Okay, we're gonna go ahead and get started.

Uh it is 2005, and I call the property management and environmental service committee to order.

Okay, um right before we go into the briefings, uh Val has some introductions to make.

Yeah, I'm excited to have Wendy Turpin here to provide an update on illegal dumping hotspots.

Um this is something that we promised the committee that we would come back and provide updates on as the team collaborated with other departments to um really hone in on some of the areas that needed to be um needed some extra upkeep.

Again, Wendy Turpin, Environmental Services Assistant Director, and I'm gonna talk about three different hot spots today.

All of them are on the east side of the city, but they are in three different council member districts.

And the first one I'm gonna talk about is actually a city-owned property, 2200 Bomar.

So this is a property that is owned by the water department, and it is currently vacant, and we have historically had a lot of illegal dumping and illegal camping hot spots here.

On that yellow circled property alone in 24, we cleaned up four illegal camp cleanups and in 25 six in the surrounding area along the river and there to the right side of the area.

We actually had about 13 camps in 2025, just outside the 2200 Beaumar area.

So it was a very difficult area to keep clean.

But in January, we worked with police and PAR to clear the vegetation area out, um, cleaned up all what was left and installed a pan tilt zoom camera and a license plate reader.

And what this does is it allows us to catch the license plates of the people that are dumping, and because of that, we've gotten a felony and four citations there.

But the really cool thing is we worked with IT department and installed an STS 360 camera, and it is motion activated, it's monitored by the water department.

And when the water department sees anybody, they call the police, and then the police are able to prevent the illegal camps and the dumping from being on that property.

And since then there have been no illegal camps.

So that camera has been a fabulous win for us.

The next property I want to talk about is 3200 greenbelt.

And this one we had passive cameras on, so basically, like think like a game camera, and we had those installed, and we caught all kinds of people conducting felonies and dumping all kinds of inappropriate things on that on that property.

We installed the camp, cleaned it up, installed a live view technology camera.

This camera actually will uh you can yell at them through it basically and tell them to leave.

Um you can speak uh both ways and tell them to get off the property, and it has lights, et cetera, et cetera.

And since then we have had no issues.

And this one was installed in January of 2026.

So this one will be there for a while.

A lot of residents uh dumped here uh over time.

So the cameras, I've mentioned two separate cameras, and I think it's really important to share the the minor difference.

There is a difference in cost, of course.

The one that doesn't do as much is cheaper.

Uh the live view technology one does have the two-way speaker and it is monitored and it'll call police, which is uh very cool, but you know you're paying for it.

So you get what you pay for when it comes to cameras.

Last but not least, we have uh a dual property.

This is 4700 Baxi 6,000.

So it's a very large property.

So on one side of the property, we have installed a camera, uh, one of these uh live view cameras, and then on the other side of the property we have our passive uh game cameras, and uh and and so we're able to for the most part keep everybody off the northern side that 4700 maxi, but we do have a little bit of problem where we don't have that live view camera on the other side because it is such a large property, but we have gained uh a lot of value from having these.

These are shots from our pan tilt zoom cameras where we see people dump.

We're able to hold them accountable after they've committed the crime, but good news is we're able to hold them accountable because we can we can get their license plates and and hunt them down, and we have I understand a really great relationship with U-Hall.

Um so they uh it's used quite frequently for dumping, unfortunately.

So we are going to continue to use this fabulous technology, the pan-tilt zoom cameras, the live view technology, and the STS360, and a lot of other departments have asked about these and are starting to install them where they struggle also.

Um, and with that, we are working on increasing information uh out to individuals to prevent illegal dumping and uh to use the drop-off stations uh rather than our at back alleyways.

So with that, do you have any questions?

I do.

I have one question.

The cameras are they also plugged into our real-time crime center as well with uh forward PD.

Yes, we actually work very closely with PD and we can actually access all of their cameras for illegal dumping and they can access all of ours.

That was my next question.

So thank you.

I appreciate that.

Wendy, um, the cameras at 4700 maxi and 6,000 High Creek.

Is that the area where Encore would is looking to expand?

So will those cameras be removed once they go in and make their if if it's approved their expansion.

So it's possible that they will not be because this is actually uh public roadway, and if we still have dumping, but if the Encore expansion does stop the dumping, then we would absolutely use this this camera and move it elsewhere.

We have considered moving it elsewhere because we've gotten a kind of a drop in in campers in that area, and we may have areas that would be more effective.

Okay, we're always considering moving.

I thought they were going to be um installing a fence, and that's why I was curious if that would keep people from going onto those properties.

I think Dr.

Wittenberg do you know more about that?

Absolutely.

So just to clarify, Cody Wittenberg Environmental Services Director.

So yes, this is the same property, and the great piece about these particular cameras is they are transferable to different locations.

So once we see that property moving forward and those security issues are resolved, then yes, I would expect we would find a new location to utilize the technology elsewhere and still embrace that.

Thank you.

Okay.

And so on these other properties, since they've been, you know, that we haven't had any uh I guess additional reoccurrences of camping.

Is there a time period where you would move them to another hot spot, Wendy?

So if the water department chooses to move the one that they're using, absolutely.

Um we we're not expecting to have any use move this one anytime soon because it is such a large uh problem.

So, but yes, they are we can always get more.

I'm happy to buy more with grant money, I'm assuming or oh sure.

Okay anywhere, anybody will buy me one, I'll I'll I'll get it.

All right, thank you.

So I guess we'll move on to the next uh presentation.

Yes, and the next presentation was requested back in the fall by this committee.

Um you had just wanted to know what are those existing mechanisms or ordinances that we currently have in place if you or residents that you hear from want to address blight in their community.

Um Wendy Turpin has coordinated with Benjamin Sampract from the city attorney's office to put this presentation together.

So this presentation will just cover some of the common commercial violations, just as a reminder.

We'll talk about the tools and our toolkit and then how we're moving forward.

The commercial compliance team of three individuals spends time specifically on properties that are not residential.

They work on everything else.

This is a list of some of the violations that they handle every day.

We focus normally on priority two violations, which are things that if they're not addressed, they will become a great hazard.

And our staff do tend to find multiple violations on any single one property.

And so you'll see those prior priority two violation number is is rather high, but we are trained to be thorough and effective and ensure that we fully communicate with the individuals when we find any violations on their property.

We want it to be a one-stop shop.

So an example of the timelines that we process here with a property maintenance violation.

This case took us about 14 days to resolve.

It came in on the Fort Worth app.

We did have a nuisance abatement order on this property that was already open.

So once we had posted our notification, we processed.

Um, hold on, I may have misspoke.

Please forgive me.

I want to look at my notes on this one.

Okay, so this one we had to get a nuisance abatement order on.

I apologize.

And then it was a repeat violator.

So I apologize for that.

But it took us 14 days.

We cleaned the property because the property owner did not clean it, and then we take those costs, calculate them up, and put a lien on the property.

So when the property is sold at a minimum, we get our money back.

Um, the property owner does have an opportunity to pay the lien at any point in time, but unfortunately, several of them don't get paid until the property changes hands.

This is a zoning violation.

This is improper um screen of a of a of a dumpster.

And this long as our property owners are taking the necessary steps to resolve the violation.

We work with them and try not to issue citations, but keep them moving forward.

With something like this, you have to get a permit with development services.

And so we worked with them as they did that to move forward.

So this one took 57 days to resolve.

And we do have our illegal dumping violations.

Now this one was in the right of way.

So this was on city owned property.

So the blessing of this one is we get to clean our own property because we're the property owners and we can do it immediately.

So we received the complaint the same day we investigated it, found out that there wasn't anybody living there, and we were able to abate it.

Um that was a Friday, February 20th, we had it abated on Monday, so that's why it took three days.

And the commercial property uh team also we also do the illegal campsites, and I want to address that too.

Um, and we use a full team of individuals to clean up our illegal campsites, and we do work.

Hope is the one we work with most, and then our nuisance abatement team cleaning it up.

Um, here is an officer investigating and posting his nuisance abatement order, and then we clean it up.

And they have property owners have about seven days to clean it up themselves, and if not, then unfortunately we have to go in and use our resources to clean that up.

We use um the first thing we do when we talk to any property owners, we give them a notice of violation.

It is not a citation, it's just a notice of here's what's wrong, and here's how you fix it.

If they choose not to fix it and they're not giving us a good faith effort, we will um have an opportunity to issue citations.

Normally they're about $500, they can go up to 2,000 depending on the violation.

If we have to clean the property ourselves, we do the liens.

And then um Benjamin is here to talk more about the building standards commission.

If you have questions, if you're not familiar with that, and also the lawsuits that we can use to get injunctive relief and civil penalties if you have questions about those two things, I will defer to him.

Okay.

Benjamin, do you mind providing just a quick overview of those two items?

Benjamin Samprack with the city attorney's office.

Um, in terms of the building standard commission, if there are substandard properties, um, places where excuse me, um, places where properties may be substandard, uh dilapidated, uh, properties can go in front of the commission, and the commission can order they repair the property or demolish it, uh, or civil penalties.

And in the case of um junk properties where there's debris and trash, the commission can also order civil penalties and for the city to clean it up.

And then, of course, with lawsuits, you all are familiar with chapter 54 and chapter 21.

Um, chapter 54 allows us to file lawsuits for code violations, a lot of the things that we're talking about here, and then um chapter 211 file allows us to file lawsuits for zoning violations, um, and then of course we get injunctive relief or civil penalties of up to a thousand dollars per day for those lawsuits.

But that's a general overview of the lawsuits in the building standards commission.

The last thing I want to talk about in the tool in the toolbox is our environment environmental investigation unit.

So these are um individuals that catch our illegal dumpers and they work very closely with the police department.

And unfortunately, a lot of our uh citations are found for for people who are littering and illegally dumping, and they do become felonies because they dump large amounts of of garbage and debris, and um then the we work with the police department to get them and sometimes they get large fines and and jail times.

So, do you want to point out that the weight difference looks very different between 2024 and 2025?

But we had a very large illegal dump that we had to clean up, so um, not typical 2024.

So point that out.

This is probably a question better answered uh by legal, but when we talk about the felonies prosecuted, uh I'm assuming those are picked up by the DA and prosecuted through them.

Um it looks like well, 37 year to date.

I don't know.

My math is not too great, so I don't know if we're above where we were last year or below, you know, as far as the year to date go.

Um we're below.

And so my question is what is are we getting the support that we need from the district attorney's office to adequately prosecute these?

And if not, I'm assuming these are under chapter 54, so we can start no.

So we work very closely with Officer.

Okay, and as I have not heard that we have struggled at all with the district attorney when it comes to these felonies.

And quite frequently our officers uh talk to the uh dumper and could normally get them to admit that they did the violation.

Um yes, and and then if they yeah, it's true.

We have some fabulous staff that can kind of get them get them talking long enough that they eventually hang themselves.

Yeah, nice.

And the only other thing that I'll add is when we're talking about felonies, obviously we're talking about criminal violations.

Um, and so with our 54 tool, we use that for our city ordinance violations.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Wendy, um, I have a question on enforcement.

Once uh notices have been posted, how much time do we give them?

Is it the 10 days for private property, even if it's commercial or okay?

Seven.

Seven, yes, okay.

And then, like about how long does it take if the city determines that we have to do the cleaning?

So after those seven days we're eligible and we put it into our ITSM or our our ticket writing process, and we have crews that are actually caught up, and we can get it cleaned within the next 24 to 48 hours, thanks to Neil Johnson and all of his fab staff.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Okay, great.

So we're gonna keep using all of these wonderful features and our wonderful team, and we are currently working on a pilot project for illegal dumping of donation bins with our EIU team and the police who um would to deal with that.

So we'll probably come back with a follow-up at some point on donation bins.

The habitual nuisance ordinance, which is coming before you tonight is something that we are also very supportive of in working with when it comes to NET force, um, which we're also a part of.

So thank you.

So just donation bins of what?

Oh, so um, if you go to just about any commercial property, you see those great big wooden boxes that said, hey, please give us your things.

99% of the time, those are on improperly zoned properties, and they're dumped on those commercial properties without permission by the property owner.

So we're trying to figure out how to not make the property owner pay to clean those up and hold the actual owner of the bin accountable.

Okay, I thought we were gonna add more.

I'm like, no, they're okay.

Thank you.

I will happily clear that up for you.

Yes, thank you, Wendy.

Thank you.

So we'll go on to the next presentation, Marilyn Marvin on reliant energy credits.

Good afternoon.

Marilyn Marvin, property management director.

And I'm here to talk about renewable energy credits.

Just a little background.

Since 2021, the city's electric sub electricity supply company, which is Reliant Energy, um, we have every year get renewable energy credits.

They're about equivalent to 50% of what we're expected to consume each year, and so it averages is about 170, 173,000 renewable credits.

And I'm just gonna keep calling them credits from now on instead of the other.

Prior to 2026, um, our contract has been that we hold those credits for a year and then reliant retires those credits every year on our behalf.

That is what our contract is.

And what we're as I get through the uh the presentation, our recommendation is to change that so that we're no longer retiring the credits at the uh annually having reliant retire credits.

So if from 2026 to 2031, we anticipate we'll have about um 934,000 credits that will be on our books, if you will, uh, that will not be retired.

The reason we're bringing this to you is because we have an opportunity to sell our 2026 through 2031 credits and one lump um transaction.

There is no risk to the city, so we'll have a third party that sells them on our behalf, and if we don't like the price that they get sold for, or if there's anything that gives us pause, we don't have to sell them, and they'll just stay on our books until we decide to sell again.

Um but we don't want to retire them anymore.

And here are some reasons why.

Um right now when we retire them.

I mean, we buy them, we retire them.

We do get some benefit on our electricity bills, but not the same benefit we would get if we sold them.

Uh, we do have some budgetary short uh shortfalls coming up.

Uh, the federal government is making changes to how you can handle credits in the future, which would decrease the value of those credits, and so we think now is a good time to sell them.

So I just said all of that, so apologize for the duplicate slide.

Right now, you can sell the credits from anywhere from a dollar to about three and a half dollars, and our third party who would sell them on our behalf believes they can sell the credits for about two dollars today.

And so if we sold all of our credits, the 934,000, uh, it would bring in about 1.9 million dollars.

We would pay our third party 15% of that.

So we the city would net about 1.6 million dollars if we sell them today.

Yes.

And Marilyn, will you just focus again on the dedicated proceeds would go to capital project shortfalls?

Yes.

Oh, thank you.

I am so sorry.

Uh the proceeds would go to capital projects, facility capital projects that we have shortfalls that we have budgeting gaps on.

That's where we recommend.

You said we're getting, I'm sorry.

You said we're gonna get 1.5 or 1.8.

That's the range.

We would get one point, we would net 1.6.

So they would sell for about 1.9, but our third party use source who's gonna sell them on our behalf gets 15%.

Perfect.

That's the almost exact number that Fire Station Community Center is um uh has a gap.

Yeah, so I love this.

I got an idea for it.

We will we will add that.

I think we have some facility gaps we need to look at.

Yes, we do.

Um, so the process will be we need to amend our contract so that uh Reliant no longer retires them on our behalf.

We're actually already working with uh legal right now to amend our contract.

Um we would have you source evaluate and analyze our credit the credit market to see how much they think they can sell them for, then they will put them out to sell and execute that sell on our behalf, and then the funds would be transferred to the city of Fort Worth once that happens.

So again, our recommendation is to put to pursue a lump sum sale, uh, and then we're gonna bring an IR to work session on March 31st.

We appreciated having this committee structure to really give you a preview here first.

Um, and then like you said, we'd like to advance it with an IR on the 31st, and then with any council action following that.

Correct.

No, that's great.

Go get us that money.

Thank you.

Okay, and so uh we would now hear from Dr.

Wittenberg uh about upcoming events.

Absolutely, thank you again.

Just wanted to take an opportunity to share some upcoming events with the community and and others that want to be a part of those.

Get it on the main screen in a moment.

Perfect.

So, first thing is is actively now is lights out.

You may be very familiar with this campaign.

We have done a great job as a city of Fort Worth with the Audubon Society and other partners at Cornell Labs and others to really bring awareness to the situation every spring.

Every fall, around two billion birds with a bee come through Texas uh on their flyway.

And so we just want to make sure we're supporting them on their journey both times, fall and spring.

So to everyone, take a minute to turn your lights out in the evening.

Typically between 11 and 6 is what's asked, but you can go a little bit earlier, a little bit later if you want to to just keep our birds safe as they move along their journey.

Next piece, uh, this is really exciting.

We are uh moving our our consumer health permitting office is moving to the fifth floor with the rest of development services, and that's going to be happening on March 12th at the end of this week.

The team has done a great job.

Kudos to Leticia Cordero and the team for some great work here.

Um, again, the uh consumer health team is moving out of Hazel Harvey Peace, and they'll be moving temporarily into the annex, and then eventually we'll be moving to City Hall on the 18th floor in a few months.

So we're very excited to join the team here at City Hall as Environmental Services.

But again, this particular piece you'll be able to pay your health permit online or or through the window if you prefer to come in person, and we just want to make sure you can always reach out to the staff if you need some help getting that paid.

Very exciting.

On the Saturday the 28th, we have Cowtown Cleanup.

This is our largest annual volunteer cleanup event.

Many of you are very familiar with it.

We will also have following the event um 8 to 11.

We will have a uh earth party in the afternoon with free food, hot dogs come and check out trash and fashion if you'd like to be a part of that.

Those subittles are due.

We've had some really great creative winners over the years.

So we this year we have a youth division and an adult division to allow both of those groups to come forward.

And we have lots of young people who are already excited to create outfits out of recycled material.

I just want to throw a challenge down as I because I've had the honor of getting to be one of the judges several years in a row.

These outfits, costumes are amazing, but I have yet to see one from the city of Fort Worth employees.

So challenge is been thrown out this year.

I want to see how creative our city of Fort Worth employees can be.

And I want to see an entry there.

No pressure.

So yes, city staff can absolutely submit a submission and we'll push that challenge out.

I bet somebody will take you up on that.

But anyway, absolutely excited to bring people out.

Please take a moment and register for the event.

If you have a challenge on the 28th, it's okay.

Go ahead and register.

We can give you some supplies.

You can clean up a little bit before the event, you can clean up a little bit after, you can clean up by yourself with a work group, maybe as a team building activity.

Anyone and everyone is help, uh is their help is really supported.

Um it could be as long or as short as you need it to be.

Moving into also on the 28th, in addition to Trash and Fashion and Earth Party and Cowtown Cleanup, we also want to continue to tackle scrap tires.

You guys may recall last fiscal year we had several very collect uh very successful collection events at the East Side Regional Library.

This year we're bringing this one event um to City Hall.

So you'll have the opportunity to bring scrap tires.

Anyone in the community wants to bring scrap tires eight to twelve right here in the back parking lot at City Hall.

Looking forward to that.

If you can help us promote that as well, absolutely.

Dr.

Whittenberg, so um, can anybody um drop off tires?

What would what kind of uh do they have to provide proof of address or in this particular case we allow anyone to just bring their tires if they have their address that would be great, but we have seen that we have plenty of capacity to bring these in.

Take them to a recycling group that's happy to take them.

So very excited to bring it forward.

Um we've had people who find them in creeks and bring them in from areas that they've cleaned up from the event, such as Cowtown Cleanup.

We've also had people who cleaned out their garage and brought them, and it doesn't matter.

You can bring them from any source.

Awesome.

Thank you.

And last couple, uh, Salt Road.

This is of course is the main access and entry point for our Southeast landfill.

There you can see the green line is effectively Salt Road.

We have been working with TPW closely and the city of Kinnadale to kick off a reconstruction or repaving of that particular street.

So during construction, we've worked with Republic, the operator for our Southeast Landfill.

People will continue to enter the landfill as they always have, but closing one lane for reconstruction and then the other to allow that lane of uh that line of access.

We're just asking that for the duration of the construction project that they exit out on the south side or the blue line that you see there back to Dick Price Road and out, and we'll continue that for the duration of the construction project.

We're still working with a pre-construction meeting for that particular project, but we hope that I'll start at the end of the month.

So thank you.

Um and then the last piece is kind of a save the date.

Um, you are very familiar that we're working on the renovation of the convention center, and we were able to leverage a brownfield loan a couple of years ago.

EPA was able to grant us a uh sorry, I said a loan, a grant from EPA for one million dollars to support asbestos abatement on that facility.

And we are very excited to partner with EPA and the Kansas State targeted assistance for Brownfield's office.

They're gonna be coming down from Manhattan and over from Dallas to do a Brownfields workshop.

This is really intended for any developers in the community, real estate professionals, anyone who's looking to purchase land.

We just want to highlight some of the grants that we're able to provide for individuals for maybe a phase one or phase two environmental site assessment or maybe some even some cleanup grants for those qualifying properties.

Um can you make sure that we uh whoever you're working with with comms sends that out to the um Terran County Association of Realtors and then the Greater Real Estate Um Council, a real estate council for worth, because I think they would definitely have constituencies that are really interested in attending that.

So absolutely, thank you.

And then at the end, we'll do a tour with that group to go through the convention center to talk about that.

But we'll make that note.

Also working with our chamber partners to make sure that any of the the chamber memberships that would like to come along can come along as well.

But it is open anyone.

The registration is open, so if you want to go to that link and register today, you're more than welcome to do so.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dr.

Rumerg.

Okay.

Um, are there any requests for future discussion topics?

Yes, councilman.

And I think the scope of this is much bigger than an IR presentation.

Um I think probably the likelihood that it'll need to be in the budget this year.

Um but we saw what happened with Gendi Street when we weren't keeping up with maintenance, and then we got hit with a price tag that we couldn't afford.

No.

Okay.

Well, if nothing else, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.

Okay, so moved.

Our meeting is adjourned.