Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to the City Council work session.

Ms.

Bryan, I think we're ready to go.

Yes, sir.

Good morning.

This is a work session of the El Paso City Council for Monday, March 2nd, 2026.

It is 9.02 AM.

Mayor Johnson is present and presiding in Council Chambers along with Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, Representative Boyatreco, Representative Nino, and Representative Limon.

Representative Malonado Rocha will be in later this morning.

Mayor, we have a quorum.

Okay.

Representative Nino, would you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, please?

Yes, Mayor.

Of course, thank you.

I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation under God, indivisible liberty and justice for all.

And Ms.

Prime, before we get started, I'm going to ask everyone that's here in Council Chambers and along the dais with us to let's have a moment in silence for the victims in the shooting in Austin, Texas, as well as our servicemen and women that are in harm's way, and of course, the loss of life of the military personnel over the weekend.

So if you would join us in a moment of silence.

Thank you.

Ms.

Bryan.

Mayor just a moment.

Certainly appreciative of the moment of silence, but in retrospect, if I could also add, we lost a giant in immigration services for our community, Carlos Spector, passed away last night, and we'll know we'll hear more about him.

But incredible history of the service that he provided for community.

Our thoughts may heard with his family too.

Thank you.

Ms.

Bryan.

And for the record, alternate mayor Brotempero is also in the meeting.

That brings us to item number one.

And this is a presentation by Benjamin Miranda for endeavors regarding the organization's work in partnership, supporting law enforcement officers, first responders, active duty military members, veterans, and their families, including collaborative efforts that strengthen public safety, workforce stability, wellness, and long-term outcomes.

And the he will also be joined by Jose Lopez from Rio Vista Behavioral Health Hospital, highlighting the hospital's partnerships with national and regional first responder agencies to address acute mental health needs through specialized inpatient and outpatient programs, including an overview of Rio Vista's dedicated first responder program designed to support duty readiness, trauma informed care, and overall cognitive and emotional well-being.

For the record, Representative Acevedo joined the meeting at 9 04.

Okay.

Representative Nino and Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor.

Council Health and Wellness is something that I take very personal.

This past week we completed our strategic plan and identified five key areas of focus economic mobility, public safety, infrastructure, quality alive and good governance.

And within public safety, we made it clear that recruiting and retaining first responders while straightening prevention efforts must be a prior top priority for this council.

This is why I felt it was important for us to bring forward today's presentation from Endeavors and Rio Vista Behavior Health Hospital.

Public safety is not only about equipment, facilities, or response times.

It's also about the physical, cognitive, and emotional well-being of the men and women who serve our community every single day.

Furthermore, we recently adopted the first version of our legislative agenda for the upcoming state legislative session.

That creates an opportunity for us to advocate at a state level for funding and policy support that strengthens programs like these and expands access to critical services for our first responders and their families.

That discussion aligns directly with our strategic priorities and positions us to take a more holistic approach to public safety.

Supporting first responder wellness strengthens our retention, improves readiness, and reinforces the long-term stability of our workforce.

I truly appreciate both Endeavors and also Rio Visa for being here today and for the work that they are doing to support those who protect and serve our country.

And also thank you all, both of you for serving our community, also Mario for your service.

So, Mr.

If Rep Chavez has anything, or if not, then um Mr.

Miranda take it away.

Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, and thank you both for Endeavors and Rio Vista for being here today.

Thank you for Representative Nino because it was his idea initially to bring this forward during this work session.

I appreciate uh the effort, Representative Nino.

Um, during my my ride alongs both with the the Westside Regional Command Center and the fire station in my district, it became apparent to me the work that these first responders do day in and day out.

They are in our community putting in their best effort to ensure that we all remain safe.

But with that work comes uh challenges, and they, of course, from time to time experience mental health challenges as well.

And that is why it is so important that we have a system in place and and we do through endeavors and Rio Vista in our community to help support our first responders and ensure that their mental health challenges that they face do not conflict with the work that they are trying to do so that they can continue doing the work and serving and protecting our community.

So I am very appreciative of your efforts, and I hope to support your initiatives through through our efforts as uh policymakers and in our state level as well, so that we can hopefully receive more funding for their protection.

So I appreciate you being here today.

Thank you both.

Good morning.

Morning, sir.

And uh the slide that's up right now is for Rio Vista.

Can some can we put up the one for Endeavors, please?

Go ahead and start it.

And Representative Carnage joined the meeting at 908.

Thank you.

Good morning, Mayor Johnson.

Good to see you, sir.

Distinguished members of City Council.

Thank you for allowing me to be here.

And Representative Nino, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to have this platform.

My name is Benjamin Miranda, and I serve as the corporate external affairs officer for endeavors.

Also, I'm a retired command chief, master sergeant from the United States Air Force and a former chief of police also for the Department of the Air Force.

So these conversations are very personal to me.

And I'm so happy to be able to take this uh opportunity in a few minutes of your time for me to talk to you a little bit about the workforce wellness program.

So this initiative is being led by endeavors in partnership with the University of Texas at El Paso, the Texas Law Enforcement Peer Network, the El Paso Behavioral Health Consortium, the Elizabeth Dole Foundation, GECU, and the Warriors Journey.

This is simply not another program.

It is a formal evaluation designed to determine what works, where gaps exist, and how we can strengthen behavioral health, suicide prevention, and workforce resiliency for Texas first responders.

Next slide, please.

The program is being delivered here in El Paso, which is a first of its kind in the nation, which is pretty exciting for our community.

Serving the El Paso Police Department, the El Paso Fire Department, the El Paso County Sheriff's Office, the West Texas Regional Public Safety Office, El Paso Telecommunicators, as well as veterans, caregivers, and family members in the Endeavors El Paso Health and Wellness Center.

Every day, law enforcement officers, firefighters, EMS, professionals, and 911 telecommunicators are exposed to trauma as part of their day-to-day work.

The cumulative exposure to tragedy, violence, and human suffering carries a significant emotional and psychological cost, not only for first responders, but for their families as well.

National research shows that first responders experience depression, PTSD, anxiety, and substance use disorders at significantly higher rates than the general population, with law enforcement representing the largest share of first responder suicide deaths.

Texas consistently ranks amongst the highest states in total first responder suicides, which is alarming.

These are not abstract statistics.

They represent fathers, mothers, spouses, sons, daughters, and our neighbors.

They also represent early retirements, overtime burdens, recruitment costs, and strain on municipal budgets.

When behavioral health goes unaddressed, readiness and response capacity also suffers.

Despite growing awareness, access to occupation specific care remains inconsistent nationwide.

And very few wellness programs are formally evaluated to demonstrate measurable outcomes and return on investment.

Next slide, please.

That is why this demonstration program works.

Through this initiative, Endeavors has implemented an integrated model that combines suicide prevention, cultural competent behavioral health care, physical wellness, family support, spiritual wellness, financial literacy, and resiliency training.

These services are provided at no cost, and I'll say this again, at no cost, to first responders and their families, eliminating financial barriers to confidential occupation specific care.

Next slide, please.

And to be clear, we are not here to replace or compete with existing employee assistant programs.

We are here to serve as a force multiplier to the city of El Paso, the County of El Paso, and the Texas Department of Public Safety by expanding access, strengthening the overall wellness ecosystem.

In partnership with UTEP, we are conducting a formal evaluation to measure outcomes over time, including service utilization, workforce retention, absenteeism, and indicators of mental health and overall well-being.

Our goal is not simply to provide services.

Our goal is to general to generate credible Texas-based data that can inform policy decisions, guide future appropriations, and ensure we invest in programs that demonstrate improved outcomes for first responders and their families as well.

Ultimately, this is about saving lives, strengthening families, and ensuring that the men and women who run toward crisis have the support they need when the sirens are off.

Next slide, please.

Our services are comprehensive, and they include mental health wellness, massage therapy, coaching, nutritionist, occupational therapy, suicide prevention programs, support mechanisms, chiropractor services, and an array of other services like financial literacy and also support mechanisms for the families.

Next slide, please.

One of the things that I want to highlight is that these services, again, are at no cost.

And it's not a mandatory referral program.

So a first responder and a family member does not need to have a referral to walk into our services.

All they need to do is call or walk into the health and wellness center and says, I need to get connected.

And they will get connected.

They'll get connected to an in-take coordinator, a case manager that can help them through an array of other programs, and they will get connected to any of the services that they choose.

Because it's not a mandatory program that they need to enroll to.

They choose what door they want to walk into.

If they want to start at the gym with a health coach, they'll start with the gym at the health coach.

If they want to start with a nutritionist, they'll start with a nutritionist.

If they want to see a licensed mental health care counselor, they'll see a licensed mental health care counselor.

And if they're throughout the whole entire program, they never want to talk to a mental health care counselor.

That's okay too.

Because it's their program.

And we develop this program to ensure again that we're saving lives, marriages, and families.

So the ultimate goal for us in working with UTIP and all our partners that have come along with us is to gather the data to see what quality of life indicators that we're capturing as we're servicing first responders and their families to then take it to state legislation next year to advocate for a state-funded program to continue to serve first responders across the state of Texas.

In addition to that, not only to the first responder, but to the whole entire family.

These programs in El Paso are also accessible to veterans and caregivers of veterans and their families.

But I wanted to focus on the first responder because there's a lot of lack of data and research at the national level in really fighting against the pandemic that we're seeing across first responders and dying by suicide.

So we want to make sure that El Paso leads this effort.

Again, no program like this exists nationwide.

And no program like this has ever been done in the state of Texas.

And we're pioneering this program here in our community in El Paso.

So we're gonna be able to showcase what we're doing here in El Paso and serving our first responders and their families, not only at the state level, but we want to take this also at the national level, because there's more to be done to ensure that our first responders are being helped, are being served, and also that their families are being taken care of.

So I'll stop there, pending any questions.

And again, Representative Nino, thank you so much for the support that you've given us in allowing us to be having this platform.

And uh Mayor Johnson, Mr.

Chip Fuljum says hi.

You want to make sure that that I extended my gratitude to you because I remember when we were in your office a couple of months ago talking about this, that you very specifically highlighted for us not to forget the fire department, because we were so focused on the law enforcement officers, and you said don't forget about the fire department, and we did.

We took that into consideration.

And we're we're proud to say that we have a great partnership, great collaborative effort with Chief Killings, with Chipasillas, with the sheriff, and also with uh the Texas public safety officers that are here in West Texas.

So thank you so much, Council.

Appreciate you and God bless you.

Pending any questions.

Yeah.

Well well, uh Ben, thank you so much, and and please give my regards to Chip as well.

Uh, can you just touch on you know, you guys were founded in San Antonio and you you're faith based.

So can you talk a little bit about that?

So we are a national nonprofit organization that serves a multitude of populations across 48 states to include Puerto Rico.

Our headquarters is in San Antonio, Texas, and you're right, sir.

We were founded at the basement of a church in 1969.

So we've been serving a multitude of populations uh for 57 years here in El Paso.

We've been serving the El Paso community since 2017 with what we call our anchor program, that's through the Stephen A.

Coyne Military Family Clinic, where we serve post-9-11 veterans and their families and active duty service members and their families with low to no cost mental health care.

And since then, we've been serving the community of El Paso across many other uh uh areas where we've helped the city of El Paso in operating shelters as well.

We've also assisted the community in uh in in being a subcontractor for someone during the the the uptake during COVID when we were also managing and operating shelters for the city of El Paso.

So we've been an internal part of this community since 2017.

And and and even Chip, our CEO says El Paso is his second home because uh El Paso has been so good to us, and we're happy and proud.

I'm an El Paso and born and raised here, so this is dear near to my heart.

Uh but yes, sir, we're a national nonprofit organization headquartered in uh in San Antonio, Texas.

Fantastic.

Thank you guys for the great work.

Representative Nino.

Thank you, Mayor.

And I was gonna also thank you in regards to ensuring that the fire department was part of that conversation.

I know I've had a lot of great conversation with Benjamin.

I visited the facility.

We celebrated the ground opening in November.

And I also want to thank our strategic and legislative affairs, Luther, Ian, and our chiefs, Chief Pasilla, Chief Killings, and Chief Agustino as well.

I know you've been part of many conversations, ensuring that the support is there.

Um and I thank you for coming out and also being part of this conversation and look forward to even future conversations again, ensuring that you know the state of El Paso stands behind supporting such efforts, um, including in our legislative uh agenda as well.

Um, I don't have any of my colleagues have questions, and not uh I know Rio Vista also has a presentation.

Representative Lemo.

Thank you, Mayor.

I had the opportunity in 2017 to actually visit your site in San Antonio before you came to El Paso.

Um my husband and I were attending a conference and it was a holiday, and you all still opened up the office to give us a tour of the facility.

One of the biggest points that I got was how you work with the entire family.

That is it isn't just in isolation, and I was really really impressed with it.

And then as time went by, and Deborah did arrive in El Paso, and you have done just an outstanding job.

Um, at the time it was focused on veterans, but now that the expansion is gone to first responders, it it's key to our community and certainly want to thank you for coming to El Paso.

I know that this is your hometown, and you certainly would want to see it thrive here, and I appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Appreciate your ma'am.

Ben, thank you for the great presentation.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

God bless you all.

Thank you.

For the record, Representative Melonado Rocha joined the meeting at 9.16 a.m.

Good morning.

Good morning, good morning.

How are you all?

Good.

Thank you once again for for having us here and listening to the efforts that we've been putting out for quite a while, as you know, Ms.

Chavez uh knows and is familiar with.

Um, I am José Luis Lopez.

I am a retired El Paso police officer.

I did the job for 25 years.

Um I retired to do this.

It's uh near to my heart.

I've had a lot of um not a lot, thank God.

Close friends, complete suicide.

And uh first responders.

All of them.

Um just in case you don't believe us.

I want to also thank Mario Herrera who's walking away.

Mario.

He's a retired lieutenant with the uh El Paso fire department, and he is the one that started the first responder program at Rio Vista, and was the one that ultimately convinced me to retire so I could take this job and continue the efforts that I had been con that I have been doing as the chief will tell you at the El Paso Police Department.

Okay, next slide, please.

What we're gonna do here a little bit is we're gonna talk about first responder stress.

Okay, I think it's important that we understand what it is that makes it so unique and so different.

First responders are routinely exposed to chronic, repeated and often on pro unprocessed trauma, including life-threatening situations, injuries and deaths, moral injuries, and responsibility for others' safety.

To me, one of the biggest ones is the moral injury.

It's the one that it's a silent one, the one most people don't talk about, the one where you couldn't do the job, where you just couldn't prevent the incident from occurring, and that does eat at a lot of first responders.

Next slide, please.

First responders, stress continuing, right?

Unlike single incident trauma, this type of exposure is ongoing and embedded in the job, leaving little opportunity for recovery before the next critical incident.

Over time, this can contribute to hypervigilance, emotional numbing, sleep disturbances, irritability, concentration difficulties, and heightened stress response, often without a clear sense of when it's started.

And I could I can witness to that.

There's just times where you just get to that point and you don't know why you got there.

Next slide, please.

When the first when a person experiences an emotional and physical uh arousal based on a thought, a perception, this is usually referred to as anxiety.

Okay.

In the first responder world, this is a necessity, and it's required to perform the duties effectively.

What most people call anxiety, we call duty ready.

We call being prepared for the job.

We have to put ourselves in danger in our mind first, so we could prepare for the incident.

Most people refer to that as anxiety.

That occurs too long and it becomes a disorder.

I think that's important to note.

Um, right here we have a couple a little little graph.

Um, it's a small little um study that was done with 64 officers.

What you see is heart rate variability here.

Okay.

When you comes to high um a resting heart rate, on average, a police officer on duty's resting heart rate is at about 90 beats per minute.

Okay.

This is taking them through a call, just so you guys could get a general understanding of physiologically what it looks like.

Okay.

When the when they get dispatched to a call, their heart rate goes up about 35 beats per minute.

In route to a call, you start seeing it escalate just above 40 beats per minute.

This is above resting heart rate.

Okay, and it varies from individual to individual.

When they arrive on scene, the heart rate now is up 55 beats per minute more from the resting heart rate.

If they encounter a use of force incident or an arrest, they're close to 60 beats per minute above their resting heart rate.

If we take the 90 and we add 60 to it, I know it's simple math, right?

That's 150 beats per minute at time of incident.

And this happens day in and day out for these first responders.

Specifically, this these statistics are for police officers.

That's what the study was was uh built around.

But I could guarantee you that our firefighters go through the same exact physiological uh uh distress.

Okay, again, day in, day out.

This is the physiological information right here.

Okay, next slide, please.

Let's talk a little bit about the culture.

The development of a mindset that was meant to protect against the stressors of police work can also be devastating for the first responder's mental health.

Okay, here's the problem.

When an officer experiences a mental health crisis, he's seen as being weak and incapable of doing the job.

People think that he's just trying to get out of work.

Diagnosis of certain conditions prevents the first responder from returning to work sometimes.

Okay.

Now imagine the emotional, the financial issues that that could cause.

Emotionally dysregulated and are often being seen as dangerous.

If you have an emotionally dysregulated first responder, the world views that individual differently than if it was just a normal citizen.

Next slide, please.

Unresolved trauma.

Some of the symptoms.

The problem is that very trauma doesn't go away.

It remains and continues to grow until ultimately it surfaces in unexpected and disappropriate uh ways.

Okay.

For example, we mentioned some of these hypervigilance, lack of trust.

Okay, we don't get invited to the parties.

Right?

We get invited to the bad situations.

So we start seeing nothing but that part of society.

Okay.

Uh disassociation, a numbness.

This could cause cause a lot of problems at home.

Control issues.

Sometimes we overcompensate because in our line of duty, in our line of work, control is key.

But at home it's not.

Anger issues, sleep difficulties, body memories, smells, tastes, pain, visualization.

You interpret things differently.

When you hear that in a normal citizen, we can refer to it as a hallucination.

That's gonna be key later on because I'm gonna talk about diagnosis.

Okay.

Uh next slide, please.

Treating unresolved trauma.

Treating unresolved trauma begins with finding a safe and nurturing environment so that first responders can feel safe to open the box where trauma is found.

The first responder needs to become aware of the traumatic experience, develop a healthy perspective of the experience, and learn ways to integrate the experience into their lives.

This is key.

Okay.

Safety is what we at Real Vista are trying to accomplish.

We're trying to get our first responders into a place where they feel safe enough to open up that box.

Certain key things have to occur for that to happen.

Next slide, please.

Let's talk a little bit about our real Vista first responder program and what makes it unique.

Our treatment planning prioritizes functional stability and readiness for duty with careful consideration of how mental health intervention may impact the first responder's ability to safely and effectively perform job responsibilities, including carrying a firearm, operating a vehicle, and making split second decisions under stress.

Cognitive overload sometimes gets in the way of the split second decisions.

Okay, that's something that's seen in the first responder world quite often.

Next slide.

For whatever reason, veterans are attracted to the first responder world.

Not only in managing trauma symptoms, but in sustaining long-term functioning, well-being, and readiness for duty, while honoring the complexities of the roles they serve and the experiences that they carry.

That's one of our goals at Real Vista.

Next slide, please.

Okay.

Under trauma, understanding trauma triggers may arise both on and off duty.

Okay.

The brain doesn't understand necessarily when you're on duty and when you're off duty.

Okay, so we need to teach the officers to understand that as well.

Identifying early physiological and psychological emotional warning signs.

Early is key before it becomes a problem, before we have the triggering event.

So we get our first responders to start understanding their identical triggers.

Teaching grounding, regulation, and reset strategies that can be used in real time and in high stress environments.

Breathing techniques, you guys know about those, right?

There's a lot of science behind what makes breathing techniques so effective.

And I know it might sound silly, but in our world we call it tactical breathing.

Long exhales, secrete acetylcholine, which slows down the body and allows thoughtful response to kick in.

That has to be taught.

That's not natural.

So we work with these kinds of situations, right?

We work with these kinds of techniques.

Supporting meaning making resilience and recovery without minimizing occupational realities.

Meaning making is huge.

Sometimes our first responders forget the why, why they started and why they're doing the job.

Next slide, please.

Let's talk a little bit about diagnosis.

We talked, we already kind of touched on this a little bit already already one time.

Our diagnosal uh diagnostic formulation emphasizes clinical accuracy, symptom severity, functional functional impact, and response to treatment rather than just the diagnosis alone.

Okay.

Well, we apply a thoughtful diagnostic approach in recognizing or recognition that certain diagnoses are care carry administrative, legal, and occupational implications.

Okay.

There unfortunately is some career killing diagnosis.

We're aware of them.

All right.

We're aware, and I use this as an example earlier.

I said I was going to bring it up.

If you have a first responder who is hallucinating, and it happened after a traumatic event, now we have a different diagnosis.

Because now we have trauma induced hallucinations versus schizophrenia.

Those are treated differently.

Our hospital understands this.

Our uh our clinical staff understands this as well.

Okay, so we look at all aspects in relation to police work.

Next slide, please.

We're almost done, guys.

Medication management.

When our first responders are engaged in medication management with the internal provider from our hospital, we remain mindful that certain medications may affect alertness, reaction time, and cognitive processing, all of which are important when it comes to first responders.

With proper consent, we collaborate with prescribing providers to ensure treatment plans support occupational safety and return to work goals.

Return to work readiness is important.

Next slide, please.

We'll give you a quick overview of our hospital.

We are we are uh 152 beds total, seven, actually now eight, my mistake.

That's that's a typo, eight 20 bed 20 bait units, and one 12-bed unit.

Okay.

Two of those wings are specifically for military, first responders, and veterans.

Okay.

So that's 40 beds total just for that demographic.

All right.

And the treatments are in line with what it is that we uh that we know these individuals experience.

Next slide, please.

Let's just talk about our uh levels of care and our scheduling, our partial hospitalization program.

This is our outpatient programming, okay?

Partial hospitalization program, also known as PHP, is a five-day program per week from 9.30 to 2 p.m.

This impri this provides intensive structured care for stabilization, skill development, and trauma and form informed treatment with out inpatient hospitalization.

The goal to all of this is to prevent the inpatient hospitalization is to catch this early in our first responders.

The other program that we have, and I want you to think about this as a step-down program to get them duty ready.

Three days per week, 9.30 to 12.30 p.m.

So it has a step-down program and entry level of care supporting ongoing recovery and gradual reintegration into work and daily responsibilities.

What we're talking about here is when things get really dark and really bad.

These are the type of programs that we would like to uh extend to our officers and our first responders, our firefighters and our military as well.

Okay, next uh slide, please.

Some more treatment tracks.

We're gonna talk about general mental health tracks.

There's a description there for you guys.

PTSD and trauma track.

Okay.

They are different.

You have your general general anxiety, general depression, that kind of stuff.

And then you have once you get the diagnosis of PTSD, or we've identified that is a trauma-induced mental health issue.

We they go into our trauma track.

Okay.

Um, next slide, please.

Unfortunately, in the first responder world, we do see a lot of substance use issues.

Okay.

So we have a track for that as well.

Of course, we also have our co-occurring and specialized needs tracks.

Those are when you have a lot of multiple things going on, substance abuse, maybe some mental health stuff going on.

All right, next slide.

This is just some of the specialized training related to our first responders that our clinicians have.

The ones that are actually um processing with our with our first responders.

They are certified in EMDR eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.

A lot of science behind that.

That is very it is very effective in processing trauma.

Cognitive processing therapy.

This helps a patient learn how to modify and challenges uh unhelpful beliefs related to the trauma.

Okay.

We have prolonged exposure therapy.

Teaches individuals to gradually approach their trauma related memories, feelings, and situations.

Gradual is the key there.

We have the uh polyvagal therapy.

With this is, I think gonna be some of the wave of the future here.

This focuses on regulating the automatic nervous system to move from states of fear or freeze into safety connection and calm.

And then we have our somatic experiences, helps resolve chronic stress, uh PTSD trauma by focusing on bodily sensations.

Okay.

And that is it.

Again, I want to thank you guys.

This is an overview of our hospital.

It's a beautiful facility, by the way.

You guys are more than welcome to to come and visit us.

Okay.

Um this is our footprint, outpatient and our inpatient, if you our inpatient facilities are a lot larger.

Okay.

Um, this is our information.

I am again grateful that you guys are taking this initiative.

Mr.

Nino, Ms.

Chavez, I appreciate you guys and everybody else that's here.

I will now take any questions if you have them.

Jose, thank you for the great presentation.

And and what's sticking with me is uh when you said the change the mindset to going in for danger.

I mean, most of us can't even comprehend that and the in the heart rate that you go through from resting to when it gets elevated.

It's I'll never forget those stats.

So thank you for sharing that with us.

I have some other stats.

Uh, really quick 143 suicides in 2024 for just police officers, 143.

Let's talk about the difference, right?

Sixty-four deaths due to felanous acts, and forty-three due to accidents.

If we do the math, suicide is the leading cause of specifically for these uh for these statistics police officers.

Yeah, hor horrible stats, but thank you for sharing that with us.

Thank you.

Uh Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Joe.

Uh, thank you, Mario.

Thank you, Benjamin, for bringing uh information to us and awareness.

I think it's it's so important that we do preventative care um and you know create a support system in our community for our first responders.

I'm very grateful to for you for being present in district one.

We're very proud of having Rio Vista in District One.

And of course, you know, I think today's presentation highlights the support we have across the city.

Um, both with Benjamin and you.

Um, Benjamin, of course, having a wellness center, you having the opportunity for inpatient and outpatient care uh for critical uh you know uh cases.

So we appreciate your presence and we thank you for the work that you are doing.

Thank you.

It's uh it's a community effort.

Yeah, count on my support always.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Representino.

Thank you, Mayor.

And again, Benjamin and Joe, thank you for being here.

Also, Rep Chavez, she brought Rio Vista into the conversation.

Um Benjamin is a district five constituent.

I know it's in the actual building is in district six now.

But um again, thank you so much for all the work that all of you are doing to support our first responders.

It comes down to all of us having these collaborative efforts, conversations to know how we support each other and really move our community forward together.

And thank you, Mayor, for allowing me to also invite them.

So thank you guys for being here.

Truly appreciate you guys and God bless.

Okay.

Ben and Joe, thank you guys for the great work.

Thank you for your time.

All right, and let us know what we can do to help.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you guys.

Ms.

Bryan.

That brings us to item number two, and this is a presentation and discussion by El Paso Electric on the 2025 annual report for the Smart Meter Project, Customer Education Plan Implementation.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good to see you guys.

Good to see you too.

Thank you for having us here today.

My name is Ivan Mejorado.

I'm a government affairs specialist for El Paso Electric.

I'm here joined by Jacob Reyes, our public affairs specialist, Grisel Ramirez, our supervisor for emergent technologies, and George Novella, our senior director for regulatory policy.

We're here today to give you an update on our smart meter deployment and education campaign.

In addition to that, we're gonna tell you how our customers are already benefiting from using these tools.

And I think in a very exciting topic, a new pilot program that we're launching that will give people even more control about what their energy.

So having said that, let me bring up Grisel, who's been leading this project for the past five years.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Mayor City Council is a pleasure to be with you today, giving you very good progress and exciting news.

Let me see where it's uh.

Well, let me just refry refresh your mind as of last year.

Um back in 2022, we got approval from the regulatory commission to implement the smart meters in our service territory.

And now that we had none smart meters before, but uh we call the smart meters because now we can't connect to these meters remotely in real time, and we can identify if the meter is having a problem, if it's failing, if there's a service point um issues, you know, high voltages, something that may put the customer in danger or in a uh safety situation.

Uh but also very um powering for the customers is that they can't obtain their consumption data in near real time.

They can basically be checking how much are they consuming per day, what time of the day they're consuming the most, and how can they can visualize the data and make better decisions?

Can they afford a $50 bill or a hundred dollar bill?

That is their decision, and it's other it's in their power.

Um these meters also let us know immediately when a customer is undergoing an outage.

So we don't have to recall on customer calls anymore.

So overall, you know, they customer have better tools and we can provide a more reliable service by having these smart meters.

Um back in 2023, we launched um this implementation and the deployment of the smart meters.

And as part of this implementation, we hired Black and Beach to help us develop the customer education plan.

What is gonna come to our um our territory, how we're gonna provide the service, and how this is gonna be enhancing the reliability of our power.

So now uh the installations are about a hundred percent complete in both Texas and New Mexico.

We have about 2,000 meters that we're still trying to um install, and these are because we need to make an appointment with the customers because we don't have a lot of um access or they have um gates locked.

So it's a little bit more coordination that we need to uh do with them, but essentially the project is 100% complete.

So uh let me um explain uh uh more about the customer education plan that we that we developed.

The phase one of the plan consisted in informing the customers that we were gonna be transforming into this technology, that how the smart meters function, what are the capabilities that the meters uh will provide to them, and if there were any concerns, any security, any costs associated with them.

We went through through that phase back in 2023.

And um phase two, which started also at the end of 2023 to 2025, that consisted of educating the customers and in the installation process.

Who was gonna be the property, how long the installation was gonna take, who how to identify that these were uh property installers, that there were not gonna be any scans via via where scams, and all the safety um measures that uh the customers should take along the installation.

Uh now that we're in post-deployment phase, phase three.

So we started the phase in 2023 and and now 2026.

And we're educating our customers about what are the enhanced capabilities and how to use the smart tools that that they're coming through the uh through as a result of the project.

So these are part uh that now the customers can't enjoy these uh smart tools in their customer portal.

And I'll let Jacob to give you uh the update on this.

Good morning, Mayor Council.

Um so to discuss the program highlights regarding marketing, we did reach the 100% deployment as Grisel said in Texas and New Mexico.

Um, and we did reach about 56.9 million ad impressions, um, both in Texas and New Mexico, and making sure that the customers were aware uh whether this was digital ads, billboards, um, on their streaming platforms.

Um we made sure that we did a wide variety of methods so that we could target um everyone.

And then we also launched the time varying rates pilot program.

And that started in New Mexico and now it's in Texas and both programs are performing very well at this moment.

In our phase one awareness campaign, we do do community events.

These are the 2025 community events that we presented at.

We do try and hit every optimization area within our service region.

We do these presentations to make sure that customers are informed about our smart energy tools to make sure that they know how the smart meter works, what the impact is to them.

And these are the community meetings that we presented at deployment phase two.

This was to inform customers about the installation timeline for customers, when they would be receiving it.

They could input their zip code and they would see about an approximate estimation of when they would be installed these smart meters.

In 2025 in Texas, we received about 1.25 million digital impressions in connected TV and Meta.

So connected TV is anything like your Roku, Samsung TVs, stuff like that, and then as the Facebook and Instagram.

Of those ads as well online, we do have about 12,000 uh ad clicks that customers went through and they went to check out the website to learn more information.

Our video ads were about 800,000 uh views as well within the service region, and 1.15 traditional impressions, which is like our billboards that we have across the state.

And in New Mexico, um, we did the same process, so 474,000 digital impressions, 6,241 ad clicks, um, the 37,000 ad views, and the 1.57 million traditional impressions.

In phase three, now we are informing customers about the smart energy tools that they can use through the El Paso Electric app and also the manage my account portal that is online.

This is to make sure that customers are aware of all the possibilities that they know how much energy they're using.

We also send out weekly emails to uh the primary account holder who has a smart meter.

This lets them know hey, you're estimated to use approximately 30% more than you used last month or the month before that.

So it gives you more insight into how you're using your energy, and it also gives them personalized um energy efficiency tips of how they can possibly minimize their usage in their house.

Um and they do have to complete a home energy analysis that gives us a little bit more insight into the appliances they have, how they're using energy, so that we we can give them those personalized tips.

Um we are deploying this phase through Facebook, Instagram, and Billboards.

Um we have reached optimization areas four, five, and seven, um, which were the first ones to kind of get completed as we were completing them.

Uh we were transitioning from installers to campaigns to the next steps campaign.

Um in Texas, we did receive about the 1.13 million digital impressions, the 9,000 ad clicks, and the 17.2 million uh traditional impressions.

And the lifetime campaign highlights, um, here are some sample materials of everything that we sent out.

So we have the flyer and downloadable FAQs.

We have the zip code search tool.

We also created educational videos instructing customers of how they can log on to the portal, exactly what goes in the smart energy tools, and how they can use those smart energy tools.

Uh we also have a smart meter website dedicated with FAQs, the rates, um, how they can use the smart meter, how they can read a smart meter, um, such information as that.

And the lifetime campaign highlights, so we've reached the 100% completion.

Um, and currently we've only had about a thousand and twenty-one total opt-outs since 2023.

Um, our advertising campaigns are exceeding our targets of meeting our customers and informing them of what we're doing with smart meters.

Um, we had a goal of reaching about 80% of adult customers once per week so that way it's uh recall on them so that when they see our smart meters campaigns or they go outside of their house and they see their meter, they can kind of recall these um information that we're providing them.

Um and currently the estimated savings is about six dollars a month in energy savings from smart meter installations.

Um, and this is when we're launching our behavior change programs and our time-bearing rates pilots programs to drive customers to reduce that impact on the load growth.

And then I will give it back to Griset to talk about our portal and energy savings.

Thank you.

And thank you again.

And this is one of our highlights.

What can you do with that meter read?

You don't know where you spend it, how you spend it.

And now with the smart meters, we can obtain data in 15-minute increments for residential and five minutes for residential.

And we provide these data for to our customers.

So we, if you remember the report from last year, we went to about 30% of our in our service territory customers were enrolling the customer portal.

We increased that to um six on average to 63% across our area.

So this is a huge win because we know that our customers are using these information to make better decisions.

Um to see how much uh is this uh information uh useful to them, how they're using uh the visibility of their data is helping their consumption.

And we find that about four to five percent um our customers are gaining on on energy savings.

It's about 42 42 um kilowatt hours in as a reduction in their uh in their bill.

So we gather, and more about how we went through these analysis.

Uh we we gather five years of monthly data and we analyze these data per customer type.

We uh correlate with uh weather conditions, uh the size of the premise, and when did they um started when did they enroll in the customer portal?

So these study uh only focus on residential customers because in reality that's they have the power or they have the flexibility to make this adjustments in their consumption behavior.

Unfortunately, for customers, uh, for commercial customers or industrial customers, they they have to consume whatever it's needed for their operations, you know.

The same the same applies for schools or government institutions.

So we um we analyze um the population of residential customers.

Here you can see how really the biggest impact is in the high usage uh residential customers.

That's where we saw the the biggest impact.

And that translates to a four or five percent reduction, which is about six dollars in their customer bill.

And um, so we you know, we're trying to we're trying to educate them more and um why why the low usage of the mid-usage ofnet creating these uh savings.

And we understand that they already have a low bill as it is, so it's hard very hard for them to make more reductions.

But on the high use usage customers that they have a little more leeway to to make um more reductions in their how they're consuming their energy, we're finding that we're very successful.

So we find that uh in Texas we had a reduction of 43 kilowatt hours higher than in New Mexico, which is 35 kilowatt hours.

So um, and this is this is how you can see that mostly mostly the we can see that more of the savings are coming from customers that enroll in the customer program in a later date.

So what we want to do next is that if these customers are having a hard time to make further reductions in their bill, how can we help them to make this reduction?

So that's where George is gonna talk about.

So now let's face let's focus on the rates where they can't they we're not talking about reduct reducing their consumption because they need that consumption, but how can we make them use the energy when it's less costly to them?

So pass it on to George.

Good morning, Mayor, uh City Council George Novella, Senior Director of Regulatory Policy and Rates for the company.

Um very excited to bring this forward, and it's our pilot program that we're offering to our Texas customers.

So a couple of things.

Uh cities introduce this uh type of metering.

It's costly and you get critique because customers don't see it getting used, or how's this getting used, or how does it benefit them?

There's a lot of benefits in the back end.

They just don't see it.

But what I wanted to do in this case was immediately try to introduce it on the front end where customers are able to see different rate options and use all of this uh interval metering that Garisel said because five minute interval readering, 15 minute interval metering, it doesn't mean anything if the customer can't access it and can't use it to change their behavior to access bill savings or potential bill savings.

And that's what we wanted to do.

Interestingly enough, in our Texas jurisdiction, we had a requirement.

In that case, they said you need to come back to a pilot program and within two years introduce a new Mexico wide rate option using this interval meter meter readings uh that are uh five minute and fifteen.

I really like that idea, and on a voluntary basis, we brought that into Texas.

So we made a filing uh a year or two years ago where we wanted to bring this pilot program to Texas, uh study our Texas customers for over two years, offer different types of pilots to both our residential and small commercial customers to see what works and what doesn't work.

Because what we don't want to do is mass deploy a rate option that says, okay, you got to use your interval meter reads, you're gonna get billed on your highest 30 minutes, and that can just create a lot of confusion uh and a big mess.

So we said, okay, let's take two years, let's study our low income, let's study even our DG customers, different types of innovative rates, and and take our time.

So my expectation is that in two years we'll be coming in and say propose a rate option that we can do throughout our El Paso uh Texas jurisdiction, and that would be my hope.

And so far with our TV RPP, our time-varying rate pilot program, and and I gotta tell you, I'm sorry for that one.

I think a lot of times we name things and it's people like myself that name them before we get the the people that know how to name things better, so you get T VRP peep from people like myself.

This horrible acronym.

But uh what's um really good about it is we've been marketing uh this types of pilot for the last several months.

People have been signing up left and right, we're giving out gift cards uh for signing up, we're giving an additional gift card after the fact after you sign up.

And what's also great is if you get a really high bill, you join this uh this rate option, you join an innovative rate, kind of something different, and you get a high bill, we'll do what's called hold harmless.

We'll take back that high bill, we'll bill you back at your existing uh older rate that you had, and we'll give you the option.

Do you want to stay on, or do you want to uh jump off this uh this trial or this pilot?

And uh we want to make sure that we don't harm customers that are really taking that initiative to uh to try these rates.

So we're excited about these rates and and uh bringing more options to our customers because the ultimate goal is this simply this is we want to introduce rates that help customers save money by moving usage to an off-peak period.

And what does that do?

That helps us build less generation, and ultimately that helps everybody.

So if we can kind of create that environment, that at the end of the day is our goal.

Thank you.

So that concludes our presentation.

We're happy to take any questions from council.

Uh a couple quick questions on this pilot program.

How does someone enter or get involved with this?

This is the tough answer.

You got the right question because it's tough.

It has to be anonymized.

So uh what happens is we hired a team from Bradle, they're called the Braddle Group.

They helped us uh define and uh capture how many people we needed per sample, and we can't broadcast it out to the city.

You actually have to uh tailor make it where you're uh picking your sample population and going out to them one by one, recruiting them.

So you don't oversample certain parts of town, different uh uh demographic populations.

So actually people wouldn't be aware of it uh unless they're called.

The last figures I saw from last week, we contacted about 63,000 of our El Pasoists to try to recruit them for a couple of thousand slots, and uh and that's where we're at right now.

It's pretty successful, and we're pretty much filled up at this point.

Okay, but ultimately will this be available to everyone?

Yes, that's the goal.

And and the key is right now we're testing, say, eight or so pilots.

I only want to uh release the two or three best options.

So we want to find out what works for our community, what do our customers understand and what helps them benefit uh from this metering technology?

So we will bring this to our community in mass, but just the ones that make sense, the ones that work.

And then my last question is now that you're reaching 100% of the smart meter deployment, uh what percentage of that opted out.

Uh we well, we currently have in uh we're cleaning up the like we said, um the that area, right?

Uh we currently have about in Texas.

We have about 300 customers that have opted out, but I don't uh to be I'll be honest with you.

We still have to finalize these two thousand that we have left uh pending uh to make sure that if they're um if they're with um they they're interested in opting out or they have the meter.

So the number may increase.

Uh can I say it?

You know, we we estimate about a thousand to fifteen hundred customers opting out in Texas.

But um but um we I mean out of four over four thousand four hundred thousand customers, that is a very good number that we can work with.

And then let me make sure I understand that the for those that opt out, there is an additional fee that they pay to keep the old meter.

Yes, correct?

That's why we want to be careful and make sure that we explain the customer if they opt it out the capabilities that they will be losing because they won't have um interval data to um to understand to to useful for to make better decisions and also you know, opportunities on um future rates that um they can provide more savings to their bill.

Okay, thank you.

Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor.

You took my question.

That's good because it we needed to know.

Um thank you for the presentation.

I do have one additional question just because um I had a business for many years and I would pay, I think uh around three thousand dollars a month for electricity for my business during the summertime, right?

And so I know that you mentioned that many commercial businesses can't really adjust the the usage because of the responsibility they have to whatever operation they're running.

But 94 still seems like a low number to me, you know, from page 14 from your presentation where it says uh people that are using the the smart meters, the portal updates.

Um I don't know if we can increase that, you know, to see if they could um you know maybe operate something more sustainably, you know, so that we could ensure that they're not consuming so much electricity, because I know that they're they're probably one of your biggest consumers and you know, rate drivers.

So I don't know uh what ideas you have behind this to try to get them to see what initiatives they can do to eliminate some of this usage or reduce, I guess rather, the usage.

Yes, um well, as of last year we created um a focus group in you know Pass Electric that is now uh creating these relationships with the small business um owners and educate them more on you know not only where are you what do you have in your business that it's consuming higher um that are high energy, you know, how can you reduce your consumption in your end?

And then um do you know it's and now like we talked, you know, these uh new rates, they're just options for them to utilize their energy and um uh times that off peak would with uh uh is less costly for them.

So uh we'll work on that.

I'll I'll um I'll follow up with with a group to see what is uh what has been uh the efforts and where can we emphasize some of uh uh the capabilities that we're bringing to them.

And yeah, it's it's uh it's a different um behavior that they have and we'll try to we'll try to help them and I think there's always room for improvement, right?

And I know that on the residential side, we're benefiting greatly from the smart meters and smart thermostats and understanding where our usage is and how to manage that better.

So I think there's probably um an opportunity there also on the commercial side to get people more aware of their usage.

Um could you just briefly describe who your biggest users are in the city of El Paso?

If you can give me top three, maybe generally we don't share like the customer's bill, but I mean it or exact quantities, and I wouldn't have at the top of my head, but we already kind of instinctively know the biggest entities within the the city, so like the city or military customer for Bliss.

We have some large industrials like Western Refining.

Um under I still call it Western Refining.

I'm dating myself, but uh there's some customers that I've I've had the same name for for decades now, but uh they've changed names.

But those kinds of names.

There's there's nobody that really pops out as uh thing that you wouldn't, it wouldn't immediately come to mind.

Schools, maybe schools, schools can be big customers.

Schools are big, not as big sometimes as you would think.

Uh just as it's uh HVC uh load and lighting load.

A lot of the ones that use a lot of load tend to have machinery or you know that kind of thing.

I remember people have asked me like what about uh certain businesses or large scale offices, and and it's not not as much as they would think just because it's that kind of load, not that heavy industrial machinery kind of load.

What about hospitals?

Uh they're fairly large, but they're they're not in the top three or four.

Not top three or four.

Okay.

Yeah, that's right.

Thank you very much for the presentation.

Representative.

Thank you, Mayor.

First, thank you for the communication.

Um your office, you and Daniels in particular are always available to answer our questions our our constituents' complaints and we can forward them to you.

In regards to the smart meter, let me start by saying the the installation at our house was seamless.

In fact, I saw the truck pull up and by the time I went to see what was going on, they were gone and I was on a smart meter.

So it and and we've um we've had no issues with it.

So thank you for that.

But is it difficult for a consumer to get off of the smart meter?

Is that is the process uh cumbersome almost like to make it negative if somebody wanted to get off a smart meter?

Yes.

Um yes, of course.

They just have to call our customer service and um tell them that you that they want to opt out.

And we actually just got approval from the commission that they don't need to complete a form anymore.

You know, they it the process can be very streamlined.

Um they just have to uh pay the one-time fee, which is required to for us to go go um visit the premise, um, test the meter, the previous meter, and uh change a meter for for a new one.

So it's seamless.

Yes, just a call.

Now not that you're gonna go get a call from me, but just thank you very much.

And again, thank you for the communication.

Thank you, Mayor.

Yeah, Representative Canales.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um yeah, I've greatly enjoyed having all of the additional information about my own usage.

Um I think I annoy some people in this building because I'm always turning off lights, trying to save on usage, although you're welcome, Ms.

Mac trying to save you on energy costs here, turning off lights.

Um but uh you know I I encourage everybody who's uh on the smart meter, and again, we're almost at 100% uptake now to use all the the data that's available to you.

Um I use the app on my phone, but I also get my handy weekly usage emails.

And really they've helped a lot in changing behaviors.

Again, I try really hard to have low usage and I'm looking at mine right now.

I have a big peak on on Friday last week, and I wanted to understand why why Friday?

What what was different on Friday?

Well, I worked from home.

I took some meetings from home uh for about half the day on Friday.

So I thought I must be the culprit.

But then I dove deeper onto Friday when I was at home low low usage, so it was in the evening.

I wasn't home, so I'll have to have a conversation with my wife what was going on with the high usage in the evening.

Um it was hot.

It was hot, yeah, maybe that's what it was.

So that's the kind of information that people can get, right?

You can think about what what is it that you're doing differently at different times of the day, different days of the week, and it can help people to reduce their their usage.

So really I encourage everybody to use the tools that you all have made available.

They're very useful, and it's that's what the the smart metering can deliver for us.

Um a lot more information at our fingertips to make better decisions about about our usage.

Yes, and and please we we take any feedback.

We try to make these as friendly as possible, that um a customer don't have to dig in into you know the graphs and and everything.

Uh that's why we sent these emails.

Uh very you know, to the point you have um uh you use 20 percent more than last week.

Or um these same month, last year you use uh 50 percent less.

So you can feel you you know that you're doing good, or you have to you you know that you can do better.

So um we've you know everything is try very, very simple.

We give you alerts on high bills if we're seeing that your consumption is trending upwards compared to what we used to, you know, for you to use last month, and these are personalized analytics.

And um and also we give you customized um uh recommendations for how can you reduce because we have what we call disaggregated load and we can identify where your high appliances um the the consumption on your high appliances and if we see that let's say your fridge um is consuming more than the average, we can recommend you know that your fridge is is above the average on consumption.

Maybe you will be um you if you know if you um a new fridge with energy energy start can uh can save you so much in energy and you can recover the money in so many months.

So these are very um useful practical you know recommendations that um we'll we'll just need to take a little time, not much, five minutes, that's it, and and you can lower your bill.

Yeah, thank you all.

Thanks, Mayor.

Representative Trahall.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you for the presentation, you all.

I uh I'm curious.

I have uh a couple of questions.

Uh Mayor had one of the questions that I had, but I I want to ask a little bit more on that.

Uh the individuals that have opt out.

You mentioned there's about 300 customers, most o menos.

Um do you know the demographics of those individuals that have opt out?

Um usually they mostly are in the central area and the far east side area.

That's uh when where we had them the most volume.

But uh, I mean, we've we believe that once you know they started seeing their bill that you know the really the higher higher fee that they're paying for uh and they start talking to the neighbors or the community that really the smart the smart meter is working uh for everyone that there's no health hazards, uh safety hazards, and this is this actually you know more optimal for them.

Okay.

Are they do they tend to be do you I don't know if you have this answer, but are they seniors or older residents?

I can I I don't have those um that data with okay.

Do you do you all have I can check?

Okay.

In your area, how many opt-outs and provide you um the number and and check with um you know how for how long have they been in our uh with these accounts so you can see you know if it's an older individual or it might be you know I'm just thinking if it's older they may not have the technology to get in get all this information.

Is there another option for them?

Um they can always call our customer service and uh they can give you all the information over the phone, explain their bill, and and um we usually like we said, you know, we we they can get these updates through letters, it doesn't need to be text or email, so they can also sign up for for these updates as well.

Okay, that's good to know.

And then um the four four to five percent savings, and that's that equals six percent.

I mean six dollars months.

Okay.

Is that is that before the rate adjustments or after?

I know the rate adjustments are very new.

So well, we calculate uh we mentioned uh about 43 KWH.

Um, and that that is that translating to $6.

Okay.

Um, you know, I calculated an average of we estimate about uh that that represents about 14 cents a kilowatt hour eight um kilowatt uh kilowatt eight.

And so I mean that's that's an average.

Okay.

All right, thank you for a residential customer.

Thank you.

Well, thank you guys for the presentations.

Any additional questions, council?

Thank you guys.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Miss Bryan.

Yes, sir.

That brings us to item number three, and this is a management update presentation on the neighborhood traffic management program for FY2026.

Good morning.

Good morning, Mayor Council.

Welcome.

I'm Olivia Montalvo Patrick.

I'm with Streets and Maintenance Project.

I'm pretty blessed to hear the presentations that came prior to me too, especially what hearing about the veterans.

It also kind of covers topics of first respondents of nurses too.

So I take that near and dear to my heart because that's what my husband does, and takes once the first responders drop them off, they're the ones taking care of them, or they're the ones telling the pay or the families to through their final goodbyes too.

So yeah, so it's a lot of a lot of that's there's a whole other section of folks that aren't covered under the PTSD, and a lot of they said a lot of the incoming nurses are former fire departments, former military.

So they do bring their past PTSD and stuff.

So it was very beneficial to hear that.

And the argument for the rates.

Oh, sorry.

Well, as we can use a dishwasher after 7 p.m.

So that has been a household argument.

So thank you.

Well, with that, I'm here today to give a presentation on another love and hated program, the neighbor uh speed hump.

So this is the neighborhood traffic management program.

Um it'll be the update for the year.

Uh falls under just so I know this is my first time presenting before council.

So if his speed homes have been around since about 2002-2003, there was a space speed hump placement program.

Um you had to be a neighborhood watch to apply.

The way we know it now, where it's the application process was adopted in 2008.

In 2010, we added the removal process.

In 2018 and 22, we lowered criteria, so raising the bar to make it or lowering the bar so it would be easier to apply.

And then we're also part of this time period too.

Um Vision Zero, a lot of the adoption of the action plan started in about 21, 22, and it formally adopted in 23, which we fall under now.

So with that, the MTMP is a formal application process with a standard review uh for with this uh set criteria for the installation of traffic calming devices.

So prior to 2018, a lot of the more larger capital projects, like the more concrete curbs extensions, traffic circles.

So about 2018, it made that transition to mostly focusing on the small scale and quicker install as speed cushions.

The quick overview process, we hand out the applications, it's an eight step process.

Um we encourage residents when they call to call through the 311.

Staff reviews their location and let them know if they if they're eligible to reply.

When we see the application, we review it, we let them know if there's any short signatures, if they meet the criteria, we do the study, we send them the eligibility notices, and then projects are placed in queue for design.

Um, and then we let the notice of the residents know when we go for installation, and after after they've been installed for a year, we also do an after study to see the feasibility of these projects as well that they are working as intended.

So some of the pre-qualifications is it has to be within the city limits.

So the county has their own, which pretty much mirrors ours.

They updated theirs and they kind of just changed the cover page.

So I was very proud of it.

Now we kind of cover the whole county area, and it's a very similar process.

Um has to have one travel lane in each direction, the primary primary code of single family housing.

So some of the three things that they need to meet to be eligible for the program is that they have 51% support from the residents in the off who live directly on the street.

So when we tell folks to get their petitions, it's people that have a front yard or the side yard.

So if they have a front of the side yard, that's who we're counting as the household support.

And from that, when we do the traffic study, they need a minimum of 500 cars, and for a simple math, um, 10% of that 500, so it'd be like 50 cars, we need to be going five miles over the speed limit.

And those have both been lowered.

It used to be originally over a thousand cars for the volume, and then used to be the 85th percentile where 15% of the cars needed need to be speedy.

So also we've been generally funded since fiscal year 2020.

Prior to that, it came out of the 2012 um street infrastructure capital plan, which is about five million that cover a lot of the larger capital plans.

We made the transition of focusing on smaller scale, and we've been funded consistently every year.

And what we use those funding for is for material cost.

So the material cost is per purchasing of our speed cushions, our hardware, um, drills and equipment that the crews need for order them to do the installations.

And some of the pictures are illustrated now where the guys go out.

They kind of do like a mega pothole patch into the area too.

So a lot of it's based on road surface conditions.

So a lot of the times they do need to do some pre-prepping to the road work so that the speed cushions while they install them, they stay.

And then from that, projects are prioritized in the order the applications were submitted and qualified for the program.

Installation usually takes about one to two years from the time they receive their eligible notice, and projects are now assigned to operations by area corral.

So basically planning areas one by each side of town, so that way we're focusing everybody gets a little something that we're each corral is working on it.

And when we do the after studies, we are seeing an impact.

So the impact from that is more than like 25-7% reduction in the volume.

So folks are not using as much as the cut through.

And then we're also seeing them getting back to the speed limit where they should be.

So a 25% reduction in speed, and so a comparison that showing that they are working and bringing them to where they should be, like at or below the speed limit.

And this is just showing where we um where they're distributed since like 20 fiscal 21.

We've installed 105 projects.

As you can see, our culprit is the east side with over 40 percent of the installations, and we could see an increase of installations that we've done throughout the fiscal years.

One of that was a process improvement before we would um, we would also have to ask for additional consent for to put in front of their homes, and that would extend the process and with a lot more no's and so now it's installed in the city right away.

Uh we've had that improvement since 22.

We've seen an increase for us to install because before staff would only be able to work on one or two projects at a time.

Now we can work on what like two to four in each area town.

So that's also helped with that.

This is just kind of the combining like a little background stuff as well.

Like I mentioned before, we started receiving annual funds in fiscal year of 2020.

We what we're using those once we started getting the general funds, we started going to the back applications that were in queue from 2016 to 18.

So there was or so there was over 40 projects in queue pending funding.

So once we got general funds, we went to the backlist that we had to work on those during that same time period, pandemic.

So that also kind of delayed our installation or public process of how we did the review.

Um we were also in certain we also lowered the criteria in 22, where we lowered the petition criteria.

It used to be two-thirds of 66%.

Now it's just the simple majority of 51%.

And we lowered the speed criteria as well.

But then we applied that to all applications under review from 2020.

So we had our backlog, then we took the lower criteria and applied it to all the applications we're reviewing from 2020.

So we had a little cue going there.

So when we were initially kicking off in 22, 23, it was taking over three years for installation.

So moving forward now with the without the having to go through the digital consent, we're cutting down that time from under three to right now.

We're just under like 2.5.

So we are going in the right direction, but it has taken time to deal with backlog and moving forward.

So and then overall we do average around 50 something applications per year.

And the luck of the draw is about a third is eligible that even meets the lower criteria that we've had.

So with the 500 cars, lowered it down to the night um 90th percentile.

It's usually um, and it actually did help out as well, but 29 of them who wouldn't have qualified under the older criteria have made it under the new lower criteria.

That this is the current list that we have right now.

I have it broken up to how we assign it to area corrals.

So this is how who shows that they've completed so far for this fiscal year, which ones are in progress for installing, and then which ones that we have in queue moving forward.

And then also moving forward, one thing that staff has been directed to update is we're also creating a new dashboard right now to be accessible through the Monday.com for city staff.

So that's something that we're in the works on, so it should include the where we are in the queue, pending studies, and so hopefully that will be a helpful user tool for the repes as well.

So with that, that is concludes the presentation.

So Olivia, do we have questions for you?

Representative.

Welcome back.

It is all lit up, Mayor.

It is where we receive the biggest complaints.

Lots of complaints.

I have a need, it's urgent, and it doesn't happen.

I applied so many years ago, and it's not happening.

So I'm looking at, let me see, let me start with page eight or your slide eight.

And looking at all at all of these numbers.

And so let me see if I can understand.

You've got your eligible applications, and then of course the ones that are ineligible, and then some that are still pending study.

But this is gonna go back out to uh 2020, correct?

Is that the way you look at it?

Well, this is just for this presentation.

I can go back to 2008, but they told me I can do death by data, so we just condensed it for the five year.

So this is fine.

And I guess in a nutshell, why is there such a long backlog of two years or longer?

Why do we have that backlog?

Well, that goes because a lot of it wasn't funded before, and so we still had that queue list.

So projects that applied in like 16 all the way to 2020, they weren't funded, so they were just still waiting until funding was approved.

So once we started getting the general funds, we already had to start with the backlog.

But from 2016, when did you get funding?

2020 is when we started general funds.

So you went from 2016 to 2020.

Did you accept applications between 2016 and 2020?

I think it was it's been under um different departments as well.

But yeah, they were still accepting applications.

So what they were focusing on the projects that did have funding.

Because this is that time period is when they also focused on larger capital.

So I understand, but I think um during that time we were giving false hope to people.

Um if we were telling them apply, apply, apply, but there was no funding.

I think that it's it, I think it was wrong.

I believe in my mind.

When I look at at let's go to slide nine.

And I was trying to think, I guess you did a breakdown just by central, east, mission valley, northeast and west, but it doesn't quite um well, it's just a general uh division.

I see the district uh on the side.

It it just takes so long.

Let me ask you this.

And I don't know if you know the answer, but maybe we could get the answer.

What is the cost?

Oh, good, Randy's right there.

Randy's good with math.

Randy, what is the cost of the installation of one speed cushion on both sides of the street?

So one location, it averages um because everything is by in-cost.

We do it in kind, so that's gonna be equipment, material, and labor of our operation crews, and it averages uh between like seven to ten thousand, what for one location.

So that is the pavement cut, the individual speed cushions, and the signage.

That's a good that's a good amount.

And of course, it's a ballpark figure.

Yeah, that's an average.

And that and that's fine in working with um with a couple of things, grants and other issues.

I think that that's always good to have that.

Um year?

We ranged about over like 20?

20.

Yeah.

So last year we did 24, and the year before was 30.

But we did also break it down by the number of locations too.

So it was only a difference of like 82 individual locations was what they did when they did the 30 projects, because that was a lot of projects were one to two locations.

Last year when they did the 24, a lot of larger projects.

So some of them were seven locations.

So it takes a little bit more time when you have like the longer my um stretches.

So my last question to you is what determines the installation of the speed cushions in an area.

For example, what what's gonna help you what how do you decide how many speed cushions to put in say one block?

Okay.

That's about the bare minimum we can work with because it's the spacing of the cushions.

You also need advanced warning signs.

And so those have different places.

But part of our MTMP policy and procedure guide, the last couple of pages are tables that have our placement guidelines, which we pull from the ITE.

Actually, you're a guest speaker mayor for that one when they came for the conference.

Uh so we use like a lot of engineering standards, and we'll upgrade it periodically on the those stuff.

So a lot of it comes for um national engineering design standards, so spacing of speed cushions, if you want them to really slow down, should be between three to five hundred feet apart.

Geometric design of the roadway could be a little bit longer because of curves and slopes are not installed on slopes greater than eight percent.

Um then we also look for placements of ideally we would love all alignments in between property lines, because we try not to put them in front of like you know, best as possible people's front doors, or we look at like window placements, we look at the landscaping, can we put the signs in?

So we do go field check and then they're all signed off by a traffic engineer.

And then also the resident has to agree, right?

No longer.

No longer.

No, that was removed in 22 to help expedite the process.

Okay.

So we were um back by that since it's in public right away.

So you're still thank you very much for the first time.

But we still have the removal process that people did.

And that's another uh I I used to hear that number one requests were speed cushions and number two, remove them.

So still a love hate, yes.

Olivia, I I got a couple questions sparked by Representative Lamone's question.

So what are the costs again to put in the uh for location?

We estimate between seven and ten thousand, and that's including if with the pavement cut, signage, and the cushions, and that's materials, equipment, and labor.

Okay, so and maybe we're using crosswords here.

When we say speed cushions, that's asphalt.

Oh no, we use cushions, it's the little rubber devices, and we use we switched from the umps because they're designed for emergency vehicle clearance.

Okay.

So our fire trucks at ambulance, woo, it's their wheelbase, they can go over those, so you're not impeding.

And it's yeah.

And if you've ever been in one, you don't want to book so um and then for for motorcycles, that's not safe.

We're not doing hot wheel ramps for the motorcycles as well.

So there are some older models still out there.

I call them twinkies, but they look like a cross, but those are installed back in the before the 2008.

But if everyone wants to update any of those ones, all they have to do is call the 311 and we'll review.

Okay.

I just wanted to make sure we were talking.

Yeah, so they're all rubber um material is what we've been using.

So perfect.

Uh representative.

Thank you, Mayor.

Ms.

Mack, um Representative Lamont had a question in regards to the from 2016 to today when we're going quicker, faster.

But wasn't there a period during COVID where there was no traffic studies being done and all of it was stopped?

Yes, there's about an 18-month law on traffic studies as well since everyone was from home and the schools.

So we had an 18-month period where we were not doing studies.

So that was also where we use some of our funding to deal with the backlog and hired an outside consultant as well to help us get back into our regular groove in the past couple years.

Our in-house guys have been able to manage all the the load and we make half of them.

Right.

No, I just wanted to clarify that.

Um we were still letting folks know that we it was on hold, but they could still apply, but there'll be a waiting period that's been taking longer during that time period.

In regards to the um cushion removal, what's the process?

And what perceives?

And how many are you getting a year?

I haven't received any in the six years I've been with streets and maintenance.

I thought you said it was a number two request.

Um when you brought up we hear them, but they haven't formally you know follow through with the paperwork.

Okay.

When you brought up the issue of um, oh you brought up that it's going to be on Monday, someday soon.

The Monday document.

The process, the updates.

That yes, we're working on a dashboard with the IT department.

And your office is great at when our office calls and asks for a follow-up on XYZ Street.

But my question to Ms.

Mack is until Monday is up and running.

Can we get a I I'm not gonna speak for everybody, but at least District 6.

Can we get an update of status quarterly of uh where we are on the speed cushions?

Oh yeah.

Good morning, Mayor and Council, Randy Garcia, Streets and Maintenance Director.

Um we're in the final final stages of finishing the the Monday.com dashboard.

It's it's already been uh worked on, it's done.

We're just doing minor tweaks and getting admitted through our our city management before presenting that to you.

But yes, we can provide you with an update.

We can get that to you today if you want to.

No, just just if if it's the next couple weeks, we'll be happy to wait for it.

But again, your you all follow up is great, but it'd be n it's we won't know until uh till uh um a resident calls up and says I've been waiting X amount of time, I haven't gotten any status.

And from what I'm hearing, there is status of follow-up with the residents, but at least this way we can say, okay, uh you're you're at this little part of it, and you're in the but just a process.

Just an update, please.

Okay, thank you.

Um then if can we go to slide seven real quick, please?

I have a math question.

It's you 42 of the of the speed cushions were done on in the east side.

You said that was the biggest portion.

But if you add up district three, which I think is more central than east, but we'll give you the credit.

District three, five, and six.

It doesn't add up to five.

Oh, and seven?

Well, she's not including that.

What is she?

So district seven calls mission valley and east site, so they do cover both.

So we Yes, Ms.

Mack.

It's planning area.

So our planning areas don't exactly align with the districts.

That means she's cutting me off.

With that, Mayor, I'll stop asking questions.

Representative Trail.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you for the presentation, Olivia.

I have a few questions starting with page three.

So it's a uh eight-step process, and then there's uh a after study.

The the after study, do you um check and see if there are the reduction in accidents?

Is that part of the study?

The study reviews volume and speed.

Okay, so you don't you don't know if there's a decrease in in accidents?

No, we're uh moving forward, we're gonna start including accident reports, but for the past ones we have not been.

Okay.

Moving forward this year, or gonna be that's something but we've been under discussion and to start reviewing for this fiscal year.

Okay.

And then with the installations, it it's prioritized based on first serve.

First come, first serve.

Yes.

Is there is there a consideration for high risk areas?

At this time, no.

Uh what we've done uh for some is like we may have we have groups, some that could be in similar areas to help expedite operations.

Like we had a five a four-pack in central, one east, like one Glenn Street, one over here, the next street over here, and Pacos over here.

So we worked with our operations crew, like do you want one at a time, or would you like all four?

And he said he would take you know all four, so that will help them go around, and we did something for the West Side as well.

Um there was about four of them that are right off of Artcraft.

So that way we can try to condense and you know utilize the best we can with our crews as well, too.

Um prior to 18, there was a prioritization system, but there was a lot of pushback from the public on that one, and it was removed and under the 2018 criteria.

Good morning again, Randy Garcia, street submainance.

So those high uh visibility areas, those ones where you're seeing accidents and excessive uh traffic speeding.

We kind of loop those in with the vision zero program.

So you guys have heard that work with Walt Keen, we have a great partnership.

So when you see those those areas that there could be uh a fatality or or a real serious accident, we'll kind of work still work through the NTMP for the NTMP for the speed cushion portion, but we pull those out additionally within streets of maintenance work with Walpines Group to look at vision zero and how we can do a bigger and broader implementation also.

Okay, thank you, Randy.

Let's see.

It mentions uh twiscal year 21 and 23.

There were consultants that were used for the traffic study.

Do you know why consultants were used at that?

That's when we didn't have studies, they were on hold during the pandemic for the 18 months.

And so requests were still coming in, stop signed requests, which require multi-way study, speed studies on arterials.

So requests were still accumulating, but they weren't being able to be done during those time periods.

And so since the MTMP had their own additional funding, it was easy for us to pull, and then our guys work on the in-house ones like the regular 311 calls that come in review, and then all the specific MTMP ones, since we take more time.

Okay.

Was were they uh using or using any tools that we weren't using that we're now using?

Anyway, the hoses as well.

So and I think one of them depending on the some are harder than others because some people if you park on the hoses, it doesn't work.

So sometimes we do have the counters that do the camera ones as well, so depending on the situation.

Um some streets have more on street parking than others, so the the new dashboard.

So going into Monday, is this something that um well, first of all, how do we have access to that as council?

Would there be a link that we would have access to or it's for you?

So it's gonna be summer sort of way that we've been doing the CID piece, just so you can have regular access.

I think this is one of the the major questions that come in.

We're just trying to do a better job with all the CRs because most of them go to Randy and team.

Great.

And will residents also be able to track it?

Would this be something that would be visible maybe through the website or something?

We can work on it.

Okay.

Let's see.

Is there still a backlog on any applications after two years?

No, we're pretty much caught up on our newer stuff.

So a lot of the stuff coming in, it's been since I've been on board now.

So we are looking at at least within like the two years for the stuff that's been coming in.

Okay, great.

So they were patient and we were updates and so very good.

And then on page now, set uh page nine here, looking at the northeast.

I see the complete, the installing, and then there's nothing.

Is that in queue, the one the area that doesn't have any Yeah, those will be the ones pending next in Q.

So once we say installing, that's mean the work order has already been designed and issue to our operations crew.

Um and then then Q is just waiting, so I gotta wait for them to install stuff, and then we just start sending them the the next.

So while they're in queue, that's when my my staff and I will go out and start doing the the designs and the walkthrough.

So I just wanted to make sure because here where it's uh it shows a north view down.

It doesn't show anything about it being in queue.

I think I don't know if that may be uh Oh, we got deleted.

Yes, he should be in Q.

It shouldn't be blank, it should be in Q.

Yeah, he's the next one up for Northview to go out there and start doing the design and Rhoda Ferrostala going to Toddware Park and Palomino.

Yeah, that's gonna be a long walk.

That's one of our longer.

I think that's one of the longest streets.

They just finished Rick Husband, which was one of our longest one, which was like a mile long.

So yeah.

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you for the presentation.

So uh speed humps is definitely something that my constituents email and ask me a lot about.

Uh so I have a few questions.

You said that in prior years there was a different type of speed hump that was installed.

I'm not sure if when people refer to the screws that come out of the speed humps and damage their cars, if that is referring to the older version, or it's still occurring with the case.

Well both because they're both the longer one that went across was still screwed in, and then the cushion panels are still screwed into.

So a lot when they start it's wear and tear, and so that's just a 3-1-1 call to do the replacement of it as well.

Is the replacement done pretty quickly?

Yes.

Yeah, that it goes right into the maintenance and repair crew and it goes straight to operations.

Okay.

Those are some of the concerns that that I've heard from from my constituents about that.

Um who's actually doing the installation of these speed humps?

Our crews, our up our operation?

In-house, completely all in-house.

Okay.

So the same guys are doing the guardrails, pothole repairs, medians, uh, helping out with other departments.

It's all the same or same guys.

So and I really wish we could have our crews do it a little quicker, Randy, just because um I'm always so proud of our pothole patcher and how quickly we are to to respond to those things.

And I know that this is a lot more work that's involved in in one of these things, but um when I came into office, I mean there was one constituent specifically that would call me and and basically anybody that that knew me, he would he would send messages to me through them to say, you know, because people think that it's it's us, you know, as city council representatives that if we could just advocate for them a little bit more, then they could get it done a little bit faster.

And they really have a hard time, I guess, understanding that it's gonna take two and a half years, right, for them to get their speed humps on their streets.

So sometimes I think they feel a little bit of frustration on on their end.

Um so I don't know what what we could do maybe to help speed it up on our end.

So I mean mostly it's our our work crew.

So we're doing this on Fridays, sometimes Saturdays.

Our focus of our operations group is the potholes, right, and trying to maintain the asphalt itself.

Um so this program, since we are able to do it in-house, it saves the city lots of money, I mean.

Uh if we were to get these done out, you'll probably uh probably pay twice as much for those asphalt nuts alone.

Um so it's just us being able to maybe look at the process more internally.

But I mean, right now we are doing this basically on overtime.

We do try to plan it out when we have the emergent weather events come out, that's really gonna stop us from really getting out and doing more.

Um but we can look at the process and see if we can get any type of efficiencies in there.

Yeah, efficiencies is good, Randy, and I'm just wondering maybe if if as long as we caught up to wherever we need it to be, you know, I'm sure that the the timeline would also be reduced.

You know, I feel like it's because we're trying to play catch-up that we're a little bit behind.

Am I right?

I don't know.

No, and we are heading in the right, so is from dealing with the catch-up and being behind, but we're the trends are going in the right direction, going slowly but surely each down.

We're chucking like a month off of the process and going through so but also is keeping our communication with our operation site as well.

So learning from them that monsoon time is not the best time for installs and so transition shifts of where their focus needs to be for the pothole repairs and different stuff what they're what they need to do with their crews as well.

So we always got to stay in communications with um all our sides and so thank you.

Um so if a person does not qualify or a street does not qualify for whatever reason, how soon can they reapply?

Applications are valid for three years, and they do not have to get their petitions all over again.

So within three years, the applicant or another one, a resident who lives on the street, if they call the 311 and we check that there's an active one on file, it will trigger a restudy.

And so it's after three years, that's when they would need to reapply again.

And so some have gotten them on the third try, Loma Land between uh North Loop and San Jose is one that got it on the third try.

So there are some that got it on the second try as well too.

So it's probably because of the the amount of uh vehicles or the speed the vehicles are traveling?

Yeah, no, it's it's the speed.

It's the speed mostly.

Okay.

Um thank you for that.

I mean, and I just want to thank Randy and the team because there were other two um speed humps that were installed in my district, one that was particular, and I think you had to make a slight modification to appease one of the the neighbors, Randy, so I thank you for that.

And another one specifically on Gomez Road where uh my constituent had cameras and showed the cars were just speeding right through them.

Um and so I think there were also some something something additional that was done in that area specifically to to mitigate that.

So I appreciate those efforts.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Representative Nino.

Thank you, Mayor.

And thank you, team.

Great presentation.

First time presented to council.

Um one quick question on slide number nine as fiscal year 2026 NTP project list.

Does that mean that all of these projects are gonna be completed this fiscal year?

No, these are the ones that are in our that are eligible.

So this is the active list.

Okay.

And so we added the ones that just finished the fall studies.

So we just added about three more, so that would have been like memory escondido, and so we'll have a net batch to add on with the studies that are happening in the spring.

So by the end of the beginning of summer, we'll have more to add on that met the eligibility criteria.

So but they're starting to be submitted, so we'll be reviewing the next batch that are pending studies.

Perfect, thank you.

Usually how long does a traffic study take in an area where someone submitted an application for?

For the time frame that we have the study out or for the time period that they're waiting for it to be done.

When the actual traffic study is being done.

Yeah, are you all doing the actual study for like a day?

It's 48 hours.

48 hours.

Which is double the time where our standard is usually 24 hours, so the MTMP is 48.

During the weekday when school um local school districts are in session.

Perfect.

Um I know the mayor asked about costs, also rep Limo and So it's 7,000 to 10,000 per location, but some of the streets might be a mile long, as you mentioned.

Is it 7,000 to 10,000 dollars per year?

It's start getting lower because then it's your hours per labor.

So this is just the an average of just like one location.

Okay.

But if the crews have multiple, then they're focusing more until labor time starts going down once there's like more and more.

So essentially if it's a mile long in my cost, like five or seven locations, so it won't be like seventy thousand, it will be a little okay.

Um and I know I I recently submitted a question for someone that had submitted a application but was not warranted to get or ineligible.

Um someone submits an application for the N2P NTMP program.

Do they specify if they want speed cushions and or are we also navigating conversations of other traffic calming devices, right?

Because the traffic calming devices can be speed cushions, they could be small scale pavement markings or speed feedback signs.

So not necessarily do they always have to be speed cushions, but are we offering our residents other options?

Should they not qualify to have speed cushions?

Those ones all follow under the qualifications.

So the speed feedback signs are more designed for collector streets, and if that's if they had 35 miles an hour where it's not as feasible to put a speed cushion or the geometric design of the roadway.

So a lot of it comes down to the engineering judgment uh for the placement and the type of material.

So we'll use the pavement and striping stuff when we physically can't put a speed cushion there as well.

So that's a lot of our curvatures, because we can't put speed cushions, they have to be a certain distance from 90 degree curves, uh slopes, and so that's when we'll use those features.

So if they don't qualify for the speed cushions, that's also incorporates the the markings that we would do in this um, so the options are there, right?

It's not just the focus on the speed questions and the same thing.

Yeah, but we don't the rest it's for the they can check off.

Also the request is designed for speed cushions, and per engineering judgment is when we'll incorporate the other amenities.

Okay, yeah, because I know I recently submitted a request in regards of the morning, Mayor and Council Joaquin Rodriguez with capital improvements.

So once the the request uh for speed cushions is evaluated, usually when it makes sense to us from an engineering standpoint to evaluate other things like curb extensions, chicanes, other traffic calling measures, it makes more sense for us to move over to the vision zero program where there's a higher availability of funding and we can go beyond the the metrics that are required for NTMP.

We can start to look at crash history, uh geometric geometric design of the roadway and other factors that aren't specifically laid out in the NTMP program going through the Vision Zero quick build policy.

Um what I would say nowadays if you do have a constituent who was denied through the NTMP uh process in March, or it is March now, we'll be launching the Vision Zero quick build program portal where people can go online and submit a project request for the Vision Zero quick build program.

That gets evaluated in a much different way than the NTMP projects would be, where we're looking specifically at crash history.

So if there is a crash history there, it didn't qualify for NTMP, we can look at it through the vision zero lens and look beyond speed humps at some of these other traffic calming measures that you're talking about.

No, this is great.

And and and I mentioned this because there has been numerous constituents that have reached out to me in regards of receiving an ineligible application, right?

And I know on the Monday dashboard I recently submitted a request asking if we could navigate other conversations or what other traffic calming measures we could install in that area, because numerous residents have inquired, but they don't fit for the NTMP program.

But I'm looking forward for that conversation.

And Ms.

Mack, if I could possibly request a list of an ineligible applications that were submitted in my district, because I would like to navigate that conversation of what other calming devices or what are the proactive measures we could take.

Because again, it's um our residents feel like sometimes they might not be heard, but if we can navigate those other options, um I would like to further have those conversations.

I know our vision zero team, uh, Anime Susent and her data folks have looked at uh Olivia's NTMP list, um, specifically at some of those that were uh determined to be ineligible.

Um and we've overlaid that with our high injury network to see if there are any areas for opportunity there and uh potential projects to look at.

Okay.

No, thank you for all your hard work.

And uh thank you all.

No further questions, Mayor.

Representative Canalis.

Hi, Olivia.

Um Thank you, Mayor.

Uh yeah, I basically just I think a lot has been covered already.

Uh a lot of the things I wanted to talk about have been covered off.

But um I think it's important for folks to understand that this is an area where we maybe have one of the highest gaps between like what the public thinks is easy and what is actually very complex to implement.

Um I I you know share some of the questions about um what it is that we could empower you with to make it easier to go faster.

Um I don't I and and and you know that's a complicated budget question as well.

Um I understand you're using the same uh operational crews that are doing pothole patching, they're doing this on additional time.

Is that correct?

Okay.

And is it would you say that's the largest impediment to rolling these out faster if you had I mean and again this isn't a promise to the public.

It's I'm sure I'm gonna make Ms.

Mac sweat by asking the question, but like if you had dedicated crews for NTMP installation, would we be able to move faster through those?

That would be like an operation question, but I know what I hear from them it's retention.

So I'm in the same vote as well.

Like trying to I was gonna say the same thing.

I think Randy can speak to you a little bit about the turnover.

I think we can always talk about adding additional, but if you're talking about hiring the same type of crews that have these other responsibility, it is it becomes about the triage piece.

I absolutely would love to keep you know whatever we do in-house because it's a lot more expensive as we start talking about bringing someone in externally.

But I don't know that we would actually have enough people as a crew with a turnover rate that we're sort of seeing.

It's getting a lot better, but I still think that the priorities in terms of the things that we're asking them to do with medians and other things still might bump a little bit into the schedule.

Randy.

Yeah, so we we do have turnover, but yes, more staff could possibly help us, you know.

But again, looking at the efficiencies that we're trying to develop within within the operations group is probably the the first thing we need to look at.

Um from the street side, you know, talking about the atrition rate, we we were upwards of 20 percent about nine, ten months ago, a year ago.

Right now we're about 10 percent.

So I think we've done a good job working with HR, Central HR, um, and getting our positions filled.

So it's about looking at more efficiencies and then determining at that point how many uh of these installations can we get done per year and seeing is is the need actually there?

Is the workforce um out there that wants to come and work for us and do this work also?

So lots of questions, yes.

Yeah, I hope the increased compensation helps with uh retention and uh you know I it's it's not easy work, and so we definitely appreciate all the workers that are there and uh that you are able to retain who are doing the the difficult work.

Um we've talked a lot about budget trade-offs in the last couple of weeks, especially as we've gone through our strategic planning.

So I think it becomes a question that we have to pose to the public of you know, do they want to fund more positions that can make this happen faster, or are they happy with potentially waiting a little bit longer for these types of installations?

I have an excellent promotion rate for my techs.

They all move up to engineering's associates.

So a lot of them get their foot in the door and so I want to keep them longer, but yes.

Well, thank you as always.

I think Olivia, I've seen you in the position from the beginning when you started in this position.

So uh I've seen a lot of improvement at at how the N NTMP gets rolled out.

So thank you for your role in that too.

Thank you.

Thanks, Mary.

Representative Lamont.

Final, yes, sir, final one.

I took um slide nine, and so I broke it down by district, which is always like as a representative, you always want to look at these numbers.

I don't want to see it by regions.

And I'm wondering, um, I'm sorry, you only had three.

Oh my god.

Sorry.

Uh and then the next um, so I'm looking at patterns.

Uh five, seven, and eight had four sites on there.

Two and three had seven, four had six, and district one had nine.

And so for what reason is it um more um applications?

Um I mean, what what what's the what's the reasoning behind a double amount like from the lowest one?

And triple for years, right?

What is it?

With that, it's just we're it's open applications, so we don't control who submits or who doesn't.

So it's what comes in, and that's just how they've qualified for the program.

So we take them all citywide, and then when we break them down, and then it goes into the corral area once we're ready for installation.

So Randy.

So it's the eligibility requirements.

We don't really cause people to speed in different areas of town differently.

Um so once the engagement's out there, once the community is submitting the applications, we have the same algebra eligibility requirement no matter what part of the city we're in.

So maybe the people are speaking more in district one than they are in the other districts.

Um and it's just the community just submitting more applications.

So if you have more residents submitting more applications, you're gonna see more on the list as well.

But the LGBT requirements remain the same regardless of it.

Um we could look at the number of applications totally submitted by district to get maybe a better representation that might help you.

Because maybe it's just we're not getting that community engagement something we could work on.

That would help.

I'm also thinking that the that when you start breaking it down, you might want to look for some equity uh to spread it out throughout the city.

That when you start breaking it down, you might want to look for some equity to spread it out throughout the city.

But whatever process that you're using, I mean I'm not going to question your process, but when you look at something like this, you know that it's real obvious.

Randy.

Yeah, yes, yes, uh Repton Moon.

It is very eye-opening to see that.

So I mean bringing it up.

I think maybe better community engagement is the answer here.

Um so it's something we definitely will look at and look at that process.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

All right.

Thank you guys for the presentation.

Very good.

Thank you.

Yep.

Ms.

Prime.

Council, is there a motion to retire into executive session?

There's a motion and a second to retire into 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, sub Chapter D to discuss any of the following.

Executive session item one, application of El Paso Electric for approval of an amendment to its generation cost recovery writer to include the Texas Business Solar One Generation Facility.

PUC number 57974, HQ number utility-65 under 551.071.

Executive session item two, application of El Paso Electric Company to amended certificate of convenience and necessity for a 366 megawatt natural gas generation facility, PUC number 59076, HQ number utility-74, 10051.071.

Executive session item three, application of El Paso Electric Company to change rates.

PUC number 57568, HQ utility-60 under 551.071.

Executive session item four, statement of intent of Texas Gas Service Company, a division of one gas inc to increase rates within the company's incorporated areas of Central Gulf, West, North and Rio Grande Valley service areas.

OS-25-00028202 HQ number utility-67 under 551.071.

Executive session item five, discussion on economic development opportunities in El Paso.

HQ number 26-6675 under 551.087.

Executive session item six discussion on economic development opportunities in El Paso.

Executive session item seven.

Discussion on purchase exchange lease or value of real property in East El Paso.

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

And 551.087 deliberation regarding economic development negotiations.

It is 1059 a.m.

Let me know when you guys are ready.

Okay, Miss Fryan, I believe we're ready.

Is there a motion to come out of executive session?

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

All in favor?

Anyone opposed?

The work session is back in session at 119 p.m.

Ms.

Prime, if you don't mind, we're gonna hope for 30 seconds just to give Ms.

Lamana.

Yes.

Representative Lama.

Yeah.

Uh okay, Miss Prime, we're ready.

Okay.

We're on EX1.

Mayor POTEM.

Thank you, Ms.

Prime.

Motion made seconded and carried that the city attorney in consultation with the city manager be authorized to enter into settlement negotiations in the application of El Paso Electric for approval of an amendment to its generation cost recovery writer to include the Texas Business Solar One Generation Facility.

The application filed with the PUC under docket number 57974, matter numbered utility dash 65, and to take all steps necessary, including the execution of any required documents in order to effectuate this authority.

Just wanted to take for EX1 through EX3 1750 from the O Paso Electric Employees Back.

Okay.

We have a motion and a second.

Ms.

Bryan.

Yes, the motion was made and read into the record by Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, seconded by Representative Limon on EX1 to enter into settlement negotiations on that motion.

On that motion, call for the vote.

Ms.

Pry.

Representative Nino?

Aye.

Thank you.

And the voting session.

And that motion passes unanimously.

All right, Ms.

Bryan, the second EX2.

EX2.

Motion made, seconded, and carried that the city manager be authorized to request that Al Paso Electric Company attend, participate, and provide a presentation at City Council's April 1st, 2026 meeting regarding the application of El Paso Electric Company to amend its certificate of convenience and necessity for a 366 megawatt natural gas generation facility filed on December 8th, 2025, under the Texas Public Utility Commission docket number 59076 and matter number utility 74.

Okay.

All right, there's a motion and a second.

Ms.

Prime, call for the vote, please.

Yes, a motion was made and read into the record by Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, seconded by Representative Limon on EX2.

That EP attend and participate in a presentation on April 1st on that motion.

Call for the vote.

And the voting session.

And that motion passes unanimously.

Okay, let's take EX3.

EX3.

Motion made, seconded, and carried that the city attorney in consultation with the city manager be authorized to file a motion for rehearing with the Public Utility Commission of Texas, the PUC in the application of El Paso Electric Company to change rates, the application filed with the PUC under docket number 57568, matter number utility-60, and to take all steps necessary, including the execution of any required documents in order to effectuate this authority.

Okay.

There's a motion.

All right, there's a motion and a second, Ms.

Bryan.

Yes, the motion was made a read into the record by Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, seconded by Representative Limon on EX3 to file the motion for rehearing on that motion.

Call for the vote.

In the voting session, and that motion passes unanimously.

Okay, the stick EX4.

EX4.

Motion made, seconded, and carried that the city attorney in consultation with the city manager be authorized to do the following.

Number one, pursue an appeal for judicial review in Texas district andor appellate courts.

And number two, engage additional outside counsel to assist in the appeal.

In the statement of intent of Texas Gas Service Company, a division of one gas inc to increase rates within the company's incorporated areas of Central Gulf, West North, and Rio Gran Valley Services Areas, the application filed with the RRC under docket number OS 250028202, matter number utility-67, and to take all steps necessary, including the execution of any required documents in order to effectuate this authority.

Okay, we have a motion and a second.

Ms.

Prime, call for the vote, please.

Yes, the motion was made and read into the record by Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, seconded by alternate Mayor Pro Tem Fierro on EX4 to pursue an appeal and engage outside council on that motion.

Call for the vote.

And the voting session.

And that motion passes unanimously.

Okay, let's take EX5.

EX5.

No action.

EX6, please, Ms.

Pry.

EX6.

No action.

Thank you.

Let's take EX7.

EX7.

I don't have an action for EX7.

I just want to be there's no action.

I don't have an action for EX7.

No action.

Thank you.

Okay, we have a motion to adjourn.

Okay, Ms.

Pry.

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

All in favor?

Anyone opposed?

And the work session for Monday, March 2nd, 2026 is adjourned at 125 p.m.

Thank you, Council.