Good morning, everyone.

This is a work session of the El Paso City Council for Monday, September 28, 2026.

It is 901 a.m.

Mayor Johnson is present and presiding in council chambers along with Mayor Protem Chavez, Representative Acevedo, Representative Boya Treco, Alternate Mayor Pro Tem Piero, Representative Limon, and Representative Maldonado Rocha will be arriving later this morning.

Mayor, we have a quorum.

Okay, thank you.

Representative Treyhood, would you lead us in the pledge, please?

And the flag of the United States of America.

And

the Republicans, one nation under God in this goal with the liberty.

Okay, Ms.

Bryan, I believe that brings us to item number one.

Yes, and item one is discussion and action on the streets and maintenance facility maintenance audit A 2026-08.

And for the record, Representative Nino arrived at 9018.

Good morning, Adrian.

Good morning, Mayor.

Good morning, Mayor, Council.

So, Adrian Serrano, Chief Internal Auditor.

Today's presentation is a recap of the streets and maintenance facilities maintenance division audits.

This audit was designed to evaluate whether city owned facilities are adequately maintained, efficiently managed, and properly preserved to extend their useful lives.

As noted on the slide above, the audit objectives were to confirm the accuracy and completeness of facility, asset, and component inventories, assess processes for identifying and tracking building maintenance needs, evaluate the effectiveness of the work order management system, review budget efficiency, and verify compliance with internal and external payment standards.

Can I get the slideshow to proceed, please?

There we go.

So

the scope covered FY2026, and our audit approach consisted of department staff interviews, reviewing building and asset inventory records, analyzing a sample of January work orders, evaluating the facility condition assessment draft, and assessing budgetary data for the department.

Our first finding identified gaps in the facility and component inventory.

FMD manages 302 facilities in CityWorks, excluding land parcels.

However, inventories are not accessible enterprise wide, and major components like HVAC units and generators are not centrally tracked.

This limits visibility into component level risks and reduces our ability to integrate facility data with other city systems, potentially affecting asset management, maintenance scheduling, and resource allocation prioritization.

Our recommendation is to complete the facility condition assessment to establish a comprehensive inventory, reconcile the results of that assessment against CityWorks, perform regular updates, and evaluate whether access to city works can be extended to support broader management needs.

Now

our second finding relates to procedural gaps.

We identified the FMD's preventative maintenance procedures were outdated with the last update occurring in 2019.

Such procedures did not contain guidance for work order closeouts or criteria for distinguishing capital versus routine expenditures, including cost responsibility guidelines.

Our recommendation is to update those procedures to include the preventative maintenance plan, work order closeout, and guidelines for cost responsibility related to discretionary work requested by departments.

These updates should be formally approved by management and regularly reviewed and updated.

Our

third finding relates to inaccurate work order closeout timelines.

We tested a sample of 30 work orders from January 2026 and identified that although physical repairs averaged right under two days.

Administrative processing to officially close out the work order increased that average to about 15 days.

This creates inaccurate performance metrics and can make it difficult to gauge actual workloads, resource allocation, and responsiveness.

We recommend implementing a formal process in CityWorks to ensure timely data entry and closure with timestamps that reflect actual completion dates rather than administrative lag.

Now

our last finding focus on the insufficiency of FMD's operational budget.

FMD's general fund budget of $5.7 million for FY26 included 408,000 in transfers to address operational shortfalls.

As of April of this year, which is when we were in the process of conducting field work, 3.7 million had already been spent.

1.5 million was encumbered, leaving about half a million in the remaining budget at that point in time.

Now

to make this a little bit more relevant for purposes of our discussion today, we did obtain updated budget info closer to fiscal year end.

FMD processed an additional 450,000 in budget transfers and savings allocations to increase its initial budget of 5.7 million to about 6.2 million.

As of August 24th, 5.8 million had been spent more than the initial budget, leaving nearly 275,000 encumbered and another 116 available for the remainder of FY26 at that point in time.

This highlights the ongoing challenge of delivering key sort key services with limited resources.

Allocate work appropriately based on priorities

and

to plan for anticipated facility expenses without having to rely on emergency funding.

So in conclusion, while Sam met the audit objectives related to payments, streets and maintenance did not meet the following audit objectives.

Facility inventories are incomplete and not fully centralized.

Policies and procedures supporting preventative maintenance and work water management are outdated.

Work order closeout delays result in inaccurate performance metrics, and general fund budget is insufficient for daily maintenance needs.

With that, I'll turn it over to FMD for their managerial responses.