Okay, Ms.

Fire, I think we're ready.

Yes, sir.

Good morning.

This is a work session of the El Paso City Council for Monday, September 29th, 2025.

It is 1031 a.m.

Mayor Johnson is present and presiding along with Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, Representative Madonado Rocha, Representative Nino, and Representative Canales.

Mayor, we have a quorum.

I think you represent Canales.

Would you lead us on the pledge?

To the flag.

That brings us to item number one on the agenda.

This is a presentation on the 89th legislative session wrap-up updates.

All right, good morning.

Good morning.

Jasmine Flores with Strategic and Legislative Affairs for the record.

So this presentation is gonna go over the 89th uh legislative session at the Texas legislature.

Um so this is a brief overview of some of the things we're gonna discuss today.

And for the record representatives, Acevedo and Alternate Mayor Proteo Piero have joined the meeting.

So look, we're gonna start with the timeline here.

So the regular session began on January 14th, lasting about 140 days, and concluded on June 2nd.

At that point in time, all indications were that the legislature had completed its business and would close after the governor's 20-day veto period on June 22nd.

However, Governor Abbott reconvened the legislature to re-legislate two priorities, uh the regulation as opposed to the ban of hemp deride products and the redrawing of congressional district lines in the state.

Therefore, the governor called the first special session on July 21st.

Um a special legislative session by law is supposed to last no more than 30 days.

Uh however, in an effort to block the attempts to redraw the congressional lines, uh over 50 Democrats fled the state to Democratic strongholds in other states.

Uh they were gone for over two weeks, halting all business from continuing in the House.

As a result, the lieutenant governor and the speaker closed the first special session on August 15th and reconvened the start of the second special that same day.

After congressional redistricting and disaster response bills were passed, uh the second special session closed on September 5th.

So the governor's regular session priorities, uh, he limited his priorities to seven major areas uh during the regular, notably property tax relief, uh, school vouchers, and water investments.

All seven priorities passed during the regular session.

Uh you see the highlighted items there and this slide and moving forward are identified as having potential um impacts to the operations of municipalities.

Uh the lieutenant governor's um priorities.

On the other hand, he came out swinging with about 40 items, 30 of which passed, namely school vouchers, increasing the homestead exemption, uh creating more affordable housing options in Texas and banning uh state lobbying.

Again, all the highlighted items are those with potential municipal impacts.

And for the record, Representative Boya Trejo has also joined the meeting.

In uh in his surprise call to reconvene the legislature for the first special, uh Governor Abbott issued a proclamation in which he listed those items on the screen as being his legislative priorities.

The July 4th flooding in Hill Country had just happened a few days after the veto announcement.

So items regarding disaster prevention and flood recovery were added to that list.

The items most pressing for municipalities again, municipal operations, sorry, were property tax reduction, banning lobbying, and law enforcement public discourse.

And because the House broke quorum, none of these priorities were able to pass during that first special, and they were recycled for the second.

The lieutenant governor wasn't too pleased with the governor's veto on his priority hemp ban.

So he issued his own set of priorities.

As you can see, the the real difference here from the governor and the lieutenant governor was banning THC, whereas the governor wanted to regulate it.

The governor's second special session priorities.

Most items passed, but of particular concern were the items related to property taxes reductions, lobbying bans, and law enforcement public discourse.

And a number of these passed as well.

So looking at the stats for the regular session, we see the bill filing record was surpassed by the 88th session, and I feel confident that every time I come before you, I'm gonna say this year's more bills filed than last year.

That's just the nature of these things.

And of that, approximately 1,200 bills were passed.

So that yields a bill passage rate of about 13.5%.

The average is between 14 and 18%, so it's just shy of the average.

For the first special, um, we see about 592 bills filed, and because it was came to an abrupt stop about halfway through, uh, none of those bills were passed, so bill passage rate of zero.

And the second special, um, most of these 395 bills that were filed were refilings from the first special.

Um, in total, about 12 bills passed.

So that's a bill passage rate of about 3.4%.

So moving on to dominant policy areas that we saw during the 89th for the regular session.

Um, these were the three big items that cities across Texas faced, uh, El Paso being no exception to that.

They were preemption of local authority, land use and housing affordability, and financial penalizations.

During the first and second specials, uh, these priorities shifted just slightly to property tax revenue cuts, the imposition of severe spending caps, and lobbying bans.

So, examples of bills filed during the regular session that fall into those three big categories include SB 2858.

Uh, this bill tempted to strip away local control across the listed codes and would allow anyone to sue a city for overstepping these bounds and imposes penalties like freezing cities' uh sales and property taxes, tax revenue for five years, and making them liable for the recovery of attorney's fees.

SB 15, which did pass during the regular session, creates a statewide cap for applicable cities regarding lot size and density limits.

Uh SB 316 would have expanded state preemption over those listed areas again, allowing for trigger lawsuits over city violations and imposing financial penalties like sales tax freezes, uh capped budget and tax increases, and the inability to receive block grants from the state.

HB 4348 also would have prevented cities from receiving affordable housing funds if they are found in violation of state street closure rules and would require an election to determine whether or not a city could close a street.

SB 10 attempted to drop the property tax rate multiplier for to 2.5%.

The House attempted to drop that rate further, apply it to all Texas cities regardless of population, and carve out an exception for public safety funds.

But the Senate via conference committee rejected those changes, and ultimately the bill stalled out and did not pass.

HB 46 would also have prohibited expenditure increases, unless that increase was tied to population growth plus inflation, or approved via supermajority vote.

The controversy of SB 10 bulldozed HB 46's STEAM, so it died in committee.

SB 13 was one of several bills aimed at banning cities and counties from lobbying at the legislature.

Though the author claimed this would not prevent cities from being a part of organizations like TML, the text of the bill would not only prevent that, but it would also cancel out our current contract with focus advocacy and prevent us from hiring a federal lobbyist in DC as council directed.

Again, this bill stalled out in the House due to the effective advocacy efforts of cities and counties and our lobbyist Snapper Carr joining us today.

His work as well helped us.

So the bills we just reviewed are a small sample of the many bills we acted on during the 89th.

We utilized several tools in our policy action tool belt, which include mobilizing city departments on action bills.

I really want to thank the city attorney's office for their quick turnaround and reviewing hundreds of these bills, if not thousands at this point.

Worked with a number of the departments, planning, streets, animal services, you name it.

Again, we also organized consistent messaging with all our relevant players, such as our delegation members, committees that we are part of, our partner organizations.

We coordinated opposition or support letters.

You know, we weren't just opposing everything, we were also supporting good things for our community, such as increasing accessibility efforts, sidewalk accessibility and pedestrian travel.

We were attentive to the inquiries they had for us.

If there was a bill that representative or senator was going to consider and they wanted more information on how we do things here at the city, we made sure we were attentive to those requests and provided them with accurate information and support where we could inform our legislatures as they make legislators as they make their decisions on their votes.

So for the regular session results, we tracked over 1,600 bills, 80 of which demanded we take action in some form using our policy action toolkit.

A stat that I'm particularly proud of is our policy success rate.

Again, this is not done by one person or one team, but this is the culmination of efforts from the entire uh city of El Paso.

To calculate this rate, we looked at the bills that we staked a position on and examined the number of times our position did not concur with the bill's passage or failure.

So when we compare these ratios, we found 82% of the time our position on a bill successfully aligned with its passage or failure.

So some of our results at a glance.

However, we were able to secure significant amendments, including increasing the minimum lot size.

It was going to be a thousand square feet through our advocacy efforts that was increased to 3,000 square feet.

Second, the work of our state delegation, which really round of applause for them.

They brought back over 146 million to El Paso, including 10 million for the I 10 Deck Park Deck Plaza project, 7 million for the Weiler Aerial Tramway, and 14.5 million for El Paso water stormwater repairs.

So that's a grand total of 31.5 million for city projects, which is the biggest chunk any organization received from the legislature's efforts.

And finally and perhaps most importantly our work protected the city and taxpayers from over 133 million in a preliminary estimated financial losses.

So you've likely been briefed in fact you have been briefed on these bills from our planning department as they review what code changes need to be made to align with the state laws just recently ignored so I'll just review these briefly these were passed these bills are passed during the regular session majority of which had a September 1st um date to to begin SB 1008 changed some of the noise amplification limits.

HB 2844 created an exception for food trucks from some local government regulatory actions.

SB 1341 simply matches the definition of a code HUD code manufactured home across city state and federal definitions.

And SB 840 changed the minimum density requirements and similar zoning changes to allow for the construction of more affordable housing units.

So first session first and second special session results during the first special we tracked about 204 bills with potential municipal operational impacts 26 of which demanded we take action and because the session was so short lived only two weeks just shy of two weeks we only got to send out two letters before quorum was broken.

During the second special we tracked 200 bills and 30 of them demanded action yielding a total of seven letters of opposition needing to be authored and sent out so looking ahead the governor's veto deadline was last week September 24th he signed 20 bills into law mainly related to additional flood prevention and disaster relief and vetoed one bill regarding permit exemptions for dams and reservoirs.

Our follow-up presentation will be a review of these bills and on what their impacts are they they're mainly again like I said flood related so not really impacting this area more directed at Hill Country but we will provide an overview of those and that concludes my presentation happy to take any questions very very good jasmine I bet you're glad this session's over very I had to get new glasses prescription my eyes are so tired.

Thank you mayor just put on on your P card don't worry about it.

I don't even have one of those let me ask Ian first and foremost thank you so much thank you for identifying the bills that affected the the municipalities in City B El Paso and keeping us informed and followed up and then and then more importantly thank you for following up on the direction that this council decided was important for us as a city and and as a community and your office and the the whole team was very good at following up and keeping us abreast of of what was happening.

My question for you is do you believe there's going to be a third special session in re in regards to um property tax relief.

You know it's not very popular gentleman with a beard is just dying to answer.

It's not very popular to be an optimist in politics but I am an optimist and I think this is it but if you'd like to hear from Steffar uh he traveled many many miles to be here today.

Good morning.

Good morning counsel uh for the record I'm Snapper Car I'm partnering general counsel with focused advocacy and uh thank y'all uh for for being here this morning and uh Jasmine's done a good job of giving you all the the key highlights um I will knock on wood and say all indications are that we will not have a third special session at this time a little hesitant to say that because all indications were we weren't gonna have one when we signed he died out of the 89th uh legislature and then we very quickly did um but but it does appear and I will say uh the the environment at the very end of the on at the September 4th when we signed he died from the special that they all very much needed to go home uh that it was a uh a bit of a contentious in both chambers uh amongst the members and and the parties at B and so I think uh cooling off period will be uh well uh needed um and but like I said only one person uh of course has that the governor hasn't indicated after his executive order

Um but but it does appear, and I will say uh the environment at the very end of the on at the September 4th when we signed he died from the special that they all very much needed to go home.

Uh that it was uh a bit of a contentious in both chambers uh amongst the members and and the parties at B.

And so I think a cooling off period will be uh well uh needed.

Um and but like I said, only one person uh of course has that.

The governor hasn't indicated after his executive order on THC uh limitations, specifically moving it to purchases over for adults over 21.

That really took away the biggest need.

Any of the other function, such as money for flood relief items or those can actually be done through processes outside of the legislative process.

Um if I could just while we're we're here, the real story I believe from from the session uh and into the next special sessions uh that were very much had a heavy city focus.

Um, you know, Jasmine had a stat that were 1,200 bills that passed.

Uh we tracked uh just shy of 300 bills that directly impacted cities.

So if you do that, that's one in four.

25% of every bill that hit the governor's desk affected the city and community in one way or another.

I'll let you know that is the highest number of bills of new laws, if you will, that affect any entities, public or private, without a close second.

You don't have other entities that every fourth bill that hits the governor's desk directly appacts their operations or our services that they're required to provide.

Uh and so having that discussion about all that you have before the legislature and this community has before it.

The the thing that I would say as you look now towards the interim uh and before we get to the 90th uh legislative session that bills will start being filed next November for uh only now again months about a year away.

Um it is area of preemption, uh preemption with your ability to manage your your budget here locally, whether that's through issues of your rate setting function on your property taxes, your debt issuances, your economic development programs, um, your expenditure levels.

We saw a number of very monumental bills.

Every session I've I was here flying this morning.

I was thinking this October uh will be my 20th year of our firm and myself working with the city.

Um all of those sessions over those years, and this is true for our other clients too.

There's two or three big bills that that are like these bills are a level uh you know of concern.

Uh they would affect operations or make dramatic changes in some way.

We have two or three of those bills that we would deal with.

This session during the regular session, we probably had 15 of those bills across a couple of different policy areas, particularly as it relates to land use authority, and again, those those matters of of financial matters, your your property tax rate authority and others, and some pretty can only be described as draconian proposals that that uh made their way through the system.

Some so over this year of hopefully more calm.

Uh I think one thing that is hopeful is that some of our partners in the private sector, and they did during session, realize that that that those some of those proposals would be very bad for for their interests as well, and started to kind of partner with local governments, cities, and counties in particular to help make the case that some of these might not be the best policy changes.

But that is gonna be the focus uh of the legislative uh committees, um, certainly all the normal stuff that we have to deal with, but then the issue of our our finances in particular and your expenditures here at the local level will be a hot hot topic.

So just kind of in in uh conclusion, and again happy to answer questions about what we saw.

Um you know, there is a great deal of discussion about governments, local governments advocating at the legislature.

Uh I just mentioned that that one in four bills that passed, no other public uh or private entity has a bill track uh that has as many bills on it as the city does, because again, there aren't bills that it filed.

So and some of those are very what I'll call mundane operational issues that require you to be involved in them.

Issues with how even how you call this meeting you know where there were laws that were passed that that changed that on down to how your public safety operations run and in those issues.

And so it's really the the issue of of engagement at the Capitol is about being involved in those topics that you are as a city are responsible for and that's what we try to do as extension of staff.

It's become a very big topic but it kind of bleeds into everything else and it really is kind of also an issue of of preemption that they're dictating to y'all how you're gonna kind of manage that process even at the local level and so I to end kind of on our my discussion on a bit of a good note we did see for the first time and Jasmine noted a very large influx of of money into the state budget that was directed to go to kind of city specific projects particularly in the water and wastewater arena statewide we saw significant and there's a proposition on the ballot to have a billion dollars a year for the next year focused on local government water and wastewater needs too if it passes and so there were some highlights and some good things but we definitely have work to do and there was no shortage of issues for us to engage on as as jasmine in in the report and would be remiss to say you know y'all's delegation was very we we couldn't do any of this without their engagement and help and and they often uh you know it's not just them standing up and and waving the flag for us or carrying the issue it's a lot of them also engaging with their colleagues talking to the right chairman at the right time the bill author to kind of maybe recognize some El Paso uniqueness to some topic and and they did that countless times I I can't thank them enough and their staffs for for that because it's absolutely vital and and they did it and so and y'all's input from from the council and your staff it it it was you know uh really a first rate effort and and a great experience even though it was real challenging at times so thank y'all thank you Snapper representative I mean uh Vieral thank you mayor okay representative thank you mayor and thank you jasmine and thank you Mr.

Carr for everything that you did over this session and for those that I hopefully the the state delegation is watching but if not they can go back and hear the thanks that we have for them as well one of the things that I talked to you jasmine about last week is that part of what wasn't on the spectrum for anybody this year was the redistricting and so going forward I think that it behooves us to always have that as part of the of the direction from council to be able to say we're going to be proactive about it instead of being reactive I think it would have helped us just a little bit even though the efforts did go a certain way I think it would have uh kept us from having to scramble which is what we had to do unfortunately but um but if we can have that and we'll direct it later but I just wanted to make sure that I had that that conversation today to be able to have that even on those off census years because it's becoming more common and so I just wanted to thank you all honestly Ian team everybody snapper your team all the updates all the input everything that you all did this session for it being my first time at such a such a close rate was really amazing to be able to see what you all accomplished on on the behalf of the city and so we're very grateful for the collaboration and the teamwork that you all provided this session I know there's some challenges up ahead but there are some definite like gold pieces that we saw out of this session and it's in big part to to what work you all do and I'm very grateful for that so I just wanted to say thank you.

Thank you.

Representative Chavez thank you mayor thank you jasmine thank you Ian and team and thank you Mr.

Carr for being here today.

I am also very uh grateful for all the work uh along with the state delegation and and the big wins for for us as a community my question is um looking forward to the 90th session if there's anything that uh didn't get through didn't get passed this time around that you think will come back that we need to be made aware of you mind if I at the end of the second special session I think you don't really have to look too far um the issue uh SB 10 was the bill that that actually passed both chambers that would have severely limited your local authority uh to deal with your your property tax rate setting function and would have limited certain debt issuances as well uh that you currently have authority for that topic is going to be the main topic uh it will be teed up over the interim so a look at our finances uh what local authority you maintain how we issue debt um calls for uh much more frequent voter approval

Um the issue uh SB 10 was the bill that actually passed both chambers that would have severely limited your local authority uh to deal with your your property tax rate setting function and would have limited certain debt issuances as well uh that you currently have authority for that topic is gonna be the main topic.

Uh it will be teed up over the interim.

So look at our finances, uh, what local authority you maintain, how we issue debt um calls for uh much more frequent voter approval requirements of of that.

So um the governor in his state of the state speech called for a um a hard if you raised a dollar above the no new revenue rate or the old effective tax rate, then you would have to go to the public and and in the governor's request, he said he wanted uh a potential two-thirds approval of of that in a referendum to approve any level of an increase.

Um the legislature didn't go that far, but they certainly looked at at different things, uh, and that's going to be the the I would say topic one through five in terms of severity and and of impact uh is is dealing with our financial situation and in context with the state uh in the way that there's is set along with all of the other uh myriad of bills that we know will always be back, land use, like I said, land use authority uh in particular is always a very hot topic too.

And Snapper, is that similar to the voucher thing where it was just a matter of time for it to get passed?

You think I mean so unfortunately what was a a negative bill did pass both chambers in that regard in the special, what will we would have considered because it took away y'all's discretion to make that decision locally, and they made it for you.

Um and so that bill uh because of differences between the House and the Senate about how far they wanted that bill to go, that's when it didn't pass here in September this uh in the second special.

And so I don't think it's a foregone conclusion.

There's a lot more policy that goes to it that that it's going to pass, but something in regards to property tax relief or reduction will pass, most likely under the current set.

And so looking at things uh that were debated, and it's very hard to have a a real thoughtful and calm debate during special sessions, especially when you have high profile topics that generate contentiousness on other matters, it's then hard to say now.

Let's all calm down and have a calm discussion here on these other topics.

Um we get into the interim and can have hearings on this, things like public safety uh being uh was already brought up that that's such a large part of most municipalities' budgets uh as a driver, cost drivers that are out of the control, uh, and at what level you bring the public in then to say we have a vote.

Uh we're gonna see a record number of tax rate elections uh since the passage of SB2 that brought it to three and a half percent.

We've had like five statewide since that time when it passed in in 2017, and now we're gonna have like 35 in one cycle.

And so that'll have some impact on the policy discussion.

But those are big topics and they definitely won't be going away.

And and I don't think we know what the financial climate's gonna be two years from now either, so that might affect it as well.

Absolutely.

If there's anything that council could do between now and the next session, please let us know.

Absolutely.

So that we can start being more proactive and start, you know, uh engaging in conversations that you think may be necessary to get us prepared for that session.

Yes, ma'am, and and uh councilwoman, I think one thing that that our advice would be is some of those discussions are gonna be here locally, and those are with some of your other community leaders outside of even the city to say these things will impact services or or contracts that we have.

I mean, it it will impact anybody that's you know engaged with the city uh or or the county.

Uh it's in the really the three main entities and of course schools are different because of their finance system, but city and counties uh have really been under the spotlight with regards to it.

Thank you.

So thank you.

Jasmine, is there a plan for us to have another strategic session midpoint, you know, sometime in the future?

So we are going through our program-based budgeting.

Um that's kicking off that kicked off last week uh with departments and our strategic planning mapping is going to start in February of next year.

But that's something I would advise keeping in the back of your mind is that as we look at the programs and how funding is allocated per department.

Um if we were to decrease to that one percent, what those impacts look like in our budget planning and and things like that.

Um but this is all part of tying in that strategic planning and that preparing our program-based budgeting efforts.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Representative.

Thank you, Mayor.

So as I'm kind of listening to the conversation that's happening between you and my colleagues here, I'm kind of getting some ideas where I think there's been some great work here, and you're presenting that to us, and and that's great.

And as the session went on, we were getting more updates, and I appreciated that.

But I I think something that's missing is um kind of like an a public education campaign on exactly what is happening here.

I think it's incumbent on us as a city to tell the public here, the public that we serve our constituents what this preemption means for them, right?

We have something on zoning, and we're we're being preempted there, and zoning is gonna lessen our power, and people don't see it now.

But as time goes by, they're going to say, hey, City of Opa, so you're not doing anything about this type of zoning.

And at that point, it's gonna be too late to say, well, you know, they took away our power.

I I think we really need to get um the public to understand this completely so they could start calling their representatives and they could say fight for this, or you know, this this is affecting me in this way.

As you're kind of saying preemption is gonna be another theme that is gonna be big around our budgeting, and whether we're gonna have to go to an election and lower that percentage for passing our yearly budget.

Well, how much does an election cost, right?

Thinking about putting those things out there saying because of this, we're gonna have to spend X amount of money on an election.

And on top of things, if this doesn't pass, we're we're gonna make X amount of cuts to public safety.

That's gonna be one of the things that we could put on the table.

Well, um, something to animal services, um, we're gonna have to decide to cut public health, etc.

Right.

And so I think if we really put that into that public education campaign and say this is what you're going to lose, and this is what we're gonna have to look at, that will be really significant for people to understand how this is bad for the people that we serve, and we don't want to cut services, and that that's always uh a big thing that we have every year.

This budget cycle was really difficult, and Robert did some magic and the team did some magic, and you know, we lost federal funding, and we we figured out how to do that.

But that not that might not happen in the future, and we're gonna have to cut services.

So I I just really want to get the public behind this.

Thank you for that.

And and that is definitely the point of us looking at program-based budgeting is to be able to connect these concerns.

Where are my taxpayer dollars going?

Well, these are the programs that we're offering to you, the public, and really connecting that, you know, as you said, like what does this bill cutting this service or ability to fund the service mean?

Well, this is what it looks like.

Um, so I I do we take that feedback, and as a department in SLA and as a uh department departments, city departments, we are looking at how we can really enhance that communication piece and connect those dots.

Um so point well taken, and I hope as we continue to work on these things that you you see and feel that that kind of marrying between connections, connection points uh is happening.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think I think I see it as a many different moving parts, right?

Um, it could be hey, can I come to your community meeting so I could explain exactly what happened here, or here are some talking points so you could go tell the community what happened here.

Here's a press release that we're we're sending out to the press so we could have a conversation with the community.

Here's this thing with social media, or here's an interview that we're doing with media sit down at the 12 o'clock show or something like that.

I I think it's it's uh a very holistic approach and many different mediums to reach um the most audience that we can on this.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you.

Representative Rocha?

Thank you again, Mayor.

And I have a question because I know that you you cover uh it's an a quick overview.

One thing we don't talk about, but I want you all to talk about and just give um some highlights on are the unfunded mandates that did pass this session.

I think it's very important that we bring that to light publicly so that everybody knows what's at stake and what um unfortunately was not accounted for in the budget, but now we have to abide by state law.

So I don't know, Jasmine or Mr.

Carr if you'd be able to do that, but I know one off the top of my head, but you can you can speak to that.

Yeah, um, we are planning on coming back and looking more holistically at what the impacts are from bills that were passed.

Right now, this was an at a glance of what passed during the regular, but like we said, there's bills that passed during the second special.

Um, but that is something we can come back and discuss uh more detail what these impacts are and how a lot of these bills don't just affect one department or one area.

It's it's an overall impact and and result in that, but uh definitely at the direction of council if you direct us to do that, we can provide that.

A lot of these will come as individual.

I think you I sent a list for you all letting you know all the ordinances that were um gonna be impacted.

It's a lot of work for the teams to sort of unpack that along with um uh Miss Neiman's office, and so you'll see those come up, and then we'll have a better idea of what the workflow looks like.

Because I think until we sort of understand the workflow and what that change of communication is going to be and where those responsibilities sort of live, we don't have a real good sense of being able to give you an actual number and helping you understand what that means for some of the timelines.

And so you'll see those um come over the next two months.

A lot of the the development, particularly in the planning and inspections area regarding landing and land and zone use um is are already underway in terms of development.

You already saw one regarding the um restaurants and others, but I'm beginning to have discussions with um food truck operators and others who say that they are this domino effect and things that impact them.

So we're beginning to have those discussions and making sure that we're looking at all those impacts for not only us, but when it affects local businesses and make sure that we're all aware of what that looks like.

Well, thank you guys for the presentation.

And um legislative sessions are stressful.

I can tell you, you know, especially on a city, you know, when we have headwinds from the federal uh headwinds we have and the state headwinds, and you know, you have a city going through a budget cycle and you're trying to put together your budget.

It's like building an airplane as you're flying it.

So uh great work by our state delegation.

Everyone has said that we we we're very, very appreciative of the work that they did to to get us where we're at here today.

In addition to that, you know, this council worked hard.

I can tell you Ian would pop in, and you know, there I've never seen so many 911s before, you know, things that we needed to do.

But uh I'm glad we were able to get through.

And and I'm looking at page 19 again, uh, Jasmine, and and you know, I just want you to highlight one more time, you know, what you brought back to El Paso and what you you know kind of protected the city from the financial losses.

I I think that's worth stating one more time on page uh 19 of your presentation.

Let's see.

Yeah, so that is about 133 million in estimated financial losses that could have impacted not just city operations but the taxpayers in their their water bills, their property tax bills, various ways.

So we were we we were calculating that we weren't just looking at what it would impact us here today, but everyone out there, everyone in the our community, because this is the community we live in.

And um so that that was the preliminary impact.

We're still looking out that number is probably much bigger.

Um, but just at a glance, that's that's what we're looking at from regular session.

Yeah, and that and that's a big number.

So uh again, congratulations to uh your team and can and snapper.

Thank you for all the great work that you're doing.

And anything we could do, you know, for the 90th session to get out ahead of this, just let us know we'll we'll be there.

But uh great work this year and and great work to our state delegation, and we we appreciate all the hard work.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you.

To note for the record, Representative Limon is also present at the meeting.

That brings us to item number two.

And this is envision al Paso comprehensive plan update.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Um I'm Casey Schnell with the urban planning and design department.

I'm the comprehensive plan program manager.

Let me see.

Make sure I understand this.

Okay.

So I'm here to provide an overview of the comprehensive plan update in Vision El Paso.

I'll provide an introduction, uh, the project process, what we've done with engagement, and that how that's informing our deliverables.

And then we'll look at project deliverables and next steps.

So the comprehensive plan update was a directive from the 2022 strategic plan session to fulfill goal seven safe and beautiful neighborhoods.

And essentially, by best practice, comprehensive plans are updated every 10 to 12 years.

So this was initiating essentially a 10-year mark from when Plan El Paso was completed in 2012.

Envision El Paso is now our update to Plan El Paso, and comprehensive plans are essentially long-range policy frameworks that are developed with the community's vision of for growth and development in the city.

So we kicked off Envision El Paso at the 2024 strategic planning session.

And from that came essentially our guiding mission for what Envision El Paso looks like.

So it's our guide for fair, sustainable investment, development, and growth to improve quality of life for all residents.

So our project process, essentially all of these elements on the screen are what embody or encompass the plan.

We have completed our vision and goals framework and our community priorities framework, which I'll speak about through our engagement process.

And now we're here at the future land use map and plan element with some early starts and meetings around the infrastructure maintenance plan as well as the economic development and the housing strategy.

So our public engagement.

We have essentially four overarching milestones.

We had a community symposium, a two and a half day program of panel discussions, breakout sessions, tours, all around to build with the guise of like building the with the intent to build awareness for the plan and the policy updates within the plan.

We facilitated a survey to identify the vision and goals framework as well as the themes for the plan.

We also hosted community workshops last year to help develop the community priorities framework as well as start the development of our place types, which is the categories for what we're calling within our future land use map.

Currently they're called land use designations.

And now we've most recently been hosting Flume workshops, future land use map workshops, to map out where these place types apply.

So from our survey, we the survey informed our themes, and overarchingly we heard these elements as priorities infrastructure maintenance, economic development, taking care of our environment, having access to facilities and open spaces and parks, having walkability, and essentially over a third of our respondents in that survey believed that there was a housing affordability issue.

So from that survey, we developed these themes, which housing affordability is really aligning housing option with resident need, mobility choice, so not only in our land development, but also for having multimodal options of how to get around and access your daily needs, sustainable living, just being really great stewards of our natural environment and resources, economic development, advancing growth and prosperity and opportunity for our residents, as well as fiscal responsibility, so ensuring sustainable uh land development patterns so we can maximize revenues and ensure high quality delivery of services.

And then we have this overarching theme of community priorities to ensuring that we're doing this through a community-driven process, but also ensuring fair investment.

So, what we have heard from our workshops last year was essentially we talked with residents about what fair investment looked like to them, and that's how we developed our community priorities, as well as understanding what kinds of development they would like to see in and around the places that they live, work, and play.

So, what was developed from that process was a community priorities framework, which is essentially a tool that we at the city, city staff and leadership can use in making data-informed policy and investment decisions based on need.

These are the overarching six categories that came out of that that residents felt like identified, what fair investment look like, what fair investment looked like to them.

And then we took away these land uses that informed our place type development.

So essentially, people want things near and where they live to access on a regular basis, whether that's through entertainment or recreation or just gathering spaces, walkability, so not only that improvement in infrastructure, but also ensuring that there's connectivity, and then diversified use of spaces and building some more mixed-use developments.

So we recently hosted our Flume workshops this past year, and that was really informing where do these updates then take place.

Through through each of our uh series of engagement, we are always following that element of like educating, building awareness, and engaging.

So in each of these steps, we're also providing information of how the what is the Flume, how does it work, you know, how does why would it matter to me as a resident?

So this was helping us to identify where those updates would take place.

And what we overarchingly heard, and I believe we shared out our summaries with each of you.

We had workshops in each district was that people want access to more green spaces, uh, open space.

They wanted that connectivity and walkability.

So not only through the infrastructure improvements, but just having things near and where they live, building that sense of community, and also having that sort of support to local business through neighborhood serving commercial and essentially just access to essential amenities.

So as being a community-driven process, we were ensuring that when we facilitated the survey that it was informing a deliverable within the plan, and so this informed the themes to our plan.

The community workshops from last year then informed our community priorities framework, which is our decision-making tool, as well as the place type developments, those updates to our land uses.

We had 11 Flume workshops with about 175 attendees.

So we had uh one per district plus an additional three.

So that was that's why you see the 11.

And then we had 24 focus groups with special interest groups, and I'll talk about them in a second.

So throughout this whole process, we gained an understanding of our key priorities for residents and ensuring what that's fair investment looked like.

This led us to also facilitating workshops with each department, so to understand how do we align departmental goals with resident priorities and needs.

Um, from our initial workshops, we also had an idea of what these updates to our land uses looked like and what people wanted and desired in their neighborhoods.

So that led to our place type development and our future land use map process.

So for those special interest groups, those focus groups, we had one-on-one meetings, small group discussions with essentially all of these stakeholders that you see, so overall institute educational institutions, economic development institutions, our school districts, other municipalities, Fort Bliss, utilities, transportation, other developers, every single city department, and uh community-based organizations.

We also um most recently with the Flume process engaged, we have been working with planning and inspections on a monthly uh meeting and process for over a year now, really understanding how they operationalize the Flume and what are those updates as we're doing these updates.

How does it impact how staff really uh uses that or informs developments, helps to shape and inform development?

Um we've been working with economic and international development as well as CID developers focus groups we presented at uh and all these other developer groups that you see here, as well as the county.

So, what are our next steps?

So, essentially, as I mentioned, these are all the elements that go up into making envision El Paso, which is our final plan.

We are here at the future land use process.

So we've done these workshops, we've identified the the updates, identified the place types, and starting and have identified with residents where they see these taking place, and we've had some early discussions around our infrastructure management plan as well as our economic development and housing plan.

So we will be coming back here to you for a future land use update at the end of October to just specifically talk about that process and what that looks like and what those updates look like, as well as coming back in November to look at our housing strategy.

And our major question here for you is is just an understanding what we've shared with you is who else should we be engaging in this process and how do you imagine that looking like goal on council?

We've been looking at the numbers of people who are participating in the future land use map.

We don't think that we are at a level that we have the right level of engagement, and so we really would appreciate if you could help us to think about um getting back out there to have more people involved in that.

I think some of these sessions we had maybe six or seven people, the future land use map is really important.

And so I just want to make sure we I asked the team to come and let's have the discussion with you all about who else we want to involve, what are the strategies that we might be able to sort of get people at the table and sort of focusing on this?

So when we come back, we feel very comfortable that we've heard all the voices that need to provide input.

Good presentation, Casey.

Uh Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor.

And someone that I just didn't see on the list, maybe it's by choice on their on their part is River Oaks property.

I don't know why they're not listed under Yeah, and some people that we haven't listed, we've reached out to, but we haven't been able to set up a meeting with them yet, but we've reached out to them.

Okay.

And maybe I can help you follow up on that.

If if it's worth uh while for me to do that, sure.

You can let me know.

Um, is there a specific target zone for these types of conversations so that we can you know better help you in terms of gathering input from the community?

So it it should be citywide.

I mean, this is a citywide plan that has impact, you know, in every district pretty much at every level when we talk about how we want our city to grow.

And so we really want to make sure that we're finding ways to get back out there.

I think the team have gone to um any type of public events, they've had tables at a lot of those events, they've been in the recreation centers, just sort of doing some work like in the lobby just to get people sort of engaged with it.

Um we know we touch you know every district, but I think we tend to get the same type of people in those discussions who really sort of understand what that map means.

But I think more broadly helping to connect what we heard in the first round about outreach to what we really want to see our built environment look like is really important.

So I know we had talked about, you know, if you would willing to let us come to you know your meetings or if there's some gathering that made sense that was happening in your district.

Um we would love to hear, you know, from you on those and make sure that we're not missing the mark and allowing people to have some input into this.

I think maybe you see future land use and you don't quite know what that means, and you may not just think that this is something I need to be participating in.

Yeah, and I and I agree, Dion.

I'm just trying to think through how to incorporate my district in into these conversations, which I think would be very helpful.

Um on page 14 it says established east side and mission valley growth plan.

That's why I'm just wondering if it was more focused towards a specific area or if that was just generally um listed here on slide 14.

I don't know why 14s or begin implementation and complete comprehensive master plan.

Maybe that's something that was specific to some some other point in time.

But it talks about um commercial neighborhood, you know, zones.

And it's just a I think a little tricky because I've had the experience where some of my very well-established neighborhoods have been trying to rezone for a little bit, even of light commercial, you like I see one.

Um, and the neighborhoods have been very resistant to that type of uh idea only because I think of the traffic implications that a commercial zoning might might add to it.

So I I think we just have to be very strategic on where to bring these conversations to, depending on where we really think implementation would be uh most welcome.

But so and I mean I think if I can offer a little bit to that is yes, it is a resident-wide, you know, uh it impacts residence-wide.

Um, but uh there are maybe stakeholders that you could think of that are driving some of those processes as well or have a really big impact on land development and those sorts of um decisions.

So I think it's kind of twofold at the macro and then a little bit of more micro conversations as well.

And then for example, in district one, you know, all of my Cimarron area that's very walkable, and people love living in the area exactly for that reason.

And so I just think that there's other areas where maybe people don't want or don't welcome that type of growth or that type of change.

And so it's just something that we have to uh navigate and and be good listeners and and try to see how we can get more input from our community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Representative.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um free presentation.

I'm always looking forward to seeing these updates.

I have the original binder of the plan O Pass when I constantly go through it and try to understand what happened in 2012.

And I think um one thing that I'm also interested in is you know, ensuring uh kind of like when was Ms.

Mack was saying is you know, the different members of the community that get to have this input.

I know in our budget conversations or budget workshops, we had maps and individuals of the community were able to also share different priorities.

So I think it's important that if we could all collaborate between the different departments and the different conversations that have happened in different community meetings will be extremely important to be able to kind of marry all the conversations and previous budget conversations that we've even had.

Um, because I know that you know, what uh the mayor potem was saying about establishing the east side of Mission Valley Growth Plan.

Um, you know, even when it comes to the conversation of this uh plan opaso or envisional passo, I know that I've read in Plan O Paso the need of street lights and XYZ in different communities.

Um, and I'm just trying to understand as to I know that we have so many different plans.

We have the street manual, and it's something that I've also read, but oftentimes I'm trying to understand how we could combine everything and make some of those projects and priorities more um you know, a reality.

Um, and also having the conversation as to if we have to ever have to open the conversation again and revisit those priorities are part of also the plan, right?

I think any plan that we work on should be a working document because the needs and the priorities are different amongst different communities.

So I'm looking forward to further conversations and also the input that is extremely needed all across the city.

So one of the things we didn't do at Plan El Paso is a award-winning document, is that we didn't have a uh implementation plan.

And so this document will have an implementation plan with a list of quick wins, as will the parks master plan.

So understanding what our priorities are, really helping us to understand what those key investments need to be, understanding what we can do in the short term, having a clear understanding of what we see as some of our infrastructure challenges in a way that brings all those plans together.

So this will actually bring together all of these master plans that we've done since um plan al Paso and really bring it together into one document, and then really focusing our effort you saw in the next step after this one is really about the infrastructure needs and understanding what the quick wins are, and that's going to help us to understand what implementation looks like.

And I think it gives us an opportunity to sort of say this can be done in the next five years or the next three years, and we know what the focus is going to be, and we have a real good understanding of how we came to those conclusions based on data and information and input from the community.

Perfect.

Thank you for that, Ms.

Mack.

Shade.

Representative Treho.

Thank you, Mayor.

Great presentation.

Thank you.

I I have a few questions and uh Miss Mac, you were answering a little bit of that question as far as implementation.

So you have the the uh the goal.

How long does it typically take to implement something like this?

So we're looking, you know, it started in 2022.

The the you know, starting the the envision al Paso.

What's the goal for implementation as far as so we don't we won't um adopt the plan until next spring, and then we won't bring back the parks master plan until the fall, but it gives us an opportunity to say within our budget how do we sort of prioritize how we're looking at infrastructure?

And then if we're talking about long-term investments, it gives us a good opportunity to really understand how we prioritize those.

My experience with the way that we've sort of developed um you know bonds in the past, it didn't necessarily come driven from one of those plans, and so it gives us an opportunity to say we've done this work, we're going to really talk about what investment we might be making in the future for El Paso based on these needs, those will be prioritized in terms of you know the cost, the level of investment, number of users, and those type of things.

So that's really what we're trying to get to.

So it isn't necessarily going to be yes, we have this plan, it's all fully funded, but it certainly will give you the opportunity to say when I'm making choices and decisions about the growth of the city and where we should be investing.

We have a better understanding of what that looks like through a process that has taken us probably a year and a half of community input to sort of pull together.

Very good.

Thank you.

Uh the I do would love to have you all at our community meetings.

Uh you mentioned, I think the end of October and the beginning of November for the housing.

Uh, so we would have to work those in pretty quickly.

The other thing that I would recommend is getting our our young adults involved.

So there was uh the youth conference uh with the high schoolers, but also you know, with the average age being in El Paso, what I think it's 36 or so.

Uh, when when you look at our community meetings within our different districts, it's gonna be an older uh population.

So we really got to find a way to to reach out to the younger, the young adults.

Uh, where are they, where are they hanging out, go go hang out there.

Uh and also with our neighborhood associations and the coalition.

Have those has there been any presentations there with neighborhood associations and the coalition?

Um we've done outreach with them, but not specifically uh presented to their individual groups.

Yeah.

Um, I know that they've been involved, uh they've shown up to workshops, they've been involved in other meetings, but not us going to their specific meetings.

And then as far as the uh youth component, um, our colleague did present around the future land use map at the youth symposium, and we've also been working with Center Future, which is out of the main public library to figure out different ways to connect with the youth voice and and just to understand like how do they engage and what are they interested in so that we um can kind of meet them, you know, in the middle there.

Very good.

Okay, thank you.

Well, Casey, thanks again for the presentation.

I guess the action item for us is who else should be engaged, right?

Yeah, and get that to you guys.

Sure.

Okay.

We'll do that.

But thank you again for a great presentation.

Thank you.

Council, that brings us to the executive session item.

Is there a motion to retire?

So there's a motion and a second to retire to executive session.

All in favor?

Anyone opposed?

And the city council of the city of El Paso may retire into executive session pursuing to section 3.5A of the El Paso City Charter and the Texas Government Code, Chapter 551, Subchapter D.

To discuss executive session item one, real estate division update, HQ number 25 5035 under 551.071 consultation with attorney and 551.072 deliberation regarding real property.

It is 1136 a.m.