Good morning.

This is a work session of the El Paso Council of the Al Paso City Council for Monday, July twenty, twenty twenty six.

It is nine oh three AM.

Mayor Johnson present in presiding, also present in council chambers is Mayor for Tem Chavez, Representative Acevedo, Representative Boyar Trejo, Representative Nino, alternate Mayor Protein Pierro, and Representative Limon.

Representative Maldonado Rocha will be joining us later.

Mayor, we have a call.

Hopefully, everyone had a great weekend in your soccer team one.

It was a great, great weekend of soccer.

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

And to the Republic for which it stands with indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Okay, Mr.

Believe that brings us to item number one.

Yes, sir.

That brings us to item number one.

And item number one is discussion and action to approve a resolution for the adoption of the data center policy framework.

Good morning, Fernando.

Good morning.

Good morning, Mayor Council.

Thank you, ma'am.

So IT, can we get the presentation?

Okay, no worries.

Representative Canales has joined the meeting at nine or five AMS.

Good morning.

Um so this is an item uh for discussion and action about the data center policy framework.

And you all directed staff on February seventeenth to come back with recommendations for this policy framework, prioritizing community engagement, long-term impacts, and also we want to talk about how this was highlighted and is one of the actions on the climate action plan.

Before we get into the recommendations, here we show all the four actions that you've taken since February 17th, including that one to develop the actual framework, and those include a couple of amendments to the legislative agenda as well as an action taken on May 26 related to specifically to economic incentives and data centers.

So we started, as I I said before, uh five months ago on this work, and we put together an internal team that included multiple departments, um, planning and inspections, urban design, strategic and legislative affairs, the city attorney's office, IT, and the PIO, and we engage in a public dialogue uh period for the end of March and early April, and then we've we've been doing the actual development of the framework for the last uh weeks that um now we're presenting to you all.

A little bit more on that approach, the it's a multifaceted approach, so we did a lot of research both locally, regionally, and nationwide, but we also put together a specific or dedicated website to inform about data centers with FAQs and questions that we were hearing about during those um community meetings.

We had conversations with the stakeholders, and we were able to do also online surveys, and we were able to publish the draft document that was online for public comment for for a few weeks and that we close at the end of June.

A little bit of uh um summary of the actionable community input that we gather throughout this process.

The main takeaways, it's something that you've heard before for the last uh months and that you read in the draft and in the final document.

So environmental uh concerns included water, air quality, and noise, among others, economic um input related to utility cost and rate increases about tax incentives and jobs, and and the input about uh avoiding future data centers in in particular hyperscalers.

Um, some numbers that you can see on the slide about those um engagement series with the the last um part of it.

We got 162 comments to the draft that was published online.

And I forgot to mention we're gonna be doing uh a joint presentation with planning and inspections with uh Kevin Smith and also with Omar Martinez from legislative affairs.

But before I pass it over to Kevin, these are the four categories in which we've um developed policy recommendations for the framework.

And with that, I'll pass it over to Kevin.

Thank you.

Good morning, Kevin.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

I can't control your mic, so low test.

Ah, there we go.

Good morning, Mayor and City Council Kevin Smith of Planning Inspections.

So I'll be presenting the uh zoning portion of the presentation.

So just a little bit of background, and I believe all of council is is aware of these, but um also this also for members of the public.

So City Council is given the zoning authority to home municipalities through state law.

And for specifically for zoning, that's uh regulated by regulated by section 211 of the local government code, and that governs the zoning parameters that um home read home rule home rule municipalities have to work with then.

So city council does have the authority to regulate zoning requirements within the city limits.

I want to make sure that it's also important to know that outside of the city limits, so items within the county in other jurisdictions outside the state, the city has no purview in that.

But we within the city limits, that is something that we can regulate.

A couple of terms that I'll be saying during this presentation are by right and by special permits.

So those are our zoning terms.

And by right, basically what it means is once a zoning designation is given on a piece of property, there's no additional requirements or uh various approvals that are required for that piece of property.

For data centers for hyperscale data centers, that's the way it currently exists right now.

One of the items that I'll be talking about quite a bit is a special permit.

Okay, so that's an additional step that would require throughout the process that use to be identified and to be publicized.

Um the notification is sent out, it is sent out with that specific use in mind and allows the public to better understand what is being proposed rather than an overall umbrella for a zoning designation.

So getting into the recommendations is right now we have one definition.

And as I mentioned, it is by right.

So it's for a hyperscale data center, and it's allowed currently in the C4, M1 and M2 zoning districts by right.

So again, someone can come in to planning inspections, get the necessary permits, and there's no other approvals that are required.

What staff is recommending is to create a tiered framework where we create three additional categories, three categories for data centers.

One would be small, these are relatively small in scale, small in nature, not impactful on the significant impact on the uh utility infrastructure or the environment.

So we would recommend that these be permitted by right.

The higher ones, which is the type two and the type three, the type three is like hyperscale.

Those would require special permits, which would have increasing requirements the larger they get.

And I'll go into some of those on the next couple of slides.

So here are some of the regulations that we are recommending for the special permit.

Right now, our notification requirements is 300 feet for typical notification requirements.

We're recommending to increase that to 500 feet.

So increased notification to that's direct mail outs to the public that take place at City Plan Commission and City Council.

We are recommending a distance buffer of 300 feet from all residential uses, um, districts, park schools, daycares, hospitals, churches, and open spaces.

And that would be between property lines.

We'd also are recommending a uh building requirement so that the building would be set back an additional hundred feet from that property line within the given property.

And that would be for the type three.

Additionally, for type three, which is a hyperscale, we are recommending a three 30-foot buffer of uh landscaping, which would provide a double row of trees, as well as a requirement to enclose the any equipment that is outside as well to assist in noise mitigation.

Additionally, as part of this, we are recommending what we we call supplemental regulation.

So these this is typical in a number of uses throughout the city council has adopted over the years.

What we're recommending for the type three is additional assessments that we would be required to be submitted at the time of the application submittal.

Uh they would these are studies that would be publicized throughout the process, both at City Plan Commission and City Council to then be able to make an informed decision on how to take proper action.

These studies would include looking at assessments based on utility impact, looking at heat impact, looking at wastewater and how that is mitigated, as well as make sure sign and lighting is in compliance with the code, as well as as well as any specific site impacts that may be there.

That would be a requirement.

So we wouldn't even be able to accept the application until all those assessments are provided to staff.

And so the biggest thing, at least in terms of this slide, is changing the use from a by-right to a special permit to then allow for public input on these items, as well as to allow city council the final authority to act on these.

Thank you, Kevin.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kevin.

It's something that we hear throughout the input process and the research process, and these um require requiring disclosure of of data related to consumption on energy emissions and water.

Um that's something that it's been consistent throughout our research and input.

The next recommendation, we're moving on into the environmental category.

You you'll remember we have four categories.

This is the second one, environmental.

We the objective of this one is to conserve El Paso's natural resources, and we want we are recommending rather to require the most efficient cooling systems and water technologies, not only for water supply, but wastewater operations.

And I want to remember you all that the final authority on all things water falls under the water utility.

But to do that within the coordinated collaboration with um El Paso Electric on El Paso Water, um, defining a formal way is the way to go.

So we are all collaborating when assessing this system.

Moving on into the economic category, local incentives, you all took action on May 26.

This recommendation was included in the draft, is in the final document.

But in between that draft development and today, you all took action on May 26 related to not grant economic incentives for hyperscalers.

Excuse me.

The next economic recommendation is demonstrate protect El Paso rate payers looking into avoiding cost shifting, meaning that all the all the costs related to infrastructure for tentative facilities of this nature to be better by the company and our developer.

And the other recommendation that we have on this slide is to pause land sale on lands until the recommendations of these framework are codified and adopted officially.

Next economic recommendations related to parent company.

So we're recommending that all, if any uh agreements um happen to be signed with the parent company, and that's to avoid tentative risk of stranded assets.

And this recommendation, community benefits agreement, is something that came up frequently during the these um policy framework process, and we're looking at community benefits agreements as tentative mechanisms to improve air quality, health, and drive economic prosperity, but also to ensure water and energy security.

So we're recommending to explore all mechanisms possible for the use of these community benefits agreements.

And I'm now passing over to Omar Martinez.

Good morning, Omar.

Good morning, Mayor Council Omar Martinez with Strategic and Legislative Affairs.

On the policy recommendations side, uh, it's important to understand that we are expecting a lot of state action regarding data center and policy policies related to them.

It can include the data center themselves or utilities or land use associated with them.

And so it's important to remember that this policy framework will become a living document, and staff will be working with our state delegation and different and our partners, including El Paso Electric, El Paso Water, and the community, to make amendments to the policy framework as the state passes new laws.

We're gonna have two priorities on in terms of our advocacy strategy.

First, it is to ensure that the state does not preempt city council's authority to make decisions regarding land uh land use and they relate to the data centers.

And so we want to make sure that council retains the authority to say to say the final no, if that is council's prerogative in in the future, whenever we get one of these data centers.

The other priority is protecting uh ratepayers.

Um the the letter sent by the governor last month essentially uh called for various protections across ERCOT regions, and it sort of left us with a lot of questions that have not been answered as of today, whether these protections also apply to non-ERCOT regions like El Paso Electric.

In our conversations with El Paso Electric, um uh we were told that El Paso Electric is assuming that all of these protections and therefore the required actions will apply to non-arcot, but staff has not held still.

We've activated our lobbyists, we've sent notes to the state delegation, we've communicated directly with the PUC, including a visit later this month to meet with them to ask this very question.

And we continue to ask anybody that might give us an answer, uh, does all of the great protections apply to to El Paso Electric?

And so know that with uh protecting council's authority and protecting our ratepayers, staff will be uh working with you uh throughout the 90th legislative session.

It also includes uh when we go to El Paso Days in Austin, where you're welcome to join us if you are able to.

And we are planning a meeting with PUC, so you can ask a lot of these questions yourselves, and anything else that the community might still have pending any dangling threats.

That is on the state side.

On the federal side, it's important to remember that the Trump administration generally tries to uh apply these law uh overarching uh policies regarding how states can regulate themselves.

Generally, these hit the courts, and we're often at a much slower standstill when it comes to executive orders, for example.

So where staff spends our time on the federal side is on the rulemaking changes.

Sometimes uh the Trump administration does take actions through the FERC or the US Department of Energy that could have an impact on data center policy, and we're always watching for that.

Our lobbyists have been happy uh have been activated to keep track, and any findings will make it as part of our our activities and updates to city council when we bring updates on the federal uh legislative agenda.

And so what's important to note about the state and federal um response, advocacy response is that staff is watching.

We want to we want to thank City Council for the resources you allocated to our department.

We are working hard to make sure that anything that comes our way, we are ready prepared.

And uh we'll take uh we will be sure to have a regular cadence with city council whenever there's any changes required by the state.

We are planning to bring back uh an update to the state legislative agenda with all of the council requested changes towards the end of this year before pre-billing pre-filing starts, and when it whenever we are in session, you can expect uh roughly uh work session item on the session, maybe once every month, once every two months, depending on where we're at on the session.

Weekly emails or by weekly emails regarding changes, and then when when things get real fast, when there's things that we need uh to inform council, uh any any change any legislation that made it through that past committee that when you to let council know that when you take action on, you'll get regular emails from us, maybe sometimes a couple of days uh couple of times a day, the way it happened last year.

With that, uh I think that would be the end of the presentation.

Uh staff is available to answer any questions you all might have.

Very good presentation.

Uh and we I know we're gonna have some questions, so maybe Fernando, Omar, and Kevin can can stand by.

I actually have one a couple quick questions.

Um I think this one's for Kevin.

You talked earlier about no jurisdiction in the county.

So if a data center is gonna go, let's just hypothetically say into Secoral, Favens or one of the outerlying counties, we have no jurisdiction.

That that is correct, sir.

The only currently, as per state law, the only authority that the city has is within our ETJ is subdivision control.

Land uses are not regulated in the county.

Um there are no zone, there is no zoning in the county.

So in theory, one can just hop right over across the state limits and build one and that be allowed by right.

Okay.

And on page nine, why aren't all the the zoning uh I guess requests gonna be uh special permit?

Well we're recommending is too just that tiered approach because where we're looked at was try to make the less impactful ones, make them easier to um to pursue um being developed.

And so the the smaller ones typically would not have as large impact, they are less there's they're small in size, they have less of an impact on utilities.

Um sometimes they may not have more uh impact on say water, wastewater than a larger scale one.

And then so what we wanted it what we're recommending is a tiered approach.

So the smallest one would just be allowed by right.

The next tier would be required a special permit, and then the third tier would require the special permit plus all the supplemental regulations, which include all those studies I mentioned earlier.

Okay, I I just the only reason I ask is I see it's by square footage.

Correct.

And then if you see a type one small that was going to be developing that 50,000 square feet, they may start there but quickly expand.

If if they did expand, that would kick it over to a special permit.

Okay.

So again, if if they expand or say their in energy increased, that would take them into the next year.

So again, we would not be able to issue any building permits until they met the code requirements.

And since it kicked it over to the next tier, that would require that zoning action, which would require at the end of the day, city council approval.

Okay, very good.

And I'm sure one of my colleagues will ask about cost shifting, so I won't do that.

But land sale.

Let's look at page 16.

So this will prohibit a a um an agent coming in and trying to acquire land for another customer.

For example, worldwide and meta.

Because worldwide was the one that actually acquired the land for Meta.

Does this prevent something like that from happening?

So during these special permit, um, we would be asking who is the parent company.

So they would need to provide the uh the we are uh permitting the the pairing company.

Yeah, I think if also I could say I believe this is also for when the city is looking at selling the land.

So then they would have to disclose to the city what company that is that is trying to acquire uh this piece of operator for a data center.

Got it.

Okay, just want to make sure.

Okay, Representative Lamont.

Thank you, Mayor.

Kevin, staying on uh page nine or slide nine, and I think the mayor touched a little bit on this.

I know I am fully understand that in the county we have no authority.

But look at uh the type two where it goes um the notification.

I believe that's on the following slide.

I'm sorry.

This is this goes into the notification, yes.

Right.

That um that distance.

If if worldwide or meta were applying today, would there be any notification to the people in Chaparral?

No, no, it stops at state lines, the same with the county is there's something abutting the city limits within the C of El Paso, it does not go beyond.

Even the word greatly affecting the wood matter.

There are other ways too, um Ms.

Simon that that we do notify.

So they would still need to provide the sign that is up on the um on the site itself on every street frontage.

They would also be um it would also be as part of a public meeting as well.

So people are invited to no matter where they live, uh come and comment on a uh uh proposal.

You're welcome.

Representative Trajo.

Thank you, Mayor.

I have a few questions.

And I don't know who can answer this, but how many data centers do we currently have in El Paso?

So um hyperscalers or data centers in the just data centers.

Data in general?

So the the databases that we've consulted, um they show six data centers.

Those are um smaller scale.

Um there are some data centers that uh that probably not on those databases for private businesses like the the big businesses or institutions in the region.

So those didn't show.

Okay.

Do we know you know their the amount of water they're using, resources, anything like that?

Was that taken into consideration?

No.

Right now they don't have any type of mandate to disclosure any type of information, any type of or or size of data center.

Okay.

When you have those into the different categories, is that something we're gonna be looking at going forward with the smaller data centers?

As you have them categorized?

Looking into the disclosure of information?

Right.

Yeah, that would apply to the hyperscalers to type three.

Only to the hyperscales?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay.

And then on slide six, where you go into the community meetings, and I have the these questions when I was uh briefed.

The number of participants, so you did have some repeat participants at the different community meetings, correct?

Yes, some members of the community uh uh participated in in multiple of the of the community meetings.

Yes.

Okay.

Do you know the number of repeat participants?

No, not really.

We we just tracked total numbers per community meetings.

I want to emphasize that there were also community members that uh were present, but for personal reasons, private reasons, they they decided not to sign in what they attended.

So the 542 uh attendees is what we have on our sign-in sheets.

Okay, and that includes repeat participants.

Okay.

When you did the what was it the gathering of the information, does that also include the repeat participants?

Yes, we didn't put limits or we didn't track who made how many comments to what is specific questions.

Okay.

Uh I know you you all had some um challenges with district one and district two, I mean district four at the beginning.

And so I was looking for the page here where you go into on the actual the actual policy.

What what page is that?

I thought I had it marked.

Let me take a look real quick.

Were you going to the different community meetings?

You know what page that that is.

I have it marked.

Let me see.

Okay, so it's on page 13 and 14.

And you mentioned each each um there was a 20-minute intervals.

Many committee members were unable to hear the prompt or move to the next topic leading the parti to participant confusion.

And this was in district one and district four.

Those were the two first initial meetings, correct?

Yes, ma'am.

And then there was some changes.

And that allowed participants, they were now able to provide feedback, freely move about the room, the format change and the comments were redirected to the appropriate boards.

And so I feel like we within, you know, I can speak for right.

I would let um representative uh Chavez to speak on her behalf, but I feel like um in my district that was not available to our constituents to be able to express because of the confusion and everything that was taking place.

Uh I would like to request another meeting for that district because there were I I was present and there was a lot of confusion and many individuals left.

I feel like they lost out on that opportunity.

So you mentioned the pivot.

I heard from all of you, we certainly saw how the meetings were going.

And so what we did was we added the online survey.

And so I think but if for people who might have felt you know intimidated to be able to provide an opportunity for their voice, we left the online survey open for about a month.

Yes or so, you know, we felt that that was a a better option rather than trying to recreate that same opportunity.

And so that was why we added that survey opportunity for people.

In addition, um we did have this um posted for comment for almost 45 days.

Yes to allow people to send us any comments and notice on the website that was available, and we thought that that was a more effective way of sort of gathering people's feedback to make sure that they had good opportunities.

So they've they've had opportunity to sort of see this, and I really appreciate all of you helping us to think about how we could pivot to get the most information in in the best environment for people.

Do you do you have it broken down by districts?

Uh what that what those what was received on that information, including the survey, because I would like to see how many from our di from each district responded and it removed duplicates.

Do you have the ability to remove duplicates?

Yeah, the team the team went through all the comments, um more than two thousand comments.

All those um the the breakdown of comments for community meeting topic and and type of comment, it's on the in the back of it's in the appendixes to the policy framework.

I'll I'll be happy to to look into that with you if you want to.

Okay.

I didn't see the appendix.

So where is that something that is on the website?

Is that where the appendix is?

It's on the website, all that information.

Do you have it broken down by districts and what I've just asked?

It's on the website and on the backup to this agenda.

Yes.

Okay.

Uh additional questions here.

So the utilities in in the uh original language when this was brought forth, it states I'm gonna read the whole thing.

So discussion and action authorizing the city manager to develop within 60 days a proposed data center policy framework for the city of El Paso.

The framework shall prioritize community engagement, utility providers, state, local, and regional government and implementation considerations, evaluate long-term impacts of infrastructure and utilities, and then during development of the framework, city uh negotiations and development discussions related to the new data center projects shall be paused.

That was removed.

Uh further direct the city manager to conduct a legal analysis of all current 380 uh agreements with data centers.

And so I don't see the utilities.

Did you all have conversations with the utilities?

We do have conversations with El Paso Water and El Paso Electric.

And uh we got um quite a few comments from Pass or Water that were addressed in the policy framework.

Yes.

Okay.

And that is that are they quoted on here or they should where where does it show that their input is in here?

So we shared the draft with them when the draft was published.

We had conversations with Alphawater.

We look at all comments like we did with all community and other stakeholder comments.

And in the final document, we are not highlighting where the wording comes from, but they were um a specific changes uh uh after suggestion from El Passwater.

Okay, so you shared the draft with them.

It was in a discussion.

You didn't have uh discussions with the utilities that were you shared the draft with them and they gave input.

I said the draft and then I have uh follow-up conversations.

I don't remember if via teams or over the phone, um at least a couple of times, two or three times.

Okay.

And then I I do have I have a lot of questions, so how much I know I I'm running out of time, so I'll come back.

Come back.

Okay.

Thank you.

Representative Acevedo.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um just want to commend all of you for really great work.

I really appreciate how much time you put into this and appreciate what um you came up with.

There's a lot of strategy here.

There is a lot of information that will help the community learn more about what we're going to do moving forward.

And as we've kind of been talking about data centers for most of this year, I know that we've been on the defense.

There's been two amendments to the legislative agendas in terms of you know, basically kind of doing stuff around energy and I forget the other one.

Um just frameworks in general on data centers.

So I and when we were kind of discussing this in my office when you briefed me on this Omar, we we were kind of talking about how we haven't really done any positive um, I guess, approach to the data center legislation that might come forth in in the next few months, whether it's at the federal or at the state level.

And so I I wanted to propose an amendment to the legislative um agenda as we're kind of looking through at the very end, there's um some policy recommendations on advocacy and um kind of looking at the resolution being adopted for this framework, but it also includes um part of that is the policy recommendation, so it would be easier to just do an amendment through this if that's what the council chooses to do, right?

That's correct.

Okay.

Um so I I moved to amend the city of Well Paso's state and federal legislative agendas to include support and advocacy for data center oversight legislation that proposes water conservation and protects the environment from air and noise pollution.

So I'll send that to Ms.

Nunia so we could send it over to the rest of council.

The idea here is that what um the governor has put out is not really addressing what the people are asking for, and people are worried about water and pollution and the environment essentially.

So I thought this could help us um give the the city staff direction in terms of supporting this legislation that could help us um in the future.

Okay.

And there's an amendment to is there a second second.

Okay, there's a second discussion on the amendment.

Representative canales.

Okay.

On the amendment.

Yeah, thanks, Mayor.

Um I don't at all disagree with the amendment.

I think we should put that in our legislative uh agenda.

This is posted for action to approve a resolution.

I don't know that we can like we would have to make an amendment to the resolution.

There's I don't think we can make an amendment to just do something totally different.

I'd welcome an opinion from uh city attorney.

Okay.

Good morning.

Good morning, Joseph Floyd's from legal.

Are you talking about the resolution that you passed originally asking for staff to come back and present the data center framework?

No, this action, this this item is uh posted as discussion and action to approve a resolution for the adoption of the data center policy framework, and there's a resolution in the backup.

We're considering a resolution with the main motion.

Uh we can amend it.

If we need to the the motion was not to amend the resolution, it was just to amend the policy framework.

I mean sorry, not the policy framework, just to amend the state legislative agenda, which is not posted.

Yeah, that would not require an amendment to this resolution.

It's something that we could bring forward as a separate item.

Yeah, we'll bring it forward as a separate item.

Yeah, we we are doing that as we go along.

So the legislative what we would propose, representative Acevedo is that you bring an item forward at the next city council meeting to put that on the agenda for an additional amendment.

Yeah, and again, I in no way am I saying this because I I don't want this to move forward, Representative Acevedo.

I just want to make sure that we do it right and it's not challenged.

So, Representative, do you want to still have the amendment?

Oh I'll take it off and bring it at the next council meeting.

Okay.

Thank you, Mayor.

Okay.

Representative uh Nino.

Thank you, Mayor.

We're back on the main motion.

And thank you, Fernando Omar, Ian, the city staff were working hard on this.

I know that I was brief last week when we spent over two hours in my office talking about all of the different questions that residents in District 5 had, and you guys were helping me address a lot of those questions.

One of the things that I asked you all too is you know, a lot of residents in District Five shared with me, why are you guys working on a policy framework for future data centers when we don't want data centers?

Why are you still having the conversation of future data centers?

And I think it um if you guys could clarify why again it's important for us to have a policy in place just because I know that you know um planning inspections mentioned that currently it's by right, and there's a lot of different aspects of ensuring that we set these community protections because we're dealing with private land, right?

If an individual sells a private property to another organization or a private company, um there's very limited things that the city could do, and essentially um our authority, legal authority by state law is the zoning and the special permit process, and that's really where the city of O Paso could have some sort of input of ensuring that there is community protections.

Yeah, so if I can respond to that, um in the zoning code, we have what's called legal nonconforming.

So basically it's when the city changes the laws or something's incorporated in the city that doesn't meet the current requirements.

As I say right now, uh before city council is um some amendments, and once it comes in for final adoption to amend the regulations, the current site, the meta site would be granted what's called legal nonconforming, basically almost like a grandfathering rule where it would still be allowed to operate.

Um we cannot um when they came in to develop, they met all the municipal requirements.

They went all through the municipal rules.

Um what we're recommending is looking out for the future and to to address those.

And so that's the recommendation, at least from the zoning side is how can we address those moving forward and what's the best way to do that?

And that's where we're recommending a special permit to allow city council the opportunity to evaluate all the information that's provided to them, all receive all the public input input, and decide whether to grant it or not.

And if we were not to have these policies in the recommendated recommended policies that we currently have in this presentation in place, what authority would the city have when it comes to again private land sales and then someone wanting to build some sort of warehouse and build a data center essentially?

So the the city would have no no uh nobility to intervene.

Um they would come in, the land sales obviously happens every day, um, but at least from a zoning perspective and a building permits perspective, they meet all the zoning requirements, assuming it meets the current zoning allowances, they come in to uh our building uh permitting and get the building permits to start construction.

Great.

Now I know that um Fernando mentioned briefly that you know he they engaged and shared this draft policy with different entities.

Uh did we also share it with the county, with state representatives and federal partners as well to ensure that they're aware of the the framework that we put together and also kind of the sentiment of the community of what the priorities are?

Yes, Ruth Nino.

So staff sent the policy framework to our elected officials to the Congress to the Office of Congressman Escobar to our state delegation and to our partners.

Now I know that we mentioned a little bit about when you know there's there might be a project that comes within the county jurisdiction or even in federal property, for example, the proposed data center in Port Bliss, right?

Which the city of O Paso does not have any sort of jurisdiction.

Um are we looking, and and I'm grateful you know, for the mayor to for helping us send a letter in the office of the congresswoman as well for that specific uh data center of even just asking if that location is the final location, if it could be moved somewhere else, and also sharing the different community concerns that have constantly been shared.

Um it comes to a project coming into other jurisdictions, do we foresee the city having some sort of engagement or um input into that or even just sending a letter of different concerns?

For example, in District 5, we have a lot of donut holes, right?

I'm my my boundaries are also adjacent within county jurisdiction and federal property.

Um and I know that we talked a little bit about the ETJ, but when it comes to a potential uh, you know, data center possibly being built somewhere that's not within city limits, what kind of input and or advocacy may we be able to have as of right now I'm not aware of any that we have currently on the books.

I I would probably defer to legal, see if there's anything.

But right now we have no jurisdiction.

We have no ability to ability to influence.

I mean, the best we can do is potentially send them a letter with our comments and concerns, but then end of the day that uh city or that county has ability to proceed with the development as they see fit within their rules and regulations.

But then end of the day, that uh city or that county has ability to proceed with the development as they see fit within their rules and regulations.

Perfect.

No, thank you for for that.

Now I know the mention the mayor mentioned in regards to you know potentially having multiple data centers that are built and it becoming some sort of cluster.

So I I've seen a lot of new industrial spaces be built around the community.

And um in Opasa Waters presentation a couple, I think it was like a week ago, they mentioned that someone could build a warehouse and then they might have a data center, but we have no idea that there's a data center.

How how would we be able to monitor something like that?

I know that they mentioned you know that the water usage could go up and whatnot, but essentially if someone does have some sort of facility that we're not aware of, what what would happen then?

So again, if it met the criteria, say of a higher level, say a type two or type three, which is one of the more intense uses, once they come in for building permits, they'd be submitting what's called a tenant improvement, which would be modifying whatever the existing building is.

That's where we would identify that, and we would not be able to issue the building permits again until city council would grant that special permit.

Does applying for a special permit guarantee approval?

No.

No, similar to a zoning change.

Again, every property owner has a right to ask.

At the end of the day, it's up to city council to approve or deny those.

Perfect.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Um would it be forever that and this is for staff, would it be fair that this framework is one component to a broader uh city effort to address again future data centers, including the adoption of a climate action plan, um, including our state legislative agenda, participation in the public utility commission proceedings, and now uh the development of local zoning and land use standards.

So I would say the related to the climate action plan, as you'll know, and you've highlighted throughout these process, the this action was identified in that plan as important, um, even though the development of the actual plan doesn't bring emissions down or or um air quality improvements, but the community and and the team felt that it was important to include in the plan.

So that's part of the broader um cohesion of what we're proposing here and and other plans from the city.

Now uh thank you for that, Fernando.

Now, you know, one of the biggest concerns um has been in the environmental aspects, and I know that during the climate action plan I talked about the environmental component when it comes to data centers.

Uh um the framework currently recommends utility impact assessments, water studies, environmental reviews, and different noise analyses, right?

Um who would be the organization person entity that would verify those?

So as part of the special permit process, it's just not planning inspections that reviews and makers' recommendations.

It's reviewed amongst many city departments, including some outside entities, such as utility companies.

So they would be the ones that would look through this information and they provide the comments, and that is incorporated as part of the overall staff comments and and information that's provided again to the City Plan Commission City Council.

So it's already built in into that review process.

They would they would be provided all these studies and be able to provide their independent uh recommendation or analysis and recommendation.

Okay, and that was going to be my follow-up questions if these studies will be independently reviewed by city or different qualified experts, um, or if we would rely solely on the information that gets provided by the applicants.

No, it would be reviewed amongst uh the various entities that review these special permits on a regular basis that currently exists.

And when it comes to, you know, say that someone goes through the process, um, would staff be providing um or support providing city council with public reports regarding compliance, water consumption, and energy demand or energy reporting?

So as of right now, there's nothing, but again, once the special permits approved, they must meet all those requirements that are as part of the special permit.

So if they violate that, then we'd uh work with our code enforcement team to take appropriate action, including taken to the courts if needed.

And I mean, I don't think any of us here in the body would want future data center, hyperscale data centers to come into our community, and I know that has been mentioned multiple times, but um you know we're making policy decisions for the future.

This policy is going to be in place for five years, ten years, fifteen, twenty years, even before or after we're here, right?

Um what enforcement mechanism does the city have if a future operator fails to comply with the conditions of a special permit?

So again, that would probably be brought up either by utility companies or by the member of the public can also bring bring it up and we'd send our code enforcement team to investigate and take appropriate action.

Again, this this here is a living document as council is aware this is something that a lot of municipalities are trying to understand.

Um we are still, as as was mentioned by Omar and Fernando, is there's a lot also going on at the state level and the federal level.

So again, as the parameters may change, um we may have to adapt uh down the road as well.

And and that was going to be my follow-up question in regards to this being a working living document.

Um how often we foresee revisiting these policies and updating them as technologies and state laws change.

Yeah, I I think from from at least from the zoning standard, if if any changes uh come about either by the state or federal level, we'll have to modify those to be compliant.

Um I'll defer to Fernando in terms of the overall framework.

But uh, but again, as with the zoning code, you know, and the codes in general, with the city council has the authority to change those as they see fit.

Okay.

I'm out of time, but okay.

Thank you, Representative.

Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Kevin, Fernando, and Omar for the presentation.

I have a first a comment on the uh amendment that was proposed earlier.

Let me let me get the mic closer to my to me.

There we go.

Um in April, on the 28th of April, Representative Nino, Representative Fierra and myself brought forward an item that was passed by council.

I'm gonna read it for the record discussion and action to direct the city manager to amend the City of El Paso's 90th session state legislative agenda as well as the 119th Congress federal legislative agenda to include advocacy support for policy proposals related to data center incentives and regulatory frameworks, including support state legislation to refine sales tax exemption criteria so that recipients must demonstrate clear, measurable public benefits and remain accountable for delivering those outcomes.

Working with TML and other municipalities to support legislation that sets higher standards at the state for transparency, environmental protection, and accountability requirements for large scale data center development.

The intent is establishing state level baseline standards for data center incentives while preserving municipal flexibility to structure Chapter 380 agreements, ensuring local governments retain control but operate within consistent guidelines that promote accountability and measurable public benefit, working with NLC and other municipalities to support federal legislation that strengthens public transparency, environmental protection, and accountability requirements for large scale data center development.

So I just wanted to make it clear that we've already, as a body, adopted this, uh voted in favor of this, and it includes language uh for advocacy in terms of environmental protection.

Um we've already done that as a body uh in April.

Uh so now I have a few more questions regarding the presentation itself.

I guess the first question, and representative Nino, you asked a lot of the ones I I was gonna ask, so you did a great job.

Um I'm just probably gonna reiterate a a couple of them.

Um and this question is specifically for uh Ms.

Neiman.

Ms.

Neiman, um has there been other cities in Texas that have done a zoning prohibition on data centers?

At this point, only San Marcos has prohibited um the development of data centers within their city limits.

And representative touched based on this a little bit uh a few minutes ago.

What would be your advice on doing something like that for the city of El Paso?

You would need to direct us to do that research.

Um there's a lot of debate going on across the state as to whether or not cities have the ability to do that under our zoning code and under state law.

The city has the ability to regulate uses within its um boundaries, for example.

Some cities prohibit uses outright, like San Marcos, that is something that that the council would have to consider.

Okay.

And I think that uh we've talked a lot about um avoiding legal repercussions uh regarding zoning and and other things in on the dias here before, and that would be something that we would need to consider because as far as I know, San Marcos is potentially gonna be facing a lawsuit because of that.

Zoning prohibition.

You're not prohibited from prohibiting uses through zoning.

I don't know whether or not San Marcos is going to be sued or has been sued it.

We've been following them, but I don't believe that they've been sued yet.

There's been comments to that effect.

The city under state law has strong zoning power to prohibit certain uses within its municipalities.

I don't think I'm prepared to give you a full legal analysis as to whether or not the city would face litigation if you all chose to move in that direction.

That's something that we would need to have specific direction from the council if you wanted to move in that direction.

Okay.

Thank you, Ms.

Demon.

I appreciate I appreciate the answer because I think it's something that we're tracking again, both at the state and federal level and other in other areas.

And I appreciate Kevin, you laying out our authority as a council in terms of zoning.

And Fernando, you talk uh about the environmental impacts being the number one concern on page three of your of your presentation.

I I think uh from what I've heard from my community, specifically in District One, um, and you know, from people that have given me their feedback, I think the environmental concerns are are one of the strongest concerns that people have expressed to me.

Um so specifically on page 11, when you talk about utility impact, what what would be the verification uh process for something like that, Kevin?

Yeah, so as part of the special permit, this would be one of the submittals that be required.

Um it would be reviewed and analyzed by uh the utility companies as they be the supplier of the uh of that uh that energy.

And um they would be able to provide that recommendation and then council will be able to determine looking at the analysis provided by El Paso Water, Paso Electric, whoever the entity may be, and be able to make a recommend be able to make a decision based on that information.

Um part of it is just simply making everyone aware of this is how much energy this is proposed to be using.

And again, if if they exceed that, that's where the code enforcement teams would step in and uh take uh action.

And and something I've I've I've been thinking a lot about is some of these companies, especially like the tier three ones that we mentioned, um, are very sophisticated, right?

They have very sophisticated systems, but they're also always changing, right?

Because their technology advances and they they decide to pivot and move in a different direction.

How can we make sure that it's not only an initial assessment of whatever the utility impact is going to be, but if there is a change in their process in the way that they're doing the work that they're going to be doing, that the impact is also analyzed at every step of the plan.

Some of these projects are in phases, right?

Correct.

Correct.

So how can we do that?

So I I think as I mentioned, that this is an evolving use throughout Franklin throughout the world.

And so these companies are evolving, they're adapting.

Uh what I would be in my recommendation would be whatever is presented as part of their submittal terms of the utility consumption, that should be the maximum.

Everything below that, so if they there's new technology to have a less redu, you know, a smaller uh amount of usage of water or or energy, that's just assisting the community and not being a strain on that.

Um the utility agency.

Yeah, and we talked a little bit about it in the presentation from El Paso Water, and I I see Renee here in the audience today.

Thanks for coming, Renee.

Um, and I think John mentioned in our his presentation that you know, in the contract that they have right now, there's like a maximum amount of water, and this is just for one specific company, right?

For Meta, but and here we're we're adopting something generally as a policy for the city for for the future.

But um that would be something that I would make sure that we continue to evaluate as we move forward, especially with phases, because not everyone's gonna have a contract with the utility.

Um if they don't have a contract in place, how do we ensure that the impact is going to be verified or analyzed at every phase or every step of the way, especially if there's a pivot in what they are doing?

And I don't know if Renee wants to speak on that.

I think it's important for us to know.

Thank you, Renee.

Good morning, Renee.

Good morning, council, good morning, councilwoman.

Uh anyway.

And Renee, just state your name and R for the record.

Uh any new customer that comes into the system has to meet with our new installations department.

They put in an application for service and we determine the infrastructure they need.

So there will be steps in the process.

Let's say someone comes in as a warehouse and decides to upgrade, they'd have to go through the city's policy, plus they'd have to check with us to see whether the existing infrastructure is there to serve their needs.

If they needed an increase in service, they would have to put in the application and we would evaluate it based on the infrastructure around that site to see if it could support an increase in water service.

So there are steps in place to kind of get that information out of the customer and for us to use that information to evaluate it.

So essentially, Renee, just because someone's established and open for business uh doing whatever they're doing doesn't mean that we have to provide.

Well, let me fake let me say it this way doesn't necessarily mean that the service is going to be there if their uh usage increases.

Correct.

And if this policy passes, they would have to abide by the city ordinance under that policy.

So they would have to go through the steps to get that permit from the city.

And again, separate from that policy, they would have to go through the steps with the utility to see if the infrastructure is there for increased water demand.

So there's there's multiple checks here in place.

And though there will be a safeguard in place.

Yes.

And I think John Baloo mentioned two weeks ago there there's also the physical limitation of the infrastructure in place.

So even if something opened as a warehouse, the infrastructure that we put in is there to serve it as a warehouse.

If they were to change their needs and suddenly need more water at a drastic scale, the infrastructure is limited in how much water it can provide on a daily basis.

So that's one physical barrier that they cannot overcome without our installing view infrastructure.

And Renee, since you touched on that, can you talk about the valves, the two to three inches what maybe Claire, I'm not an engineer, so uh the valves, the infrastructure it's put in place is based on what the customer requests and what the customer needs.

So most of us here, residential customers, we have three quarter inch meters.

That only allows a certain number a certain amount of water to pass through within a day.

Uh you know, commercial, industrial manufacturing, those those have different sizes of meters.

Uh the Meta case, for example, has a large meter, and that will only allow a certain amount amount of water a day to pass through that meter.

So in the case of Meta, they have a maximum use of 2.5 million gallons a day.

The meter is sized to only allow that amount to pass through within a single day.

So that is one limitation on the water usage, and that's what keeps them within the maximum amount allowed of a contract.

Okay.

So that would be the same for any other data center applicant.

Okay.

Sorry, Representative Chapter, the technique.

I give it back to you.

But I give it back to you, I take some of your time.

I'll maybe come back, Mayor, but I just want to make sure that that the community knows Renee and Kevin and Omar and Fernanda and everybody, right?

We need to understand that this is a living document, and that just because someone has uh a permit to open and operate, it doesn't necessarily mean that there's not going to be checks and balances along the way, or if there's any growth also along the way.

Correct.

And I think it's also important to point out that what works in one area of the city for one customer, one applicant, may not work for that same applicant in a different part of the city because the infrastructure and the water supply might not be there.

They might already be spoken for.

So that's another step.

That's another check and balance in it.

And that's important for me as well, because just because I take a vote to permit something today, if any part of that process changes in the future, or if they come back requesting more permits, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be granted.

Correct.

And that's important to know for me as well.

Thank you, Renee.

And I'll come back, Mayor.

Thank you.

All right.

Representative Trejo.

Thank you, Mayor.

I appreciate uh district uh representative Nino and Chavez for the additional questions.

A lot of those were my questions as well.

So thank you so much.

I I do have additional questions.

Um slide eight, when we look at the uh the zoning authority and and we you know consider, for example, legislative preemption.

What would that look like when we, you know, would s face uh state and federal incentives override or state and federal legislation overwrite when it comes to zoning authority, even though I'll pass those a home rule municipality?

Would would the state state and federal override those?

So it depends uh depends on what what state and federal regulations you're referring to.

Um currently the city of Alba Housew and every other home rule city has zoning authority, which means that you have the ability to decide what is or isn't allowed within the city limits.

Also within a special permit provision, the city council can deny a special permit.

You could have a data center come forward and say we want a special permit to do X, Y, and Z.

Council can say no, we're not gonna grant you the special permit.

We don't think that it's in the right location, or you're not willing to do X, Y, or Z.

But then along comes another data center that applies for a special permit, and then the council believes that they've done a better job of placing that facility in in the correct location if they're doing the right conventional standards that they're following the zoning standard.

So while there are some cities that believe that they don't want to have at least one city in the state of Texas has said we don't want data centers, it appears that the rest of the state is willing to have a conversation like this council is having where it's on a case by case basis, right?

And that's really what staff is bringing forward.

It gives the council the broadest uh authority without unilaterally saying no, we're never gonna allow these ever again.

So may I guess my question is more along the lines of you know, we we know like the in the federal site, they're incentivizing data centers.

And so if they're wanting to come to El Paso, we're putting all these restrictions.

How can we hold those?

Well, you're you're no longer incentivizing data centers.

So these are not these are regulatory provisions that are as a result of zoning.

And every zoning has been around since the early 1900s.

Businesses understand what zoning is and the powers of cities to zone.

So unless you have a federal directive that prohibits zoning of data centers, these regulations are still valid.

Unless you have a state bill that passes it says that cities can no longer regulate data centers, then this proposal still applies.

Also keep in mind that if you approve this plan today, staff will have to come back with additional changes to the zoning code to put those into place.

Okay, very good.

Thank you.

Do we know if um the county has already put together a data policy framework?

So you'll remember back in February you all had that discussion about the county and the city.

The to the to the best of my knowledge, they they they haven't started working on on their they call it large load uh framework rather than data center, but um I don't think they they kick that off.

Okay.

And then my other question comes with the so we're no longer gonna be incentivizing hyperscale data centers.

No more 380 agreements.

What does it look like if we have a large again?

We go back to the zoning, right?

But how do we put protections in place for the city and our residents when it comes to the resources?

I know we you know you talked about co uh code enforcement and things like that.

Is that part of the data policy framework?

Is that been included on there?

Is that something that's also a work in progress?

Well, that's typical for any development that doesn't comply with the regulations we just go take appropriate action.

Uh again, that's there are certain items already built into the code to say if you exceed those one-called limitations set imposed by council, if you exceed that, then the city will take appropriate action to enforce those.

Okay.

But that we don't have anything written as to what that looks like.

Well, again, it would go through the uh code enforcement department, they'd be given uh I believe a notice of violation or citation, and then they would have an opportunity to comply with a certain amount of time.

If they don't, then it'll be taken before the courts.

Okay, but do we have that anywhere written?

Is there is there's already a documentation for that, or is there something that's their penalty is already written into the zoning code I'm aware of that um do talk about penalties that exist?

Right now there are no regulations.

Um basically it is allowed by right currently, and someone can go into planning inspection, submit for permit, and we'd be required to issue one if it met all our requirements.

So again, what staff is recommending is to change our our zoning code and to make these changes to require a special permit with all these other uh requirements and assessments to be brought forward and allow city council the final say whether to grant it or not.

Okay, very good.

Thank you.

No more questions.

Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh I'm back, Kevin.

Um again, Carla, this is gonna be Ms.

Niman, it's gonna be a question for you on slide 15.

Uh cost shifting.

It says demonstrate that 100% of the cost for transmission distribution, substations, or generation capacity additions, or any water-related infrastructure required to serve a data center load must be paid by the developer.

We've had this conversation a lot lately.

Um what is your perspective on the load being paid by the developer?

I know that you've had several opinions you've shared with us.

So the work that we're doing in the utility um section with El Paso Electric, the position of the city has continuously been that the user needs to bear the cost of the use or expense or drawing of that utility, right?

So I think we've done we've been extremely aggressive in taking that position with El Paso Electric.

Clearly, that will continue to be the position of the city as long as this policy is in place.

It has actually always been the policy of the city that the person that is drawing that need has to pay for that expense.

Yeah, I I completely agree.

I mean, I think in addition from the environmental impacts, which I already discussed in when I spoke earlier, um I think the second biggest concern is the utility rate uh increase being passed on to the consumer.

Um so this is definitely something that we need to ensure not only whatever they initially commit to, but if they transition or they change for whatever reason to what their needs are, I I think it's important that we make sure that the community doesn't end up paying for whatever infrastructure is put into place to service uh any data center.

Um I want to put that in my record.

Um let me go back to page 13 real quick.

Um Renee, I might need you one more time, please.

Uh, where it says coordinates directly with El Paso Electric and El Paso Water to promote best technologies.

I I don't I have no um knowledge on on how you would decide what best technologies to coordinate with them on.

I don't know if you have someone in place at El Paso Water that is an expert in terms of data centers specifically and technologies they use, or how would this coordination happen?

Uh the coordination would work similar to how the coordination worked when Meta was in discussions to come to the city.

Um our engineers looked at what they were proposing, and they thought, you know, this is more demand than what the system can supply.

So they worked with Meta to come up with better options for cooling technologies for their center rather than just rely on large water use for swamp coolers to cool the facility.

Uh they worked with Meta to say, you know, this is too much of a demand.

What can you come up with that would cool your systems to meet your needs that would not strain the supplies for this particular site?

And that's when Meta came back with their closed loop cooling technology that lowered the amount of demand that that site would need.

And we looked at that and that fit within the cap of supply that we can supply for that area.

So that kind of coordination would mirror what the policy would call for.

They would come to us, we would talk to them, we'd see what they need.

Can it fit within what we can supply, and then we can go ahead and offer our comments to the city.

Yeah, and I think it's important to also make note that it's not that we're trying to promote data centers to establish themselves here in El Paso because that's not what we're trying to do.

We're trying to put a policy framework in place.

I would encourage El Paso Water and El Paso Electric to ensure that they have someone on the team that that is knowledgeable on what technologies they're using and and which ones to coordinate with to ensure that uh if there's another project uh in the future, regardless of the size, that we are only uh recommending the best technology out there that has the least impact on our utilities.

Yes, and you know, we we're also not trying to recruit or incentivize new data centers.

Yes, but at the same time, we can't deny service to to data centers that come in if we have the capacity to serve them.

So these types of discussions help us bridge that gap between you know what we can do and what we can't to what we want to see in terms of water use.

Thank you, Renee.

Thank you for that.

Um and lastly, I'd like to um just make a statement, Mayor, because I think it's important regarding uh this discussion today.

I've listened to hundreds of residents, I've heard concerns about water, energy, environment, quality of life, and protecting taxpayers.

I want to uh let everyone know that those concerns matter greatly to me, and they deserve policy that is responsive and transparent.

That's why today's discussion on this comprehensive data center framework establishes stronger rules for the future, greater public oversight, and stronger environmental protections, increased transparency, which is so important, and clear expectations for anyone that is seeking uh to establish themselves here and establish a data center in El Paso.

My responsibility is to the taxpayers to safeguard their dollars and to ensure that we continue to build a city that is strong, a city that is built with a future that is bright, but that it is also built on trust.

And again, I want to welcome the community to reach out to me if they have any questions.

I welcome the conversation, and I thank Fernando, Omar, and Kevin, and the rest of the team really, because I know there were a lot of people behind this that put this framework together.

Thank you.

Representative.

Thank you, Mayor.

I know that I already spoke for a period of time and talked about environmental components.

Um I want to touch base also on the impact of utility costs, because I know that was one of the main takeaways whenever we were doing the community outreach.

Um, when it comes to utilities, we have regional jurisdiction when the utilities trying to file some sort of CCN or any other type of filing, right?

However, it's important to also understand that we aren't the final approval in the entire process.

You know, um we have the Public Utility Commission, the Aro Group Commission, and uh I know that we amended the state legislative agenda also about you know ensuring that there's further community protections.

One question that I would like to have is um, you know, the the public utility commission and the railroad commission, they're either appointed or elected statewide.

Um these individuals have that state authority, which is state law that gives them that authority.

Have we talked to our state legislation or um when it comes to having you know the the amendment of the state legislative agenda?

We could advocate for a long period of time and we'll spend funds on you know legal counsel trying to um essentially advocate for opasswins, but then you know I I I looked at the the hearing for a railroad commission, for example, when it comes to Texas gas.

And when I saw that hearing, our legal counsel and our staff didn't even get the opportunity to present the case.

They decided not to hear the case.

Um so it gets a little difficult in the process of you know, us as a body, we're advocating for opasswins, taking a position of advocating for for ensuring that there's further protections, but when we are not the final authority, then it puts us some limbo even with the community, right?

I know a lot of members of the community are currently facing rising costs when it comes to the utilities.

However, this body did take action to intervene on any of those filings uh to again ensure that we're advocating for them.

But again, um this is a the authority to the PUC and to the railroad commission is set by state legislation.

Have we considered having any of those conversations of ensuring that cities do have more advocacy at that level?

Thank you for that question.

It's uh it's complicated, but the city staff has been active in preparing us for quote unquote good bills that are going to come that we're expecting to come from the state.

And I go back to Repa Sevedo's uh amendment to the proposed amendment, which uh the I I believe the intent was city has historically always fought back against preemption, push back against state preemption, and it's because we want to keep our original authorities as a home room municipality.

Sometimes the state gets in the in our ability to uh raise revenues or to make decisions.

When it comes to data centers, the city's uh primary authority as Kevin discussed was through zoning.

However, we are we have had conversations with Texas Municipal League and the T the PUC directly as they figure out what the governor's letter and directive to ERCOT and the PUC is.

And so to that end, we've done uh a couple of steps.

The first one is at the end of this month, city stuff will go to the PUC and advocate.

This is sitting down with them, letting them know like, hey, we're very concerned that our COTS protections will not apply to our region.

Can you give us any guarantees in writing?

That step in itself is already uh beyond what uh normally cities can do on their own.

The fact that the PUC took a meeting with us so early in the process, because we are one of the largest non-RCOT uh communities.

Second, we have submitted formal requests to the PUC to clarify.

And their response has either been no response or has been that we'll get back to you as they themselves find out.

La at the end of August, Texas Municipal League, all the large cities, uh, smaller cities will gather to set TML's priorities.

And uh Reb Limon, you participated in one of these events uh in the previous session.

Our one of our primary goals in this is ensuring that El Paso's voice and issues are heard at the state level.

What this means is we're gonna use the collective power of all the municipalities through TML to advocate for the city's uh position and this data center framework.

So we're we're gonna come ready with our folders, a lot of advocacy, as you all may know, is gentle conversations.

Some of them are through formalities.

And so in TML's final legislative agenda, legislative priorities, we're pushing hard for data centers, clarity around data centers, rate payer protections, and protecting municipal um authorities, that that become a permanent part of TML's issues.

Now we as a municipality, you're absolutely correct, may not have the same authorities or or the same weight that larger cities or state-appointed officials might have, and you're absolutely correct.

Sometimes we're so far from Austin.

But sometimes it's hard to make our voices heard.

But this is why we hired uh state lobbyists.

This is why you have strategic and legislative affairs.

This is why we travel to Austin so often to make El Paso's voice heard.

And so going back to Representative Acevedo, uh those amendments, the intend to push for good bills.

Historically, our legislative agenda seems to be a little bit defensive.

But we hear you, Repa Sevedo, we're we can flip the narrative and work with TML, work with the lobbyists, work with partners, work with community advocates, and push for good bills.

No guarantees yet, but for example, if you've kept up with committee sessions, Representative Mary Gonzalez has been very active and very vocal against status centers.

I wouldn't be surprised if she proposes a bill.

Know that we will do our usual analysis the way we do all we analyze all of the bills, and if it's a quote unquote good bill, which I think it will be, then we'll definitely advocate for it.

So that's the kind of that's the kind of actions that we as a body have, and your strategic and legislative department will take in this next session.

We do have to work with the existing state machine to make a difference, but know that we're we're using we're we're looking at every avenue possible to make the community's voices heard.

Okay, no, thank you for that.

And um and the reason I was bringing this up is exactly because of the amendments that we've done in the state legislature legislative agenda in regards to you know taxpayer protection, rate peer protection, environmental protections, to ensure that again, even when it comes to utilities, we could advocate as much as we can, but we're not the final authority when it comes to the PUC or the railroad commission or any other um regulatory entity that is going to make that final determination, right?

Again, I mentioned how a lot of members of our community even saw a huge increase on their electric bills this last month.

Um I had different residents reach out to me.

But again, the city, this body did intervene, and we have been advocating for opass ones, but sometimes the final decision is not made by this body.

And I think it is important to ensure that you know those uh costs are not shifting to residential or current existing uh customers.

Um I know that means uh Neiman briefly mentioned also in regards to um we're still gonna do future adoptions of zoning code amendments and whatnot.

What is the framework?

Uh what are the next implementation steps or when do we foresee recommendations that will require future ordinances, amendments to zoning, or additional council actions coming forward.

Yeah, so thank you.

As as was mentioned, um this adoption of the framework does not change the code at all.

So staff will have to do research with the work with our legal team and bring forward those amendments to the zoning code specifically, which um obviously is recommended as part of this framework.

Um we'll want to research also best practice in terms of other cities as well to see if there are any tweaks or adjustments we need to make.

But um, I would envision bringing forward in the next few months to uh for council to adopt.

Perfect.

Well, I'm grateful for all your work, Ms.

Niman, Ms.

Mack, uh Slay.

Planning inspections.

Thank you guys for all your work.

I know that we've had a lot of meaningful conversations about this and how important it is for members of our community.

Um so thank you, Mayor.

I'd just like to request for my comments to be part of the record.

Thank you.

No objection there.

Representative thank you, Mayor.

Uh no real questions, just a couple comments.

Uh first of all, thank you to all three of you and uh the teams behind you.

I think you've put together a really robust document.

38-page policy document, but backed up by 172 pages of of documentation in the appendices.

Um I think it really reflects both uh the uh huge amount of work that your your teams put in, but also uh a lot of community sentiment.

And um I I appreciate that it's very honest, it presents a very honest picture of where we are.

Um and I think it not every document goes uh so deep into thoroughly documenting what the community thinks about a particular issue, and so I I appreciate that this one does.

Um and Fernando, I know it took over your life for the last couple of months, so I really appreciate it.

Um we tasked you with the climate action plan, and that took a few years, and then we didn't let you breathe for even a minute without having to put together this and and go through that that community outreach process again.

So I wanted to say thank you all.

I think you've produced uh a very strong set of recommendations that I'll say is um I hope sticky, legally defensible.

Um, something that the community can be happy with and satisfied with and that will protect us and protect the uh environment in El Paso into the future.

So I plan to support it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good job, guys.

And I I think it's a a good first step, and then we'll see the additional recommendations you bring.

But uh I think this also shifts power to the council now with the zoning reclassifications, which is really good because before we didn't have any power, but this at least gives us some power to um to work and do and do the job that we need to do as city council.

So again, we were learning as we were going, but this is a good framework that we're putting in place and we'll continue to improve it because it is a working document.

So just want to congratulate you guys on a on a very good first step, and we'll continue to modify it and adjust as we need to go forward.

But good job.

Thank you, Mayor.

Now, if I may be so shameless to name out the people of our team uh that did a lot of the work.

Sure.

I'll start with our climate team.

Yes, Fernando is the leader, but also Mia Trevino, Dura Hernandez, and Rubera Saga.

They were the ones that were part of the meet the community meetings.

So if we could give them a round of applause.

On the legislative side, we have Alejandra Gorski and Cesar Ortiz and in strategic partnerships.

We had uh Judith Almoldovar, all of them had a lot to do with making sure that the community was heard.

Uh we have Alex Hoffman, who gave us a lot of his brain power on uh understanding uh iss zoning issues.

And then Ian Volgovit, our director, who is not here today, but uh he should have been presenting.

And then our partners on economic development, Karina Brasgala and Bill Allen, who also gave us a lot of the insider information we needed to put together this document.

Thank you.

Well, that was a well-deserved plug.

Well deserved.

Thank you guys again.

Uh Mr.

We have public comment.

Yes, we do have two members of the public signed up to speak.

Ms.

Veronica Carvajal, followed by Saul Gonzalez.

You have three minutes, ma'am.

Good morning.

Good morning, good morning, Mayor, Council, Veronica Carvajal with the Semera and the Esperanza Coalition.

Um and I want to be clear.

This was brought up earlier.

We want to be clear.

We don't want AI data centers here.

Um if this meeting were about a ban on data centers, we would have a full house um at City Hall.

The AI industry is like so many industries that have exploded our environment, our health, and most importantly, our lack of knowledge about their operations and their impact, especially long term.

This is like, I've said it before, the lead industry, tobacco, asbestos, fossil fuels, opioids.

Um, yes, Mayor, we are learning as we go.

And um regulations are key.

Uh again, want to thank the staff and the public.

Really, the public has done so much of this research.

Um, but these regulations are only as good as our knowledge, so I am happy to hear staff say that this is a living document and that there will be future modifications as we learn more because every day we find out just how bad these data centers are.

Um there are no experts at O Paso Water, Ms.

Tavis, um or El Paso Electric, or I would say even at City Hall, even us, we're not experts, even though we're looking at this every single day because this is changing so quickly.

We have focused so much on the water and the energy and the land impact, but also the noise.

And right now the framework is saying, you know, we're gonna use existing noise regulations.

You have heard from Felipe Acunia, Ms.

Um Rocha, we've talked about Union Pacific, for instance, violating noise regulations, and most of the time the regulate because the regulations are so loose, they they're allowed to create um a huge impact on people's health.

So the existing regulations are not fantastic.

Um in terms of heat, there is no regulations, and we know that these data centers can increase temperatures from three to sixteen degrees.

Um electromagnetic fields from the electric usage can lead to cancer.

Um and from construction to operation, these issues have to be addressed.

We know about Cheyenne, Wyoming, they're dealing with bacteria from a meta site that you know has been going on since February.

Um regulations must be enforced and there must be penalties in Wyoming.

What they did is that they prohibited Meta from discharging into the racewater.

So this cannot um this will only mean something if you have penalties attached to it.

We're sad to see that renewable energy was not made mandatory in this framework.

Um it ain't you know it affects air pollution as well as water um shortages.

We need the PSB, El Paso Water to adopt a similar framework, if not a tougher one, and to not allow land sales to data centers.

And then lastly, to the point about your impact with the county and Fort Bliss, you do have nuisance authority.

And so if there is an issue with these um data centers outside of city limits, you do have the power to strengthen your nuisance um uh authority and to um intervene on behalf of residents.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Next is Saul Gonzalez.

You have three minutes, sir.

Uh good morning, good morning uh city council.

My name is Saul Gonzalez, an organizer with Sembrando Esperanza and a resident of district three.

Uh as Venom mentioned, we want to be clear, we don't want AI data centers in our community.

Uh I want to thank uh Fernando and the team for hosting these meetings.

Umbrando Esperanza was part in every of these meetings.

We were talking to residents, and they share uh our values.

We don't want more AI data centers.

The discussions there were about canceling the 3D agreement about how do we protect our natural resources.

Um so I do support this first step uh of this draft, but I think we should um be having more conversations as better mentioned.

I think we should uh direct the PSB to implement a framework for data centers as well, or for uh large water users in general.

Um when it comes to the acquisition of land, I do find and and I want to say like a loophole.

Uh the PSB has a lot of land.

Uh just in the last meeting in executive session, item A, they had an item uh item that it's I'm gonna read it.

It's discussion of the value of approximately 1,000 acres of the utility real property.

So it's got they're they're bowing a land that's next to the meta data center.

So what's gonna happen if Meta purchases land or El Paso Electric by Z buys this land to uh apply for another power plan for transmission lines?

It's gonna bring more pollution uh to our community.

So uh I'm already telling you, like this is an executive session.

I will ask you to uh take some actions to prevent meta from from expanding or El Paso Electric for even creating more pollution.

Um when we talk about um having more meetings, um I'm gonna be really respectful about this.

I think it's a waste of time if it doesn't come like what's next.

Um over on an action.

So um Sembrando Esperanza is gonna have an event this Saturday where we're gonna invite people from Chaparral and people that live close to the uh the meta data center.

Um I for you an invitation to all of you.

I haven't heard from some of you, but I think um it's important that you hear from those people.

I think it's important uh that you pay attention to what Chaparral is even going on.

I know it's not part of the jurisdiction of the city of El Paso, but I think the impacts are are just terrible.

Like I I go to the uh the meta data center really often, and I I can see all the pollution, all the construction going on, and I couldn't imagine living next to it.

So I extend the invitation again.

Uh I'm gonna share some flyers with you.

I know there's maybe commitments, but if even if you can send a staff member, I think you really need to hear from those people.

Thank you, so thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr.

Gonzalez.

Okay, Miss Nunez, we have a motion and a second.

Yes, we do.

And for the record, Representative Maldonado Rocha joined the meeting at 1010 a.m.

And we do have a motion made by uh Mayor Pro Tem Alejandra Chavez, seconded by Representative Lilimon.

No, it was Representative Trey.

Made the motion seconded by Representative Limon.

Correct.

Voting session is open.

And the item has been approved unanimously, and that is the resolution adopting the data center policy framework.

Very good, very good.

Uh let's take item number two, please.

Item number two is presentation and discussion on the proposed housing strategy, a key deliverable of the comprehensive plan update, and be envisioned El Paso.

The update will cover an overview, housing deliverable scope of work, overview, housing deliverable scope of work, a review of the housing needs assessment, and the proposed housing strategy for implementation.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Morning.

Hi all uh Matt Prosser.

I'm a principal of a firm called Economic and Planning Systems.

I'm back here to present to you the housing strategy that we've been working on as part of the envision El Paso comprehensive plan effort.

If you recall, we uh was presenting to you all in November of last year, uh talking about our housing needs assessment.

Uh that was really the framework for us to understand what the housing issues and conditions are in El Paso to help us develop the strategy.

Um here to share with you uh the draft housing strategy and get your input and questions.

Um this slide shows a pre overview of what we've been working on.

Uh our major deliverables are housing needs analysis that really identifies the types of housing we need at different income levels and different types.

We use that analysis to develop a housing strategy, um, which we'll be talking about today, and then ultimately we're also creating a dashboard that'll track conditions over time that you can use to see how you're doing in terms of making progress towards needs as well as tracking housing conditions.

So this uh is a timeline of the study we started over a year ago.

Um a lot of the upfront work uh last year was focused on uh the housing needs assessment um, which we like I said presented to you all in November.

Um and then since then we've been doing work on the housing strategy and also have been doing a lot more outreach as well.

We uh there was another round of outreach to the development community and others related to not only the housing strategy but as well as the future land use map, which you have heard about in other presentations.

Um so just an overview of this outreach and engagement.

Um we had sort of a multifaceted approach in terms of the types of folks that we talked to throughout the process.

We had a housing working group.

This was uh about a like a 10-member group of neighborhood organizations, housing experts, providers in the community that helped us guide the effort throughout.

Um so we met six, six or seven times with them throughout the process at each key step, getting um inputs and thoughts on the different components we developed.

Um we also met with community organizations that are active in providing housing and housing related services.

Um had two different uh focus group meetings with them in person um throughout the process, uh a number of meetings with different developers or folks in the real estate community, um including some focus groups, individual developer interviews as part of that future land use map process, as well as a presentation to sort of a regular meeting uh real estate folks have in relation to the future land use map.

Um and then lastly, we had some targeted meetings with what we call design professionals, folks like architects, planners, engineers that work on development projects, housing development projects, really kind of understand what challenges they have with the process and some of the tools and programs you have in place.

And this is a quick overview of sort of what we've heard from the different groups, pretty diverse set of inputs.

Um, the working group, a lot of the focus was you know, we need to look uh more finite or more in-depth than just the citywide or countywide boundaries when we think about housing strategies.

Uh, there are certain conditions and certain portions of the city that are different and different affordability needs and challenges, and so we need to be cognizant of the diverging needs uh in throughout our city, as well as uh needing to prioritize uh issues with vulnerable communities and making sure we're not creating undue burdens on those that are least equipped to address changes.

Uh community organizations talked a lot about how our demographics are shifting, especially the needs of aging residents, um challenges with home ownership.

A lot of those organizations were active in ways to help support existing and future homeowners and how we can support them.

Uh developers, a lot of the comments that we received were the challenges with developing within the city, um, review times, the process, um, some of those challenges making it less attractive than perhaps developing in your neighbor jurisdictions.

Um then just the reality that as we start to develop more and more infill within El Paso as our boundary is not growing as quickly as it could previously.

There are more challenges with infill.

And so, how do we work collectively try to address those?

Um, similar sort of feedback from the design professionals about review processes, challenges with existing programs, um, and addressing the needs to invest in our existing infrastructure.

So, we took all of that feedback as well as the housing needs findings.

I'm gonna give you a quick re-uh recap of some of the stuff we presented last time in terms of drivers of housing needs to set the stage for the housing strategies, which will be relatively new in terms of a presentation.

So some quick overview of some of those drivers of housing needs.

As we talked last time, we have a growing economy here in El Paso that's been outpacing population growth over the last decade or so.

And so as we continue to produce more jobs that are located in the city, our population isn't necessarily growing to meet that.

And that's partly due to a number of reasons.

So in one of those is sort of the lack of housing production.

First, we know that our demographics are shifting.

There's an increase in the number of older residents in the community that are over 60 years old, and they're having obviously some diverging housing needs than the perhaps they would need than they would have when they were younger, perhaps still had children.

And so that is creating impacts on housing needs in the community.

We also have seen a pretty profound decrease in the number of residents under the age 20 in the community, and that's something that's really jumped out to us.

And actually, we've we've heard pretty loud and clear from the school districts the the issues with declining enrollment.

And part of that shift, what we're seeing is that we are seeing a decrease in housing production overall in the city and the county, but a lot of the housing production has actually shifted outside of the city into your neighboring communities.

And so where we used to have a lot more families form and move into the city, they're more often finding choices outside of the city, and that's having impacts on school enrollment, but also the attraction of workforce over time.

Coupled with that, sort of lack of housing production, as well as sort of a shift, a large increase in the average home price within the community.

That's something we saw nationally through the COVID pandemic.

Um, as we had very low interest rates, um, the ability to get into homes was lower with some discretionary spending, and so we saw a large spike in home prices.

And when that's coupled with a lack of production locally, that started to create more strain on the availability of affordable options within the community.

This slide illustrates the decrease in affordable home sales to folks earning 120% of AMI and below uh over the last uh five, six years, as well as the number of affordable rental units uh to folks earning less than 80% of AMI over the last five or six years, and so finding it for some of those lower income households more and more challenging to find affordable options within the community.

Um, with this back, this sort of background research and data that we've compiled, we started to set out defining what is affordability mean in El Paso and how can that drive your policies going forward.

And as we looked at all the different data points we had, your household incomes, the distribution of wages, uh occupations and wages in the market conditions.

Uh our sort of finding was that your focus on affordable housing, um, and we'll talk specifically what that means, should be at folks that are earning 70% of AMI or below.

Um, and so just for reference, a two-person household in El Paso, um the 100% of AMI is around $64,000 a year, and so 70% would be you know, 70% of that 64%.

Um we also when we think about housing options, there's something there's more need and nuance beyond just uh what we would call capital A affordable housing.

So affordable housing is often housing that's needed to address folks that can't access market rate options, um, and often those options need to be rent subsidized or income restricted to ensure that folks can access that.

And so when we talked about capital affordable housing, we generally think you should focus on folks under 70% of AMI and trying to create housing products and that price.

There also is a need to help support development of what we would call attainable housing.

Um, these are folks that might have challenges uh accessing housing, whether it's rent or for sale, but wouldn't qualify for some of the the sort of federal tax credit type units that are income restricted, and so we still have needs there, and so thinking about not only addressing our needs for uh those lower income affordable housing units as well as more attainable options for the folks that are in your workforce that are still finding having challenges accessing options.

Um this is an overview of what area median income is, just in case you need a reference.

So uh the area medium income is a federal sort of definition set by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

It's set at the metro area for El Paso County here, and it reflects different the area median income and a lot of housing programs, especially federal housing programs, are targeted specific uh cohorts of income related to this area media income definition, as I mentioned in 2025.

It's uh a two-person household, 100% of AMI is about 64,000 dollars annually.

Uh, when you look at your the city specifically, your medium uh household income is around 90% of that definition, so it's slightly less, just as a point of reference.

Um we also did a lot of work looking at wages and what folks are earning.

Um, you know, the top four most prevalent prevalent occupations in El Paso account for about 40% of the workforce.

Um, and those occupations all earn at or below sort of the median wage, which is about 40,000 annually, and that equates to a household that would fit in that sort of 74% of AMI.

And so that shows you a lot of your workforce, a lot of folks that are working in the community fit in that sort of near affordable or attainable level in terms of the type of housing options we have.

And so as we sort support the growth of our workforce, it's important to understand we need a diversity of options that fall in and out of what would be tip typically uh typically defined as sort of affordable housing uh efforts.

Um we went through all of our analysis and started to create some estimates of housing needs, and really what we're doing here is trying to uh illustrate uh a figure of housing units that uh of different need at different income levels that the city should try to address through its programs.

This is really just sort of a number to help you understand the relative order of magnitude need in the community, and we've broken that down by geography and AMI level to help understand the types of products that need to address this need.

And we calculate this housing need based on two buckets, two things we looked at.

First is called catch-up need.

This is where we look at existing housing issues in the community and identify the number of households that are facing these issues, and we need to sort of catch up to addressing these needs through different programs.

And then as we think about continued growth of the economy over the next 10 years, we also need to think about what we call keep up needs.

How do we continue to create housing options for this growing economy that we have at different income levels?

And sort of this slide breaks down the distribution of need between catching up and keeping up.

The one thing I'll note in terms of our existing housing needs uh related to catching up is uh overcrowding is the most prevalent issue that we found.

So, this is households that have more than one person per room in a unit living in it, and that's not bedroom, that's room.

So, kitchen counts for that, living room, bathroom.

That counts as a room within a uh housing unit.

And so that is the biggest need that we have, and that's sort of a reflection of likely folks having a challenge finding affordable options and therefore are doubling up, tripling up in units with different household with other households.

So we've documented this housing need by sub-area.

Um these sub-areas were defined through help with our housing working group to sort of document the different you know, contextual areas within the city and trying to get a sense of what the needs are for those certain areas so that it can be a little more hyper-focused or more locally focused in some of our strategies, understanding that the east side or the west might have different challenges than central or south central and trying to address those.

And this gives you an overall sort of estimate of the need as um in relation to the overall need in the city.

I will say that just uh these are more targets to help understand how we might focus different programs.

It's perfectly fine for one area to provide a lot more housing in the future than other areas.

We don't necessarily need to hit these targets specifically locally, they're more to help support an understanding.

Overall, addressing needs as a community, I think is the biggest priority.

Um we also have broken down this housing need by the types of products and different income levels, and so there's a pretty great diversity from you know about 20% of our housing needs at that very low income level below 50% of AMI, uh, but also the need of 20% of units to be more that sort of upper income luxury option.

And so we need to focus on creating a diversity of housing throughout the community, um, and this shows a pretty even spread of need among all the different income levels.

So we took all of that information in and started to develop some strategies to address these needs based on the feedback that we got from our outreach.

So the way that we've sort of organized this housing strategy is first focusing on the issues that we heard most commonly through the process, and those are identified on the left slide, the slide, left side of the slide up there.

These are the things that we saw in the data, but are also commonly reflected to us in our outreach.

And we use those issues to develop sort of three key strategies, which you see on the right.

The first being reinvestment and stabilizing neighborhoods, specifically existing neighborhoods is the way that should be read.

The second is attracting a diversity of housing types, so a greater diversity that currently exists.

And then third is an overall call to increase housing production.

As I had mentioned previously, we've seen declines in the rate of production in the city that are even greater than the declines we're seeing in the county.

And this lack of housing option is really creating a lot of pressure and need on all sorts of folks in the community.

And so, how can we work to create overall housing production while focusing on those specific areas of need going forward?

So within the housing structure, we created our housing strategy, we created sort of a structure to each of these.

So we took the issues to identify those three mean strategies I just showed you, and underneath that we have actions and tools.

So actions are the steps that we're recommending that you take in the short, medium, and long term, and then tools are potential tools that you can utilize to implement those actions.

And we'll go through each of those three key strategies.

In the housing strategy, we've developed a strategy matrix.

This is an example of the matrix, what it looks like in there.

I just want to point out how we've sort of organized those different strategies.

First, we try to follow a similar sort of framework you've been using for other initiatives in the city, thinking about process, program, and policy.

So trying to identify is this an action that's a process?

Is it a program?

Is it a policy?

Also, some guidance on what we think the short-term, medium, and long-term strategies are, as well as we've identified who the potential city lead would be, the level of resource for a certain tool that might be needed, uh, and then what AMI levels or income levels does this tool or strategy address?

Some address all of them, some address specific ones.

Um, and then lastly, some partners that'll be key to the implementation of these.

So the first bucket or first major strategy is this reinvestment and stabilizing uh neighborhoods.

Um we heard a lot uh through our outreach, especially with our working group, is that as reinvestment in our community comes, as home home prices increase, those impacts are most disproportionately felt on our most vulnerable populations.

And so we need to think about how we can support those existing residents and existing neighborhoods to ensure that they can benefit from economic growth and reinvestment in our neighborhoods.

Uh we've sort of identified two buckets for that.

One is neighborhood stabilization, and the second is anti-displacement.

Um, in terms of neighborhood stabilization, um, these are tools and actions focused on supporting existing residents and homeowners to be able to maintain their homes and stay in place.

Um the biggest things we sort of found through the process is that you all have sort of limited resources that's been invested towards housing.

Uh, the federal the federal government provides um funding through community development block grants as well as home funds.

That is primarily what you use to invest in housing programs in the community.

And as the needs for affordable housing have grown in over recent years, you've started to prioritize the creation of affordable units through those funds, and that's come at the cost of being able to offer some of these neighborhood stabilization programs, specifically programs focused on home repair loans and grants.

That's something that you used to provide, but have now prioritize those federal dollars for affordable housing creation.

But they are still really important programs and tools that we need.

But we need resources, we need funds to be able to invest in that.

And so one of the first action steps, as you'll see in both this first strategy one and two is the need for additional resources to be able to provide some of these programs.

Um as we look for different resources to use, uh, the priority tools are listed on the right.

I think the biggest focus is how do we kind of recreate that home repair loan and grant program that used to provide to help support existing homeowners to invest in their homes and stay in place, but there are additional tools that could be considered.

We also did a fair amount of outreach with uh local lenders, the development community, uh, community development organizations within the community, um, and there's a lot of folks doing various programs and providing various services to folks, but uh a greater level of coordination, one, and then more awareness to the availability of capital resources to homeowners is was pointed out.

How can we help support existing homeowners to utilize the equity in their home to help reinvest that through lower cost financing tools and grant programs?

And so there's potential partnerships long term to form with some of these local lenders that do a lot of support to existing and future home buyers, and how can we tailor some programs to work with them going forward.

The second part of this bucket is the creation of an anti-displacement strategy.

There was a council directive to start creating an anti-displacement strategy, and we've actually started working on that.

And so what we've done in this housing strategy is really just to set the recommendation that you should explore the creation of an anti-displacement strategy.

And these are some of the tools on the right that you could explore within that strategy to implement, as well as the direction to try to track issues and risks related to displacement long term.

A lot of that foundational work that's needed to start to track areas that are most vulnerable has already been done.

And so what we're doing through the anti-displacement strategy, which is really a next step implementation effort out of this, is to use that documentation of priority areas and best practice research to come up with a suite of tools that the community can consider, do stakeholder outreach with our partners and um within the city to figure out which ones are best suited for El Paso.

What makes sense here?

Um best practices in other communities may work there, but may not work here.

So wanting to provide the options for the community to explore, um, vet those through the outreach project and the uh efforts and then bring recommendations back to you all to consider for implementation.

Um, and so that's a next step effort that's happening outside of this.

The second bucket of strategies is trying to attract a diversity of housing types.

Um we suggest doing that through two ways.

First, policy and regulatory changes, and then second, programs.

So from on the policy policy standpoint, um you have in recent years uh tried to make the prioritization of your resources go towards creating new affordable housing units in the community.

We think that's the right approach.

That's the biggest priority that you need to continue.

So that continued prioritization of supporting affordable housing projects is something you should continue.

Um you've recently uh adopted a new policy in terms of how you support 9% low-income housing tax credit projects.

We think it's great to have a policy for how you prioritize those.

Although through our outreach, we did find that perhaps uh the existing policy is a little too narrowly defined, and that we would encourage you perhaps to sort of expand specifically kind of the geographic boundaries of where you'd like to support projects to create more opportunity.

The the biggest challenge we heard in our outreach is finding land for these projects is challenging.

And while it'd be great to find a site right next to a transit stop, a grocery store, a daycare, they don't always exist, and they're also competing in the private market for that land.

And so perhaps a little more broader definition that's in line with the state requirements would make more projects uh perhaps fit underneath your policy in terms of which ones you want to express support to when they go towards tax credit, getting tax credits.

Um then the third thing in terms of greater housing diversity is something you've been doing a lot of work on for a while now.

Um it's changing different uh development policies and programs to help uh for greater diversity of housing options to be built in different parts of the community.

And as you've done that, like exploring things like more middle density housing or ADUs, you've you've run into the challenge and the nuances of where and how to apply this.

And so I think the path forward that we're recommending that fits in the line with some of the work that you're doing with the future land use map is to try to identify those target pilot areas where the community is of supportive of changing regulations to provide more housing options, and where you have the infrastructure and the capacity to best support it.

And so you've been working with uh the planning team and development of growth areas, and so our recommendation is to target changes to zoning code and development codes along with sort of this idea of growth areas, places where we can pilot these types of changes that could increase more housing diversity to show sort of how well they could work, what impacts they might have on the community, and then consider how we might do that in other parts of the community going forward.

And so, really kind of prioritizing those areas uh first and then considering expanding that over time as the need presents itself.

The second group of actions and tools related to this second strategy are related to how to create more resources and sites for affordable and different types of housing development.

So I sort of buried the lead by putting the biggest recommendation at the bottom here.

I think the one of our recommendations is for you all to create a housing trust fund.

This is a recommendation that was provided to you in previous housing studies that have been done for the city.

And the point of a housing trust fund is it creates a separate fund outside of sort of your operating general fund where you can fund different housing programs and programs out of and becomes uh somewhat decoupled from sort of the the year-to-year budgeting process.

Um as well, it provides more flexibility for how you uh receive funds for housing and use funds out of this housing trust fund.

Um but part of creating this trust fund is trying to find something to seed it with.

You're gonna need whether it's a general fund allocation, one-time allocation, uh a portion annually, considering the use of a bond program to help seed the trust fund.

Uh other ideas we looked at this the use of proceeds from selling city land and other sort of things could help seed the trust fund over time.

But ultimately, this trust fund can help support a lot of those different programs and give you more flexibility for how you raise resources for those as opposed to just through general fund allocations.

Um a second uh recommendation is the uh a policy and program to use excess city land for housing, including affordable housing.

Um own a number of sites throughout the community that might be good candidates for housing, and how do we set up a policy and a program that you can uh offer those sites for development of affordable housing that meets your needs and goals, and then start to use some of the resources that are generated through that sale of excess land to support other programs.

Um along that line is in our conversations with school districts is the realization that as we see declining enrollment, there are school sites, whether they're schools or they're just district property that could also be options for housing, uh especially uh affordable housing.

And so a suggestion for long term to consider uh forming a partnership with the school directs to explore how they could reuse certain um excess or closed public school sites or district sites for the use for housing.

All right, lastly, the third bucket of strategies is just overall increase of housing production.

And there's a whole number of uh recommendations that are put on the slide, and we probably should have broken them up.

And so these are different things that you can consider to help support uh increasing the production of housing within the city.

Um you've already started doing this through the future land use map within the comprehensive plan.

The future land use map provides a greater range of place types that encourage uh a greater diversity of housing options to be built in different parts of the city, and that'll ultimately drive changes to your zoning code, your development code over time.

And so setting that important future land use map in place that provide that flexibility and guidance for where different types of housing are best suited in the community, especially using that growth area framework is a great next step to really sort of set forth the policy or the regulatory changes that you'll need to help support greater diversity of housing.

Um as you know, the the Texas legislature has been extremely active in addressing housing production changes to state law, makes buyright housing for multifamily uh a reality in commercial and mixed-use districts.

That's something that all Texas cities had have had to react to.

Um, and as you're sort of reacting those, there's an opportunity to try to left leverage the changes you're gonna have to make to support housing production over time.

And so you've already started doing that, but just to encourage you to think about as those sort of top-down things come at you, how do you best leverage those to address the needs within the strategy?

Um, I'm sure you're aware of you all have been selected to participate in a national housing supply accelerator program.

Um, and this is a really great opportunity for you to explore what are sort of internal and somewhat external policies and processes that you can improve to help uh increase the rate at which housing can be approved and built within the community.

And so that program will lead to I think a number of sort of internal changes you can consider to uh adopt over time as those are be developed in that process.

That's something that we would likely would have suggested a lot of those types of improvements within the strategy, but this accelerator program gives you a great implementation step for addressing those.

Um something I'm about I'm gonna talk about in our next uh presentation after we talk about housing is your infill uh the uh infill incentive policy.

Um and part of that are is our recommendation to refine that policy to make it work better.

And we'll be talking about that later, but that's one of the strategies that we think is tied here in housing that also has an impact on sort of economic development.

How do we attract uh new housing creation as a tool to support workforce as well as the attraction of new businesses?

Um next suggestion is there are a number of public financing tools and mechanisms that are available to cities and developers in Texas that we think you could leverage more to help support development.

And I think there's a lot of benefits to using some of these special districts to help support uh development.

One, they can help shift some of that cost burden off of the general community and place it on to the new development.

And so some of that infrastructure investment that is needed to make new development happen now becomes uh more attributed to those new residents or buyers in that specific area as opposed to perhaps that shared cost throughout the community if you were to have to expend capital resources to help supported development.

Um as well, it helps address the upfront cost of new development for a developer and being able to place that more on a long-term property assessment as opposed to the upfront costs, which might require them to charge uh more rent or higher home prices to be able to make a project feasible.

And so some of these tools can help uh developers find ways forward in terms of financing, especially as we face more challenges with development in the community, and that our ability to grow outward into sort of those easier to develop greenfield areas is more and more limited now with the inability to unilaterally annex.

Um, and now annexation has to happen through voluntary um efforts.

Um, and we're finding there's less sort of uh desire from the development community to to annex as opposed to developing in the unincorporated portion of the county or other communities.

And if we're able to support those projects more, we'll be able to address the housing needs that we have, but also within the parameters of what we'd like to see that development look like.

Um other things that we've suggested or found were ways that you can internally help facilitate development through your review process, and we'll talk about that in the infill incentive portion.

Um then also how do we support and grow our network of community development organizations that are active in different programs to help housing production.

So that was a lot.

I gave you an overview of the overall housing strategy.

Uh before we jump into discussion, I just want to talk about next steps.

Um as I mentioned, this housing strategy is part of the overall comprehensive plan effort.

Um city staff has been bringing you different elements of the comprehensive plan for your consideration.

I know you talked about the future land use map previously.

Uh ultimately, all of these elements will go through a series of community open houses and then back to you for a council adoption of the overall comprehensive plan.

This is an opportunity here to ask questions and provide input on specifically the housing strategy.

So with that, I'll stop talking for a minute.

Matt, that was impressive.

Thank you.

You didn't have no notes or anything, did you?

No, I've given it a lot.

So you did a good job, Matt, and thank you for for giving us the uh the update there.

And as you mentioned, there's some next steps on page 30, page 35.

There'll be a number of things we'll have to bring back to uh council.

Yep.

One question I do have is on the housing accelerator program, the national.

Who else is participating in that and how did we get involved?

You know, I'm not the best to answer that.

Is there city staff?

Yeah, Casey with planning.

We'll have a better answer.

Okay.

Good morning.

Hi, good morning, Casey Schnell with uh Urban Planning and Design.

So we have four of our council representatives currently a part of that alongside city staff, and it's been expanded to like economic development, community human development.

So everyone that's kind of working on housing.

Oh, very good.

Very good.

And then the last question I have is you talked about the housing trust fund on page 32.

Is there and you talked about a couple ways of getting dollars into that fund?

Is there grant dollars available for that?

Are there private dollars that can also go into?

Because you talk general fund into what other types of of money mechanisms are there?

Yeah, so commonly we've seen cities try to seed this through either uh one-time allocation of capital improvement funds or general fund dollars or through bond programs.

That's been a common one uh on the city side.

Although creation of the trust fund though, puts the fund at more of an arm's length from your your operation of your regular general fund budget.

So uh exploring ways to look at philanthropic investments that might come into that becomes more of an option through that trust fund.

And so are there ways to partner with foundations that might be interested in funding specific programs so that the trust fund would then administer is something to explore.

Um I I can't think of any specific grant opportunities, but that is something to explore as well.

But uh creating the separate trust fund gives you more flexibility and less sort of the challenges and hurdles of just funding your housing programs directly out of your general fund on a year to year basis.

Very good.

Thank you.

Representative Canellas.

Thanks, Mayor.

Um yeah.

Uh really thorough presentation.

Um I know that this has been in the works for quite a long time.

Um I don't have particular questions, and I I want to actually ask a question not about what's presented, but kind of in the next steps.

It's difficult to give feedback to you but live essentially in this setting.

Um will there be some formal process for uh I I know we'll have the community open houses to get specific feedback from the members of council about the plan uh between now and August September time frame for adoption.

I think yes, I'll let Casey into the um so no formal process I guess has been identified specifically, but what we're doing is we're posting everything on our conveyos site for for gathering public comment, so that could be a way to circulate.

Um and then I think we'll work with our leadership to identify any additional steps.

Okay.

Um and then uh strategically, or I guess the way that we work through this for a rollout, um, is the idea to bring a lot of these policies together as a single package, or is this something that we look to implement over time?

Uh implemented over time.

So uh as we've worked with both the housing supply accelerated group and the C of T group identifying both the growth areas and then prioritization and where those apply, so versus um rather than taking a blanketed approach for everything, it's really looking at um what's going to be the best fit where so taking them incrementally and kind of in batches.

Okay, yeah, the the strategy identifies a lot of uh tools, strategies.

Uh I I just want to make sure that we leave this in a place in a final draft where there's an implementation plan kind of for all of those strategies that is identified maybe across a timeline or my worry like often is that you know we we have identified lots of great tools and then there's not a concrete plan for for like a phased implementation.

Yeah, so we have um within the matrix that Matt had showed on one of the earlier slides, uh sort of a short-term, medium-term, and then long-term approach to that implementation.

So again, both in kind of bucketing prioritization of certain more of the policy aspects, there's also um programs and process improvements that have been identified in that short term that you know are sort of internal um work that don't need to go after additional funding or anything like that, so those we can address rather quickly.

Okay.

And they're they're really identified just through the short-term, medium term, and long term.

So uh given within the first um you know, zero to one year, two to three year, um that aligned with the way that's departmentally we're structured uh to meet our metrics for each year, so that's gonna be structured in that way too.

So they'll they'll be kind of aligned in that sense.

Okay, but the idea is to come to council with some of these things as soon as the around September when it says for that initial implementation time frame.

Um I don't know how to answer that one.

I'm looking at slide 36.

It says Yeah.

Yeah, August September council adoption.

Adoption of this particular plan, but not of any of the rollout.

That's the entire comp plan.

Yeah.

We're bringing everything back to use.

We're bringing everything in buckets so we can kind of have some digesting of all of it.

Go back out for the community meeting.

We will find ways for you to provide any final input, but then we have to come back to adopt the entire comprehensive plan, and then from there the um items that we have listed will be um included within the strategic plan.

And then from there the items that we have listed will be included within the strategic plan.

So I already have a layout for the next two years from Alex and the team in terms of some of these pieces more than happy to share some of those with you already working on some of the permitting pieces and things that we know are going to be critical to this plan.

And so those are already included, and so you'll see those in my reports as well over the next year.

Okay.

And will that timeline be included in the adopted comprehensive plan, or is it something that we have to do?

We are forceful with our time.

Okay.

I mean, some of it I think require us to sort of have some discussions and conversations and then really understand the breadth and depth for the changes that we're saying that we're going to put forth.

And then I think it gives us a better opportunity to kind of understand what those changes are.

A lot of those are policy things that we would need to bring forward.

I'm not quite sure the extent of the work at this point.

Okay.

But yeah, we're seeing it within the two-year strategic planning cycle that starts September 1 for some of these.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm a little bit into minds.

I understand the importance of giving you the flexibility on the timeline.

I just want to make sure that we are if we are adopting this plan, we are committing to bringing these things forward in a reasonable amount of time.

Correct.

Yeah, and I didn't realize you were talking about the adoption time.

So one of the commitments we made with this comprehensive plan was that it was going to be executable, that it was not going to be an award-winning document that's just sort of sitting on the shelf, and so making sure that we had very concrete actions to hold ourselves accountable for the things that we were saying.

And I think you see that we're looking at things that are really going to be achievable within our community.

Um, not having everything sort of be in one bucket or dependent on a certain level of funding.

There are things that we can do to move the plan forward, you know, even if some elements of this don't uh aren't realized within the next few years.

As far as thinking is the entire plan should have those steps included.

Okay.

Um and then my final question is on the anti-displacement strategy specifically.

Um I know that directive came later from the council, and so it's on just a generally later timeline.

Um we don't anticipate to have that completed by the time of comp plan adoption.

Correct.

Yeah, I think we're working with staff on sort of a six to nine month time frame that's already started.

Um follow uh the conference of plan adoption.

And so within the housing strategy is the recommendation to implement an anti-displacement strategy.

We've done a lot of the data work to support where we need to target specific programs already.

Um and what we're doing is really taking that next step of investigating what policies you can actually implement.

And I think the outcome of the strategy is to have a suite of whether it's policy recommendations or potential programs that you can bring forward to implement.

So it's really to me, my it's kind of a next step implementation item that's already happening uh the housing strategy.

We were able to sort of move that forward with that council directive to do so.

Okay.

I guess my only request would be that uh similar to my last one, some sort of uh preview, if you will, or some sort of semblance of that anti-displacement strategy be at least called out in a little bit more detail in the comp plan if if that's if we're able to.

It doesn't have to be the entirety of the strategy you know, all fleshed out because I understand that will take several months to develop.

Um but like you said, a lot of that work has been started already, and so whatever we can include, I think would be important in uh uh letting the community know that that that has happened already.

Okay.

Yeah, I we'll work with staff to define what that looks like to see more um definition there.

Some things that jump out to me is we have a good sense of the areas that have the highest need and priority, and some of those sub areas we identified in the housing strategy were specifically designed or drawn around sort of that realization that uh those certain portions of the community have greater issues or needs or vulnerability to the or to displacement issues, and so we have that framework geographically as well as uh already a suite of tools to consider, and so we'll think about what level of additional detail we can add into the strategy uh to provide that guidance.

Got it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Representative Travis.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, and thank you for the presentation.

Um I guess I have some comments and some questions.

Uh generally speaking.

So the first thing I'd like to say is I know that this is a conversation that's happening happening all across the country.

A few of us a few months ago were at the National League of Uh Cities at in Washington, and I know that NLC is also pushing uh towards some bills at the federal level regarding housing strategy.

So I know it's a conversation happening all over our country.

Um I have a lot of questions.

We've been a part of the CFT uh group for a few months now, but many of the things that you've presented today are are new to me.

Like I haven't, I'm not aware of them at least.

So I have some concerns and some questions.

I would love the opportunity to probably meet with you one-on-one to go through those questions because I think it's too many for me to cover in a 10-minute period.

Okay.

And I don't know what the best way to do that, but I would I would like that very much.

And I've had also conversations with Alex.

I know he's not here today, but he knows some of those concerns as well.

Um so I'd like to continue the conversation with him also.

Um I I know that your consulting firm has offices in Oakland, Sacramento, from your presentation, Los Angeles and Denver.

From all the cities that you've evaluated, how where does El Paso, how does El Paso relate to those other cities?

Well, I think uh you're unique in some interesting ways.

Um you haven't felt to some of your Texas peers, you haven't felt quite the acute rapid growth pressures that say Austin, San Antonio, even you know, Houston, Dallas have had, which have really exacerbated some of those housing problems.

And so while your economy has grown, um it hasn't grown at such a rapid rate that it's created profound issues.

So you have a real opportunity to put in place some things like anti-displacement or ways to help support housing production in a way that I think is uh not as critical as some of those other communities.

Um I think uh you being relatively isolated um creates uh some challenges in that uh your development, it's this is somewhat true, but your development community is really hyper local.

Um so you have a lot of folks that are doing good stuff, but you need to continue to sort of build the capacity of that development community.

Um that's one thing we heard that even if the city is able to help support with processing permits quicker or better review process.

Sometimes the challenges are with inspections with your utility providers.

Sometimes it's just finding professionals in the community that have time and capacity to support projects.

Um it's that realization you kind of need to collectively build that capacity greater because you don't have the same uh sort of larger sort of access to folks in that community that say you know along the I-35 corridor in Texas would have.

Um yeah, I mean, I think those are the two biggest things that jump out to me.

I mean, that the other thing is you're still a relatively affordable community.

It's still relatively easy to buy a home here.

Um and maintaining that I think is a part of your competitive advantage economically.

And so uh a big key to that is obviously economic development and creating uh attracting jobs that can pay better wages that help support homeownership going forward, but it's also making sure that we're creating a uh housing options that the community can buy um as opposed to having to go outside the community to find housing.

And so um part of maintaining that affordability is to continue to produce housing options that the community needs and wants.

And I think uh in addition to what you just mentioned, El Paso is very unique because we're a binational community.

83% of our population more or less is Hispanic.

Um you talked about overcrowding in homes.

I don't know if any of that is because of our culture here, you know, and people um having more children here.

I don't know if if overcrowding is with adults specifically, or you also estimated with children.

Like those are the types of questions that I would like to know more about.

You you do have uh a much higher percentage of folks that uh are children living, adult children living with their parents than you see in other in Texas overall as well as national.

Your average is much higher.

But that is not directly related to overcrowding.

Um the overcrowding, as I said, the definition we looked at is more than one person per unit in a per room, sorry, in a housing unit.

Um and so this sort of uh cultural practice of living with family until you're you're getting married or buying a home uh doesn't necessarily have to show up in overcrowding data.

Um it's more the actual the physical size of the unit and the number of folks living in it.

And to be over that one point that one uh person per uh room threshold, it needs it is a more of a reflection of multiple households living in one unit than it is sort of a cultural sort of uh practice of uh family members living together.

What about other houses what about other cities that you've uh studied regarding their income levels?

Are we how do we how do we fit in that?

Yeah, relatively lower income than some of the larger Texas cities, but although kind of comparable to some other larger Southwest cities like Tucson, Albuquerque, um those some are several levels.

Um and they have similar challenges in the work that we've we've we've looked at.

Those communities have uh been trying to attract more urban reinvestment and have a little bit more successful than El Paso has.

And so uh I think there are somewhat models for some strategies you could utilize.

Um I do a lot of work in San Antonio, they've been uh uh relatively similar wage level and been pretty successful, not only in attracting urban investments in terms of housing in their downtown core, but also building community capacity and support for uh a housing bond that they passed um and then are looking to do another cycle of that's helped create funding for supporting affordable housing projects uh in the community.

Now you mentioned Austin earlier.

I know that they had affordable housing strategies uh that their city did.

Um I I don't know how successful they've been, but I I've read some articles regarding that.

Do you have uh any input on that?

Yeah.

Uh yeah, we uh do a fair amount of work for the city of Austin.

Um one of the things that we most recently did is they have a a pretty robust density bonus program.

Uh their market is very strong in terms of development demand and pressures, and so they've been able to do a good job of leveraging private development to create affordable housing through density bonus programs.

Uh their downtown program uh has been able to leverage a lot of fee and lo revenue.

So a lot of um you're sort of in essence either providing an on-site unit or paying a fee to go higher uh in height in your project, and that's created a lot of resources.

They've their other density pronous bonus programs that have been successful is their affordable housing unlocked program, which was a program that's tailored around supporting basically 100% affordable projects.

And so they've provided a number of sort of regulatory flexibility and bonuses for projects that are completely affordable to make it easier for them to develop.

And it also provides them more options in terms of sites that they might be able to develop than uh typical uh market rate development would because of that zoning flexibility.

And so that program has been super successful for them.

Uh they've had to do a lot more aggressive work around displacement issues because of the rapid pace of growth.

Um and so they've had a lot of focus on that.

I am less uh of an expert of what they've implemented there, but there are some things to consider um related to that those, you know.

Well, I appreciate the presentation.

I'm almost out of time.

I I have a lot more questions.

I have several concerns as well, but I think it's better if we address them one-on-one and with the team.

Um I do just want to say that I think it's important that when we adopt policy that we make sure that we're adopting the best policy with the right vision in place for the future.

I know that again, this is a conversation happening nationwide, but there's so much need, right?

And so we just always have to decide uh where to focus our efforts and our taxpayer dollars and and anything else.

And it's an important conversation.

So thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

Representative Traho.

Thank you, Mayor.

I have a question on page or slide 24.

When you look at the strategy and attracting the diversity of housing types, were there any, you know, considering that there's uh an increase in 60 plus of individuals that are homeowners.

Yeah.

Was there any discussions or strategy on having 55 plus community?

You know, not specifically.

Uh that did come up a lot, especially with the community development organizations, was uh trying to be able to keep homeowners in their home over time.

And so some of those programs around uh home repair or upgrades are related to how you could retrofit for you know wheelchair ramps or you know, zero step entry kind of universal design principles and creating resources to help folks, whether it's an incentive or a low interest loan, something to to allow them to adapt their home so they could stay in over time.

And so that could fit pretty pretty well within uh a home repair grant program if you have resources to provide those.

So that's one thing that we did consider.

Uh in terms of new development, we didn't specifically identify any strategies related to uh 55 or older communities other than encouraging them.

Um I don't know that could be something we could consider in terms of what might be some specific strategies.

I think about while you're thinking through building code and development code changes, uh making it easier to do uh more universal design techniques that allow for um making sure you don't have regulations that are making it more burdensome for folks to get in and out of their homes, you know, and so a little more flexibility in design.

Um I'm not uh an expert in your code in relation to that issue, and so I I think that could be a recommendation that we we plant in the housing strategy to consider that through as you start going through the accelerator program and look at some specific development code regulation changes.

Yeah, I think we do need to take a look at that, especially if that's increasing the the number of of homeowners, but also you know, the older the seniors are looking at ways on how they can downsize and and then the possibility of doing something where we have a community of 55 plus and that specific community is is geared toward that.

So I think that's a very important area to consider.

Thank you.

Represent Fiero.

Thank you, Mayor.

Mayor, this question is for Ms.

Mac.

Um Ms.

Mac, this gentleman has shared a lot of local data with us today.

Is it possible for for you to share that information, that data with all the council?

Absolutely.

So thank you, Mayor.

Okay, Representative.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the great presentation as well.

I I also would love to sit down and have further conversation with you.

I'm part of the cross functional team for the housing strategy.

Um and I was trying to understand in regards of like the you know, I know that this is part of the envision plan, and I know that I've asked staff like trying to really get a comprehensive understanding of even the input that was obtained from the cross-functional team.

I'm not sure how it ties to your because again, some of the new uh tools.

I mean, there's policy advocacy and then there's tools, but this is the first time that we're having this conversation um with you, so I think uh I would also benefit of having that conversation.

Um I'm glad that you have a slide of defining affordability in it, Baso, and I know that I've mentioned with staff, um, you know, or even just public safety, any conversation that we have could be defined by different committee members very differently.

Um oftentimes I know that you know we talk about affordability, but we might focus on low income housing or other strategies.

So I'm glad to see that there's other strategies in place, including ensuring that we um you know, you know, one of the things that I've constantly have mentioned is how do we build more home ownership, how do we help individuals build that generational wealth?

Um and I know that I've had numerous conversations with the city attorney and Ms.

Mack of other strategies that I'm thinking about and other ideas that I could possibly would like to have for the conversation on.

Um, because I've been thinking about even just bringing items forward of what is it that I could uh advocate for to ensure that you know that home ownership and first-time home buyer programs, for example, could possibly be an opportunity.

Last year I had a uh asked about the first time home buyer program, and I know that that used to be a program that the City of El Paso used to have many years ago, but you know, rising costs don't make it feasible anymore.

But I have some ideas that I want to possibly discuss uh because I think again, um to me it's about how do we help individuals reach that home ownership, build that generational wealth uh to help overall our our our community.

I think uh just uh reflect on that.

I think you have um both in the housing finance corporation as well as your local lending environment or partners, uh they offer programs and options that um I think the city partnering with and building on is a great framework for addressing that.

And so as you look at those, I would I would encourage including those your local mortgage lenders as well as the housing finance corporation, including those in those conversations.

Great.

Uh and and Ms.

Mack or staff, um, when it comes to us, we did a survey with our cross-functional teams and the housing accelerator, kind of the different policy priorities that we wanted to advocate for that we wanted to prioritize, and I know that there was you know, every different every district is also very different.

How does how how does that input tie to this?

Yeah, so this is just a snapshot of the strategy matrix.

I just want to make sure that we're really clear on that.

So it's not meant to be the comprehensive snapshot of all the things that you've talked about.

I think we'll make sure you get all the information.

And I think what's going to be important is as you're thinking about ideas, does it give us the flexibility over the next 10 years?

Because the comprehensive plan is that long to do the types of things that you may want to do.

Okay.

So it should be a broad policy, and under that policy, can we do some of the things that we might want to do?

Then one of the conversations I have with the team was, you know, I certainly don't think we have an appetite for you know issuing debt or doing some of those things that are our tools that we are listing in here, but it doesn't mean that we're we're going through this process to really understand the breadth of what those tools might be sort of in the future.

If that is something that a future council may see as a higher priority, then we make sure that we've done the work and we have the data to be able to really understand that.

So I'll make sure you get the full documents, and we'll also make the staff available for follow-up meetings before we come back for the adoption of the plan, and we won't do an adoption to everybody's company.

Great.

And if the tools are just their ideas should the body wish to implement or find funding or strategies, so really just trying to make sure that as we're thinking about these things, and you'll hear the next presentation too, as we're thinking about developing new policies for economic development and others.

What are the basis for that?

What does it tell us about our community?

This is far more from my perspective, comprehensive than the plan we did in in 2019.

That was our high house housing strategy.

You know, it really covers everything in the way that I didn't understand for our city.

And so that's really what we're hoping to do.

Some of these policies we may bring back to you right away.

Some things we will be doing right away, and you'll see that within the matrix.

Um, but if we're going to consider this of somebody sitting, you know, you're seeing eight years, you know, what does this look like and how do you understand what our strategy is for a city because it really becomes our comprehensive plan for everyone?

Thank you for that.

No, thank you.

Um, one more follow-up question when it comes, I saw that some of the data that the consultant puts together comes from the American community survey from the census.

Me myself personally have not been a huge fan of the American Community Survey or census because I feel that there's discrepancies and not enough people actually participate, at least from what I've seen, right?

Um my staff and I have analyzed the different community service throughout years to try to analyze how do we advocate more for my district.

I know that we had a conversation, like for example, for opportunity zones.

Um and we were analyzing the different patterns and including when it comes to MIAMI, and including when we were talking about um multi-generational families, you know, um we see more and more individuals leaving together, but then that kind of um affects when it comes to the income of the home rather than the actual property owner or the person who's paying the bills.

So I will again I would like to have more conversations about that just to understand really how um we could even possibly in the future advocate, right?

Of you know, a lot of these um data points come from again the American community survey in the census, but I think it's also having a broader conversation of, you know, um, I think we analyzed my staff where the the average income comes from all everyone if it's mom, dad, brother, sister, and everyone ha is working, they put all their their uh incomes together, so then they're at a higher threshold compared to you know, there might be only one or two people that are paying for that home and they're still living in poverty.

So um again, uh I'm looking forward to further conversations with you to really try to comprehend and understand that to even advocate for further tools or or policies in place to help with this uh housing uh strategy that we're working on.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Okay, Representative Brocha.

Thank you, Mayor.

And thank you for the presentation.

Uh and and this may be for staff first.

Um you mentioned that there was community outreach.

How many meetings were held when it came to community outreach?

Uh we had a total of seven working group meetings for the assessment portion.

We had uh three focus group uh three focus groups.

Uh we met with them twice, and then we had maybe about 30 one-on-ones uh into 2026.

We had a total of 50 meetings, um, a presentation to GEPAR an additional meeting with our community-based organizations, which is part of that earlier focus group, our eight neighborhood association meetings, one per district.

Um, and that's it.

The seven for our working group is included in that.

Thank you, Casey.

And about how many total would you say attendees did you have out of these um 50 meetings?

Would you be able to sum that up?

Um I know I had included it on the backup with everyone that uh shows.

That everyone was there.

I think in um the 50 meetings that were held in 2026, a lot of them are one-on-one or two people involved in those, so you would say at least 50 there.

Um our CBOs was about 12.

Our working group always range between 10 or 12.

And then the neighborhood association meetings, they ranged from you know, five to twenty or something like that.

So, in in the upcoming community outreach that you're gonna be doing, is it gonna be similar to what what you've previously done, holding like community meetings or district meetings, or what is that really look like?

So this will be more of an open house format.

Again, it's bringing envision El Paso as a whole.

Um, so it's all of the components that make up the plan, so including the housing strategy, we also have the future land use map and the land use plan.

So we are proposing to host them as open houses.

They it allows it for more of a conversational, really walking through the whole process for developing the plan, being able to show the recap of engagement and what was said and how it's applied, how it's integrated into the plan, and then be able to show sort of the proposed updates in the plan as well as having the online components or people can kind of dig into the finer details.

Okay.

I I appreciate that.

And then um is is it supposed to be in each district, or are you just gonna host uh certain a certain number of meetings?

Is there an expectation on that?

Uh we're looking to host four, really centrally located to capture multiple districts.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Is that it, representative?

Yes, thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

And maybe this is for staff also on slide 21.

It's housing needs by sub area.

Is there a way to clearly define by district?

Because you have Central South and South Central, and is there a way to represent by district?

I think the way that would come to mind, but I know that it has a component to the data aspect that I'll let Matt speak to is just overlaying district lines onto what that sub-area map already is.

But yeah, so these boundaries align with census check lines.

Okay.

And uh it could be possible to reorganize the database on district, assuming those districts follow census check lines that would be.

Okay.

So it's by census track.

Yeah.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Representative.

Representative Russia.

Thank you, Mayor.

That actually led to something else.

Um when we talk about the the AMI, you have less than 50% AI, 51 to 80, 81 to 150, and then greater than 150.

On these, is there a way to set it up so that we can see how many units there currently are fitting into each of these buckets, and then what the actual need is per bucket?

Um, yes, we can.

Yeah.

I think that would be super helpful.

Yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Yeah.

All right, any other questions?

That's clearly not Miss Nunez, so Luis?

I believe we have public comment.

Look at this.

All right, Ms.

I believe we have some public comment on the side.

Yes, we do, sir.

We have Ms.

Kathleen Stout, followed by Richard Deyub, Carmen Rodriguez, and Rafael Garcia.

Okay.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Stout, you have three minutes, ma'am.

Thank you.

My name is Kathleen Stout, Kathy for Short.

I'm co-founder of the Community First Coalition and a member of the Affordable Housing Group headed by Carmen Rodriguez.

She will also speak.

I speak today in support of item two for this work session focused on housing strategy.

Well-designed report, uh, excellent material.

I commend city staff for thoroughly researching and consulting with the community, very elaborate, uh, for presenting findings that target geographic areas and affordable housing needs, for presenting a strategy that resonates with both the bipartisan federal effort, the 21st century Road to Housing Act, which recently became law, and last year's state legislative actions, at least four bills were passed that resonate here.

Um I also commend them for uh the idea of using vacant uh city lots and public schools for affordable housing, and uh finally for generating capital for an affordable housing through a TURS.

Uh from the CFC community first perspective, our major points affirm support for supply of affordable housing inside the city and uh streamlined procedures as per new state and federal laws.

However, we in the CFC would also like to push a little further than the strategies under consideration for the following.

Number one, expanding opportunities for nonprofit affordable housing developers and medium-sized for-profit developers to take advantage of low-income tax credits.

Number two, facilitating community land trusts.

I noticed one little line in the presentation on that, uh, but this is a way to reduce the overall cost of homes by as much as a third for home buyers uh for the legal trust of leased land.

Many cities in Texas afford this opportunity, including Texas, uh including Austin, Texas.

In addition, I would like to make a few points from me as a retired political scientist with one foot in the MPA public administration program.

Please identify who is in charge of what seems to be a somewhat fragmented effort.

Not wanting to criticize, but it does appear that way on the website.

Uh, who's in charge?

Who's the housing director?

Will the director be assigned a grant writer?

I think as one is desperately needed.

Also, please create a small fund, and this has been mentioned with different tools, uh, which capital finance incentives might be drawn from.

Uh, when I examined websites for other cities in Texas, I found such funding, albeit in San Antonio and Dallas, where voter-approved bonds exist, and I know El Paso ones have no stomach for that at the moment.

However, I wish to plant a seed for such a fund.

Can I give you a question?

We'll give you a few more minutes.

A few more seconds.

Okay, you're on the you're on a row, go ahead.

Okay.

Um, in sum, then I hope you will listen, read and positively consider the city staff affordable housing strategy presented today.

Uh we've been behind the curve on affordable housing rather than ahead of the curve for quite a while.

Uh, but it is time to keep up with the momentum and change in this movement.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks for the extra sentence.

You got it, thank you.

Thank you, ma'am.

Now we have Mr.

Richard Dayu.

Mr.

Deyup, you have three minutes, sir.

Good morning.

Good morning.

It's kind of hard to follow Cathy Stout, but I'll do my best.

Uh Richard Dave for the record uh registered lobbyists with the city.

I first want to thank Alex Hoffman and Casey Schnell for meeting with me along with several of my clients and for including the city's housing consultant, Matt, who made his presentation and listened to our recommendations.

And I see reflected a few of those in his recommendations.

We believe that it is advisable for the city to be proactive in developing strategies now and generally support these efforts.

Generally, we have a few recommendations for your consideration.

As is evidenced by the chart on slide 21 entitled Housing Needs by Sub-area, each of the six areas of the community have dramatically different challenges and needs.

One size does not fit all.

Each of my clients underscored this point.

Consistently, the common theme in our meetings is that current city code discourages infill development, partly because of the related costs as well as the limited inventory of property that is economically feasible to develop, especially for multifamily housing and affordable housing in particular.

While community development has made some improvements to the criteria for affordable housing support, a great deal more needs to be done.

Despite stating that we want walkable neighborhoods, not all neighborhoods are realistically walkable.

Except in design senior communities, there persists a perception that affordable housing means many of the residents do not have private transportation.

So requiring specific criteria, such as proximity to public transportation and grocery outlets as a scoring measure for support, is in my view contrary to both the reality that most have their own vehicles, but also making it more difficult to reach your stated goals of increasing the housing stock.

Zoning codes and lengthy permitting processes also make it difficult and excessively costly to develop within the city compared to the ETJ and neighboring communities.

As you identify areas of the community that you want to develop, consider incentives that are mutually beneficial and equitable to all development in those areas.

We should consider policies that remove barriers so as to increase our housing inventory and affordability.

You have an excellent opportunity to make changes now that will encourage developers and builders to support infill development that makes economic sense and will help the city achieve its long-term goals to include regaining our location advantage, which we have lost to the outlying communities.

Thank you.

Thank you, Richard.

Followed by Miss Carmen Rodriguez.

And then we'll have Rafael Garcia.

Good morning, Miss Rodriguez.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Thank you for this opportunity.

I'm from Community First Coalition, and I'm not a registered lobbyist.

This is all volunteer work.

We started working on housing on affordable housing in 2023.

We began with uh commenting to the mayor leiser and his administration regarding the downtown plan.

At that time, we urged the city to focus on current residents.

And we have seen uh for too long that thousands of working families with children and elders who live in all eight districts and have long lacked adequate and dignified housing.

We believe then and now that such conditions breed hopelessness in our youth and reflect negatively on our city.

We have continued to work on this issue to educate ourselves, and we've had many meetings, many discussions.

We have a group uh from all over the city, uh, some with a lot of knowledge of the issue and also of the community.

Um we were never optimistic uh that the federal housing act was going to pass, but miraculously it has passed at least up to today, I hope.

So uh today there is much to be optimistic about.

Uh hopefully those funds will come in and uh we won't have uh that huge challenge that we have always had.

Uh we have documented our findings and our recommendations, and uh what I would like to do is leave this information with you so that you can look at it in your own time.

There is a lot of detail.

This is a complex and very broad issue.

So I'm not going to speak very long, except that I would like to make a couple point to a couple of our recommendations.

One of them is a city registry.

We are very concerned about the rental conditions in some of our uh very low-income areas.

Uh we are aware that many of these homes, apartments, uh are really uninhabitable.

Technically, they are uninhabitable, they do not meet the requirements that that habitability uh has.

Uh we are very much in favor of the housing trust fund and a community land trust.

The tours is a very good idea.

Many of our ideas are very uh much supportive of what the city has presented, but we also have some ideas of our own that we would like for you to look at and consider.

And we will continue to work on this and attend the community meetings, and hopefully, we will be able to uh agree on many many of these initiatives.

We look forward to that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Mr.

Rafael Garcia.

Father.

Father Garcia.

Rob Markman, Ms.

Rodriguez, you could give those documents to Miss Nunez.

You have three minutes, Father.

Good morning.

Good morning, Mayor and Council.

Good morning to be here with you.

Uh I'm Rafael Garcia, I'm the pastor of Sacred Heart Church, which I've been a pastor there for total 19 years at two different times.

First time starting in 1994.

So I'm pretty familiar with the Segundo Barrio and adjacent areas.

And I want to share some of the uh I want to share some of the issues that connect with the topic of housing and what Ms.

Carmen Rodriguez just mentioned and the presentation dealt with.

Um basically also I'm uh I'm an architect.

I was an architect before I became a priest in Miami, Florida, so I've got some experience there as well.

But uh there's just this ongoing since the 90s uh as a pastor here in Costa BC, the same problem occurring where it's people that are have major problems in their apartment units, uh, major deficiencies, dangerous situations, uh plumbing problems, lighting, inadequate lighting, inadequate ventilation.

Uh recently we we've learned, I don't know how uh appropriate this is, but there's two buildings that we know of that have multiple units, people renting in different units, and there's only two bathrooms available in one case.

You have to walk through one area of a person's unit to get to the bathroom.

So things like that are happening.

I think you're aware of that.

Uh people are afraid to complain, so the current system has to be revisited for complaining from the tenant because people are just not doing it.

They're afraid of being uh told to leave.

If they have immigration issues at their families, they sometimes that's brought up as a kind of a threat.

Uh so the present system is not working.

I also find that uh there's a need for inspections, which apparently are not uh part of the code system or inspection systems at the time.

These are commercial areas.

Uh they're gathering spaces in these apartment complexes, like courtyards where everybody has to go out through that courtyard, and often those courtyards don't have the proper hardware on their exits, which are required of other uh gathering spaces, like for example, in a church or a store.

So I think there some things have to be revisited.

I would uh I just want to suggest two things.

One of them, if the present codes don't uh require uh inspections of these buildings, I think something should be done about the codes to make them work for the least of our brothers and sisters who are hardworking people who often don't have a voice.

That's one thing.

The other one, there should be some sort of, I would think some kind of whistleblower type protection for people that have the courage to step up and want to denounce what's going on.

Uh at present, people are very afraid.

When we visit homes, they tell us, well, don't say anything because we're afraid we may be asked to leave.

So something should be done about the present systems so that they work for the people.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Representative Long, did you want to say something?

We don't normally provide comment, but represent them all.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just wanted to add, I I'm not sure that I mentioned this to Kelsey when we did the the briefing, but at our last meeting of the Housing Finance Corporation, we're applying for $25 million in first-time homeowner uh funding that's going to come to the city, specifically to the city of El Paso.

Fantastic.

Okay.

Any other comments on this item?

Okay.

We're going to move on to item number three.

There is no action on that item.

In item number three is presentation and discussion of the proposed redevelopment incentives policy, which is complementary element of the housing strategy, a key deliverable of the comprehensive plan update in vision al Paso.

The update will provide an overview of the current infill policy, the engagement process proposed policy update, and a summary of overarching overarching policies and goals to direct and guide economic development efforts in the region and city.

Good afternoon, Matt.

Hey, I'm back.

Yeah.

It's afternoon now.

Good afternoon.

So two big focus areas of the comprehensive plan uh were housing and then economic development.

And so the first part of our task and of this presentation is really uh sort of a uh summary or overview of what all you're doing economic in terms of economic development in the community.

Um I think it's an important element of a comprehensive plan is to express to the community what you're doing, and it provides an opportunity to show that framework.

Um within that, uh doving on the housing work and the work in the future land use map.

Uh we were tasked with looking at specific um potential refinements or changes to your infill incentive policy.

Um and so the first set of slides is providing that overall framework of what you're doing in economic development.

A lot of this you're probably aware of, you're working on it day to day.

Um, and it's showing how the infill incentive program fits into that and to the larger context, and then we'll get into the specific process that we went through and recommendations we have for refinement for that policy.

So, terms of economic development.

We've we're developing sort of economic development policy overview or framework that will be part of the comprehensive plan.

Uh its components include an overview of your existing economic climate, your assets and partners, uh guiding efforts that impact economic developments, which includes your strategic plan, as well as the regional sets and other efforts.

Uh underneath that, we've developed sort of three policy buckets underneath all of your schedule or what you're doing in terms of economic development fall, and then sort of listing the programs and tools.

Um as you know, uh the economy in El Paso has been growing at a relatively consistent rate, around one percent annually in job growth.

Um it's been outpacing population growth, as I mentioned.

Uh, your economic base driven by health care, education, defense, and military, trade, and tourism.

Um health care has really emerged as one of the largest industries and fastest growing industries in El Paso.

And while we have economic growth, we do have a lot of jobs that pay relatively lower wage, 40 median wage in the community about 40,000 annually.

We have a lot of opportunities and challenges from an economic standpoint to face as a community.

You know, we have this amazing benefit of being at the center of international trade with the ports of entry into Mexico and our connection throughout North America and how we can build on that, as well as building on the presence of Fort Bliss and the military activity and spin-off activity that can occur related to that.

You all have a rich cultural and historic tradition here that it really attracts a lot of people and visitation to the area, and how do we continue to build on that?

Some great educational institutions that we can leverage to create economic activity.

And as been mentioned in previous comments, this multicultural bilingual workforce that is really a strength and unique aspect of our community.

But we also have challenges, uh, shifting international trade policies, which sometimes or a lot of times are completely out of your hands.

And so reacting to those.

We have an increase of cost of living and doing business.

We heard a lot through some of our outreach throughout this plan process to access the resources for businesses, uh, support new businesses and expansion of businesses is a challenge.

Um we have an economic base that is pretty heavily reliant on public sector employment.

And so our private property tax base from commercial and industrial uses is relatively lower to some of our peers, and that presents challenges in being able to reinvest in our community.

And so, how do we address that?

But you have a lot of really great assets to build on, obviously, being, as I mentioned, sort of the center of trade and manufacturing, second largest U.S.

Army installation that has a really outsized economic impact on the community, uh, our ports of entry and premier research education institutions that provide an opportunity for growth.

And with that, you have a lot of partners that are doing a lot of great stuff that most or uh some are reflected here.

And working collaborately is really the best way to grow the economy going forward.

Um, and you all have put some thought into this too.

Within your strategic plan, you've uh placed economic mobility as one of your key uh pillars, um, creating opportunity and prosperities for all of Pasuans through strengthening economic mobility and that local identity that is here.

And those sort of key strategies or core strategies you've identified are sort of reflected in the policy statements that we created for the plan, looking at workforce pathways, supporting individuals and local businesses within our key industries, um, defining how the city can support uh housing options and affordability.

We just talked about that.

I think it's important to underscore how more and more uh housing availability is a key part of economic development uh for cities like El Paso, and so continued support for those efforts, as well as how can you do better to help support businesses expand, make changes, grow over time.

Um as you know, there is currently a regional effort being done to create a regional comprehensive economic development strategy.

This is a five-year regional strategy document that's created that identifies the priority uh economic growth areas and projects within communities, and it helps to uh provide a listing of those priority projects that the community is going after that can help secure funding, specifically uh federal funding for economic development support.

So this is an important effort to be part of.

Um they're currently in the process of drafting that.

I know that city staff has been giving you updates along the way on this.

Um, and so a key component of your economic development efforts.

Uh, another key component, I think, that's going on right now, is the future landings map.

Um, while it may not jump out, but I think it's a core element of ensuring you have a healthy economy is making sure you have healthy economic places for businesses to locate and grow.

And so that plan is an important element of identifying those key employment locations in our community, whether there are our centers and corridors that have a mixture of uses or those specific employment areas that have things like manufacturing, logistics operations, and making sure that we're planning for the types of spaces we our economy need is a really important element, and that's something that feature land use map is pushing forward.

Um, with that framework, we had generally identified three major policy buckets that your efforts fit underneath.

Um, and this is sort of a reflection within the comprehensive plan of what you're doing.

First is looking at diversifying and growing the economic base by providing supports to businesses.

You do that currently through uh foreign and domestic uh business expansion, attraction and retention efforts with focuses on some target industries, advanced manufacturing, uh defense industry-based businesses, international trade, life sciences.

You also do this through support of small businesses, your boss program is a key uh component of supporting small business development, and you also do that through supporting tourism activities in diversity of different areas, whether it's cultural and heritage tourism, uh growing outdoor recreational opportunities, and then events and destinations, including things like your convention center and looking at things like uh youth and uh college sports and how that can leverage tourism.

The second major policy bucket for economic development is investing in your economic places to ensure that has the infrastructure needed to support economic growth.

You do that currently through things like your foreign trade zone designation, your uh advanced manufacturing district that you've identified, as well as through place management, um your downtown management district, uh city initiative tours, uh, the use of things like business improvement districts, those are types of strategies to curate and manage economic places, and then the ongoing investment and management of your critical infrastructure, including your ports of entry, uh, which are a key component of your economy.

And then the third bucket or policy related to economic development is supporting workers and residents to improve economic mobility.

We you do that through skill development, educational programs, career pathway programs, and then investing in quality of life infrastructure, and again, that's where this idea of affordable and accessible housing shows up, transportation connectivities, uh connectivity, the things like that to make sure that we have an attractive place for workers to live and thrive.

So, within that, you have a number of tools and programs that you utilize to implement those policies and strategies, including your chapter 380 grant and loan programs, your chapter 312 tax abatements, your existing infill development policy, which we're going to talk about in a second, these other programs that you've put in place, as well as state and federal programs that you're able to leverage and access.

And so what we've been asked to do is as we go through this important comprehensive plan process that really focuses on place and development of the city.

We were tasked with uh providing recommendations to one of those key tools that I just talked about.

One of those is your infill incentive policy, a redevelopment incentive policy.

Um, and so throughout our outreach, we heard a number of things from different stakeholders about the challenges of doing infill.

Um proving a market uh for new uses within existing parts of the city is a common challenge that a lot of cities face, and a common challenge of trying to build sort of a market within areas that uh haven't seen growth in recent areas.

We heard a lot about the uh approval review inspection capacity within the community and your broader development community and how we can enhance that, improve that to make it easier to build projects.

Umtility infrastructure upgrade costs are higher generally with infill projects, so how do we address that?

Umjects usually have very nuanced needs related to design, which perhaps a greenfield development wouldn't have.

It's a lot easier to develop out there because you don't have some of these existing condition parameters you have to work around, especially when you're talking about old buildings that are trying to be readapted, adaptively reused.

So, how do we create more flexibility to make it easier?

Um, especially as this community has been growing outward for a long time, and now the focus is sort of shifted back for a number of reasons.

Uh, a lot of your tools, your development regulations have been oriented to sort of developments on the edges of the community, and trying to retool those to address a greater diversity of types of projects is is uh part of this challenge that you're seeing now.

So your current tools that you provide to support infill reinvestment or infill development are your infill incentive incentive policy policy, sorry, your TOD incentive policy, which is pretty much a mirror of the infill incentive policy, uh, the use of tax increment reinvestment zones, um, as well as your downtown management district.

Um I want to focus on the infill incentive policy currently.

Um, so within your policy, what you currently have in the books are the use of a construction material sales tax rebate, an incremental property tax rebate, uh support with lien waivers for projects, as well as waiving building and permit uh building and planning permit fees, I think up to 10,000.

That's your current policy.

And the applicability of that policy is pretty broad in terms of its geographic reach.

Um, it defines infill as a pretty uh pretty broad definition throughout the community.

Um so what we've really dove into is what are some changes you might make to that incentive policy, and then what is the broader context of other organizations and tools that you might be able to leverage to help support that.

So we did some outreach specific to this program to to figure out how well it's working.

Um we mentioned those focus groups with design professionals in the community, they were an important part of this conversation.

They helped us kind of understand what the challenges are currently for development and then what challenges they're having with your current programs.

Um so I reflected to you in the first slide, sort of some of those more broader infill challenges, and then these are specific points of feedback that we heard from folks trying to use your incentives currently.

Um generally the reflection was there, they're often too small in value to address project feasibility gaps.

And so it's great that you're providing incentive, it's often not enough to move the needle.

Uh part of that is they're largely rebates, so you have to pay up front a lot of these taxes and fees and then wait for repayment rebate.

Um sometimes uh specifically to a property tax rebate.

Um, the increased value that's created for the property, the property valuation because you invest in your property can offset the impact of the rebate that you're getting.

And so there are some suggestions for how we might be able to recalibrate those to make them so that they're more impactful to projects, thinking about length and administration.

Um the sales and use tax rebate is uh we heard a very laborious program to use where you have to document every receipt that you have for a project, and uh it's often too hard to try to collect all of those different documentation requirements to to even use the program.

So it will cost you more to try to document the rebate than it would be just to get the rebate, so often not utilized.

Um, and then we heard that permit fee waivers are great.

Can they be increased or removed because um they've been really helpful and supportive?

So, what we've done is we did some financial modeling of different types of development projects in the community to kind of understand where do we find challenges with feasibility for different product types.

And so we looked at different ranges of mixed-use and multifamily developments stemming from small you know, five to twenty unit projects up to a larger, like 150 unit mixed use building, um, and and different contexts in terms of location and parking uh requirements to look at where there are financial challenges, and then if there are financial challenges with feasibility, uh how do the current incentives address those?

And so uh to no surprise, more of those urban infill projects have the more financial challenges, especially ones that have to have things like structured parking or more urban elements to make them fit within a site.

Um, and currently the incentives generally don't address those financial gaps.

Part of that is due to the length of abatement or rebatement of the property taxes is pretty limited, uh especially in line with your peers.

Um we also found that different projects have different varying needs.

So smaller projects have different needs than larger projects.

Uh, and then lastly, you utilize your tax increment zones to help support infill and reinvestment, um, but your partner um taxing districts don't often or ever participate, whether it's the school district or the county.

And we've seen in other communities in Texas as well as elsewhere in the south and western US, been able to leverage tax increment financing as a very powerful tool to support urban redevelopment.

But often they have the participation, at least a portion of school district or county property tax mills.

Um, and that is a sort of a missing sort of extra power that you could potentially uh explore with your partners.

So with this uh feedback from users of the incentive program, feasibility analysis, and the broader efforts that we are going through, we kind of set up a framework for the in for addressing infill development and how the city can play a role in that.

Um, first, there's through direct incentives, that's your infill incentive policy.

There's also ways the city can support re reinvest or redevelopment at infill.

Um ideas include uh we'll get into those in a second, but there's a bucket of different ways you can support infill developments as well as partnerships.

And I think that's something to emphasize is that how can we talk to our partner school districts, utility providers to help them join in this effort to help support reinvestment in the community.

And one of the biggest things we identify is we think it might make sense to structure your incentive policy around small projects versus large projects.

And so smaller scale projects being ones that you know are a couple a million or two in terms of total valuation, perhaps under you know, 15-20 units.

You've been doing a number of sort of individual chapter 380 agreements for some of these smaller projects that perhaps are only a half a million dollars in value versus larger ones that are much larger investments from the developer and have different financing uh obligations and challenges, and how do we sort of support NFL small infill projects differently than perhaps larger ones?

Um this is the meat of the recommendations that we have.

Three major recommendations for changes to the existing policy.

We think exploring and modification to have two different sets of projects.

Um we have suggestions for some specific modifications to agreement processes, definition, eligibility criteria, some tweaks that can make them more attractive.

And then lastly is have you now that we've gone through this future land use map process, this comprehensive plan, let's align our infill incentive policy to the growth areas that we are identifying.

And so the areas that we want to support development, that's the places where we want to address the additional costs and challenges of developing in those.

Um so using that effort to tie your incentive policy to it, which now is pretty broad in its definition.

So I'll go through each of those specifically.

Um, first, in terms of small projects, setting a maximum threshold in terms of project costs or units.

Um applying this more broadly, similar to how your current infill and policy uh works.

Is there a way to simplify your sales tax, sales and use tax rebate program so that it's more of like a grant as opposed to a laborious rebate program?

Exploring the use of a tax abatement instead of a rebate for projects for five years or 10 years if it's a more complicated project.

Um challenge that small projects have is the upfront cost of feasibility.

Uh, an incentive is less valuable for them in that if it's rebated, they still have to come out of pocket up front in terms of equity and cap and financing to make that project happen.

So if you can give them an abatement where they don't have to pay it, um, it can address those challenges.

And then continue to do things like provide waivers of development permit fees and property lien support.

And then in terms of larger projects, it's sort of thinking about this differently.

So start to target the use of the incentive policy to specific growth areas that you're identifying through the future land use map process.

Um creating a longer period for the tax rebate that you currently provide.

Currently, it's five to seven years with a decreasing percentage that is allocated to projects.

We found that uh creating a 75% tax increments of the value added portion of property tax created by the project for 10 years would put you in line with a lot of uh sort of the incentive level that a lot of your peer communities have been at that have been successful at creating infill project uh uh attracting infill projects.

Um and then sometimes as we try to build a market, perhaps in downtown for urban living or for mixed-use development, sometimes we need to explore some upfront grants or zero interest loans to help address uh feasibility in the near term as we build market momentum over time.

We found in some of our peer communities specifically, done work a lot in San Antonio had a very um a very successful infill incentive program um within their community.

Um they've set a priority goal of creating 7,500 housing units in their urban core over 10 years about a decade ago, and they put in an incentive policy that was very successful, um, pretty streamlined, where the same um incentive was provided to every project as long as it met eligibility criteria.

And it was very successful.

They met their target and became so successful that the market started to place a premium premium of being on downtown, and to the point where they didn't need the incentives anymore.

And their focus shifted more towards supporting affordable housing specifically because they have built a market, and we've seen that in other areas too.

And as you start to create uh a market for urban living and urban projects, the the need for those incentives will change over time.

And so the realization of we need to help support the market get its getting its feet to start, and then over time we can adjust that as market conditions improve, as people start to see the benefit and find premium and living in these walkable urban places in El Paso.

Other recommendations related to how else to support NFL and redevelopment.

We've found other communities have been very successful in dedicating a specific project review team or approval team to infill projects.

The needs of infill projects are so more diverse and different than greenfield projects that having a dedicated team that works continuously on these infill projects builds a capacity and knowledge and experience of how to address issues.

And another potential suggestion is to have specific roles within that review team to help support the process.

One is the idea of a project navigator, somebody that helps shepherd a development project through the review process and can help flag issues that are occurring.

And then another common challenge we see other communities address is that you often have multiple departments and utilities reviewing plans, and sometimes they have conflicting changes that they want in the plan, the conflicting challenges, and having an arbiter or somebody to help resolve those issues and figure out what is the greater policy priority or requirement to help move projects forward is something that's been successful in supporting infill and redevelopment.

Another call here in terms of the use of your tax increment zones, trying to encourage your partner jurisdictions or taxing districts to participate in a contribution of tax increment can really make that a valuable tool to not only support development projects directly as well as build resources for investment and programs and capital and infrastructure investments in your your TERS areas.

There's a state program that actually backfills the amount of lost revenue from their operating and maintenance portion of their tax levy if they participate in a tax increment district, which would make them more or less whole in terms of the amount of money they might be out of pocket if they were to participate.

And so exploring conversations with them to see if that's an option, as well as how the county can be a partner and the use of tax increment going forward.

Also talking with utility providers, specifically water and sewer and power.

Are there ways that they might be able to offset fees for redevelopment in areas that already have existing capacity or infrastructure that doesn't have outsized costs that they need to recover through their fee programs?

And how can they reduce the cost of infill development through uh waiver or rebate of a portion of their fees?

And then lastly, there are some additional tools to consider.

I've mentioned the housing finance corporation previously in the housing strategy.

That's a powerful tool that's had some uh has the additional power to support mixed income developments in the community, um, similar to how a public facilities corporation can support that.

So relying on that tool to help finance projects that especially those mixed income or affordable projects in infill locations, as well as exploring other state-enabled tools, things like a neighborhood empowerment zone.

Uh, that's similar to your chapter 312 and 380 agreement programs.

What you can do here is identify specific neighborhoods, design a specific program that has a specific incentive, whether it's home repair or things like that within the neighborhood.

And then each time there's an incentive given, it doesn't have to come to city council approval.

It it is a pretty streamlined process.

Um, and so that you can set parameters for specific empowerment zones that have specific programs that then can enable reinvestment and infill in neighborhoods.

Um that would be a especially tool for smaller scale reinvestment in neighborhoods and commercial districts.

So that's a big overview of a lot of things.

Um this presentation really was to one show you that overall framework of economic development and then how this incentive policy fits into that.

Um we were tasked with providing suggestions for refinement to your infill incentive policy.

Uh, what staff is going to do is take those and any additional comments that you may have, changes, ideas, and develop a draft uh policy that they'll bring forward to you for consideration in a future council setting.

Um they're doing that in alignment with their changes to your current 380 incentive policy.

So that 380 policy is really focused on incentivizing big economic businesses and investments in the community, whereas this incentive infill incentive policy is more supporting the development side of that as well as smaller scale projects.

So it's a key tool.

There are two different tools that work together, and you're kind of working through changes to to those concurrently.

Um today I specifically want to ask you for some thoughts about some of the recommendations that we put together.

Specifically, so the idea of focusing on small and large projects makes sense.

So your thoughts and reflections on those topics would be helpful for us to provide more refinement to our recommendations to staff and then allow staff to bring forward changes in the future.

Very good, Matt.

It sounds like San Antonio had a very good infill that they put together.

So maybe we could take pieces of that and use it here at the city.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Representative Limon.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor.

I fully support the two the two items that you just mentioned.

Incentivizing them is certainly embedded in our district strategic plan that came out before the city plan.

So we're certainly looking at that and very much in support of all the items that you brought forth.

Thank you, sir.

Representative Canellus.

Thank you, Mayor.

Yeah, specifically on these feedback topics.

I mean, I think aside from the last one, and that we can't force other taxing entities to participate.

I think I'm gonna say the same thing that I said last time.

This is kind of a difficult forum to provide more detailed feedback.

And so I'd love for just a mechanism if this can be if uh our feedback can be solicited some other way and we can provide you something more detailed.

I would love to be able to do that before you move into the next steps.

Sure, yeah.

Um we'll work with staff to define that.

Um we have a more detailed uh report that we wrote that details our analysis and builds the the basis for our recommendations, and that we can share that with you all for more in-depth uh review, and then happy to answer any questions.

Yeah, that'd be great.

I mean, I can commit to getting stuff back to you quickly, but because I know you have next steps to work through and in terms of uh you know providing the the more final draft to our staff, but um yeah, I just think this is difficult to give you more detailed feedback like this verbally.

But yeah, I wanted to give you that uh presentation of what we're thinking about, what we're recommending, and then those topics, whether it's now or in the future, are the specifics that would be helpful in terms of direction.

Yeah, and I I appreciate it.

I think it's uh an excellent set of recommendations.

Thank you.

Representative Acevedo.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um can you send us uh I guess like a good overview of what the districts could do?

You you explained it really nicely, but I kind of want to dive a little deeper into that in terms of the tours and getting that money back and why it's so lucrative for them to join that I would appreciate that.

Yeah, yeah.

And then the other thing that I've been thinking about lately is infill is really important to my district.

It's that's vital, it's the core of the of the entire city.

Yeah, and sometimes we have some unintended consequences when infill happens.

You know, there are projects that are not affordable for people, so I'm wondering how we can build that into this.

And I know that there's um just different scale projects, whether it's small or large, but there's also incentives.

So how can we strengthen the policy to say if you're gonna come in and take over 20 units, can you at least make X percentage affordable or something?

I think that's kind of missing in the in the guidelines here.

Yeah, that's a good point.

There's a couple of things to react to there.

Um I think, especially for larger projects being focused in the specific areas where those are applicable.

Um helps, I think, support putting your public tax dollars or um in the places that you want to see growth as well as preventing perhaps uh development places that are less uh ready to support that, whether that's from lack of infrastructure or displacement concerns.

You can also place parameters on the type of project you invest in.

And so um if somebody is buying existing property, um you can place you know requirements around displacement and things that you mentioned within the incentive agreement, so you can structure it that way so we can provide direction there.

Um generally we're sort of thinking of these as projects that are replacing whether it's a parking lot or an abandoned building or underutilized building, but you do make a good point that there are sometimes existing uses that we want to value and protect, and I think putting those parameters is something we can recommend.

Yeah, I'd love to see more on that.

I would appreciate it.

There's just this balance that I think this this work is all really great.

I'm very supportive of all of it, but that was something that I kind of don't see as a gap, so I appreciate you saying all that.

Thank you.

Okay.

Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Matt, for the presentation.

Um again, I'd I'd like to have a conversation with you in my office just because we only have 10 minute increments here, and it's hard to ask everything or talk about all the thoughts that I had while you were going through your presentation.

Um but a couple of things I do want to touch on, and you briefly mentioned it at the end.

Uh I've had multiple conversations with people in my district specifically who've tried to buy older homes to rehabilitate them to live in them personally, and they've gone through a lot of trouble doing it both both because of the cost and the time involved in those projects.

Uh most of the time people don't have the the time it takes to do it because they work full-time, they're they're raising families, um, and the cost involved in it as well.

But I do know that there was uh something that was brought forward that's called the the whole home repairs act.

I don't know if you're familiar with it.

No, I'm not.

It was passed in July, and what it does is it it requires HUD to establish like a pilot program under which they will award grants for um organizations um to include nonprofits.

And uh let me I have it right in front of me here, and I want to touch on this.

It says it's authorized to uh provide grants to implementing organizations to administer a whole home repairs program for eligible homeowners and eligible landlords.

And it's basically for rehabilitation for for older homes.

I know that this is on a smaller scale than what you were mentioning, but I do think it's important because we have older established neighborhoods all across our city.

Um and if we really want to promote infill, this is something that I would definitely be in support of to ensure that uh people that do want to buy older homes have such a program or that we um basically uh advocate for this type of program in our community.

Yeah, that's that's awesome.

I'll look into that.

Um that fits well into that going back to the housing strategy, that first bucket related to neighborhood reinvestment.

Um some communities we've seen had success with they have uh they kind of set up a program where they have pre-qualified contractors that can do sort of whole home repairs and then have matching grant funding to help support that.

And it helps reduce the barrier of doing a project for a homeowner that it's really hard to have time to like go find 12 different contractors that could do all of this.

And if you're able to get a grant as well as have one single sort of point of contact, it makes it uh a more realistic option than then perhaps the daunting one that is probably in a lot of the challenges you're hearing.

And so that's really awesome that there might be federal resources to help support that as well.

Yeah, I mean I think it's sometimes it's it becomes too much trouble for people to go through the the whole process, and so they end up just buying a newer home, maybe even outside the city limits, just because it's it's faster.

Not necessarily what they wanted, right?

But we do want to promote that infill.

There are a lot of beautiful neighborhoods in our community all across the city and and older homes that do need a lot of help in terms of repair and and and things like that.

So that's something to look into that I would be supportive of.

Um the slide where you mentioned the partners, the people that you've spoken to.

I see Bill is in the audience.

Um there are others in the community that I've spoken to that have given me a lot of in-depth information in terms of data.

I don't know if you've had an opportunity to speak with them, but one is the Federal Reserve Bank.

I know they do a lot of uh research and they've provided me research specifically to our community to our city, which I don't see listed here.

And then uh UTEP has a whole program through the Hunt Institute on global competitiveness.

I know that you mentioned where a binational community, you mentioned manufacturing and things like that.

I don't see them listed here.

I I think they would be worthwhile to to reach out to to see what other data they can provide in terms of of putting all of this together for economic development.

Um and then finally, just to miss Mac through our budget that we've gone through recently, we've talked a lot about forecasts.

I know that Robert Cortine has gone through a lot of them and and for different reasons at the state level for people getting um uh different uh incentives in our community that's that's um that's impacted our our forecast for our fund, uh our general fund.

And I was just wondering if we could also get a forecast if we implement some of these strategies, what that would look like.

Um I think it would be important for us to understand financially the impact we would have as a community if we were to try to incentivize some of these these um these groups.

Okay, and then maybe we could continue the conversation in my office.

It's presentation on status of facility condition assessment update.

Good afternoon, Randy.

Council.

So can I te bring up the presentation?

Okay.

So this is uh streets of maintenance facility condition assessment update.

Um so what we've been doing is we've been tasked by Ms.

Hernandez and Ms.

Mack to really come up with a better way to look at how we see our facilities and how we do our overall long-term maintenance.

So just a quick overview, we're gonna go over the inventory for only the buildings that are maintained by streets and maintenance facility department.

That's not inclusive of all the city, all the buildings owned by the city, it's just what we maintain.

Uh we talk, we're gonna talk briefly about our capital investment plan, our assessment, which is how we actually look at the buildings to determine what maintenance needs are are required of us.

Uh give you an update on the progress since we've implemented uh our new assessment method this year, and then looking forward to the next few years of our five-year action plan.

So the city so fees of maintenance maintains 34 very unique different types of buildings throughout the city.

And you can see the majority of those buildings are over 50 years of age, 37%, and within the next 10 years, you'll see that next uh large group of 30 to 49 years coming being older than 50.

So even though we try to be as proactive with preventive maintenance, you know, and day-to-day maintenance, it's really important that we develop a way to do an assessment of how um what uh state those buildings are in, how well they've been maintained, um, the day-to-day maintenance, and then looking at all the systems that we have within within the those buildings.

So you can see here see a breakdown of the buildings.

The majority of them are public facing, uh parks leading the way, of course, having the most.

And then you can see the internal departments like such as fire, ESD, even streets and maintenance.

We do have buildings that that we utilize that we maintain.

So we look at our uh capital plan.

We've been given money the past couple the past few years to do an investment.

And the way we looked at our assessments in the past is we would do a one-off, create a list and try to use the money that was given to us during the budget season for that list and kind of we would do that one year, one year, one year.

But now what we're trying to do is looking at a full five-year plan of how do we develop a more robust plan and a stronger plan going forward.

So we've uh talked about in my department is the facility condition assessment.

Really looking at industry standards.

Um developing a rating scale that helps us prioritize the buildings and the repairs that are necessary, developing a checklist so when our staff goes out there, they know what they're looking for and what what to say is in poor condition and what is in uh good condition.

Really, we we are focusing on the subsystems of the building, mechanical, of course, that's the HVAC and heating and cooling, plumbing systems, making sure they're up to date and up to code, electrical systems, making sure that they are fully functional, and the building envelope, the roofs, you know, the surrounding parts of the buildings.

We need to ensure that those building envelopes are secure before we put additional money into the other subsystems.

So if we look at our our key elements for our assessment, we're really looking at the age of the system, the expected service life, the history of the building, um, the uh visual inspection of it and the operational needs.

And from there we go into a rating.

So we have a checklist, we'll rate those subsystems, and then that kind of tells us tells us exactly where we want to focus our repairs.

So when we implementing this process, we first look at the assessments that we have currently have completed, and we verify that those as assessments are still accurate and up to date.

From there, we'll look at scoping and uh getting specifications for those projects, and then we work with our purchasing department to obtain quotes through our GLC contracts or other on-call service contracts that we currently have.

That's just to try to expedite uh that purchasing process.

Um from there we actually do the actual construction work, any modifications needed to that uh specific project will get done through a change order, and then finally acceptance of the project and closing it out, making sure all the documents are complete and all the work was done as per the specifications.

So currently um we're calling this year one.

We have 32 projects we've identified through this through prior assessments and our current assessment.

Um you can see here the majority of those are uh building, those are roofs, and then the mechanical systems.

And here's just really a breakdown of of the detail of the buildings, what we're doing.

So you can see lots of roofs where all over the city, um, lighting projects, mechanical projects, HVAC, you know, being important, especially as we came in to the summer, uh, the summer season.

And here's uh five of the projects that we finished.

I think we actually uh finished another project recently, but these are the five ones that I know we are finished uh to date.

Um looking at year two, we already have identified 20 projects that were deferred from the year one list, so we move over again.

A lot of building projects, a lot of roofs, mechanical, um, electrical employment systems.

And you can see the breakdown also by the department again, looking a lot at the forward-facing groups such as parks.

Um here's an actual breakdown of the of the detailed uh buildings that we would be uh doing the maintenance projects on this coming year in FY27.

So I really want to focus on this.

This is uh our capital plan kind of going forward, how we're gonna look at it.

So we have year one deferred projects that we're gonna move into year two, which is FY27.

We already have those 20 projects in queue.

So once that fiscal year starts, we know what buildings we need to work on and start getting those purchase orders, the the scoping, the specifications completed.

But really, what we're focusing on right now is the updating of our inventory.

We have over 300 plus buildings.

We need to go in there and see what subsystems we have, what type of HVAC systems we have, what's the state of electrical systems, and that leads us to our continuous assessment.

We're aiming to do 25 uh percent of our buildings of the 3004, which is approximately 74 buildings per year to complete the assessment, and that will keep that assessment will be continuous.

It won't stop.

So that means if we have a building that we know what it's like today, we can keep on looking at it and ensuring that we're on top of it to make sure if anything does fall into disrepair, we can make sure that we can um put it on our list for any um any projects.

And we also do look at uh emergencies, you know.

This year we had a couple of uh concerns with the HVAC unit at PD headquarters, and it just happened, you know, happened that the cooling towers were going down.

So we had to be reactive.

We looked at the list, we have that funding, we do the assessment of that bill of that HVAC and determine if it's necessary or if it's wanted to do it immediately, and then we make that decision from there.

So this is really just a whole new way of looking at it.

Instead of just handling a repair as a one-off repair, we're looking at holistic buildings now, and we're really trying to determine what the grade level of that building is to really prioritize it and really ensure that we that we are using the money that's given to us from council from this mac um and making sure that we are being efficient and effective in the way we are uh utilizing that funding.

Randy, you have your hands full.

Yes, it's a lot.

Yeah, and and let me make sure I understand this.

So 65% of our buildings are 30 to 50 plus years old.

Yes, the majority of the buildings that treats and maintenance maintenance are over 50 years old.

But that with that being said, I mean, as long as we are maintaining and we have an active way of actually maintaining them and having a process in place.

I think um that's what's really important.

That's what you know.

I don't mean but Mr.

Nam has really pushed us.

Develop processes, develop criteria, you know, look at industry standards, how are we maintaining this?

What are we doing?

Are we just going and changing the light bulb and changing the light bulb and continually doing that without checking if it's an electrical system problem that's making us change a label?

Or if we have a backup in the toilet system, do we go and just do that one one-time fix, or do we really look at what's going on there?

Dig a little deeper and making sure that we are just not giving our day-to-day maintenance money and just continue to do these one off repairs.

Very good.

Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Randy, for the presentation.

I I was very happy to see something like this come forward because this is something that I've been dealing with in some of the older buildings in my district specifically.

I do have a question regarding.

So you have a plan in place for everything that we need to maintain, right?

And I like the first year, the second year plan, all that's great.

Last year we had an emergency at the Westside Sports Complex where water went into the electrical system and shorted out all the lights.

And it became a big deal because the cost to repair all those lights was expensive.

The first price that we received was very high.

We didn't have the money to replace it.

And that is a facility that's rented out by uh a soccer team, and so it's a money-making facility, right?

It's a it's under parks, but it's a money-making facility.

And I almost thought we were going to have to cancel the season because we didn't have lights for them to play at night.

So it became, you know, something that was very concerning for me.

Um so you have a plan in place right now for like ongoing maintenance.

But do we have a plan for emergencies like that, right?

Yeah.

Thank you, Ms.

Mack.

Different funding stream.

So um you we also have about 1.5 for um park facilities.

I mean, it's also doing the best with the dollars that we have.

I mean, I think that's one of the kind of emergencies that Robert kind of hinted to when we did our last presentation that having flexibility or some flexibility within our budgets to be able to address those things are really important.

What happened in that situation was the team had some dollars within the fund, and then they had to look for savings and other accounts across the board.

I think we ended up at 165 or so, but it was like in September or October.

So we're very early in the fiscal year, lots of other things come up.

And so our goal is to really have a really good assessment of all of our facilities, really understand where we have those needs, get proactive with all of them to really understand how we might address them.

Um they'll always be emergencies.

We have a lot of assets.

You've heard Randy talk about streets and street lights and how many of those we have in addition to buildings and others, and just trying to find that balance.

Um, fortunately, these dollars have been allocated through the budget.

This council has worked to increase that number or help to get us restored.

But Randy certainly is showing you what the need is across the board.

You'll soon be soon be seeing the proxmaster plan.

Um that's going to make some recommendations and we'll be talking about the uh amount of maintenance that's required for those facilities.

We just think it's really important for the community to be able to see this as well.

I think you talk about it a lot in the community, so we hadn't done this type of presentation for you, but we're trying to find those opportunities.

So when you're starting to talk about the things that we need for our city, people have a broader context for it.

Yeah, and I appreciate it, Ms.

Mack, and I think it's important for the community to understand that there's so much need, there's a lot of maintenance that's required from all of our city buildings, um, and and learning how to prioritize those and and not just try to put out fires like we were doing in the past is important moving forward.

So I appreciate it.

I I appreciate the fact that you're saying we have a different funding source altogether for emergencies.

Um I think that's being very responsible so that we can continue providing the services and more importantly, quality of life for our community.

So thank you.

Thanks, Randy.

Welcome.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Randy, for our hard work.

I know that we we had a really good conversation last week about all of this uh maintenance that happens across the entire city.

Um can you touch a little bit about standardizing some of the materials and supplies that are needed across all of the facilities?

For example, if a lie bulb is needed, how is it that we're looking at possibly buying in bulk, for example, and ensuring that uh even just new facilities kind of seem use the same type of fly bulbs that we're not you know buying limited amounts of this certain light bulb.

Can you touch a little bit about again standardizing and ordering in bulk?

So I think um something that we have talked about during the budget process was really looking at how do we standardize as much of the maintenance activities we're doing, not only with facilities but fleet and also on the street side.

So I mean we do have opportunities with the cooperative contracts that purchasing us put in place that allows us to use.

And by being able to leverage those contracts, talking to the contractors of asking for additional discounts, that's really important, and that's something that we have recently done in the street department.

I think recently saved $60,000 on the recent purchase of some street materials that we needed.

So that's kind of what we're looking at it.

And what the assessment's gonna help us do now is know what systems we actually have in place.

So if there's specific uh age vacuum, it's our specific subsystem that we need to look at to standardize, or maybe there's a a certain model that's just not working for us where we know to keep away from that, and we know to kind of get what we feel is the best through the assessment.

Again, buildings change the age every day, so we need to make sure we stay on top of it.

And the assessment just can't be a one-off thing, it has to be continuous.

We have to continually look at it.

And I think once we can look at the entire systems and we get to a good place where we feel comfortable, you know, about knowing what the costs are for uh some of these projects, then we can go back and looking how can we standardize as much of this and get bulk purchases so we can get a bigger discount when we relate those purchases.

Yeah, thank you for doing that and uh verifying that just because overall I think if there could be any potential cost savings on the expenditures, that that would be a great avenue to to look into.

Um another question that I had during our briefing was in regards of the warranty when it comes to building a new facility or even buying new equipment, ensuring that um you know we're working with CID and we're following up with a warranty, for example, at the Beast.

We've had roofing issues since we've had that facility.

Um I know that it's been looked at a couple of times, and I know I've had conversation with Ms.

Mack about that as well.

Um, but I wanted to ask about you know, I'm glad that we're looking at all the maintenance components, but also ensuring that if the actual equipment or or the materials that we're buying um when we're building such facility that we're looking at the warranty aspect so that there could be additional you know cost savings um so that we could go after the warranty rather than having to do that expenditure.

Um I could tell you the uh this rain that happened this weekend on Friday, um the bees had a water leakage again, Ms.

Mack.

Um so I think it we uh if we could look at again that warranty component of it, it's just ensuring that we we could because I know some of the warranties could be 20 years or 30 years for the actual materials, and I mean I'm not an engineer or contractor, but maybe that could be something, but I know that you mentioned that you're working with CID and all of that as well.

Yeah, so we'll continue to work with CD CID to make sure that all the warranties are covered or any repairs that need to be done if they are covered or not covered by the warranty and making that determination.

Again, I think the good point you brought up was the materials and if the materials have a separate warranty, so we'll definitely be uh in contact with CID to ensure that if there is a warranty that we can take advantage of that we do so.

All right, well, thank you again for all your hard work and truly appreciate the work that everyone does.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Representative Lumon.

Thank you.

Thank you, Randy.

Good afternoon.

Uh Randy, on slide 10 item number 10 under the building area where it says Isleta Park Rec building.

Is that actually a park and rec building or is it an animal shelter thing?

No, I believe it's the senior building behind the Pablo Real Center.

Okay, but you've got Isleta Senior Center Roof Replacement.

Oh yeah, so that is actually the recenter building, the Pablo real one.

I think we're doing both of them.

Okay, so then uh number 10 would be Pablo Real.

Yes.

Okay.

All right, and the other one is a senior center.

Okay, yeah, those are been there.

And Randy, on plumbing, is that for the PD headquarters plumbing?

Yes.

Is that a major thing that we're doing given that we're not gonna have that building?

So we we really looked deep into it because we knew we don't we're not gonna occupy the building long term.

Um the plumbing was the true and we've we've what we've been doing in the past is as the issues have come up with our toilets and some of the uh the water issues we've seen there, we've been handling them as one-off issues.

Um we we did go in there and look at it closely, and we determined at that point like either this plumbing system is gonna continue to fail until they get their new building, you know, and then we are just gonna be really, really reactive, or now the chance to be proactive, you know, and be a little more efficient with our time and and with the funding we have and going and taking care of the of the problems that we see.

It's not an entire system rebuild, but there are major parts to that plumbing that are just completely failing.

And it was time that we stop sending it as emergency calls and actually take care of it if we know it's gonna happen again and again.

Okay, so it's a partial plumbing thing.

Right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Randy.

Representative Trahill.

Thank you, Mayor.

I apologize for being late.

But I we I was uh you shared the presentation with me last week.

And had some questions on it.

Uh on uh page seven, where you go into the assessment key elements.

And and we had that conversation in my in my office as far as you know, taking into consideration possibly buildings that are revenue uh that are somehow generating revenue.

I know we're looking at a lot of the parks and recreation here on the list that you have.

But um looking at that as one of the uh possible assessments and adding it on to that.

Uh this is a way of you know generating revenue for the city, and if we're not looking at those as a priority, we're losing out on that.

Yeah, and I think that that was a good point that you made.

Um, since we've already started the assessment uh earlier this year, I think as we go into FY27 coming up, I think it's important that we do look at those revenue revenue generating uh facilities and see if that's somewhere we want to put our priorities at.

So it's definitely something um as part of a a program improvement that we could implement.

So it's something definitely that we'll look at.

And then the other thing that was brought up is having more uh equitable distribution between the the districts.

Yes, so but the way we looked at it this year is we started from one uh we started looking at different buildings and doing those assessments.

We had a prior assessment that already had a lot of projects identified.

But yeah, we will I will work with Mr.

Notes and Ms.

Mack to look at how it comes out.

But when we look at the buildings, we're just looking at the building.

Um so if we need to look at the different districts to ensure that the money's getting spent equally, that's something that I get direction from this net to do, then that's up to the We're gonna have to go where the problems are.

What's I mean?

Well, this is complete maintenance, and I think we have um as you talk about the assessment and the priorities, um it really is about forward facing.

I think we talk about you know our public safety facilities and then we talk about how our seniors and others engage.

Um they're looking at it from the life cycle of the building.

Some areas of our city have uh newer facilities.

You can see this is a complete mix.

Um I think it would be difficult, and I do not want to put on the record for you all that if we have an emergency or something that's near failing, that we're I'm gonna at all consider what district is in.

I mean our obligation is to make sure we're taking care of the city.

I think as we start to talk about bond projects and things like that in terms of um how we do those, I think it makes sense for council to have those discussions, but for repairs, we just need to keep the city going.

Right, but when you're looking at uh the different uh districts, some districts have been waiting for you know renovations.

Um for example, when I can give you an example of Arlington Park shelter.

We had a meeting there and the the AC was not working.

So you know, we're maybe if we can have a list or something of where they are in in the in the queue to you know be maintained as far as the whether it's electrical, mechanical or whatever, but maybe we can have a list of where they are in the list.

But if you even look at what happened with veterans, it was never a conversation about what district it was at.

You know, council made the decision, the investment was well over a million dollars.

That's the largest project that we've ever done through this fund.

It was important to your district.

You know, we went back, we looked and the bathrooms needed to be done.

We didn't have a conversation about whether we should do shelters or whether you know it needed to be in another district.

We knew the complete project when we were in it.

So this is strictly just emergency.

And we're gonna go fix it.

And we're talking emergencies.

Yes, this is this is really what is driving emergencies or about to be an emergency, and we just have never had ongoing funding, you know, within the last couple of years to actually have a cycle.

We've never really had a plan.

It's always been it's broken, we'll try to do this, we'll try to do that, and when the money is gone, the money's gone.

So we're just trying to get really strategic about it.

And as I mentioned, you'll see the parks master plan is going to start to help you understand how we talk about um categorizing some of those products because those are renovations.

So this is maintenance and renovations are are much bigger than that.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Representative Massavero.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um Randy, thanks for this great list.

I am wondering how many how many um projects are gonna roll over from year one?

Is it the 20?

So the 20 that you see were already considered verified in previous assessments.

Um from our our list of 32, that's what we are aiming, and I've kind of pushed the staff to make sure if we say 32 projects are getting done in FY26 that 32 projects get finished.

So that's our goal, 32.

And then 20 for next year.

And then we'll s and like I said, right now we're doing an assessment of all the buildings across the city.

We should have 25% of those of the 304, which is about 70 something, and then that will tell us uh give us more projects to look at.

Okay.

So yeah, I and I so I guess most of these 32 projects are already finished.

I think we finished six actually.

So we have I think it's eighteen that are under either procurement or actually under construction.

So that's the majority.

Hopefully within I'm hoping by August, we'll see those 18 turn from in progress to completed.

And then that's what we'll see the big the the big jump from it being um you know still in queue to being completed.

Okay, so then uh most of them will be finished within the fiscal year.

I expect all 32 to be finished by the okay.

I trust you.

Sorry, but one of the conversations we had um in terms of when the team was doing the rollout, it's like with the senior centers, we don't want to have to close.

So trying to think about the season.

Like I think last year we had like the bathrooms for one of the rec center um polls, we're like, okay, we would have to close it down.

So they're trying to make sure that we're kind of thinking about those things too, and so it may impact some of the schedules.

And we know just about all of them on the list.

Okay, yeah, I did notice that.

Um other thing, and I told you when you briefed me.

I I just want to see the amounts for all these projects.

I know you're kind of giving us the large amount for fiscal year 26, 5.8 million for the next year.

It's like four point something million, um, 4.1 million.

But I kind of want to look at um the itemized list of how much each of these things are are costing.

And I I think it gives us an idea of okay.

Well, we're gonna replace a roof, and this is how much this roof costs, and we could start sharing those stories with our constituents and the amount of time that it takes and the the work that we did.

I think this is a really good story.

I I just want to have that missing bit of information.

Okay, I'll show I'll show that with all the the city representatives.

I do have that information.

Okay, thank you so much.

Any other questions from Randy?

Randy, thank you for the presentation.

Thank you.

All right, Ms.

Let's take item number five.

Item number five is discussion and action regarding ratepayer protection through the city's intervention efforts as utility findings become more frequent and complex.

All right, is there a motion to approve this item?

So good afternoon, Mayor and Council Carla Neeman for the record.

I'll be um present uh opening the presentation, but I'll be handing it off to both Oscar and Robert, members of our office.

Um the purpose of this presentation council is to um ask for authority from the council to change the way that we are um filing interventions in the multiple um utility filings that we're seeing in the last couple of years.

Um so again, what the purpose of the presentation is to really to explain to the public what our role is in all of these filings and how the city takes the position to protect the ratepayers, as well as to the role that the city plays in intervening, what the city's jurisdiction means when we intervene at these cases at the state level, but also under our home rule charter and the authority that the council has intrinsically to set rates at the local level, and then I'll have um both um Oscar Gomez and Robert Aguinaga go through some of those specific issues.

What I wanted to really emphasize for the council and for the public is what do we mean when we say the city intervenes?

It's a very technical term, but it just means we join in the filing at the state level.

And these are some of the topics that we are discussing the public policy decisions that are being considered when we intervene in these cases.

So we talk about quality of life, specifically as the rates impact our ratepayers, correct?

And then we have the disc discussions about both the electricity and the Texas gas infrastructure, which is something that we hear a lot about, whether our utilities can provide safe and reliable utilities to our uh citizens.

We talk about economic mobility and what it looks like in terms of both all three utilities being able to expand to provide additional services to an expanding city.

Um, the public benefit in regards to what it looks like to continue to have that growth, and then finally the good governance structure, which specifically ensures that the costs that are being uh requested by both of our utilities are in the best interest of our community.

Now, what happens if the city doesn't intervene is you all know we have those conversations often, and if the city doesn't intervene, a lot of our utility filings will go on challenge, which means that the local ratepayer doesn't have a voice in terms of being represented.

Um traditionally, I will tell you that the state of Texas does have the Office of Public Utility Council, which is intended to serve as the public advocacy group at the state level on behalf of our customers.

However, um that portion of the commission doesn't necessarily have their finger on the pulse in regards to what is happening at the local level, which all of you do, right?

And understand the impact of a utility filing at the local level.

Uh folks that are in Austin sometimes miss out on the intricacies and the nuances that are taking place in El Paso, and that is why we are very proactive in asking often for the city to intervene in a lot of these filings.

We do um handle as much as we can internally, which is a lot of monitoring of cases.

However, when we intervene, we do spend some expense in hiring experts, and we talk about experts, they're not just lawyers.

We do hire some lawyers, but we hire engineers, we have financial experts that are traditionally forensic accountants, and then we also hire uh members of the community who have interest or have an expertise in utility corporate structures and how utilities traditionally uh function and the best practice of a utility operating in in in the environment that they operate in, right?

It also gives us an opportunity to negotiate on behalf of the ratepayers, so we don't intervene, we don't get a seat at the table and have another bite at the apple, as I like to say, beyond just the city's original jurisdiction when we negotiate at the public utility commission.

What would happen is that these cases would simply go unanswered or they would move forward without without our city's the city's voice at the table.

Once an intervention is filed, is passed, so you'll hear from Oscar and Robert, the deadlines are kind of are are very tight in terms of our intervention.

So if we don't intervene, again the city loses the opportunity to intervene.

And I wanted to spend some time talking to you about the work that we've done in the last four years between 2023 and 2026.

Specifically since 2021, we have um had 41 proceedings both at the electric and the and the Texas gas, mostly on the electric side of the house.

Approximately, and this is a conservative figure, we have been able to achieve about 85 million dollars in taxpayer savings.

We're missing about 15 million dollars.

It's more like 100 million dollars in the last uh couple of months in additional savings that we've been able to achieve for the ratepayer.

Now, when we have these conversations, many times we talk about whether or not the city will receive reimbursement of an intervention and under the state law, we are allowed to receive our reimbursements on our rate cases.

So any of those rate cases that we intervene in, we are able to be reimbursed.

However, we have what we call CCNs, which we've heard a lot about in the last couple of weeks with the McLeod Generation Facility.

A CCN is a certificate of convenience and necessity that is traditionally what a utility files when they're trying to create new infrastructure, like Newman 6, uh McLeod.

We saw a few um solar and battery-powered facilities that are asking for these types of uh certificates.

That is what we do when we intervene.

Those are not uh reimbursable to the public.

However, we believe that it's important to join in those cases simply because if we don't join at the beginning, the costs become exorbitant.

And what happens when we become involved in a CC and we're able to either settle or or have the public utility commission set a cap on the amount of expense that the utility is proposing, as you all know, costs skyrocket from the time that they propose a project to the time they finish building a project, and that's the reason why we frequently request permission to intervene in these cases.

Now the the cost recovery that you see there at 35%.

We're still pending um about $2.26 million in reimbursements.

What I will explain to you in that sense is that the Public Utility Commission reimburses up to a certain point in a rate case.

So for example, the rate case that we just finished with El Paso Electric this this year.

We were only reimbursed up until the middle of of last year.

The rest of the reimbursement we won't see until the next rate case.

So we split the expenses on rate cases.

So you don't see the reimbursement happen immediately, but it happens over to rate cases.

And then you can see the rest of that savings here on the breakdowns on those four cases that we were able to achieve additional savings.

Now I wanted to also highlight this is what a typical bill looks like.

This bill is from 2021.

It's a residential bill.

But I will tell you is that we have seen in the last four years a significant increase in the number of utility filings.

And if you see at the bottom of that utility bill, you see the the line item of all of the cases that demonstrates to you all of the interim filings that Al Paso Electric has been adding to your bill.

So just so you get a sense of what that looks like.

Here is a slide that shows you what has been happening from 2017 to the present.

So in the last four years alone, we have seen a doubling of the number of filings that Al Paso Electric has filed.

So as you can see, on average, none of their filings were over 10, except even in 2009.

Now we're seeing it's only July, and in 2026, we're already at 14 filings.

What what we are um telling the public and the council is that clearly El Paso Electric has changed their strategy from how they previously operated, and they have decided that it is in their best interest to double the number of filings that they are seeing, and that is the purpose of our presentation here today to change the way that um our office interacts with the utility and the ability to just move forward on a much faster basis to intervene in these cases.

I'm gonna hand it over to Oscar now, unless you all have any questions for me at this moment.

We'll wait to the end.

Thank you.

Okay.

Uh good afternoon, mayor counsel, Oscar Gomez with the city attorney's office.

Uh I'll be going just very briefly over the city's true jurisdiction over utilities and how um they've they've obtained that authority.

Um so first of all, I won't I want to touch upon the city's authority or this concept of original jurisdiction and where it comes from.

The Texas Constitution, the charter, and state laws all support this concept that we have here in this slide.

And what it basically does is uh allows the city to review utilities and most important their filings, operations, the rates that they said, but most importantly, it allows uh the municipality, in this case the city of El Paso, to maintain local controls over utility um proceedings.

Um I also want to just uh mention that so like Ms.

Neiman said, um, this proceedings are are highly technical and are very extensive.

If in simple terms, it's like looking at a typical civil case or a criminal case.

Uh the process is very lengthy.

Um, and it's important for the city to act and intervene in the cases because it's been giving this authority but uh the Texas uh constitution.

Um I also want to mention here the two other regulators in the state, and that's the PUCT, it's a public um utilities commission of Texas, and then the railroad commission of Texas.

Uh the PUCT uh has authority over electric filings.

Uh the RC in this case has authority over uh natural gas um util uh filings.

I also want to mention that um when a utility filing begins or or wants to set rates or or build a new infrastructure, um, they must file with the city and with the state regulators, and the the cases if you uh simply to put it uh they run concurrently, it runs with the city and with the state at the same time, and and we go through the motions of this of the case, whether requesting information, um the posing witnesses, uh going in front of a judge and things like that, those happen at the same time with the city and um the state regulators.

I also want to mention that um although the city has original jurisdiction and and has the ability to do certain things that are highlighted here in this slide, we also remained active throughout um participant throughout the filing process with the the state regulator.

So it's important um, like we mentioned before, this this intervention, which I'll I'll highlight um this rights and authority that the city has, but it's important to intervene and uh since the beginning because it allows the city to exercise various rights that I'll cover in the next slide.

And so, how does the city exercise its authority?

Like I mentioned before, the most important um thing here to consider is uh the ability to intervene.

This provides the city um the ability to advocate for the ratepayers locally and within the state um state regulators.

Uh once we intervene and once we begin this process, we are able to do some of the following here in the slide, like review, analyze uh the rates that the utilities proposing.

Uh at some instances, state law provides uh the ability to suspend in this case and I uh want to highlight the natural gut gas filings.

The city has some ability there to suspend.

Uh we also have the ability to conduct hearings locally and then also participate in hearings at the state level.

Uh requests, like I mentioned before, testimony records and supporting that data.

And as Ms.

Niman said, the city has the ability to hire experts, and uh at this point is when we analyze and we provide testimony to the PUC or to the RRC in this case to support whatever the city's position and the particular filing is.

Uh we also have another um I think it's very important to negotiate settlements in and participating in consensus contested proceedings.

Uh in this case, uh we're able to negotiate the settlements, and not only will that provide some relief for the the ratepayers, um, but it also highlights the ability for the the city to to like to advocate for the ratepayer as well.

Um then the last the last item uh enforced compliance with applicable laws.

Our city code has a specific chapter just designated to utility regulation.

So I think it's important for the city to to continue to advocate for its rate payers and exercise authority that's been given by the state.

Um and after this, I'll go ahead and uh hand it over to Robert Aginaga to continue.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Robert.

Afternoon, Mayor and Council, Robert Aguinara, Assistant City Attorney.

So I'm just going to go hope briefly over some of the more common types of filings that we see in our office from the utilities.

So the types of utilities cases that we see most often.

First types are those CCNs that certificate opinions and necessity.

These are mostly El Paso Electric filings, and it's going towards new infrastructure construction.

This is seen both in EPE and the gas company, Texas Gas.

And this directly affects the rates of the ratepayers in our customer bills.

Any type of interim filing that we might see, this is well again mostly in El Paso Electric.

And these are temporary rate increases from one rate case to the other.

Grip filings, this is a uh the interim version of the Texas gas, and that does go to gas infrastructure, but does impact rates between the gas rate cases.

And then there's an assortment of miscellaneous cases, uh, mostly seen through El Paso Electric that could potentially have rate impacts depending on their source.

So just a brief overview of the types of utilities we have here.

The first one, El Paso Electric.

El Paso Electric is what we call vertically integrated utility, meaning that they do everything from generating the power to transmissioning the power out to the substations, and then finally distributing it out into homes and businesses.

So they're vertically interrated and they do these different aspects of it, you do see a lot more filings from El Paso Electric because it generates, transmits, and distributes as well as setting it the rates.

When we look at El Paso Electric filings, they mostly fit into three categories.

The CCNs, whenever El Paso Electric is looking to uh create some sort of new infrastructure.

Uh an interim filing, whether it be GCRF or DCRF, some sort of interim uh rate uh filing that comes after the CCN.

So when they're trying to collect on the new infrastructure, and then finally the rate case, which occurs approximately every four years, but could happen uh sooner, and that's going to set the base rates that the interim rates then add to.

So when we're looking at CCNs, and this is going to our uh ask in the motion as to why we would like that authority to intervene more frequently.

We are seeing more of them happen as we go through.

And Ms.

Neiman showed you that chart as we're going through, we're at our already uh almost more than everyone uh other year, and we're still only in July.

Uh we've seen nine CCNs since uh 2021, and in 2026 this year we've already seen four, and we are expecting more.

It usually costs around 23,000 for the city to intervene.

As Ms.

Neiman mentioned, these costs are not recoverable.

However, we feel that it's very important to intervene on these because this is our first step to advocate for the ratepayer.

A lot of times we're able to intervene and be successful in either lowering the overall cost of the infrastructure project or uh obtain certain protections that are going to be in place throughout the life of that infrastructure.

So this helps lower the case uh the cost at the next step at the interim filings and then at the final step at the rate case.

So even though we don't get to recover at this stage, this is one of our uh this is our first and uh a very good opportunity for us to secure savings for the ratepayers at this first step.

The next uh I part to that is the interim filings.

Uh these come after the CCN.

So once the infrastructure is operational, the utility can become or begin collecting on that.

So once that power plant is done, they can file a uh GCRF, the generation cost recovery, to begin collecting back on that, and they can set a rate here.

So this is one that we do get to get reimbursed about.

Uh the average cost to us is around 28,000 on these, uh, but we do get to have a voice here and intervene to see what type of rate we can set at and uh help the ratepayer at this point.

So this is our first point where it actually begins showing up on the bill at these interim filings.

Uh the turnaround on these can be quite quick, uh as low as uh 30 days on some, and that's why one of the reasons that we are bringing this motion today so that we do have the opportunity to file it quickly when we do get notice so that we can begin working on these as soon as possible.

The next one is the major one, the rate case.

This one, as I mentioned, comes more uh or less frequently and about every four years, as I mentioned, but can come sooner.

Uh, this is the one that sets the base rate case and it takes into account all that has happened prior.

So all the infrastructure that's been created, all the new filings, all any type of item that the utility needs to collect back on is where they file into this rate case, and this sets the base level that the interim filings add to, as you saw in the customer bill that Ms.

Neiman uh provided.

These are much more costly and are much more technical and caught take a much longer time.

This last one with El Paso Electric's rate case uh cost the city over a million dollars.

Uh those are recoverable.

Uh lastly, there are a number of miscellaneous filings that El Paso Electric uh typically makes throughout the year.

Uh they average around 23,000 on the cost of the city.

Some of these are possible that we can be reimbursed in through either a settlement or by uh state law.

Uh and they range from anything from uh a new rate type of filing, the most recent uh that uh we've seen that we brought to the council is the high low tariff rate.

Um it could be something that goes to like the system resiliency plan, in which we were able to secure about 20 million in savings for ratepayers on that, or uh even a more typical yearly filing, such as the military base uh discount, which is uh uh coming soon.

Next to the Texas gas TGS, TGS is not vertically indirect integrated like El Paso Electric.

This one is only to distribution, it does not produce the gas, it does not transmit it over long distances, it really just accepts it and then try are distributes into the homes and fitnesses.

And if you see in this picture here in that lower right, uh that's what we call a city gate.

And I believe uh some members of council were able to go on that tour with us, or TGS showed one of these where they receive the gas from their supplier.

Uh those are the white pipes in the background to the Texas gas ones in the blue pipes, which then uh go out to the individual homes and businesses.

Uh one of the main interim filings that uh Texas Gas has is their grip, their gas reliable infrastructure.

So again, this goes to the uh whenever Texas gas uh is uh develops new infrastructure and they can become they can begin recovering off of these between the rate cases through this grip filing.

Uh state law does not give us much of ability to intervene on this.

Uh the last one that they did file, uh we used our uh authority as our home room jurisdiction to suspend uh and then it ultimately goes off to the railroad commission.

Uh and then, of course, their rate case that also just recently uh uh finished up.

These are not as involved as the El Paso Electric, again, because it's not vertically integrated.

Uh this last one did cost the city around 350,000 on this one.

Uh these again come much more infrequently, uh only two since 2021.

Uh and with that, I will turn it uh back over to Oscar Runs.

So this is uh the our last slides for this presentation.

So we just want to uh point out a couple of key takeaways from this um this presentation, and that is that uh utility proceedings have you as you notice from this presentation directly affect the customer bills, as many El Pasoans have seen those line items and and the and for example in El Paso Electric and the gas uh gas utility, they've increased and there's constantly charges there that we see um connected to all this filings that the utilities have done.

So uh the next key takeaway would be the city is the first regular for customers within the city limits, city limits, like I've discussed.

Um it's very important that the city exercises original jurisdiction, and uh uh and that's why we're the first regular basically in this type of proceedings.

And then uh number three, without intervention, without city intervention, uh customer interest may not be fully represented as as authorities provide so the city, we played on a very important role in and securing some protections for the customers, either by suspension of rates, um uh settlements or or just you know, basically challenging whatever rates um come forward from the utilities.

Uh and the last uh the last point I want to discuss is uh the city's participation has reduced requested rate increases, as Ms.

Nima's mentioned in uh at the beginning of the PowerPoint.

There has been a lot uh significant savings for the the rate payers, uh specifically within the last rate case from El Paso Electric.

We're also being able to negotiate some customers' protection as reflected in some cases where you know there's some cost caps or or some benef some other benefit for the rate payer that it has been negotiated, uh customer protections and then improved uh overall utility accountability.

Uh and with that, we would like to make a recommendation for to have uh council authorize this motion, and then that is to authorize the city attorney to intervene in electric and natural gas regulatory filings, including certificates of convenience and necessity and interim filings, which uh Robert discussed in the presentation, and that is to protect the old passer ratepayers.

Thank you, counsel.

All right.

Uh couple questions.

So Oscar, these filings are coming 30 days or less, right?

They're coming so quick that you're needing the authority to file.

That is correct, sir.

They're they're coming pretty quickly, and from uh what we notice and what the the presentation demonstrated is that uh within just only the last year they they pretty much um have increased significantly, and that's the reason we're we're here today just to be able to act quickly, intervene as we've discussed earlier, uh interventions basically the first step, and it gives us the ability to just continue on that process as far as the the proceeding moves forward with the the city or the state regulator.

Okay, and our since 2026 there's been four CCN filings?

That's correct.

And we expect uh a couple or more this year from discussions with El Paso Electric.

And the average cost intervenes about 23,000?

That is correct, yes, sir.

And are those reimbursable, those fees or not?

They're not reimbursable at that stage, but I think the important thing to highlight there as far as the CCNs is it's uh one um as Robert discussed in in this part of the presentation, it's the first step for a utility to build infrastructure, and so it kind of gives the city the first shot at challenging some of this cost that will eventually be recovered through an interim filing or a rate case.

So I think that's very important that although the costs are not reimbursable, that that is uh is highlighted as far as um our authority there for those type of filings.

Okay.

Representative Chavez?

Mayor, if I could just add a little more to what Oscar was just explaining.

The flip side of the coin is also remember that if we don't challenge that expense, we are often successful at capping the expense.

So but for our intervention, the rate payer would pay more money.

So the offset is our expense versus what our utilities look like at the end of the day on that bill, right?

That's what we're really attempting to mitigate the cost that the rate payer is going to bear.

Um Representative Chavez?

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh thank you, Oscar, Robert, and Ms.

Newman.

Um of you could maybe answer this question.

Do all rate cases result in a rate increase to residents?

Uh most of the time they do, it's just how much of a rate increase.

Um the the utility needs to be given an opportunity to earn a return and to earn their investment and to recoup some of the costs that they're um they're incurring to provide the service to the customer.

It's however the question is how much can that increase be?

And so in the last rate case or the the one that we're currently in, and it's it's about to conclude is um there was a request for 85 million dollars.

Um we were able to lower that by 50 million dollars.

So it there is an increase, but it's it's substantially less than what the utility filed for.

So the city intervenes, but who is the ultimate decision maker?

Um at this stage um in the proceeding, like I mentioned before, the cases um move through the through the proceedings concurrently.

Ultimately, the PD PUC uh in this case for electric for an electric company, it's the ultimate um decision, the ones that hold the decision ultimately.

However, um we do have the ability to challenge and even at that stage we also have the ability to appeal if the decision is not favorable.

We think that uh it could it could be challenged further at the at the court level.

So the council's authority lies in intervening.

That's that's the ultimate authority we have as a council is to intervene in rate increases.

I think that's that's uh I think the the takeaway that I would have from this PowerPoint is that the intervention part of it, yes, ma'am.

Okay.

Of the 14 rate cases from this year alone in 2026, have we intervened in all 14?

Uh from my recollection, I believe we've been arranged in most of them, yes ma'am.

And that's because it's been various CCNs like we've discussed previously, it's kind of the first shot of that.

Um we've had other interim uh filings that follow where there's actually going to be some cost recovery from the utility from the ratepayers.

Um in that case, um most of the the costs there will be recoverable for the city.

But I believe we've intervened in most of those cases already.

And when we intervene in one of these uh rate cases, what is the average timeline for those to get resolved?

It depends a lot on the type of um the type of case it is.

Typically I would say six months to a year.

Uh it all depends on the type of filing, but we've seen um yeah, six, six to a six months to a year, yes, ma'am, to get on a decision from the PUC.

Thank you.

Ms.

Niman, could you explain to the public?

So when there is a rate case that comes forward and we intervene, at what point do the residents see the rate increase in their bill?

So traditionally on a rate case, they don't they see it soon after the public utility commission makes the decision and then it gets finalized.

So it's about a year later that they start seeing the rate increase.

Okay, I think it's good for the public to have that timeline in mind.

So the 14, for example, for this year.

Um we're not going to go through each one of them, but have they seen any rate increases from those 14 just from this year alone that you know of?

I I don't have the particulars in mind because remember the 14 this year, but some of them may have ended.

I would have to give you a more thorough accounting of what is already on the bill.

The rate case is already on the bill.

That that we know for sure.

Um the other question you asked, we didn't intervene in one case earlier in the year.

It was the E CRF.

The what is E C RF stand for again?

The electric efficiency cost recovery.

We did not intervene in that filing.

Okay.

But the majority of the time we're intervening.

We've intervened in all the specific cases.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

Representative.

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

And I know that previously I've mentioned the reasoning of us having these conversations, intervening, and overall I'm grateful for the question that Rep Chavez mentioned in regards to who has the final authority.

Um it's either PC or the railroad commission, but then even then we could still contest it through coin through through the appeal process.

Um I just have a couple of questions.

When it comes to you know, original jurisdiction, who has original jurisdiction within the Opaso electric service territory here in Texas.

I mean, we have the city of El Paso, but we also have other municipalities, right, that run through the same service territory.

Do the CCNs go through the entire territory or is it just for the city of Opaso?

Um so as far as jurisdiction, that will be limited to city limits, right?

The city has original jurisdiction within the limits.

Um as far as other municipalities, I'm not sure.

Uh it would depend likely on what type of um corporate structure or corporate um corporation they are.

So we are a home rule.

Um I'm not sure on uh about regarding other municipalities what type of either they're a home rule municipality.

As far as the CCNs go, um they affect the whole the whole um El Paso electric market, right?

Wherever there's the service to the service territory wherever they provide service, it affects that.

Um we've seen in the past some CCNs where they're for particular purpose or you know within the city limits.

Um however, in the last couple of filings, we've seen you know infrastructure being built in in other parts of the state that um whether here in Texas or in New Mexico that it will affect Texas Texas residents and customers, not with not only within city limits, but the re you know, wherever the territory expands here in all in Texas.

But when it comes to doing an actual intervention or intervening, um pretty much any customer could do could you could do an uh that's right intervening, right?

Yes.

Now the reason why I was asking about original jurisdiction, I was curious to know about the other municipalities such as Coro, Horizon.

Do they participate in uh the intervention process as well?

So we've seen it uh, for example, in this last rate case, we've seen um other government agencies like the school districts, we also see private entities intervening, some other large um private entities within El Paso and even nationally that have um facilities here in El Paso that will intervene and challenge you know whatever the the rate increase or whatever um for example in this case El Paso Electric would want to recover.

So it's not only the city of El Paso but other other parties within you know the service territory do intervene in this cases.

And do we collaborate with those other entities who do the intervention who intervene?

Uh they're part of the of the the proceeding.

We do intervene.

Uh we do engage in discussions with the other parties, um, specifically when it comes to you know, some settlement discussions or negotiations to see you know what the part the other party's position is in this particular in a particular proceeding.

Yes, sir.

Okay, great.

So a regular resident has an opportunity to intervene just in the same process the city can.

The city does it on behalf of the city of El Paso as it for its residents, but other entities, school districts can also intervene in the entire process to advocate for their own constituency or residence as well.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

And um the base rate case proceedings, the larger cases that we see typically you know every four years that were that's where we see the most interveners at those particular cases.

Maybe at the CCN level or the interim filing, there's not uh many interveners there, but uh at the base rate case for sure, um there there is uh uh increase in interveners at that stage, yes, sir.

And do we ever share any costs with anyone else who's intervening, such as another entity or school district that decides to do an intervening process?

Um do we share any costs when it comes to litigation?

So traditionally the costs are provided to the public commission.

So every entity that participates in a rate making proceedings submits their filings, and then the PUCT decides what expenses are going to be reimbursed, and then all of that gets rolled back into the rate, and then everybody pays out.

So it's not necessarily uh it's a proportionate share of the distribution, is what I'm saying that is then brought back to the rate payer.

In regards to your prior questions, representative, uh historically we see uh the Texas um there's an industrial group that is often at the table with the city of El Paso, even at the CCNs, which is usually representing Western refining and some of the recycling facilities, the large manufacturers are often at the table with us in the CCNs and in the infant filings.

But for the rate cases, you see some of the smaller cities, Vinton and Horizon are often uh in the case, as is the city of Socorro, and then of course uh EPISD and the county for the rate cases.

Okay, great.

And is there cost savings whenever we collaborate with them when it comes to all their our expenditures of the I think we call it cost savings because they all hire their own employers and everybody hires the their own experts.

I will tell you that in my experience I have seen um most other interveners benefit from the fact that the city usually takes the the lead in intervening and providing the best defense or the best arguments to oppose some of the expenses.

Right.

So us making the decision to intervene just like any other filing that we've had this year, we're essentially not just helping El Paso but the entire region as a whole, because we are advocating also on behalf of them, and we have our consultants, our experts uh really advocating for more protections for our community.

Absolutely.

Okay.

I have no further questions.

Thank you, Ms.

Neiman and no more.

Represent Canales.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um very small thing, I think it's important for people to understand, and it was gone over in the presentation, but um if we can put it in as simple terms as possible, um any given filing, but let's say in particular on a certificate of convenience necessity.

Um we've thrown around the acronym CCN a lot.

Um can you explain what happens from the point where the filing is made with the with the public utility commission by El Paso Electric?

Like what can we just can you walk through the steps for someone from the public who has no idea how any of it works, like who sees what when and what could what what does the procedure look like?

Um so in that case for for a CCN, um, like I mentioned before, it kind of works similar to a regular, you know, a civil case, uh criminal case.

What it what is if I can stop you quickly, what is a certificate of convenience and necessity?

Like that's one of the most common filings that we get.

Yes, that is one of the most common filings, and that that type of filing, what it does is is allow the utility to build new infrastructure within their service territory.

Uh in this case, for example, um, since El Paso Electric serves here in the in El Paso, uh, whenever they want to build a new facility, their generation, transmission, um, they'll go ahead and follow this type of filing with the city and with the PUC.

And that kind of begins the whole process of the case if you want to call it um that way.

And that's to evaluate if that uh investment is prudent for the system.

That is correct.

So that's the ultimate question, whether it's prudent and necessary for the the service as a whole, the grid, um, in this case.

And so that in uh the actual filing is what begins the case.

There's you know, there's a notice to the public, there's uh request or or um for information.

Um that that's another step though of the of the actual procedure.

There's negotiations, there's a there's a hearing, like I said, similar to very similar to a case.

There's a hearing with an administrative law judge, which will provide uh uh uh recommendation to the PUC and and at some future date um the PUC will hear this case and determine whether to uh take on that recommendation, approve, deny, etc.

on on the case.

But like I said, it moves very similar to that, and there's um those those various steps there's there's you know analysis of the the cases sometimes run you know hundreds of pages are very technical.

Uh that's when the experts come in and and help, you know, the intervenience in this case the city via it, it just it that's pretty much the the the process how it moves.

And the administrative law judge who hears that case first, that's a state appointed judge?

I believe in a specialty call.

Yes, sir.

And um the the public utility commission, the PUC, um that is a that's the state regulatory body for electric electric uh utilities.

That is correct, yes sir.

And how how uh how are they in their seats?

I believe they're also appointed.

So they're appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Texas Senate?

That's correct.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

So I just again I think it's important for people to walk through that process.

Now if it was it's very similar process, but if it was a uh a rate case instead of uh certificate of convenience and necessity, so this then it's a rate making procedure.

The city council actually gets to make a decision locally as the as the original jurisdiction uh regulator.

That's right.

What happens uh as it did in this past rate case if the city council decides to deny the request.

Um so in that case uh the case will move to the state regulators um for for appeal.

Um like I said, uh typically the the utilities file with the city of O'Paso and with the state regulator.

Um but at that point if the city acts to deny that um that particular case, then it will move to the state.

The other thing I just want to mention really quickly is be uh the the difference between the ba the rate case and the CCN is that um in the rate case there's actually an effect on the customers.

There's looks there's actually gonna be a charge for the customer's bill.

And the CCN at that stage there's no there's no cost, right?

Not yet until there's another filing, an interim filing, which will come down the the at a later time.

Right.

The CCN essentially gives them the ability to incur the cost in the future, but there's no direct cost that comes from it until later.

That's correct, yes sir.

And so then uh if if the denial from the city council is appealed to the public utility commission, um they go through the entire process that you described earlier of the hearing with the administrative law judge and they make a recommendation to the public utility commission who ultimately decides on the on the case.

That that is correct, yes sir.

Um and then one more time you did mention it.

Uh even if the when the public utility commission uh if they make a decision that one side or the other feels is unfavorable, um there's additional recourse.

What what is that?

That is that is correct.

So the city at that point will still have the ability to to appeal um just to a regular court.

If you know at that point we think that um the result was not favorable or or could could still be challenged at that point.

And that appeal is typically with the state uh district court in Austin.

That I believe that's correct.

Okay.

Um yeah, I think it's important for the public to understand that part of the process.

I know it gets a little tedious explaining it because it's a lot of steps, and I mean, even this stripped out a lot of the steps, right?

There's a whole back and forth of of filings of expert testimony and other arguments that happens over a period of several months, sometimes you know, we had, for example, El Paso Electric in the last rate case come here to present uh and to answer questions.

Uh that's that's a step that we've taken more frequently in recent years in order to try to get some of the public's questions answered and some of our questions answered about their filings.

But I uh again, like I said, it's it's important for the public to understand at least how the the process works and um who ultimately is making these decisions because on all of the the filings, at least during my time on the council that have come before us uh where we had a local decision to make I I think in in all cases except for one minor filing that the city council has uh voted to to deny either to suspend rates at first and then to deny the proposed increases um but ultimately those decisions get appealed to the public utility commit public utility commission.

I think it's important for people to understand the process.

Okay.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um so um I'm really liking this slide on seven, page seven.

It it is really startling to see just the last four years alone, how many filings Opas Electricas had and we're halfway through this year and we're already at 14 right.

So we're probably gonna exceed that.

To just make it simple, can we just focus on this year's 14 filings of the 14 filings every filing that they have filed has potential to increase rates for OPAS Electric customers, right?

That's correct, yes, sir.

And of those we usually have an idea of how much each case can increase a bill, right?

Uh some instances it it will be reflected in the filing what El Paso Electric estimates to be that charge in the future for the customer.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

I I'm just thinking through how we can better present this information to the public because it is just really overwhelming.

We're seeing so many.

And when we've done rate cases in the past, we kind of s have we had a chart at some point that showed this is what they asked for, this is what they got after we intervened.

And usually we've been pretty successful over the last few rate cases.

I think it would be really important to have something like this for like that for these filings, where for the ones that we know that they say this is gonna increase the bill by five dollars and this is we're fighting this right now, and then this is what we were able to save.

I think that would be really helpful for ratepayers to have a better understanding of this very complex process.

And even if we have uh I don't know, some of them, right?

But let's say out of the 14, we know seven.

Uh say we if we don't intervene in these, these seven things will go through and your your bill will increase by a total of fifty dollars because you add all of them, right?

So I'm I'm hoping we could get to uh a better place to explain this to people because right now the the economy hasn't hasn't been great, right?

And we've kind of heard that over and over.

And and I'm wondering how we could be a little bit more transparent with the public on on our end.

I think we're doing everything that we can, but this could be a good tool for people to access.

So, representative, we we actually do that every time, every step of the way on any one, all of these interventions.

We've been doing that historically.

The purpose of today's presentation is to simply notify the public that the filings are doubling in time and we need additional flexibility, but we've not gonna change the way we present these to the public.

Um every time that there's a new filing the council has requested that we do a press release and we explain what the ask is and what it looks like moving forward, and then as the case progresses, we put out additional press releases as to how the case is progressing.

So that is not gonna change at all.

And we've been doing that historically.

No, and then we continue to do it.

And I know there's a press release every single time, but like for example, how much how much has a person's bill gone up because of these filings and then the rate case that happened in the last year.

I I think getting those numbers out to people so they understand we they they wanted five dollar increases.

We intervene with an average of 23,000 dollars per filing, and we were able to make that increase two dollars instead of five dollars.

Yes.

And and if there's one place where all of that is tracked rather than press release by press release, I think it would it would be really eye-opening for a lot of people to understand where all that happened.

I I haven't seen it.

And we already have let me explain to you what the difficulty is with that because it's if the regulatory lag that we talk about, so many times you'll see the line item, and then the line items disappear when the rate rate case comes on.

So while we do that historically on every rate case, they see it on their bill, and then once the rate case comes and it's finished, a lot of the line items go away.

Because it all gets rolled up into the rate case.

That's not happening today as we speak because of the number of filings that you're seeing.

So you're just seeing this tack on, and then you'll have to wait for another rate case.

So we're doing as much as we can to keep the public informed as the cases are progressing, what the what the what the ask is and what the savings is.

But unfortunately, you're not seeing a roll-up because they just keep adding.

So we're we're attempting to stay ahead of it, and we'll have to talk to uh our strategic communications office about how we change that conversation.

But we're doing as much as we can to keep up with the filings and then notify the public of what that looks like.

But unfortunately, what we're relaying to you is that you're not going to see those loan those line items deleted when they used to delete in the past, and you just just see a few line items, you're just going to continue to see these moving forward until El Paso Electric decides that they don't want to keep filing these cases.

Okay, no, I I understand the the limitations and it's nice to see these numbers in terms of how many are um happening per year, and then how much money we're spending to intervene.

I just wish we could get to uh this is how it's gonna impact your pocketbook on a monthly basis because bills are going up.

That's kind of where I'm coming from on this.

But I get the limitations.

Thank you.

Representative.

I actually like that.

I wish that there was a way that with every um when every case is resolved, that we would be able to tell how much of an increase each uh resident has.

And do we have any control?

I guess we don't have any control over the billing, right?

Only water.

Okay.

Um but yeah, I think that that would be important for the public to know.

I know there was an outcry over the weekend on the rate people receiving their bills, and it was just really strong.

And I guess the final thing is that El Paso Electric can file the rate case and we can intervene and we can find it, fight it.

But in the long run, the final decision is completely and totally out of our hands.

And I think that's important for people to know that we're not the ones that are deciding, gee, we're gonna increase your electrical bill, that it comes from the outside.

Thank you.

Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor.

And I think it's important to point out one more thing that hasn't been talked about.

The fact that we have a lot of people at the city that have been working on rate cases for quite some time, but we also consult with outside counsel um to just level level us up and make sure that we're as successful as possible as we go to the state and in front of the PUCT.

Ms.

Niman, can you talk a little bit about what that outside counsel brings to the table?

Right.

So um historically, we've had uh Norman Gordon, who has been our our resident expert, though he's not in our office, he's been practicing for the city of El Paso for about 50 years now in the utility world.

And then most recently, um Don Davy, who used to be a member of the office, has gone out on his own, and he is now um the heir apparent once Mr.

Um Norman retires, which he has threatened to retire several times, but we just don't let him.

Um and and that's really outside council-wise, that is who we we rely on, and then the rest of the work is done uh both by Oscar uh Gomez and Robert Aginaga and then a few other uh members of our office who are starting to show additional interest in this area because it's um something that we are continuing to see increase and we've had to add another section to our office and for utilities because of it.

Thank you, Ms.

Demon.

And I think Oscar, you mentioned it briefly, it's a very complex process.

Um we're learning along the way too, just because of the amount of rate cases that have come before us as a council has been significant, and so we thank you for for that leadership.

Uh, but we also want to make sure that when we do go in front of the PUCT, since they are appointed by the governor and um they are uh you know commissioners that are very savvy in this in this field, we want to make sure that we have really good representation.

So we thank you for the work that the legal department is doing here as well as our outside council.

It's important that we protect our ratepayers here locally.

Thank you.

Mayor, if I could just add one more one more item.

We have been working um updating our our ordinance that is in place for communications with the utility companies.

It's a very old ordinance from 1977, and we have um undertaken some of that work recently.

We've shared it with El Paso Electric, and then we will be sharing it with the council more recent more right after.

It will require additional um filing notices with El Paso Electric and Texas Gas to give you additional um notification prior to them bringing a case um before the PUCT, as you can tell.

Um, it's fallen upon the city attorney's office to come to council frequently and brief you while you have not received that equal briefing from El Paso Electric.

So we believe that as your authority under the charter, which gives you original jurisdiction, you could require that they come forward and brief you at the time of the filing in front of the council so that the public can hear it from them, and then you have the opportunity to question them as opposed to having to get answers from us.

So that will be coming forward here in the next um few weeks as well.

Okay, very good.

Any further questions for the city attorney's office?

Thank you guys for for intervening on on behalf of the rate pairs.

We appreciate that.

All right, there was a motion and a second, Miss Nunez.

And we did have Miss Claude signed up, but I don't see her present.

She's signed up to speak.

Okay, so she's okay.

Motion and second, would you call for the vote, please?

And we do have a motion made by Representative Limon, seconded by alternate mayor proton Fierro.

Yes, or was it Nina?

I heard somebody.

Thank you, ma'am.

And the item has been approved unanimously.

And Ms.

Nunez, you had it right.

It was Representative Lamon and uh Representative.

Okay, I'll note that.

All right, is there a motion to retire to move to retire on EX13X9?

Okay.

There's a motion and a second to retire.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Anyone oppose and the city of the city council of the city of El Paso may retire into executive session pursuing to section 3.58 of the El Paso City Charter and the Texas Government Code, Chapter 551, subchapter D to discuss any of the following.

EX1, the City of Houston versus the state of Texas interveners, City of San Antonio and City of El Paso, number D1 GN 2303474, and number 03 2300531 C B, Section 551.071, EX2 is Leda del Sur del Sur Pueblo versus City of El Paso, cost number EP 23 C V 132 DCG, Section 551071, EX3, Anna Barnes versus City of El Paso, and all United States Western District Court, cost number three 20 B 161, Section 551.071.