No, I know this.

At some point, you guys got it.

Yeah, at some point.

So I'm gonna call the uh meeting of the legislative intergovernment affairs committee to order.

Uh first item of business is approval of the April seventh, twenty twenty-six minutes.

All those in favor?

Any opposed?

Great.

Uh action items, consideration of recommendation of appointment of two new substitute judges and related salary.

Chief Gonzalez, I think you're stepping up.

Thank you.

Microphone.

Councilmember Crane, committee members, and staff.

I'm here today requesting to fill two vacant part-time substitute judge positions.

Um judges are appointed for a two-year term, and the current term expires March third first of twenty twenty-seven.

We have eight subs eight substitute part-time judge positions, six are filled with two vacancies.

They're appointed for a two-year term, and I and not an odd number of years, and they're limited to work nineteen hours per week.

They're compensated only for the number of hours worked, and there are no benefits.

Actually, the appointment of a substitute judge to a full-time judge position, and the second vacancy was due to a resignation of a substitute judge.

The first vacancy was due to the to appointing substitute judge Karen Boyd Williams to fill the full-time judge position commencing April first, twenty twenty-six, and the second vacancy was due to the uh resignation of substitute substitute judge Leslie Lynch effective March thirty-first of twenty twenty-six, which created an immediate need to fill the vacancies promptly.

However, at the conclusion of the interview process, the committee selected Dina Dina Stallings to fill the vacant substitute judge position.

The second vacancy was due to uh the uh resignation of substitute judge Leslie Lynch.

So we posted the position for a two-week period, first we posted it externally from March twelfth through March twenty-sixth.

We received three applications.

Two were interviewed uh on Thursday, April 1st, and the panel selected Raymond Daniel to fill the substitute judge position.

The interview committee consisted of Deputy Chief Radshaw, two municipal court judges, and the clerk of the court, assistant director.

Dana Dinah Stallings is a graduate of Baylor University School of Law, licensed in Texas since 1996.

She's a solo practitioner with a background in criminal and family law, as well as contract.

Raymond Daniel is a graduate of South Texas College of Law, licensed in Texas in 1991, also a solo practitioner in the areas of Will's trust and probate family and criminal background.

My recommendation is to approve the appointment of Diana Stallings and Raymond Daniel as substitute judges for the remainder of a two-year term, commencing May 16th, 2026 through March 31st of 2027.

And I also recommend to establish the same rate of pay as all the other part-time judges or substitute judges at a rate of $64 per hour.

The next steps consists of an M and C to the mayor and city council for consideration on May 12th, 2026.

Any questions?

Any questions?

No.

Can we take both of these recommendations together?

Right.

Okay.

Do I hear a motion to approve the recommendation to appoint uh Dean Dina?

Dinah.

Dinah Stallings and Raymond Daniel as substitute judges for the all those in favor?

Any of the closed?

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Appreciate it, Judge.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Next up we have the federal legislative update, and I see Casey Pipes in the house.

Step on up.

Thanks.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Mr.

City Manager, Mr.

Chairman, members of the committee.

On behalf of Teresa James, TJ Patterson, and our entire government affairs team, happy to uh update you on uh what's going on in DC.

I was joking with uh Teresa and TJ that it's odd that you would ask me for an update.

There's absolutely nothing interesting going on in Washington.

Assassination attempts, wars, tariffs, uh, but for our purposes, appropriations is going on.

So I wanted to update you on sort of where we are and the process, uh, what comes next, and then also mention uh the at grade crossing campaign that we've begun.

Uh so you have the report in front of you, um, or you should have the report in front of you of uh the list of meetings that have been done, very active in the last couple of months, mainly because we're trying to get all of our uh appropriate requests in.

So uh 89 meetings over the course of the last month, so every day uh we're in somebody's office uh pushing for the city's uh agenda and the city's request.

We put in 13 different requests uh forated projects.

Um we put in directly, some of these were others put in and we supported them.

Alliance is a great example of that.

Uh, but they total uh in sum uh 13 requests for 40 million dollars, uh, and these are the CPFs.

So this is the restricted earmarks, uh, the community project fund funding possibilities.

This was brought back online about five years ago.

Uh, and so we're we want to use that as much as we can, but that's doesn't mention or include the programmatic or plus up requests, uh, which will happen this summer.

And those are the ones where there's already a line item.

Uh there's already a budget item that is money is flowing uh to a to an entity, a Fort Worth entity, uh, and we try to go in and plus those accounts up and add money to them.

Uh we have submitted roughly a hundred to a hundred and ten million dollars uh in plus up requests, so that's actually where the real money is.

Uh, and we'll have more of an update later this summer.

We're still early in that process, uh, and I'll be back to to update you on that.

I did want to mention before I take your questions uh the at grade crossing campaign.

I think I've met discussed this with everybody uh on the committee.

Uh this is the idea that came up in our meetings in the fall.

We always meet with the entire council individually in the fall and try to get a sense of what they want to work on in the coming year.

This issue came up over and over and over again that uh there are too many at Great Crossings uh that are creating an issue.

This is obviously where the road and the railroad meet.

Uh, and so we're trying to find uh and launch a campaign uh to find money to alleviate some of these.

So I'm gonna be coming around and doing meetings with individual council members to try to show you the map that Kelly Porter has come up with.

Uh it's an exhaustive map.

It covers every at grade crossing in the city.

There's I think about a hundred of them.

So we're gonna go through and look at your individual districts and try to prioritize the most important ones in your areas, and then we're gonna try to get money for them.

Uh, Scott has already begun the process uh with the DOT.

Uh, in fact, you you will notice in your uh page two of your uh summary.

Uh Jay Payne is the deputy administrator of the federal highway administration.

We've had a couple of different meetings with him.

Scott has.

Um Scott couldn't join us today, by the way.

He had to be in the speaker's office, so I guess we'll forgive him uh for for doing that.

Um but he's had a couple of meetings with Jay Pay Payne, and there's a couple of different ways to go about this.

There's discretionary money uh that the agency has that we're gonna pursue.

There is the grant process in particular, uh the consolidated rail infrastructure and safety improvements grant that's sending them as uh Chrissy grants, uh, which Kelly Porter and his team are looking into.

There's CPFs next year, uh, and then there's the plus ups that I just mentioned.

So a lot of different angles of attack we can use on this, uh, but we are gonna try to pursue massive amounts of money because this is not gonna be cheap to do it, but it's a game changer for the city if we can get this done, both in terms of public safety and in terms of just moving goods and services uh around the city uh more quickly.

So a very, very busy spring, uh, and it's gonna be an even busier summer uh as we look to the plus ups uh on the approbe side.

And let me stop there and take uh any questions or comments that you may have.

Any questions?

Yeah, yeah.

Thank you, Casey.

Um, on that at grade crossings, is Kelly Porter ranking those by priority before we get that list?

So the the list that I have is just a map that lists all of them by district.

Um so we can certainly work with him on prioritizing it, but we also want you guys to give us input as well.

So we we probably will do both.

Okay.

And then do we have a dollar amount that we're kind of pie in the sky that we're gonna go after?

So if we were to fix every at grade crossing, it would be 900 million dollars, something like that.

Okay.

So by triaging these and coming up with you know, three or four in each district, we can dramatically reduce our price, but still a lot of money we're gonna need to get.

Okay, and then sorry, one last kind of question for Alan.

Um can you talk a little bit about Dallas wanting to align with us on appropriations request?

Oh, yeah.

Uh it's a true story.

Uh it was uh actually a request that came to the city manager.

Um it was I think it was the regional chamber, um, that had asked if they could coordinate all of the appropriations requests uh for the entire region.

And we politely said no, we like the Dallas Regional Chamber, they're they're fine, but um we want to get Fort Worth money for Fort Worth projects, and uh we took it as a compliment.

Um they obviously know that we do appropriations very well, and uh kind of want to we we suspected they kind of wanted to get in on some of our relationships at the committee, and um we're not we're not doing that.

We're gonna Dallas asked that.

Remind them that they need to be good regional partners if they want that, and just point them to their members on the RTC committee.

I'll point them to you, Ms.

Beck.

Yes.

I've already told them about it.

I'm sure Casey, and this this may be better directed to Kelly Porter.

Um but I'm gonna echo uh councilwoman Hill's comment.

I would really love to have some data around that around those crossings to prioritize them.

And the two things I would look at are the number of minutes per day that the crossing is blocked, and then the sheer volume of traffic that uses the particular road at that crossing, so we can really really see which ones have the maximum amount of problem.

Yeah, that that was gonna be my suggestion as well.

Is we can look at number of cars, whatever that formula is over total time stalled, because um, you know, there's some that are a pain, right?

But there's others that are a real problem.

And so like we were discussing the West 7th, right?

Like that's that's a huge um when it stops, and you know, it's a lot of cars that back up.

So there might be a couple cars backing up for 30 minutes someplace way out, but if we've got hundreds of cars backing up for 30, that's a problem.

No, it's a great point.

And I'll check with Kelly.

He is a savant on this issue, as you know.

Uh he toured me around about 10 of the sites one day, and uh he knows them inside and out.

So I'll I'll get this data from him before I come meet with you guys.

Carlos.

Yeah, thank you.

Uh Casey, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the uh uh aerospace and aviation uh innovation initiatives.

I see listed here in your handout that uh Texas AM University is included.

That's you know rightfully so.

Um I also wanted to point out that uh TCC Northwest campus also has you know a program they're getting off the ground uh that pertains specifically to air traffic control training.

Because currently there's one center, and it's in Oklahoma, and it's kind of a fast track with a high washout rate.

So we need help in that regard uh to provide some fundamental education, you know, for candidates going into that type of uh schooling and training.

Sure.

So I would ask.

Let me follow up with you on that because there may still be a way to pursue plus up money on that.

Yeah, yeah.

I think combined it might be a s you know, even a stronger proposition.

Absolutely.

Uh thank anybody any other questions?

Uh who did we ask who uh what member offices that carry the CPS?

So uh did um I think four of them uh Roger did around four of them.

Um and uh VC did all the rest.

Okay.

Yeah.

Actually, VC did six, I think, if I recall recall correctly.

Right.

Well thank go ahead.

Go ahead, TJ.

Well, thank them on our behalf, and I know we'll continue to work them as part of this process.

We will.

We'll miss uh we'll miss Mark when he leaves, but we're getting Roger to take over a lot of his district, so uh it's not a bad backup plan to have Roger there.

It's great to know.

Well, thank you for being here today.

And if there's nothing else, great.

Uh meeting is adjourned.

What's next?

That's it, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do.