Well, good morning, everyone.

We are going to call our work session to order, and I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend.

Miss Prime, we're ready to go.

Yes, sir.

Good morning.

This is a work session of the El Paso City Council for Monday, November 3rd, 2025.

It is nine o'clock AM.

Mayor Johnson is present and presiding in Council Chambers along with Mayor Pro Tem Chaplin.

Representative Acevedo, Representative Marinada Rocha, Representative Boya Treco, Representative Nino, and alternate Mayor Potem Piero.

Representative Fier, would you leave us in the pledge?

Thank you, Mayor.

Ms.

Prime.

That brings us to item number one, and this is a presentation and discussion on an update of the FY twenty twenty-five year-in review report, quality of life, public safety and community progress funds, capital programs, and overview of the priorities of the city's capital improvement program.

And for the record, representatives Limon and Canales joined the meeting at nine oh one.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning, Mary Council.

How are you today?

How are you this morning?

Good.

Trying to adjust to that time change.

We're here.

We're here.

Hope everybody woke up on time.

Uh Job Guerrero with Capital Improvements.

I'll be providing you the CIP uh year end report.

Uh IT, can you please bring up the presentation, please.

So we'll go over the twenty twenty-five results, uh some of our accomplishments, and then we'll cover a little bit of all the programs that we're working on right now.

So this is the twenty twenty-five FY results.

Uh as you can see we have encumbered um over a hundred and twelve million dollars, which are a little bit over our average, so we're doing very well.

This is a money that's already set aside for projects to uh our PO's ready, ready to go, uh start designing construction.

Um as you can see, every year we're you know, doing a little bit some are a little bit higher, some a little bit lower, but overall our average is about a hundred and and ten million dollars a year.

As far as the expenditures, um our payments so far, a hundred and eight million dollars.

This is all the work that's had been completed on all of our projects from the design for equipment for uh construction.

Um since FY eighteen to twenty-five, we have spent over nine hundred and thirty million dollars.

And the impact that's this has a hundred and now we're gonna round it up to a hundred and nine million dollars.

It's about fifty-four million dollars in labor cost.

This is the labor cost of all this this workers that work on all the projects, the designers, architects, engineers.

So you can see it we do have a big impact on the community, uh, from all the money that we're spending on city projects.

As far as uh 2025, we have supported over 3800 jobs locally.

And since uh 20 2011, over 55,000 jobs locally that we have supported through our CID projects.

And some of our accomplishments and highlights.

Um so far, 43 projects we completed in uh FY 2024, which is again we're about average from what we're splitting projects, which is about 50.

Some there's a little bit more, some less.

This uh FY, 43 projects completed citywide.

And here's uh the map um of all the projects we have completed since FY 2015 to now, over 600 projects, and as you can see, projects uh all over uh the city and every district of the city.

We have a short video that we like to show.

It's truly a gift from the citizens.

I think it's a great core.

I mean, it's convenient because it's right where I live, and I can just come here every day to practice and work on my game.

This is great, and it's it's great for our youth.

Great.

Thank you.

As you can see, a lot more projects and than six months ago when I gave you the media presentation, and they're all great.

So look forward to seeing you all and more of the ribbon cutting.

And we'll talk about some of them that we're uh getting ready to complete very soon.

So this is this is a breakdown of all our um programs that we're working on right now, and we'll go through each one, give a little bit of the projects that we're working on from the from the pre-design design to the construction.

Uh so in the 2012 Quality Alive.

Um, as you can see, we're down to the last projects that we work on, majority of uh all are in the zoo.

And as you can see here, uh the ones in design are uh zoo projects, and then also the Modesto Gomez uh central flat fields.

Um getting ready to start construction uh next summer um and early next year.

Uh the projects and bidding right now, we have one, which we're working with electric companies soon to get started in in construction.

And then the ones in construction, some of them are already uh ongoing right now, some of them are already uh are completed.

I did sign a couple of uh completions uh certificates earlier uh this week.

So we we'll see you in some other ribbon cutting starting pretty soon.

Right, and the 2019 uh public safety bond, um 413 million dollars for the safety bond.

Right now we have some projects in in the pre-design.

This is just working with our user departments to make sure before we actually start the construction that we're providing them everything that they need in their facilities, and then of course we go to our design, bidding, and construction.

Right now, in pre-decide, we have some of our our bigger projects that you're gonna see um uh kicking off next next summer or next year.

We were pretty excited on those big projects that we're gonna get started on them.

And some that are in design right now, some of the design projects are already complete, uh, especially on the fire stations.

We're just waiting to complete some fire stations right now before we can actually move on to the next ones.

Uh the next slide shows you the projects that were in construction right now, some of the stations.

So as soon as we wrap wrap those up, um, and then the next month or two, then we'll move on to the ones that the designs already complete.

Okay.

And the community progress bond.

Um, again, there's uh just one in pre-design, but we do have um uh you know pretty good size of projects in the design and and uh and the bidding phase.

Um as you can see, some of the big bigger extensions of of our streets, the Mountwood, Wrestler, uh Rojas, the Vista Sol Reconstruction.

So you can see those are the bigger street projects that will be working on.

Uh we do have some in bidding, majority of them are traffic signals, and then some of them are in construction, some of the traffic signals that have already uh started construction.

Um I know one of them is already pretty much complete.

We're moving on to the next one, followed by the third one in district three.

And then the 2017 Capital Plan.

Um again, we have completed the majority of those projects, institute projects have been completed.

Right now we just had a Cedar Grove improvement um in the design phase.

Uh majority right now are in the construction phase with completion early next year as well, early next year to the summer.

And the 2018 capital plan again, this one we're gonna have one in design, one in construction with 29 complete uh railroad uh reconstruction as long as as well as the Sean High, this are part of the SIB loan funded projects that uh we're working with uh with that uh funding for those two particular projects.

And the 2019 capital plants, again, six in design, one bidding, sixteen complete, uh the ones in design, some of the projects, uh Sun City Lights, for example, the traffic management uh centers, and those as well start construction in 2026.

So you can see that pattern.

We are gonna be pretty busy starting um next year, spring and summer uh with the construction of all these projects.

The 2020 capital plan would have one project in design with 37 complete already, and the project in design is the Sun City Lights.

That one's coming along very well.

I think you'll all be very surprised and excited how that one's gonna turn out for everybody.

And with that, that concludes my presentation, my uh year and update for CIP.

Wow, you guys have been busy.

We've been very busy, yes, sir.

And we're gonna be a lot more busier coming next year.

Yeah, congratulations on all the on all the great work.

And you what did you say it was uh roughly about 45 to 50 projects a year?

It's about 50 projects a year that we complete.

Yeah, this is from the design all the way to the construction.

Wow, okay.

Uh questions for Gilbert.

All right, Gilbert, great presentation and keep up the great work.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Mayor, we will be bringing the sorry.

We will be bringing the NIP.

I know we had a question about some follow-up questions about NIP and some good news about our escalating those projects forward.

So we're gonna have that as a separate presentation, so you'll see that soon.

Um, and we're also working on having the financials that are related to all the capital available to you and the community on a quarterly basis.

So that'll be coming soon.

We'll have that public funding.

Okay, very good.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Gilbert.

That brings us to item number two, and this is discussion in action on entering into a memorandum of understanding between the City of Al Paso, the El Paso Community Foundation, and the United Nations International Children's Fund UNICEF to participate in the UNICEF Child Friendly Cities program.

Good morning, Richard.

Good morning, Richard Bristol and the City Manager's Office.

Um this item is a memorandum of understanding between ourselves, the uh United Nations uh International Children's Emergency Fund and the El Paso Community Foundation to enter into an agreement to seek the official uh designation of a child friendly city.

And this is an initiative that UNICEF offers.

There are eight cities that have it, and we will be we may not be the ninth.

I don't know how many cities are involved, but we will be the first international community to have this.

Um this is uh it was launched in 1996 by UNICEF.

Uh it's a global initiative, it's aimed at realizing children's rights in urban and uh community settings and empowers local governments and stakeholders to build environments where children's voices and their needs and their rights are prioritized and they're integrated into public policies and into governance structures.

And there's a vision and a framework to this.

Um the vision is that I'm sorry, did I advance?

There we go.

Sorry about that.

So the vision is that every child and young person enjoys their childhood uh and their youth and reaches their full potential through equal realization of the rights within their cities and their communities.

Um the framework is around five outcomes.

One, every child's valued, respected, and treated fairly.

Two, every child's got a voice that's heard in public decisions.

Um three, every child has access to quality essential services.

Uh four, every child uh lives in a safe, clean, and healthy environment.

And the fifth one is every child involves involved enjoys a family life with play and leisure.

So this is the framework that was grounded, the convention of the rights of a child, and it's all linked to sustainable goals.

Um, here, what we're going to do here is enter into this agreement.

This will get us on the initiative for the child friendly cities program.

And this is going to allow City and our partner, the community foundation to begin a very comprehensive multi-year process of required actions to achieve this designation because it's going to take about three years to get here.

And what we're going to start with uh today, we do the memorandum of understanding with the UNICEF, that's at the top of the chart there.

Then we'll move on to the child rights uh situation analysis, the local development plan.

A lot of us are partnered, the community foundation will be carrying a lot of this.

We've got the implementation and monitoring, which is throughout.

Hopefully, uh by the time we get to evaluation, which is also throughout, um, in a three-year time frame, we'll have met the criteria and meet the designation.

Um, because this this will take a little bit of time.

And to be recognized as a child friendly city, we have to meet some some uh criteria.

One, we have to demonstrate the results for children across our child friendly city initiative goal areas.

We identified 71, 73 rather programs for children.

We have programs in place to meet this uh this requirement.

Two meaningful and exclusive child participation, including children's councils and engagement throughout the CFCA cycle.

We met this one because we have established our youth advisory board.

Uh we had our first use youth advisory board meeting last week.

It was fantastic.

Um, it was a very, very good reading.

Uh we actually uh we were in there for two hours and we got a lot of good information about our board, and we received a lot of good information from the UNICEF representatives, and we really got off to a good start.

Um, and then the final one is dedication to eliminating discrimination, ensuring equality in all policies and actions.

That's that's who we are.

That's that's what we stand for, so that's an easy fit for us.

So recognition is granted uh over a set period.

It could, it's it takes up to five years.

It's probably gonna take us up to three years to get the recognition.

And um, once we get there, uh we are going to be a better city for it, and we're gonna be have we're gonna be provide better services for our children because we're gonna have their voice in our government.

And here's another breakdown just to kind of initial engagement.

We've done that part.

We we were up here in April for the initial uh time we brought this to council.

It took a little bit of time to get back here with the MOU.

Once we get this done over the next three to six months, we'll do the child uh situation analysis, move into the uh development of an action plan.

Um, then we're in our implementation phase, our implementation phase will go on for a little while.

We have to prove that we're meeting the criteria through the monitoring and evaluation and we get our recognition from UNICEF, we will be there and we will not only achieve it, but we will renew it.

Um some of the key actions that have got us here.

Uh, this was initiated in the strategic plan and the discussions back in February 2024.

Um, Representative Acevedo is very involved with uh Padonios, and he's done a lot with that group to get the application together to get it sent into UNICEF.

Um he actually helped us a lot with getting a lot of the critical requirements together.

We launched our youth advisory board uh back in May 1.

Our steering committee has been working on this uh since May.

Um actually I've been steering working on this for a year now, but they got all of the information together for our readiness report, which is a very critical document, and we submitted that to UNICEF, and that's what got us the approval to enter in the uh memorandum understanding.

So we've started our youth advisory board.

We will have another meeting on November 12th, and November 12th and 13th are big dates because we're gonna have our child friendly cities launch event, and that will be on the in the Arts Plaza.

We're using several facilities, and it's going to be a very uh very large-scale event.

I'm looking forward to it, and I'm sure we will be inviting all of you.

Um, in our requested action today is requesting the city of uh council enter uh into an a memorable understanding between the city of El Paso, the El Paso Community Foundation, and the United States Fund for UNICEF for the purpose of entering into our journey to become a child-friendly USA city.

Very good.

Representative, is there a motion to approve this?

Move to approve.

Second.

All right, representative.

Thank you, Mayor.

And thank you for that really succinct presentation.

But I was like, I don't know how you could put that into eight slides because I feel like it's been a real journey over the last almost two years.

And this is a really significant milestone in all of this work.

We we got it started almost two years ago, and then formed the Baranino steering committee and everything that you said.

And you know, my my office has dedicated a ton of time to this.

There's countless hours my staff has just been living and breathing this every day, it seems.

And I I really want to thank you and your leadership and all the other city staff that have really put in a lot of work into this, the the community foundation, Padaninos.

I I think this is the the true definition of a good partnership where the city can't do this alone, and we need to do it with other organizations and other organizations that can really come in and do a great job.

Next week is a another significant milestone where you're we're gonna have people from UNICEF USA here over two days.

We're taking them to Quadis on the second day, but the first day is gonna be the more important one.

There should have been invitations that went out.

I believe the Bananino Steering Committee is um working through those invitations, but it'll be at the the big big launch will be at 4 30 at the Mac.

And we we did a walkthrough last week, everything looks great.

Thank you for the youth advisory board.

I I think seeing the youth advisory board in action has been a long time coming.

It was a really great meeting.

The youth were really engaged, and I really look forward to adding to the youth advisory board and bringing it under UNICEF standards and uh overall I I see this as an opportunity for economic development and opportunity for our city to grow, our youth having a voice in everything that we do, and so I just really appreciate everyone for getting us to today.

Thank you, sir.

I need to recognize Julie Bobamino and Roman Sanchez, they've done a lot of heavy living here as well.

And Norma and Ms.

Mack and Ms.

Neiman.

I mean, it it's been all hands on deck, and if we're forgetting somebody, I'm sorry, Ben Five, um, you know, Stephanie Aldero and Eric Pearson at the at the foundation, um, Leah Hanani and Jack Loveridge, uh, a lot of contributions.

It's been really nice to bring everybody together.

Representative.

Thank you, Mayor.

Richard, um, I'm not sure if you're aware, but we have two um national UNICEF ambassadors that are students here in the city.

One of them is that in the Socoro district, and one of them is at Coronado High School.

And I'm not sure if you've reached out to them, but I'll get you the contact information for them.

Thank you very much.

That'd be great.

I mean, if we're talking about this, and then second of all, I was made aware aware we had a request our office in the mayor's office uh to do a present uh proclamation for a group.

It's El Paso Roots, and it is an organization that's composed of student leaders from student councils throughout the city.

Um super impressive group, and the the goals that they have really will kind of mesh in here and bring this up to another level.

I will share that information with you as well.

It's thank you.

An incredible group of students that are working on that.

Andre Miranda from Eastwood High School is leading it, and then like I said, there are students from different high schools.

I know Burgess, Coronado, um, I think East Lake, but I'll get you that list so that maybe you can include them in this process.

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

Very good.

Uh Representative Trahall.

Thank you, Mayor.

This is this is awesome.

I I think this is great that we're doing this for for our community.

And you know, Paso is a young community, and and this is great that this is gonna take place.

How when was the program initiated through UNICEF?

Um 1996 when UNICEF started the Child Friendly Cities Initiative.

Okay, and the cities that have already initiated this program.

What has been the results of that?

You know, I would I haven't done enough research to provide some good comparative analysis, but I think that's what I'll do that and I'll go ahead and share it with the council.

Okay, great, great.

And the age group again, are you?

I know you all were looking at the age group.

Have you all decided yes?

Yeah, we're going from well, we're really going up to age 24.

UNICERF recognize I believe 16 to 24.

Okay, very good.

Thank you again.

Thank you, Mayor.

Just to add a little bit more of the conversation.

I think it's 14 to 24.

But what we have a whole handbook on just the youth advisory board is like 30 pages.

But overall, I I think cities have really seen a lot of progress on this.

You know, Houston was the first in in the U.S.

because this is an initiative happening all around the world.

And Houston was the first in the U.S.

And then you have Minneapolis as large cities.

The difference between those cities and our cities is that they are a strong mayor form of government.

And so I think that you know that presents its challenges because it could become political at some point.

New leadership comes in.

Uh, but having a city manager form of government like we do is is really ideal for this because it kind of stays ingrained no matter who's at the top.

Obviously, a council could decide to remove it at some point, but seeing the the great benefit of a lot of this work is is important and it's kind of hard to undo once none of us up here are no longer here, right?

And so I I think there's um you know, I keep seeing stuff about Minneapolis and how amazing their parks are and really they have a lot of lakes and we don't get to have a lot of lakes, but um, you know, but just really elevates their their their parks, they have that designation.

The the reason that I kind of learned about this is when we were in strategic planning.

I had been here for maybe like 10 days, and I got a notification that said that Minneapolis had just been recognized.

So they went through that work, they went through the pilot.

I I think we could do it in a time frame between two and three years, and I don't think it'll take the full three years, but there's a lot of of great people working on this, and we also have UNICEF clubs that we just found out about a few weeks ago, and they uh exist at high schools.

I know that Loreto has one specific one, and I think there's another high school, so I think it's similar to what Rep Limon was saying in terms of ambassadors, but these are actual clubs, and they are being engaged to be part of the event next week.

And UNICEF was really floored by our community last week when they were here.

We really put a schedule together that did not let them rest for a period of 24 hours, but they were really really impressed, and now they're gonna bring even more people from UNICEF USA uh next week.

So it's gonna be it's gonna be a great event.

I look forward to it.

Well, uh, you know, I I just want to thank Representative Acevedo for spearheading this, and like you said, there's so many involved in in getting this done, and this is the beginning of a of a journey, and you know, and and designing and urban planning with uh children in mind and doing the things that this will help us do going forward.

I think you know, and my numbers could be off, but I want to say 25 percent are under 18 here in the El Paso community.

So as we're doing planning, we gotta make sure it's equitable and and and we we have the youth in mind going forward because as he said, a lot of us won't be sitting here, you know, in the next 10, 15, 20, 20 years.

So this is a very, very good uh uh program.

Glad that we're we're finally getting the traction, getting this started.

Uh 36 months doesn't it's gonna go by pretty quick, but hopefully we can get it done in in 24 months.

But uh again, community foundation, there's so many departments to thank.

Uh but again, thanks to representative Acevedo for for spearheading this.

Okay.

All right, Miss Bryan.

Yes, sir.

The motion was made by Representative Acevedo, seconded by Representative Nino to approve the resolution on item two on that motion, call for the vote in the voting session.

And that motion passes unanimously.

Congratulations, awesome.

Is there a motion to retire to executive session?

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

All in favor?

Anyone opposed?

And the city council of city of El Paso may retire to executive session pursuing 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, discussion on economic development opportunities in downtown El Paso, Texas, HQ number 25-4395 under 551.087 and executive session item two discussion on economic development opportunities in downtown El Paso, Texas.

Discussion on economic development opportunities in downtown El Paso, Texas.

HQ number 25-4395 under 551.087.

And executive session item two, discussion on economic development opportunities in downtown El Paso, Texas.

HQ number 25-5376.

Also under 551.087 deliberation regarding economic development negotiations.

It is 929 a.m.

Is there a motion to come out of executive session?

Ms.

Bryan.

Do we have to vote on the motion to come out of second?

Okay.

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

All in favor?

Aye.

Anyone opposed?

The meeting is back in session at 1042 a.m.

Mayor Potem EX1.

No action.

Thank you.

EX2?

No action.

Thank you.

Is there a motion to adjourn?

So moved.

Oh second.

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

All in favor?

Aye.

Anyone opposed?

And the work session for November third, 2025 is adjourned at 1043 a.m.

Thank you, Council.