we're working on those challenges and trying to make sure we're scheduling every every meeting within the city as quick as possible to make sure we go through that rotation, but it will take a few months before we um it'll it'll get a lot better um once the rainfall starts and a lot of the the weeds, it'll make it a lot easier for our staff to pull them out and and clean up through the medians once everything starts dying down a little bit when the rainfall stops.

Okay, thank you.

And then um I I I know that you said that there you have two spraying units right and you can't spray if wind is greater than 10 miles an hour.

Correct.

And you cited state law.

Yes.

Would you happen to know that law number by any chance?

No, I I I can get that for you though.

I don't have it with me currently.

Okay, thank you.

And then I also um saw illegal dumping is part of this and V and vehicle accidents that kind of the debris lands on the median in that area.

So are there fines for dumping?

Um the um I'm not sure if there's fines.

Um we'd have to provide all the information for the um they would have to have all the information for legal dumping, like who's doing it, license plate numbers, and a lot of that happens when we don't have anybody around to document the information or nobody reports it.

So typically when there's legal dumping, nobody sees it.

So I'm we we can't find anybody for any of the legal dumping uh for the um that vehicle accidents we do work with police department.

Um they let us know if there's an accident, they do provide information on that, and we try to recover any any money from that.

But just uh when it comes to physical time that we're using, it costs us just approximately about 25,000 dollars in in man hours to go out and fix the medians after accidents.

25,000 in man hours?

Yes.

Okay.

And then what is the you said you had six crews right now that are working in in this area or in this group, right?

You have six.

So throughout the city, yes.

No, no, so we we have 47 FTs as part of the median group.

47 FTEs, okay.

Yeah, and with seven vacancies.

So total you should be at 54?

Uh no, we will be at 47.

Is this we have 40 group uh 40 right now?

Oh, you're at 40.

Okay.

47 is your is your cap.

Yes.

Okay, hold on for me.

But you have 26 on the beautification staff?

Yes, and we brought over three groups uh from that to do separate media's uh during this heavy rainfall season.

And right now they're working 6 a.m.

to 4 30 p.m.

Monday through Friday?

Yes.

And have is I guess I'm I'm trying to understand if we're limited and we're s we don't really have a timeline as to when the weeds will get cleaned up.

Is there something that's in place for mitigation?

Uh bring bringing over the the groups from beautification and working overtime is our our mitigation plan currently.

Uh we're using all the resources we can as part of the environmental fee to take uh take care of the meetings as much as possible.

And my last question, and this is it.

So um by any chance are you so what you all use for the spray, right?

Do you work in conjunction with Parks and Rec to see if I know that they use something for their weed abatement also?

Do they not?

Do you all work together for that?

Yes, it's pretty much it's the same chemical that they use.

We we all get trained throughout the same uh herbicide license folks.

So it's all the same uh chemicals that are used throughout streets and maintenance, parks and rec and environmental services.

Okay.

Thanks, Nick.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Representative Canalis.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um yeah, first of all, tremendous amount of work out there for you also.

I appreciate how much you get through with you know the the limited crew that you have, and I know that's one of the diff the the very difficult jobs to hire as well, because it's very difficult work.

So I appreciate all the employees who are out there working hard and the employees for the contractor as well.

I know they share the same the same struggles.

Um it feels like just yesterday, but I remember 2018 when there was quite a lot of talk about Text Dot and their decision not to continue maintaining their own maintenance, uh their own medium.

Can you talk a little bit about what that agreement looks like?

I mean, again, you know, I know it's about two million dollars in in obligation.

Um but uh Richard Bristol come up and speak on that.

He was director during that transition.

Um morning, sir.

Richard Bristol with uh city manager's office.

In 2018, we got uh uh notification from TechSoup that their interpretation of the municipal maintenance agreement was that anything within the right-of-way would be our responsibility.

And with that, they stopped and notified us that they notified us in writing that they will stop maintaining meetings and have them to us.

What we had to do at the time, in all honesty, is we were all on contract at the time.

All of our citywide meetings were on contract.

We could not get a larger allocation um from the environment from the environmental fee that year, so we found a way to bring them all in-house.

And we took on, like the city manager said, we estimated um right under two million dollars of contracted work at the time.

So we didn't have two more million dollars to deal with, so we had to find a way to put it all in-house and and make it an internal process, and we did that.

So that's what we have the positions on staff now.

Uh we did supplement it with a third party, like like Nick's doing now.

Um, but labor has been the key over the last few years.

That's really hurt us.

Do we feel that there's more capacity out there if there were you know, I I know the the current third-party contractor is at the limit of what they're able to accomplish.

Is is there other labor out there that could potentially pick up?

There's labor out there, sir.

Getting them to uh getting them to bid on our program is is a different story, but there is labor out there, and the cost of labor is what's influencing is ability to get three to four treatments a year as opposed to eight.

Um we were able to do this a lot more uh with more frequency when the costs were lower.

Um there was a time we're doing it bi-weekly.

Um at these uh labor prices, I think the and traffic control as well, that would be a challenge.

Um but honestly, uh keeping up with medians has a lot to do with the cost of labor.

Okay, yeah, I mean it's uh I know we just adopted a budget two weeks ago, but uh something to consider in the upcoming years that if we want to see more uh median maintenance, uh more cycles of of each median, we have to consider a a greater allocation for it.

Um it's it's heartbreaking to hear that your crews are facing uh threats and uh some aggression from the public.

Uh they're out there working incredibly hard, and uh really it's up to us up here to make decisions about the kind of funding that we allocate to to media maintenance, and so um sorry uh colleagues on council, but the public should direct their anger to us and not to the crews on the street.

We're the ones who who make the decisions on what we want to spend on this.

Um so thank you again to everybody who's out working hard on the maintenance crews.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Yep.

Representative Nino.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Nicholas and the entire staff for all their great work.

I did see some of the maintenance crew uh on Rich Beam and also on John Hayes cleaning last week, so very grateful for all the work that you all do.

I know that in the budget process I did request in one of my council budget requests, I had requested for additional funding for median upkeep, cleaning and spraying.

Um, and you all were able to provide some analysis of what it would cost, you know, everything from the startup costs to the annual costs and whatnot.

But um in the presentation, I have a couple of questions in regards to the vehicle debris.

Um it says that you guys do it is it two times a week, or are how can you walk me through the process of that?

Is if there's an accident, does PD give you all the report and then you all go out and clean up the debris, or how how does that work?

Uh so we do it one of two ways.

Typically, either we hear from uh the police department, let us know that there was an accident in the location this weekend, or um we'll hear about it uh online or through the news, or even through Fitfan, we'll see it and our staff will let us know that hey, there was an accident here, there was this, this, and this debris, uh we need to go take care of it.

So we're proactive, we're always checking to see where the accidents are if we don't hear from the the police right away, but we do have that communication.

But um, you know, some of these accidents happen late at night or early in the mornings where the the word doesn't get get back to us.

So we we use all avenues to uh check for all the the media maintenance activities that we need to take care of throughout the city.

Okay, good to know.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

Now in regards to kind of what the mayor had asked about the metrics with the contractor, is there a way for us to see the cleaning schedule ahead of time or to get a better idea as to when they're gonna be cleaning the specific mediums?

I know that um earlier this year my office had requested different medions to be cleaned, and I know that there's a schedule every three months, right?

Is it every three months that they get visited?

Um but I was trying to understand in regards to like the weather.

Um I think if we were to focus a little bit more into the summer months or the months that we have the more growth rather than for example um in the winter, I'm not sure if there's that growth happening.

I know in district five, I have some medias that have absolutely no landscaping, it's just dirt or even some roundabouts.

So I know that I've have faced a lot of uh you know constituents reaching out to my office in regards to some of the wheats growing, um, including I know that you know we're not responsible for the double frontage homes or the parkway, which is why I had asked if we could put that in the presentation, because I have some areas in my district that some of the double frontage or the parkways have grown up to four or five feet tall.

And I know that I have had conversation with Ms.

Mack and some of the staff members in regards to the current municipal code states that we don't really go through the process or notify the homeowners until the weeds are over 12 inches, right?

Um so I think we I would love to navigate the conversation of um uh last week in my my briefing with Ms.

Mack, I had mentioned that uh in regards to the community outreach, possibly uh working alongside with like O Paso Water and putting an insert there of notifying the constituents or the residents of like the responsibilities will be extremely helpful because a lot of times people just don't know.

And I know that we've constantly visited what we don't know, we don't know, right?

Um so I think I I would really love to explore those conversations.

Um one question for you all.

Um, or I don't know if this is Ms.

Mack or if this is environmental services or or CID.

In regards to the new medians, any new meeting that gets installed or any new um roundabout, are we looking at measures to help deviate from possibly um you know overgrown weeds in the future, like better plastic underneath, you know, something that could be in place to where uh we're taking we're being proactive now so that you know in the future we're not trying to play catch up.

Yes, the staff has been looking at some designs and making some recommendations in terms of how we might be able to mitigate you know some of these pieces.

And I have to say personally that I I think that these mediums that we've added as beautification to our city.

You know, I think previous councils worked hard to make sure that we could go back and put planting in areas that we didn't have them before.

So really trying to find that balance between you know concrete and dirt and you know, something that is actually adding to our city that we can maintain is going to be really important for us.

Um so we've been having that discussion about, you know, perhaps when we talk about uh the um ends towards the sidewalk, you know, do we need planting that goes all the way to the end there?

And that would actually give us um less cleanup.

And so we'll probably be having that conversation and bringing that back um to you all.

We have the landscaping ordinance coming forward this fall.

Um but all one of the conversations that Nick and I had was I still have what I have, and we need to clean up what we have.

Perfect.

Thank you, Miss Mac.

Um one last question on slide number 12, the top 20 traveled roadways.

Um is Pebble Hills not a top traveled roadway.

I just didn't see Pebble Hills on there, so I was insurer.

Um so when we did this, we were basing it off data when we got to it two and a half years ago when we were providing the contract.

We have an updated, we will be re-looking at it when the contract comes up.

We're on the the second year of the contract.

So when it renews, we'll be looking at it and trying to divvy up the the roadways uh at that point per per current uh information.

Perfect.

Okay, no further questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor.

No, don't apologize.

Nick, thank you for the presentation.

I know uh we've been in communication.

You were at my community meeting last week, and I really appreciate um all the work that you and your crew have been putting in.

I know that they're working already 10 hours over time as it is trying um to you know make sure that we beautify our city.

I think from what I've heard from your presentation today, bottom line, you need help.

You need help.

We need uh more hands on deck.

Um we have a third party vendor that is uh not able for whatever reason to fulfill the scope of work that we've designated to that person.

Um and so this item today is not listed as an action item, but I think that we need to look further into this to see how we can you know put all of our efforts together and make sure that we are doing the right thing for our city.

There's a saying that says dress to impress.

I'm sure many people have heard it.

Um, and I just don't feel that our city right now is stressed to impress anybody.

But uh the people that we need to impress the most, in my opinion, are our constituents because that's who we respond to, that's who we are accountable to.

Um, I'm gonna read some things that they've told me.

Um, you know, and this is uh just coming from them, and this is why this item was brought forth by myself and representative Madzonado Rocha, because I do think that we need to be leaders that not just listen but that also take action.

Um so for example, one constituent says, I now understand what a frustrating task it is to work with the city.

I can say without hesitation that our city is a mess.

And I instead of removing wild palms, they're trimming them instead of removing wild weeds, they leave them.

I can't see any of the dead trees being removed.

This was um I know that since then you have taken some some care of of some of these items that I have sent uh to you.

Uh another constituent says, very unfortunate as to what has happened to the city.

I am a native old Pasuan for 71 years.

Another constituent says it's disheartening to witness your city being overrun by weeds.

Another constituent emailed me and said, When is the city going to turn this disaster around?

So it's not one person, it's many people, and I think it's all throughout the city.

I I understand that we're trying to do as much as we can, but going back to my first point is you need help.

If it's gonna take you one and a half to two weeks to do, you know, the mile that you described.

I don't I understand why you can't give us a timeline today.

Is that right?

You can't give us a timeline.

Correct.

Because the task I think is too too too big, right?

From what I understand.

I mean, for the size crew that you have available at this time.

And it's still raining.

And it's still raining, yes.

Yes, and I think so.

I just want to note for council that we uh Nick mentioned that all of these services are paid through the environmental fee.

The council has the ability and authority to adjust that fee at any time to add capacity to staff.

Um, as you recall, we did do an adjustment this year for um code enforcement.

Um, a one dollar increase of fee will get you about two million dollars.

So we'll yeah, one dollar will get you about two million.

Um it will not give us all of the equipment right away, but it certainly would give the capacity to be able to start to bring the staffing on.

They do have to have um safety gear and trucks that really help people keep them safe within the median.

So, as you said, we've had this conversation for a long time.

We made that adjustment when we got the tech stot um right-aways, which really was not adding additional capacity to what we had.

We just grew our inventory, and so I just wanted to make sure I offer that as um a possibility of council.

So once they entertain that in the future.

Thank you, Miss Mac.

So I I think you know that's gonna be a difficult conversation to have to basically say the city doesn't have the funding to clean up the weeds that we currently have.

Is that basically what I heard from from what we have right now budgeted?

Is that right?

Correct.

So the environmental fee is specifically for um cleanups throughout the city.

I mean, Nick, you can talk about what's an environmental fee.

Yeah, it's for the media maintenance beautification group, uh code code department.

Um so it's pretty much just for the visual image, uh, street sweeping, uh great 3D abatement.

So that's what the environmental fee is for, just to beautify the city.

Yeah.

And you know, many times we we discussed, you know, having a more proactive approach instead of a reactive one.

Um as was previously mentioned.

I mean, it's not like it never rains and it just rained this year.

This year it just happened to rain more.

We understand that.

But uh it it just seems like you know, we need to prioritize things.

I think making sure that our city looks clean and um again again is uh in a in a condition that people feel that their taxes are being put to good use.

Um that is what people witness firsthand every day when they're driving our streets, and so that is the impression they have of the city they love, and that is why I think it is so important that we do our best to clean it up.

Um that is what our constituents are asking for, and that is what I think they expect.

They expect a response that's gonna be action-oriented.

Um, so I I don't know because this item's not listed for action today.

I don't know what action we can take.

Um, I know uh representative Canales talked about something for next year.

I just don't know if next year is soon enough.

Um and and I know that you need help.

So again, we're gonna have to have this discussion further on on how that's gonna happen because those fees I don't think we can implement tomorrow either.

So those weeds do need to be cleaned up soon, though.

Okay.

Well, um, this is something that I think we need to discuss further.

We need to make sure again that we are responsive to our constituency because at the end of the day we are held accountable for it, and um we need a more proactive approach to how we address this issue to make sure that our city really reflects the pride we feel as O Paso ones.

Again, Nick, you know, I know your crew is working hard.

I know that you've been working hard and you're doing the best with what you have today.

So I thank you for those efforts and and let's continue the conversation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Representative Trahill.

Thank you, Mayor.

Nick, thank you for this presentation, and thank you to your crew who's out there in the different various weather, heat, cold, rain, sand, dirt, everything.

We appreciate them very much for all that they do.

Uh I do have some questions here.

Um regarding the beautification, how is how is that different than the regular consistent cleanup?

What is the difference between the maintenance and the beautification?

So median maintenance, they're strictly just on medians constantly throughout the year.

The beef beautification group uh does the property cleanup.

So anytime the co department deems a property um out of compliance with either weeds, trash, um hoarding, anything of that sort.

That crew is just uh constantly working on those properties also.

So we always have crews dedicated to that because they they come out throughout the year, they're not just a summer thing, because it like I said, it's not just weeds, it's also trash, um, hoarding, different activities like that.

So they're just continually working on that.

And then we have one crew specifically for both pickups, and that's a service that we have.

That's a $35 service that will pick up any trash in front of your house that you leave curbside as long as you schedule it with us.

So we have those crews that are continually uh dealing with those services outside of media maintenance.

Okay.

And so the the beautification team, they don't get called into to clean help clean the medium, or they're they're specific to just those those areas that you just spoke of.

So typically during the summer I bring them in as additional crews to work overtime just to assist the median maintenance group during the fall and winter months.

We keep them just on property cleanups because when we do pull them off, there does get a little bit of a backlog on the property cleanups and and the residents still want those properties cleaned up at that time.

So we pull them up, but then we bring them back during the fall and winter months to assist with that so we could bring down the cases on the on the property cleanups also.

Okay.

Uh regarding the third party.

So you mentioned you're having some challenges with the third party uh contracting.

What size is their crew?

How many people are in their team?

They they have two teams.

I don't know how many crew members they have.

Um we don't keep track of that.

They've had so they have mentioned that, had some issues with hiring and also, but um, their crew size changes anywhere from six to eight people from what they've mentioned in previous meetings, but it it varies based off um uh people that are sick, vacation, different items like that.

So they don't have a set number all the time, but they have mentioned that they've had issues with hiring on the median side also because of the amount of the type of work that they perform.

Okay.

And they and they work throughout throughout the city.

How how do you know which where to designate them to go and clean?

Well, once again, they do the top 20 most traveled roadways.

As I mentioned, we uh developed that list uh two years ago, and those are they do those on a rotational basis.

They start at the beginning and then they continue throughout the top 20 roadways, and then they just rotate from the top of the list to the bottom, and they have them split up a little up.

It's not 10 to 10, it's a little more like seven to thirteen just due to the square footage.

They broke it out evenly between what they take care of.

And when they're having the challenges meeting uh the required amount that they're responsible for, does the city do you work with them so that the city works with that or what happens in the area where they're not able to maintain?

We we we work with them telling them that you know they they need to catch up on their schedule, so they try to to hire more people, they try to get more equipment, more people out there.

So we let them know like, hey, this is where you should be right now.

So we we meet with them on a continual basis.

We have a single employer that's constantly monitoring their contract to make sure they're trying to meet their their goals.

Like I said, um, as of August 30th, they hit about one point one million of their contract out of the 1.2.

So they were in cycle four, but they couldn't quite finish it.

They were about a third way through the cycle, the fourth cycle.

Okay.

The the bidding process, is it based on lowest bid or best value?

Um that's the same.

So when we originally um had the contract, we put it out for bid three different times, and we had uh nobody uh bid on the the contract.

So we worked with exceeds who have uh uh um I don't know how to describe the contract.

Uh they um exceeds has an exemption.

An exemption, yes.

An exemption?

Yes, because they they hire uh special needs and uh different employees of that sort.

So they have an exemption with the city that we could work with them to have the contract.

But when we initially went out for bid, we didn't have any bidders for three straight bids.

So that's why we went with the special contract.

Okay.

What what is it is it uh what is causing the lack of bidding?

Um uh some of the state roads require you to have the the TMAs, the traffic mounted attenuators to provide the the safety on the state roads.

So a lot of the majority of the top 20 traveled roads are those those uh contracted roads.

So that's why we've had issues with some of the smaller groups because we've been asked why don't we hire more of the smaller groups?

Well, they don't have the equipment to for the traffic management.

So and a lot of the times we require that all together just to keep the employees safe, because um typically if you're gonna stay stationed longer than one hour in any location on a median, you have to have the traffic control through the city and get it all.

But if you're continually moving, you don't have to it's not required of that traffic control just to have the traffic uh vehicles behind you making sure they're stopping traffic.

So that's that's one of the things we've had.

And if they didn't have that, they would have to constantly be in applying for traffic uh control to have that for every movement they were going to do throughout the city.

So that's why we require to have for them to have those vehicles.

So they're continually moving, and it reduces the amount of time that they have to prepare permits for traffic control and different items like that.

Okay, okay.

Uh regarding the legal dumping, what would you say is the estimated cost that that goes into that?

Um I I don't I don't have uh a number in my head because it is very few and far between in the medians.

We get mud the majority of the legal dumping in the alleyways, but so on the medians it happens few and far between.

So I I I don't have a number.

I could get that for you though.

Okay, please.

Uh-huh.

Uh when when they're cleaning the the medium and they see if if they see trash maybe across the street or something like that.

Do they have to wait until they get a CR to clean that area up as well?

Or I'm asking because it's so on McCombs, we have a median that that gets cleaned it, you know, they they've done very well in cleaning that.

But right across the street, there's illegal dumping and there's a ton of trash there.

We've put a CR several times.

If they see that across the street, can they go and clean that area, or do they need to have the written document to be able to do that?

So it it depends on the location.

If we're talking about on the railroad property, we're not allowed to enter that property without a rate of entry, and that does take a bit of time through the railroad company because they still don't even want us on their property the majority of the time because of the the dangerousness of being next to the tracks.

But if we do sit on the I'm speaking of Macomb, so McCombs, there's no real road track there.

If it's on private property, then we do have to go through the um the rate of entry process through code for them to establish a case because we can't just enter a property without per uh permission from the the resident or have them clean it or uh uh do through the writ of entry through the code department.

Okay.

I'm just um brainstorming in my head right now uh of ideas here.

Uh have you have you only ever had a like an adopt a medium type type of program?

I know you mentioned right now you know, you have to have the the safety, but I know in in other cities there you can adopt a median, and so we can do something with schools, for example, for service-related projects.

So is that a possibility?

You could adopt the highway, which is the parkways.

The medium, they they never adopt the mediums because of the safety issue.

So we did have uh community cleanups about two or three years ago where um we had multiple cleanups, but we had to completely close down all the roads, so there was no traffic whatsoever.

And we had volunteers come in, but they still got injured on site, and we were just pulling weeds and picking up trash.

Um but it costs us anywhere from 20 to 25,000 a mile to do the community cleanups where our staff and the third party could do it anywhere from 3500 to 4500 for the same amount of uh median.

Okay, okay.

Thank you, Nick.

I appreciate your representative Massaveto.

Thank you, Mayor.

Hi, Nick.

It's been it's been a morning.

Yes.

I um I'm just kind of listening to the the conversation and have some questions and some thoughts, so I wanted to go over them.

I I guess you you're talking about this plan that you have, and you do it every quarter or so on what you're doing, and you're trying to tackle that plan, right?

Yes.

Okay.

So how do the CRs factor into that plan?

I'm I'm trying to have that understanding of when we put a CR in, which I think all the council offices from the conversation have put in a lot of CR requests.

Yes.

Or just CRs.

So how does that work?

So when we do get a CR on the median maintenance, we we try to provide the most updated schedule on our list to let them know when we're gonna be hitting the median.

Uh we try not to jump off the rotation because then you know it and misaligns everything, and then we're gonna miss one and it's gonna be longer for others.

So we try to provide the most updated schedule to let you know which one of the six crews is gonna be there as um and the earliest date possible.

Okay, so you're not deviating from the schedule, even though you might get five CRs on one area.

We we try not to.

Um what we've been doing with the the beautification crews on the on some of the heavier weeded areas.

We have been attacking those with our our beautification crews, but it's not based off the CRs, it's based off how much vegetation we're seeing in the media to try to tackle those more heavy weeded areas because we want to keep that rotational basis to make sure we're getting the full coverage of the city.

Okay.

I I'd love to kind of see data on how many CRs have been submitted this this summer alone and how much of that has been tackled because it was already part of the current plan.

Like, I don't know, a hundred CRs have been submitted, and then we only got to 20% because they weren't scheduled until later or something like that.

Okay.

I can get that information.

Yeah, that that would be helpful.

I I'm just wondering I the status quo, it seems has been like this since 2018 since the text dot issue happened, and we're kind of seeing it now.

And I'm I'm wondering how we can strategize on the current processes that are in place, just because the many conversations that I've had c with constituents have, you know, they they say, well, I'm already paying a lot in taxes.

At the very least, this could be tackled, right?

And I can't get into the nuances of you know, the budget is this and all of that.

But when people are around, what they see is going to give them the impression that nothing is being done with the taxes that they're paying, right?

So at the very least you're paying high taxes, but what are we getting?

And a lot of them think they're getting nothing, right?

And so I think that's a lot of where their frustrations come into play.

I'm also wondering with illegal dumping when you were talking about illegal dumping in this presentation.

You're talking specifically only in the medians, or you're talking illegal dumping in general as ZSD.

No, I was talking about the median maintenance group, and it's only illegal dumping within the mediums.

Okay.

And then have you seen what other cities are doing?

I I think from what the mayor was saying earlier, you know, Phoenix Albuquerque.

They're they're very similar in in size and just um even geography and stuff like that.

Have you looked at what they do to not have this issue?

They don't have as many medians.

There's a lot more, and I I don't want to go that way.

Like a lot more just the the turning lanes, the concrete to provide where you're gonna turn.

I've uh like I said, um I'll sometimes go to Phoenix and just drive around the entire city in the city of Phoenix, you don't see a lot of mediums.

You do see them in the the more predominant areas, but you'll see them more in like Scottsdale, uh Glendale in the more the smaller areas, but um they they don't have as many media, and a lot of them are more just for turning purposes and providing the traffic uh directions.

So different planning is what you're kind of saying.

I I think they're just have uh they don't have the the volume that we do.

I've just reached out to three of the the city managers and we'll just get something a little bit more comprehensive.

The earlier messages that I got back was that some of the HOAs have responsibility for some of those in business districts, businesses have taken on some of that responsibility.

You know, obviously I wouldn't really understand what their baseline of staff um involvement is, but we'll we'll put that pull that together, and so you'll have something that's a little bit more comprehensive, and we'll send that out to everybody once I receive it.

Okay, thank you, Ms.

Mack.

And now that code is its own department, and I see Mr.

Albarell here.

How is this collaboration kind of working?

You're you're talking about getting a rate of entry.

How long does it take to get something like that?

Well, the rate of entry as soon as we receive the case from uh the uh code department will submit that in.

It typically takes uh a week or two to get the rate of entry for a property.

But like I said, when we pull back the the beautification group from doing property cleanups and doing all the legal dumpings, we only have two crews, so there might be a bit of a a delay on getting those uh abated as as quick as possible.

But um, I don't know if Steve wants to go through the whole process uh real quick.

Yeah.

Good morning, Steve.

Good morning, mayor, counsel, Steve Alvarado for the record, code enforcement director.

Uh, for the rate of entries, once we send a case over to ESD or ESD partners, they will do some follow-up inspections to go out and check to make sure the case has not been cleaned.

Um, therefore they don't have to get the writ of entry, and they'll do a follow-up after that.

They're posting a 48-hour notice when it comes to the second follow-up, letting them know hey, this is the last time you have the opportunity, 48 hours to get out there and clean it before we the city get in there and clean it.

Uh, we're working with the courts as well to see how we could streamline, maybe expediting signing these rate of entries.

Um at about costas, the director there's been we've been talking and communicating.

It's been a great collaboration uh with the municipal courts.

Um but we're looking at other opportunities with the new code enforcement department that started yesterday, today's the first day, hoorah.

Um we're excited looking at ways to improve services deliverables as well, and maybe creating an o our own abatement team to assist ESD but focus on the property maintenance on private properties that we're writing up to expedite the process as well.

Okay.

Thank you, Nick.

I mean, thank you, Steve.

Thank you, sir.

I I also wanted to ask your you've put stuff out for bid you said three times, and then you have uh a contract with um some organization.

Have we done anything?

This has come up at my community meetings with um JPD or APD.

Um no, because uh we're at the capacity for the environmental fee, so we've continued with uh XCs right now on their third-party contract.

Because like I said, they they've gotten closed, uh, they haven't hit the four cycles, but they've they got in there and they've provided a minimum at least three cycles throughout the city on their current contract.

So we've maintained with their current contract, this will be their last year coming up, so we'll be looking at all avenues uh in this next cycle.

Okay, and then you have 40 employees right now.

You you want to get to 47.

Yes.

And you're having trouble hiring for this, um, I'm assuming.

Uh it's not that we have trouble hiring.

We do hire employees, they come in, they they'll stay, some of them won't.

It it's a constant revolving door because it it's a lot of it's a lot of work being outside, being crossed over, being bent over 10 hours a day pulling weeds, because we try not to cut the weeds because cutting the weeds you know they'll grow back right away.

So they try to pull all the weeds and try to try to get all everything as much as possible pulled by hand.

So it's it's a tough job.

So it's a continual rotating basis.

Uh either they'll they'll go somewhere else or they'll um they they just can't handle it.

And I I completely understand why, because it's it's a tough job.

Okay.

But I I would say, you know, HR is constantly helping us with the hiring process.

They do an amazing job to get us to list uh as quickly as possible.

So we're constantly interviewing and the solid waste service worker and the lead solid waste work service work is typically my most uh vacant position uh throughout environmental services.

That that doesn't include just medium and beautification, that includes the landfill and all the other divisions within environmental services, because it's typically an outdoor position doing manual labor.

Okay.

And then I guess uh the last thing that I wanted to say was even if we throw more money at this, there's always the issue of people power on on this, right?

And and that is kind of my worry because I kind of seen that with streets.

Okay, we could throw more money at streets, but are we gonna get sufficient people whether they're in-house or whether it's a contract?

How do we get there?

I've seen it with animal services where we don't have enough officers and they leave after six months and there's retention issues, and that continues to be a thing that I've seen across departments, not just here.

How can we get past these things where we could rethink on how we're approaching this?

And and then that's kind of my theme overall on this item.

That I really want to see us do things a little differently because the status quo isn't working.

I I think about the illegal dumping as well.

I've I've said that we need to open the citizen collection sites to all people because if they have that open, then they're not gonna be dumping behind their alley or something, you know, like people that live in apartments or something that don't have a water bill.

They're we're constantly going throughout my district driving around, and then we see a couch in front of some apartments because they can't go dispose of it at the citizen collection.

So that's kind of the overall thing, and Miss Mac, I think you have just overall in terms of staffing.

We do expect to see you know a certain number number of turnover, and so what we've been doing in some cases is overfilling, just assuming that you know, in that cycle, you're gonna see a certain amount of turnover and allows us to sort of have the numbers that we need.

As you know, we continue to work on um some of the issues as are related to um uh making sure that our compensation is competitive, but it's still 107 degrees and you're still outside for 10 hours.

And so, you know, in some of this work, you just understand the nature of the work and try to make it as pleasant as possible for the people who are signing up to get that done and hoping that we can have enough people to work through some of those processes.

Um and on the ESD item, we were having a discussion, and we'll come we'll send you a note on what we think might be a strategy in terms of um allowing people who don't have water bills to be able to pay to be able to utilize that service.

So we did have that listed from the budget process.

Okay, that's that's good to know.

And I don't know, even the hours, right?

If it's uh start at 6 a.m., go till 11 and come back at four and go till nine or three to eight or something like that where the they're not in the heat that is the highest throughout the day or something.

So we've we've talked to staff and they say once they start they just want to go because if they get that rest in between, they're they're done.

They're done.

Yeah, they they don't want and that's why they ask for the two days on on the week because then they'd rather do the overtime during the week because it works better with them physically.

Okay.

Representative Limo.

Thank you, mate.

Thank you, Mayor.

Nick, what a thankless job.

The work that the people is incredibly backbreaking work.

I was looking at your your overtime schedule that you have.

So they're working ten hours a day, and then you offer them overtime on Saturday, and I am absolutely not surprised that you don't have the whole crew coming back on that day.

Um I wonder if you only did half a day.

If you offered over time just for half a day on Saturday, the possibility that uh just I'll come in for five hours and do a little something extra.

Um I mean, I'm just thinking I'd probably be dead tired on Friday afternoon at 4 30 and wouldn't be interested in coming in.

But sometimes sometimes those things can come up.

So I'm just curious about that.

Recently, the median on Yarbrough from Gateway down to independence was cleaned up.

It's been maybe about a month, two months.

I don't believe that I saw any herbicide uh spray.

Is that the green?

Correct, yes.

Okay.

Yeah, I don't think that it was sprayed um because I think I would have seen it.

And so I'm concerned or worried that the cleaning might be taking place, but we're not following up with a herbicide.

Just a thought on on on that that we would want to look at.

And so let me see if I understand.

In 2018, Text Dots said we're no longer maintaining mediums, and so they don't at all.

The city has undertaken that responsibility.

Correct.

Wow.

Okay.

Um whenever there's an accident, whether it be on a major street, on a regular street, on I-10, and there's vehicle parts or pieces, fenders all over the place.

Whose responsibility is it to do that cleanup?

Is it the tow truck service?

Or is that text dot or is that the city?

You know, you all be driving, I'll see this fender on the side of the road, and I'm thinking, like, plus, how did it get there?

Obviously, it was an accident.

But who's responsible for the pickup of that?

Um I I don't want to speak.

I don't know if there's anybody here uh typically Steve Alvarado for the record again.

Uh typically the tow truck driver after an accident would be responsible for cleaning up, they would throw some cat litter down or some sawdust down to soak up the fluids, brush it up, throw it into a trash can, any broken glass, and remove any bumpers.

Typically they'll throw the bumpers in the vehicle that they're towing.

Um that's how it's happened across the states I've worked for.

And and that's what I thought was supposed to happen, but I think we tend to find vendors all over the place, and it's been an accident where there was a tow truck, a vehicle was towed, but I don't think that they're fully following through on that particular pickup.

So I'm wondering if allowing if letting you know, hey, there was an accident on Yarborough, there's a spender there, that you could go back and figure out, well, wait a minute, it was a tow truck.

The tow truck's responsible, that maybe they should be the ones that would be cleaning that up.

Just to just a thought on that.

So, Nick, on the CR process that Representative Acevedo brought up.

So, really we can have as many CR concerns or constituent concerns about a particular area, excessive weeds, but it's not necessarily going to get any attention because things are already in a cycle.

Um that that's for the cycles that the media crews uh do on a continual basis.

Like I mentioned, when we have the beautification groups, they try to focus on the the highest weed uh activities, so we move them to where those areas are um to try to evade those issues as quick as possible with the the highest amount of weeds so they could take care of those.

We do move those around because they're not on a continual schedule.

They're separate that we bring in on overtime, like I mentioned, separate from the median group, so they try to tackle those high traffic or like high weed areas as quick as possible.

Okay.

That's a little bit different from what I had heard.

Um several well years ago, I remember that Riverside High School was having their homecoming parade, and oh my gosh, it was such a horrible weeded area.

And so here the parade was gonna happen, and um people were coming in, and so the group did an excellent job in cleaning it up.

But it took, you know, letting them know in advance, hey, we've got a parade route coming through here.

It really would be nice to have it cleaned up and you were able to well, somebody, maybe Richard Bristol, I don't know who it was, but somebody was able to do that.

And we appreciate that because we're in there.

This is where we live.

This is our area that we're looking at, and so we're the eyes of it, and maybe like people in your department are not necessarily living and and being in that particular area.

So I hope that you will take our request um as perhaps almost expert because we're coming in from the sense that we this is what we are seeing ourselves.

I mean, we don't even need to have our constituents tell us.

We can see it, we know what it's like.

And so I won't say we don't know it, like I said, I do bring the median crews mainly during the summer, but we do bring them through other times of year when there's city events like winter fest, do we see anything downtown?

Um when coal plate came into town, we made sure the uh airways and and Montana were cleaned up before the concert.

We do tackle things like that with the with the beautification crew when we do bring them in over time uh to to handle the medians on um to assist the median group.

So we do focus on city events that we know that there's gonna be a lot of city residents there to make sure, like the the veterans parade in the northeast, we try to sweep there um right before the parade and clean the medians right before to make sure we we're taking care of the city events.

I and I really appreciate it.

I think that's really good that you've got the focus and really thinking of what areas people are going to be most focused on.

That's the last thing we need for people to complain about going down Montana and the weeds are all over the place or the street isn't swept, and I know that you do a really good job.

So thank you very much for your presentation.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Representative Rocha.

Thank you, Mayor, and and thanks, Nick.

I uh I'm gonna echo the sentiment that Representative Canales made, which said, you know, don't um I believe that all of that hate and everything that your crews are are receiving should be directed at us.

And I I urge the public to please um refrain from from throwing anything, including words to the staff that's out there, because it is not a safe environment.

Because it is not a safe environment.

It's a very dangerous environment when you consider all the the vehicles that are passing um throughout the day.

So I'll state I'll say it with that.

Uh secondly, I also want to to kind of circle back with what uh representative Chavez said in regards to being more proactive.

So I just have a couple of questions that came up.

Uh is there a plan?

Because based off of what I see what you all do, um what your crews do, you know, uh tree or um prune the trees and remove debris and all of this, right?

Is there a proactive plan to use mulch or to pull back the landscape and throw some weed barrier on there?

Or you know, I I'm I'm looking at things that are very reactive, and we use a lot of uh proactive in the herbicide and the emergent.

But are there any other plans to use some other ways to um to go in that direction?

Like ground cover, you know, over the landscaping.

I don't know, ways to that are that are going to eliminate the weeds or choke the weeds out, similar to what you know what we use at home, for example.

Are there any plans to do that?

I think we'd have to take a deeper look at that because the landscaping is in the middle of a roadway, right?

So you're really concerned about wind blowing, so it's very different than how we would probably treat our yards.

Right.

I think you know what we have in terms of the design in terms of the rocks and things like that are really about the fact that it's a design median.

So I certainly can make sure as we're talking about looking at other ways to approach some of this that we we put that on the list and look at other things we might be able to bring forward.

Um I did speak to the teams in terms of um the folks who design the medians, they do have weed berry.

I don't know if it's you know disintegrated because of the heat.

So it may be an opportunity for us to go back and look at some of those pieces.

So those are conversations that we're having.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

It's just a question more than anything to understand, right?

For the public to say, well, we we do all of this to maintain, but what are we doing to prevent down down the line, right?

More long-term solutions versus um the pre-emergent and the herbicide.

So thank you, Nick, for you and your staff.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Representative Canales.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um yeah, I wanted to uh talk a little bit about some of the history of it.

Again, going back to 2018.

I remembered the conversation and and there was a lot of public conversation about do we even want landscaped medians?

And we talked about the possibility of just paving medians and having concrete medians.

And the public absolutely said no.

We want landscape medians.

We I mean I remember the it was presented as like it it's an option that will keep them clean.

We could do stamped concrete or you know, painted medians, and you know, people really wanted the landscape medians, and I remember it being presented as we will have a challenge to maintain these over time.

And you know, I'll sound like a broken record as the city keeps growing, it keeps expanding.

We're adding miles and miles of medians, right?

Like to thousands and thousands of square feet for the crews to maintain.

Um the the environmental fee that we're receiving is not even growing at the same pace as the the center line center line miles that we have to maintain.

And so um uh I think it's important to recognize like it's been you know seven, six, seven years since since we had that conversation, and people are now seeing the result of like if we keep adding landscape medians, we're gonna keep having the issue.

Um but I think the public probably still feels the same.

They want to have landscape medians, and so like I said before, we're gonna have to have a conversation about if the public wants landscape medium, they're gonna have to pay for and I mean I say they, I mean all of us, right?

We we all pay it too.

We're all gonna have to pay for the for what that costs to maintain a landscape median.

And I I don't think we are paying the full cost of that right now, and we're seeing that in what we're seeing out in the fields.

There are gonna be challenges in in maintaining.

So um like Ms.

Max said, we can adjust that environmental fee and give you all more resources.

But we're gonna have to hear from the public whether they want that or not.

Um you know, we can we can have it looking perfect and people will pay a lot more, or we can have it looking a little bit better and people might pay a little bit more, or we can leave things as they are.

And I mean, I know that's a struggle for your department.

But we we kind of have to make the decision, and the public has to help us make the decision of what level of service they want in terms of of media and cleanliness.

You know, this is an abnormal year.

Um but we do see this conversation every year, and every year I have people tell me it's never been worse than this year, and then it gets cleaned up and then they're happy for you know nine months until the next rainy season.

Uh it's it's not easy, like it it's raining multiple times a week, and it has been for the last few months.

Um we don't see that every year, but we do see rain every year, and the weeds grow when it rains.

Um so I I know I've been urging my constituents to have a little bit of patience.

It's hard to clean when it's raining non-stop.

So yeah, we've I'm I'm very open, counsel to having the conversation about about the environmental fee.

But again, anytime people hear raising fees, they they don't like the sound of that, and so it's a conversation we're gonna have to have with the public.

Uh one last thing I wanted to clarify because I keep hearing and I hear from my constituents all the time.

A come uh for whatever reason they compare us with Albuquerque.

So I was just looking up, I was curious.

Albuquerque is about 187 square miles, not growing as fast geographically.

We're 248 square miles in Al Paso and growing much faster than them geographically.

So we're already a third bigger, like 30, 33% bigger than Albuquerque.

Um again, funding is different.

Uh the the level of planting in the medians is different.

It's not an easy comparison.

You can't just say one place does it this way and we should do it that way too.

Um different state regulations, there's all kinds of reasons why a different city's uh landscaping and medians might look different than ours.

Um yeah, open to having the conversation about the fee.

Uh and it's something I'll be asking my constituents about right away.

Thank you again, Nick.

Thank you.

Ah, and one last plug here, and that's Nick will be at my community meeting uh tomorrow night.

So any constituents who are watching who want to come ask questions, maybe have a conversation about the environmental fee, come join us tomorrow.

Thank you again.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um Nick, thank you once again.

I want to ask you, because the direction from council said um plans for communication with the public regarding process and expected completion dates.

So what is the message to the public going to be?

I I would say the message to the public is we're out there, we bring in an extra crews, we're trying to catch up to the pre-rain uh medians.

We're we're working five to six days a week.

We're we're we're gonna get there.

I don't have a time frame, but I will say we're we're gonna catch up to where we were before the rains within the next couple of months.

But we'll be there again.

Our staff is continuing, they they take great pride in what they do, and they they see the the weeds and it it hurts them also because they live here in El Paso, so they are working hard.

They we will get back, you know.

Like I said, once the the weeds die with the rainfall stop, it's a lot easier to clean up the medians because they're a lot easier to pull, they they come out a lot quicker, they're not attached to anything seriously under the the soil.

So it will increase the speed.

You know, we look more one and a half to two weeks in the in the worst part of the year and the more vegetated to more of a one week uh per the 52,000 square feet.

So we we will get to where we need to be um hopefully within the next few months once everything the rainfall started slowing down.

Okay, and I guess maybe this question is for Ms.

Mack.

How are we going to communicate this to the public?

What means are we gonna use?

Communications team was already working on um some graphics, particularly on the double frontage.

We certainly can push out something regarding you know what our teams are doing, talking about the safety, including some of the scheduled information, sort of summarize some of the things that Mick talked about so people can see the proactivity to the work that's happening.

Okay, yeah, I think that would be a good idea.

I I think um the message has to be very clear.

I I I wouldn't like the message to be, you know, oops, it rained too much this year, and we don't have a budget for it.

I I think that would be the incorrect message.

I think our message needs to be more of how the city is really working uh to beautify the areas that you know have a lot of weed growth and that we are working hard, we recognize that there's an issue and that our team, you know, your team and others are really working nonstop to um better this and make it make it look nicer.

Um so I think that should be the message.

Um I I welcome counsel if they have a different message, but I think that would be a better message that we think that's what we're doing.

So our intention, I mean, for us and the public, we're always gonna do our best with the resources that we have.

Yes.

But if you're saying that we want to move it to a level higher than what we know we have responsiveness to in our community, that's when I offer the option of this is what I believe it will take.

But our message is gonna be this is what we're doing, this is what we're working on, just as he presented his presentation.

He actually had some slides about additional cost.

I told him to hide those slides because that's not the conversation today.

Exactly.

And so you know, I I think we understand what our community is asking of us, and we want to be very honest about what we think the results are going to be based on the manual labor that it takes to just go out there and pull these wheat.

Yeah.

Ms.

Cruz?

Laura Cruz.

Forgive my voice.

Uh Laura Cruzicosa with the communications.

Loteria.

Um the to uh echo what Ms.

Mack is saying is basically we've actually already started that communication effort through some of the video programming that we put out in our community, as well as some of the and Nick references and some of the um printed uh collateral that we are distributing throughout the community with the support of Steve's group.

And so we will continue to do that in that respect.

We will continue to be uh aggressive in explaining some of the work that Nick's crews are doing and the support that the community can do, talking about the policies and procedures that exist at this point in time.

And we with uh all that's happening here, we will continue to be more aggressive with the support of Nick and that effort.

Thank you, Laura.

And Ms.

Mack, because you mentioned you reached out to other city managers.

Um I know Nick and I have had the conversation about HOA companies that are already working in the city of El Paso whose medium.

I don't know if there would be an opportunity to speak with them or collaborate with some of them that are already doing the work.

Somehow they have figured it out.

Obviously, they have uh less to cover, I'm sure, than you do, but whatever they're doing, of the ones I've seen, not all of them, but the ones I've I have seen, um they seem to have some sort of system that's that's working for them, so it might be helpful or beneficial to us to figure whatever that system is and see if we can implement any of those changes as well.

We'll do.

Okay.

Thank you.

Representative Trahill.

Thank you.

Uh I I wanted to go back to the my question regarding if this was uh if the bid was lowest bid versus best value.

And and the reason is that so you know, I also did a little bit of research in Phoenix and Albuquerque have uh the best value bid for this type of work.

And it's performance-based.

And so something to consider as you all are are, you know, bidding for these contractors to help uh with this cleanup is to make it performance-based and have some matrix towards it.

So something, you know, this is something for a procurement.

I know they're not here, but something to consider going forward when um looking at these bids.

And then also with the marketing, um, Laura.

I I share your voice right now.

Uh if you can share the, you know, any graphics, marketing, anything that you're that you're putting out there in the public, if you can share it with our districts as well so that we can share it on our newsletters.

Thank you so much.

Well, Nick, I think that's that's it.

And I just want to kind of you know summarize again what we're all gonna tell you is the the safety of the city employees and your crews is is paramount.

That is the most important thing as you're performing the work, and and that goes for all city employees.

I also want to, you know, recognize and and say we understand the hard work that goes into doing this, and me personally, you know, I woke up at four or five in the morning, went out there with one of your crews to personally witness uh the incredible work that they do, and and and we are not minimizing that in in any way, and we respect the work.

What you're hearing is you know, the community saying we want to see more and more and more.

And we're gonna have to figure out to represent Canalis' uh comments earlier.

What is the more is it is it raising the fee, you know, the environmental fee.

What is this more that we need to do to get this under control?

Because it one thing's constant, it is going to rain next monsoon season.

Yes, and we may be having this same similar conversation, and we we need to get ahead of it.

The the other thing is the world that I live in, you know, there's a scope of work that comes out, and as a contractor, I bid it and I have to live within the four walls of that particular contract.

So contractors that are saying, you know, I I can't do this, or I don't, you know, someone call that should be outside the realm of the actual particular contract.

We should hold them to uh whatever they bid on and make sure that they're helping you because obviously you could you could use the the support.

I think we we will we will get over this this hurdle.

And one of the other things I was gonna mention and ask you, have you ever altered the schedule and said, you know, let me do some windshield drive in and go see the Lower Valley or Northeast or the West Side or East Side, whatever part of town that may be and see if maybe one area needs a little bit more attention than one that may be on the schedule.

Uh yes, like I mentioned uh to the reps.

That's what the beautification crews do when they're doing the overtime during the summer.

They tackle the higher uh weed areas that we see.

So we have two supervisors that are constantly driving around uh looking to check out the entire city to see once again to check in what our crews are doing, what the third party crews are doing, and just to see where where the high weed areas are so we could move those uh beautification crews that aren't part of the meeting crews um to help assist with those.

Okay, very good.

And uh again, we we you know there's a lot of favorite departments we have here at the city, and you're also one of those.

So thank you.

Uh we have a number of those, and you you're included in that.

And again, we appreciate the the great work you are doing and whatever more we can do.

You know, it's gonna be a uh a tough conversation that city council is gonna have to to address, but uh we appreciate the hard work and we want your your folks to stay safe.

So thank you for the presentation.

Thank you very much.

Ms.

Brian?

Council that brings us to executive session.

Is there a motion to retire?

There's a motion and a second to retire to executive session.

All in favor?

Aye.

Anyone opposed?

And the city council of City of El Paso may retire to executive session pursuant to Section 3.5A of the El Paso City Charter and the Texas Government Code, Chapter 551 sub chapter D to discuss any of the following executive session item one, claim of Jessica Gallardo La Rock, claim 599 under 551.071.

Executive session item two, claim of Marina Flores, claim seven four five under 551.071.

Executive session item three, claim of Cheryl Groff, claim seven five four under 551.071.

Executive session item four, Barbara Thompson et al.

versus City of Al Paso et al.

Cost number 324-00276 under 551.071.

Executive session item five, TJW, Aviation LLC and Far West Texas and Southern New Mexico Trauma Regional Advisory Council, DBA Border Rack versus City of Al Paso, Clause No.

2025, DCV 3589 under 551.071.

Executive session item six, Joseph Pickeff versus City of El Paso, clause number 2024, DCV 5250 under 551.071.

Executive session item seven, Daniel Villegas versus City of Al Paso et al.

USDC case number 315-CB-386 under 551.071.

Executive session item eight, application of Al Paso Electric Company, Macho Springs reassignment, PUC number 57760.

Executive session item nine, application of Al Paso Electric Company to change rates.

PUC number 57568, HQ number utility dash sixty under 551.071.

Executive session item 10, application of El Paso Electric Company to implement an interim fuel refund.

PUC number 58546, HQ number utility dash 72 under 551.071.

Executive session item 11.

Application of El Paso Electric Company to amended certificate of convenience NSSD CCN for a 100 megawatt solar and 100 megawatt battery storage facility, PUC number 57501.071.

Executive session item 12.

Discussion on economic development opportunities in Northwest El Paso, Texas, HQ number 25-4305 under 551.087.

Executive session item 13.

Discussion on economic development opportunities in Northeast El Paso, Texas, HQ number 25-5335 under 551.087.

And executive session item 14, city manager evaluation and legal consultation regarding employment agreement evaluation process and duties of city manager under 551.071 and 551.074.

These matters are taken into executive session under 551.071 consultation with attorney.

Deliberation regarding economic development negotiations.

It is 1042 a.m.

You okay?

All right, good afternoon, Ms.

Prime.

We are ready to go.

Yes, sir.

Is there a motion to come out of executive session?

Sorry, okay.

There's a motion and a second to come out of executive session.

All in favor?

Anyone opposed?

And the meeting is back in session at 227 p.m.

Mayor Pro Tem EX1.

Thank you, Ms.

Prime.

Motion made, seconded and carried that the city attorney's office in consultation with the city manager be authorized to deny the claim of Jessica Gallardo Larry in HQ claim number 599 and to take all steps necessary, including the execution of any required documents in order to effectuate this authority.

Second there's a motion and second, Ms.

Prime.

Yes, sir.

The motion was made and read into the record by Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, seconded by Representative Limon on EX1 to deny the claim on that motion.

Call for the vote.

Sometimes you get to leave and have release.

Representative Nino.

I have it.

Thank you.

Representative Limon?

Aye.

Thank you.

Representative Gonales.

Aye.

Thank you.

In the voting session.

And that motion passes unanimously.

EX2.

EX2.

Try that.

Motion made, seconded, and carried that the city attorney's office in consultation with the city manager be authorized to deny the claim of Marina Flores in HQ matter number claim seven four five and to take all steps necessary, including the execution of any required documents in order to effectuate this authority.

Second.

There's a motion and second, Miss Prime.

Yes, sir.

The motion was made already to the record by Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, seconded by alternate mayor pro tempiero, and this is to deny the claim on EX2.

On that motion, call for the vote.

In the voting session, and that motion passes unanimously.

EX3.

Motion made, seconded, and carried that the city attorney's office in consultation with the city manager be authorized to deny the claim of Cheryl Grop and HQ matter number claim dash 754 and to take all steps necessary, including the execution of any required documents in order to effectuate this authority.

Second motion and a second, Ms.

Prime?

Yes, sir.

There's a motion made and written to the record by Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, seconded by Representative Limon, and this is to deny the claim on EX3.

On that motion, call for the vote.

And the voting session.

And that motion passes 721.

Representative Acevedo voting nay.

The remainder of council voting aye.

The motion carries.

Okay.

EX4.

No action.

Thank you.

EX5.

No action.

Thank you.

EX6.

No action.

Thank you, EX7.

No action.

Thank you, EX8.

Motion made, seconded, and carried that the city attorney in consultation with the city manager be authorized to accept the settlement proposal in the application of Al Paso Electric Company's Macho Springs reassignment under the Texas Public Utility Commission docket number 57760 in matter number high Qtility-63 and to take all steps necessary, including the execution of any required documents in order to effectuate this authority.

All right, we have a motion and a second.

Representative Nino.

Thank you, Mayor.

I would like for notation for EX8 and EX10 that I did receive a contribution from the O Paso Electric Employees PAC for a thousand dollars.

Thank you, Mayor.

Representative Acevedo.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just also wanted to not take for EX8, 9, 10, and 11 that I've received 1750 from the Opas Electric Employees Pack.

Okay.

Representative Limon.

Yes, Mayor.

I echo the same sentiment on that uh contribution.

Yep.

As well as I do on EX78, EX8, 9, 10, and 11.

I received a contribution from the Al Paso Electric Pack.

Ms.

Prime, no other discussion.

Please call for the vote.

Yes, sir.

The motion was made and read into the record by Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, seconded by Representative Limon.

And this is to accept the settlement on EX8.

On that motion, call for the vote.

And the voting session.

And that motion passes unanimously.

EX9?

No action.

Thank you.

EX10.

Motion made, seconded and carried that the city attorney in consultation with the city manager be authorized to hire and retain outside counsel and any other necessary consultants and to file an intervention in the application of Al Paso Electric Company to implement an interim fuel refund under the Texas Public Utility Commission docket number 58546 in matter number high Q utility-72 and to take all steps necessary including the execution of any required documents in order to effectuate this authority.

Second.

There's a motion and second, Miss Prime, please call for the vote.

Yes, sir.

The motion was made and rendered to the record by Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, seconded by Representative Limon on EX10, and this is to hire and retain outside council and file an intervention on that motion.

Call for the vote.

No action.

Thank you, EX12.

No action.

Thank you, EX13.

No action.

Thank you, EX14.

No action.

Thank you.

That brings us to the end of the agenda.

Motion to adjourn.

Second.

There's a motion and a second to adjourn the work session.

All in favor?

Anyone opposed?

And the work session for Tuesday, September second, twenty twenty-five, is adjourned at two thirty-three p.m.

Thank you, Council.

Thank you, Council.