Good morning, everyone is five minutes after 10.

I call to order the city council work session for our budget work session on the FY2027 uh budget meeting.

For Tuesday, June 16th.

Uh Jay, you're opening up.

Good morning, everyone.

A good morning.

This is the last city council work session before the city council work session on the one break.

Two summer break.

Uh budget meeting.

I want to thank Tuesday and the departments, the hard work that's been going on.

Good morning.

A good morning council budget process.

This is the last, as we've been talking about, we're staring at a pretty hefty uh budget gap as we move forward.

And uh last week we went through what we call budget blitz where every department uh came and uh offered up their proposed budgets along with potential cuts and additions and those kind of things.

We got we got them all done.

Um, so now the budget group and the city manager's office is we'll be working on trying to put this together and get to a balanced uh budget.

As we mentioned last time, or when we start off, we were looking at about a fifty million dollar uh budget gap.

We're still in that range.

Um, without we we are looking at a lot of different ways to close that uh gap, no final decisions yet, but we have some significant um cuts and changes that we'd be probably offering up in July, we'll get the final appraisal from Durham Appraisal District.

Uh we're hoping that we'll have a positive surprise on the uh on the commercial side on the appraisals like we did last year.

Um this year again, we're not gonna really have a big change or any change.

Uh and if anything, it's gonna be negative on the residential existing residential since those uh properties are not being appraised.

So with that, I will call up uh Brady Kirk to start us with uh our list of different presentations today.

Good morning.

Thank you, Jay.

Thank you all for being here today for this.

So you're gonna hear from a lot of different departments today.

You're gonna hear from uh our environmental services, our water department and transportation and public works, and everything you're hearing about today in today's work session is about rates and fees that are paid by users, uh residents, businesses within the city.

And leading into all that, we're gonna start with an overview of really everything that a typical resident would pay in Fort Worth, just uh for the essential cost for being a someone in the city, and the amounts we're looking at are current amounts only, so any potential increases you hear about later on in the work session are not reflected in these amounts.

So we're really in a key part of the budget process right now, and as we go through this every year, a lot of our focus and balancing and key decisions has to do with the general funds.

So when Jay talks about a big gap that we're trying to close and some challenges there, that's in the general fund, and that naturally gets the most attention, and even within that discussion, we can almost spoil that down sometimes to where it all seems to be about what's gonna happen with property tax and any kind of decision on the tax rate.

And that's fair and justifiable because that's a major cost of being in Fort Worth and affordability.

But when you look at what somebody who lives here has to pay all wrapped up, almost half of those costs are things that come on that monthly utility bill that are other than property tax.

So here on the screen, you're seeing an approximate monthly amount if you added that all up.

And of course, people don't pay their property tax monthly, but if you spread that over 12 months, that's what that would look like.

So out of about 240 dollars overall, someone would need to be paying to the city for city services about 108 of that, 46% or 45% comes from those other costs.

And all cities in Texas are providing the same services, but there could be some difference in how they pass the cost of those along.

I think these easiest example to see of that is that in one of the cities we're gonna look at, there's actually no solid waste charge on the utility bill.

But that doesn't mean that residents are not paying for that, it's probably just covered in the property tax and the sales tax and the general sources like that.

So, what we want to show you today is if you look at cities all across Texas, and then within the Metroplex, how does Fort Worth measure up to what other cities are doing?

And all these combined charges that we're going to look at are these ones that we're including on the screen right here.

So no matter where you are in Texas, if you own a home, you're going to be paying property taxes, or at least vast majority, including every city we're looking at here.

And pretty much everybody is also going to be paying water, wastewater rates on a utility bill, and solid waste fees.

And then some of these other ones might not be universal, but a lot of cities are going to charge a stormwater utility fee.

I think every city we're looking at today includes that.

Most cities are going to have an environmental protection fee.

Sometimes you might see a street maintenance fee, and then one just one city in the peer groups that we're looking at today also includes an EMS fee.

So you could compare Fort Worth to other cities on some different bases.

So the first one would be major cities across Texas, and this is I think the truest way to really build a peer group for Fort Worth.

So major cities, we're saying anything above a population of half of a million residents, and that includes Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, and El Paso.

Then the next one we're going to look at is local cities.

So we're saying that cities that are right around Fort Worth.

So you imagine maybe a person who's gotten a job in Fort Worth or in one of these cities, and they could really live anywhere around here, and they're trying to decide about where they want to be based in order to just put down roots here and live their lives.

And then the last one is what we're calling regional competitors.

So this is still within the metroplex, and it's those larger to mid-sized cities: Plano, Irving, Garland, Frisco, and McKinney's.

So these are a population, all of them right around a quarter of a million residents.

And these are cities that Fort Worth could maybe compete with if it was something like a company headquarters, a major development, maybe even events would be something where Fort Worth would be competing with these cities.

So just like on the first slide, you saw that roughly 240 dollars per month for a typical resident.

We built a comparable amount, an estimated amount for every one of these cities that we're gonna be looking at.

So we're using consistent usage assumptions for water.

So we're using those cities' rates, but our volume assumptions, except for if a city published what its actual average water bill monthly was for a resident, we use that.

For solid waste, we're using the largest cart size they have, and we're using our own largest cart size.

2,000 square foot home, a median single family taxable home value as published by the cities, which mostly they have to do for tax rate purposes, but I think there's at least I think there's only one to where we use the average listed price of a home and then applied that city's homestead exemption.

And then we're also seeing what these costs are in aggregate as a percentage of the median household income, and we use the one-year average from the Census Bureau for that, or one year median.

So just as a high-level summary, looking down these lists and in overall, it's there's five in each of those categories.

So along with Fort Worth, that makes a group of 16 or three groups of six.

And Fort Worth consistently is above average in all of its affordability, and then really even the metrics you see at the bottom of that list, which is what percentage of income goes to these city costs.

Against those large cities, which is Fort Worth's real peer group, we're especially competitive on that front, being in the top third of almost everything, versus the local cities.

We're doing well as also I'll dive into that, and then we're consistently the most affordable if you compare those regional competitors, but it's just hard for Fort Worth to compete on an income basis against some of those.

Starting with the major Texas cities, when you look at this list, what stands out is there's one city which is far above the average, and and one which is much more affordable than the most of the group, but overall the majority of this is pretty tightly clustered around a similar range.

And Fort Worth is fortunately the lowest among that group.

So it it edges out a couple of those cities just narrowly, but it comes out as only the um second second most affordable out of this entire group of six.

Looking at the local cities, which you think about that, that's a a group that has totally different economics in their scale and just what they're dealing with in terms of offering services.

But even though Fort Worth is really competitive against the large cities when the way it stacks up against these small local cities, which are nearby, uh it's coming out, it's really close to second, it just gets narrowly edged by Arlington for that, but it's it's still in the top half of affordability among these local cities, and it's the same thing mostly.

You see four of the six pretty tightly clustered around a similar level of affordability.

And then finally, if you look at these regional competitors, it's a lot more simple here.

Fort Worth is really by far the most affordable of this group, and uh just again, why we would compare to a group like this.

This these are still cities people might consider living in for one thing within the Metroplex, but these are also cities that have made some big public moves in economic development, and so that's a good basis to compare to them on.

So just to sum it up, um I coming back to the point that no matter which group you're comparing Fort Worth to, that if you stack up against really large cities, some of the biggest cities in the country, or some small cities, populations in the low 10,000s, that Fort Worth is competitive against all those, and also against some really affluent cities.

I think that's a great really encouraging sign.

And then any increases that you'll see today, just a reminder, those were not included in this group.

But at the same time, cities all across the state are going to be increasing their costs as well.

Everybody's dealing with the same regulatory and economic environment, and so if you see Fort Worth coming up on anything, you should expect all those peer cities to be similarly increasing some of their rates just to keep up with what they need to do cost wise.

So throughout the morning, you're gonna hear next from Cody from Environmental Services, then Chris Harder is going to come up from the water utility to talk about water and wastewater rates, and then finally Jennifer from TPW is going to talk about stormwater utility rates.

Thank you, Brittany.

And just as a reminder, this is like we did last year, I think it worked really well getting your feedback on this is where staff is with proposed rates and where they'd like to see them.

Um, but like last year we got your feedback, and I I think we ended up reducing, for instance, one of the rates and have another one the council was more uh apt to increase it, so we did that.

Um so we want to look at your feedback.

We're in the middle of the of the process, so nothing's set in stone from a status perspective, so we can make adjustments all the way through.

Chris, do you have a question?

I have a question.

Um, so you said we we were looking at monthly cost uh comparison for major Texas cities.

San Antonio is 55% larger in population than we are.

What are they doing differently that has their costs so low?

If you talk about San Antonio's strategic approach, uh it's hard to comment on that.

I think if you go back to the graph, you can see the areas where they're cheaper presentation.

Okay, so I guess let me let me rephrase it.

What are the how are they able to keep their costs so much lower?

I wanted if they can put the presentation back up, yeah.

Whoever's controlling that.

There's so it's a good question.

So if we just look at the categories that drive that, uh it looks like San Antonio's water and wastewater rates really stand out.

They're the the lowest by far of that group.

So that's one thing.

Um it's hard to say, because I think you're talking a little bit more big picture.

What is San Antonio do?

It's hard for me to answer that, but one thing at least about San Antonio that stands out is it's not like some of these cities part of such a larger connected metropolitan area, like Dallas and Fort Worth or Houston, which is almost the third largest city in the country.

It's mostly San Antonio, and San Antonio kind of is the main city, so I don't know if that could have anything to do with it.

Oh a couple of things.

One is the average home value is much less.

So when you apply the property tax, that's why the property taxes is less, so the actual taxes paid is less.

And then on the water side, all their water is groundwater.

Is that correct, Chris?

And so they're not paying a regional uh water group like we are the regional water district that has to build and maintain all of the lakes, and so their cost of raw water just pumping it out of the ground is much less than the cost for anybody in this region where all our all our water comes from lakes.

And they have a significant, if I remember correctly, they have a significant water reclamation system.

They do, and I mean I think we're not as as uh uh long as they are or in this region, but the difference is they have less water to get out of the out of the ground.

And then finally, the last thing I'd say is just traditionally they've spent a lot less on infrastructure.

So you they have a we have some some uh stormwater issues in Fort Worth.

They have a lot a lot more than we do, I think.

When when it rains heavily down.

Any other questions for Brady?

Thank you.

Thanks, Brady.

Alright, looks like we have next step.

Uh, I do.

Uh Cody Wittenberg from uh solid waste environmental services to give us a presentation on rates.

Good morning, thank you for a few minutes.

So in environmental services, we have three specific funds that we look out each year.

So we have our environmental protection fund, this is all about litter and keeping our city clean.

We have our general fund, which is a portion tied to consumer health specifically and commercial compliance, and then we have our solid waste fund.

Just gonna touch on each of these three today.

Starting with our impact as an overall, we are community is really focused on creating and maintaining a clean, attractive city, taking care of our waste, taking care of our properties, and just keeping things clean overall.

You can see many of the things that we experience on a day-to-day basis here in this photo.

I start with the environmental protection fund.

So key priorities are keeping the city clean, litter, street sweeping, making sure that we take care of illegal dumping, air, land, water quality, environmental inspections, making sure we're promoting reuse for cleaning up properties through site remediation and the Brownfields program.

And we have some unique characteristics.

We've worked very hard to build solvency on this fund over the past few years.

And as we look into the future, we want to leverage our ability to pay for pay-go capital to really invest in our street sweeping program to continue the the efforts we've made so far to create that clean attractive city.

We also have an ongoing demand.

There's a big demand to keep our our campsites cleaned up, our roadways clean, making sure that our properties are well managed, even if it's public or private sector, and we work very diligently to do that.

And then we also have our allocations and annual adjustments.

I think the punchline here is we worked again since 2023 to really leverage this renewed sense of security for this fund, and we just want to lean into this space a little bit further.

As we look into our FY27 proposed budget, we are meeting our reserve requirement, it's about a $25 million dollar fund overall.

Again, you're going to see these key features to really invest in our fleet and really keep things moving forward in that environmental cleanliness space.

We also want to make sure we're committed to reviewing this fund on a year-by-year basis and bring forward these rates reviews every single year.

So what is the punchline for the environmental fund?

This year we're proposing an 11% across the board increase.

So for your typical residents, that's from $225 to $250 or a $25 cent per month increase.

And the additional changes there that you see for commercial, industrial, and nonprofit follow suit.

Our key goal is to really add another uh upspire crew to bring in a couple of street sweepers and really again build up that fund balance for our paygo capital.

This overall promotes that concept of a clean city and really invest in these programs moving forward.

I want to talk a little bit about the rate history very briefly.

Fund was established in the early 90s and really got solidified in 1995, and we've worked very hard, but I want to point out that there was no rate increase on the environmental fund for about 28 years.

Then moving into 2023, we leveraged our services between the solid waste fund and the environmental fund and really found that rate and and rate balance and that fund alignment with those services.

We've added crews across the board to keep our city clean over the last few years and really moved into most recently in 2026.

We added five crews to really focus in on illegal campsite cleanup.

I think they've done a beautiful job taking care of the city.

Moving into our general fund, switching gears a moment.

Can I just uh interrupt you for a second, Macy?

Yes, Petty had a quick question.

We addressed us when we you did the preview for me on page seven, going back to the flat rate of 11%.

We talked that through and why it's 11% through all those categories.

Absolutely.

So we wanted to try to have a very defined budget for our residents and those ratepayers that are at the residential rate.

And so we started with that 25 cents there, and then in order to keep those, you can see the categories between residential, commercial, industrial, they're not the same.

We want to make sure that we're accounting for those different business types and the uh the amount of material that they may produce into the community or impact to the community.

And so we tried to keep those different rates strategically spaced so that you can see that the resident is uh three is two fifty, keeping that 41 dollars at commercial and 130 at industrial.

We really want those commercial industrial rate payers to pay more as all payers pay the environmental fund.

Cody, uh one question that I have right now.

Um, going back to your chart, priority three, um, you know, the addition of a um, you know, upspired crew and then two sweepers.

Is that a purchase of two sweepers or a leasing or is that been determined?

Absolutely.

So it takes a moment for our sweepers to be built and to be received.

So we'd probably start with maybe adding in some additional uh crews for through through a contract service as we did to kick off this resweeping program in 2024, and then we'll work to to bid out and to receive that equipment and add those in in the near future.

Are we um just for fun when we get when we actually get our street sweep the new two in?

Are we gonna do a naming competition for them?

Like we did for the yeah.

You know, there's probably some backup names in the list, but I think it'd probably be fun to go back out and see what we can.

All right, okay.

Every well, I had to tell Dr.

Wittenberg, I am extremely proud of the work we're doing with our upspire teams.

I told them I was out on a Sunday and I was going from one meeting to another, and the upspire teams were out working on Sunday, and as we see the proliferation in additional uh homeless camps, uh it is good to see these teams out there because that's probably one of my biggest resident complaints is making sure that we are getting to those camps and getting the services to the homeless uh the unhoused that are there.

So, thank you.

Thank you.

All right, so moving into uh this the second fund that we perceive within our with our department is a portion of the general fund.

Again, this is your commercial health team and your and your consumer health team and your commercial compliance team together to really find that synergy there.

Here's just a list of some of the initiatives we collaborate on with our departments and some of our core mission.

Again, this is restaurant inspections, keeping uh food safe and healthy, and making sure that those consumer uh components are really well taken care of.

As we look into this particular fund, we're really just leaning into that consumer health business unit.

So, every good business wants to make sure that every business unit is balancing their expenses and their revenue.

And so in this case, this is the ratepayers are those permittees.

So these are your restaurants, your grocery stores, your child care, hotel, motel, those in and individual units that get a health permit from the city.

That's the revenue coming in.

And of course, we provide those services in terms of inspections and reviews and what have you.

So we have a few changes.

You may recall so SB 1008 last year, changed the way that cities could charge restaurants for their health permit.

So we have a flat rate at 773, and we've worked the last couple of years to really look at all of our permit fees.

So a couple of things we're proposing for this year.

Last year, you may recall hotel and motel health permits and swimming pools and spas health permits did a we we agreed with the various stakeholders to look at a two-year phased approach to get those to cost recovery.

And so we are looking at a year two of that two-year approach this year.

Last year we did not raise our health permits for child care facilities, and similar to what we did with motels and hotels and swimming pools and spas, we're proposing a two-year incremental rate increase to also balance out cost recovery on that particular set.

Again, the same concept, like every business, we want to make sure we're looking at all of our fees annually and bringing that forward on a year by year just to ensure full cost recovery.

I want to underscore the goal is not to make money, we are not a for-profit entity.

We're just trying to cover our cost to provide these services to these individual individuals.

And we appreciate your department being sensitive to council input on that regard to try to you know extend this and stage it so that it's not an immediate impact.

Absolutely.

Appreciate that.

So when you look at Go ahead, Chris.

Sorry.

You said that we haven't raised our rates in 28 years.

So for 2025, where was what was the gap, or was there a gap in what we brought in versus what we had to pay?

Absolutely.

So on the environmental protection fund, we we had that that gap.

So one key thing is we we were able to get our fund and service is realigned.

So as an example, there was about 4.5 million dollars on the solid waste fund where just the solid waste customers were paying for those services for litter and illegal dumping and those types of things.

And so we were able in 2023 to offset some of those costs and also to do another investment of about two to three million dollars into our programs.

So it really wasn't necessarily a cost deficit, but it was really about program expansion and getting those services right aligned with the right ratepayers, and again, environmental fund, everyone pays.

Solid waste is just those individuals that have solid waste service.

Can we go back to the fund, the sheet that talked about the rate increases and uh specifically the health care permits for uh tier one, tier two, and tier three.

Um, what was the thought process behind that?

And I do like that because I have smaller um uh health care daycares in my district, so but kind of walk me through the thought process.

Absolutely, I appreciate that.

So, again, picking up with the general fund and our consumer health rates for proposed for 27.

Whenever we looked at our our child care and our daycare facilities, we wanted to really look at a tiered system to really allow for some variability from the smallest businesses to those larger businesses.

So, as a as a point of uh, just a point you can see in that second column under children in care.

So the Department of Health and Human Services licenses daycares based on the number of children that they can have within their capacity.

And so we do not provide a health permit from the city for those smallest businesses that are 12 or fewer children, that's just a license straight through the state.

We'll of course work with the state if there's any sort of issues, but we're not performing that right routine inspection or charging that extra expense for a permit.

But as you look at tier one, tier two, and tier three, this particular year is the first time we've ever approached it like this, and we tried to allow for that for that stair step 12 to 99, 100 to 174, and 175 are over.

And again, it's all based on that state licensing capacity that that child care has.

Thank you.

Just another another couple of points here is uh before and after school care.

You can see that that is another group here that we have also promoted, but usually 400, 440, 480, and 520 as a reference point.

Switching gears a little bit further into our and if I can, before he goes on to the waste fund, this is part of the general fund.

So these are not full cost recovery.

So this is just trying to maintain where they are on a percentage-wise, any any of everything else is subsidized by the general fund, which is mostly sales tax and property tax.

Do we have an idea of what the deficit is then?

I mean, what are we not covering?

So right now, if you look at those top three bullet points on our consumer health group, as we look into FY27, we have about uh an estimate of about 4.7 million coming in and about 4.9 in expenses.

Now there's a little bit of overlap there.

These are citywide programs like the mosquito program or underpass cleaning.

We expect for the general fund without the component of permittees or rate payers in this case to cover those.

But we are very close to break-even, and I think as we continue to refine that we're gonna be able to make sure that this business unit within that greater general fund is covering all their expenses.

But it's not fully loaded like you would think of an enterprise fund where they would pay for a portion of city manager's office of the law department of HR, those services aren't fully loaded into this department.

So there is a there is a coverage factor that that's not included in that.

Switching gears, the third fund within our department is our solid waste fund.

Again, this is residential garbage recycling yard and bulk, our drop-off stations, our ECC.

This fund also covers for dead animal collection, pedestrian street cans, our education, residential collections compliance, so making sure what portion is supporting those code officers that are helping to enforce our our garbage rules, and then also we have our oversight of our southeast landfill.

The solid waste fund challenges.

We worked last year to get the first rate increase on this particular fund.

Um we recognize that our rates do not fully cover our annual operational cost on the solid waste fund.

And the reason that we have been able to do that is we have really, as a community, leveraged these additional revenues that we get because we own our landfill, we receive rent and royalty and some other revenues like our landfill environmental fee.

But as we've discussed, we have some cost on the horizon as we prepare for the future closure of that landfill one day and what those long-term solid waste solutions look like.

And so we really want to make sure we are leaning into this fund and really having really good fund management and fund stewardship.

There's three key pieces of this daily operations, our capital investment that we're gonna need now and in the future, and also those long-term service obligations as we know time moves on and cost to do business increases.

So I think it's noteworthy uh to um to point out, Cody, that maybe back around the 2012 time frame, the city council then made a uh decision uh to go with a diversion program for you know waste uh management, that reduced the amount of you know types of waste that went into the landfill.

In other words, if you had yard waste, wouldn't go in there, recycling wouldn't go in there.

So that added you know, life to the landfill, and now we're looking at this point in time, and it's expected right there.

There's uh there's a certain lifetime to your landfills, but at the city council then not done it.

We would have been in uh probably a much worse position.

You're absolutely right.

So diversion programs are critical, and every landfill has a landfill capacity, and so we want to make sure we're always honoring that and trying to maximize our landfill life as long as we can.

We'll talk a little bit about that at the end as well.

Thank you for that.

So looking at the particular fund overview, the reserve requirement is met here.

We are uh we have about 24 million in that reserve requirement and about 24 million or so held for for paygo.

But we know that the cost of landfills and things in the future is going to be a lot more than that.

It could be between 200 and 250 million dollars.

So we have to really lean in and start saving now for those long-term investments.

And we have done this.

You may recall last year we kicked off the RNG or renewable natural gas project at the Southeast Landfill.

That's a new revenue source that we did not have currently in design, but we are receiving that development fee for as long as they earn that price, and we were able to secure, you know, for this year, $1 million dollars is tucked away for that future long-range solution.

And we have the ability to do that with other lines of revenue.

So maybe landfill rent enrollity can be delegated and reserved for this future costs, or uh, for example, the landfill environmental fee.

I'll touch on that in a moment as well.

For this particular fund, we have continual annual rising cost for our expenses go up every year.

We also are always trying to balance out for that again that pay go capital, and we want to make sure we're looking at our rates year over year to look at those annual rate adjustments to see if we need to move things forward.

Our punchlines here are services and infrastructure needs.

Everything that we're proposing as part of these rates is really just to balance out the fund and could keep things moving forward in that respect.

A different way to see this rather than all the words on the page are three key areas.

So you've got daily operations.

You can point, I want to point out that this fund also did not have a rate increase for about 19 years.

And this is our first rate increase was last year to start to play catch-up to make sure that this fund is fully solvent and recovering.

So you can see we have made efforts to close that gap in FY25.

We had a 20 million dollar gap.

In 26, with that rate increase that was approved, we got it down to 17 million.

Again, there's lots of variables here.

And as we look into 27, if these rates move forward, we'll be able to continue to close that gap incrementally with a seven million dollar gap moving forward.

We also again want to make sure we're having adequate savings for these long-range costs, and we want to make sure that we're always looking at all of our costs across the board as that subsidy ends with the landfill, and we're balancing out all of our contractual obligations.

Just a picture of what that kind of looks like over time.

You can see that in to council member Flores' point in 2003, we moved to a contract-based system where the city no longer collected garbage.

That was a good move in terms of a business decision.

And then we developed the three different lines or three different cart sizes at that time.

So we have a 32-gallon, a 64 gallon, and a 96.

We also have just seen that that those rates basically remain the same.

There was a small change for a healthy recycling market in 2014, but for the most part, it was pretty neutral.

However, we know our costs continue to rise, and we still needed those savings for those future solutions.

So as we move into this particular fiscal year, we are looking at uh proposing a 20% across the board.

I kind of view this as the top of a peak or of a multi-year process to restore some balance to this fund, and then as kind of maybe the apex, if you will, and looking at the next few years to really bring this fund into really sound financial management.

So you can see just as an example, for those individuals that were grandfathered in with the 32-gallon cart and want to continue that, it's a $2.75 increase, so going up to $16.50 per month.

64 gallon again, 1950 is the current rate with a $3.90 increase at 20% that goes up to $23.40.

And then $96 gallon, similar concept, $25.75 with an additional $5.15 goes up to $30.90.

Again, the whole goal here is to make sure that our rates are bringing in enough revenue to cover our true cost, and we're paying saving for that future pay go requirements that are going to be needed.

Just another way to view that.

You can see that again, remember there was no rate increase for about 19 years.

So that FY 25 rate of 1250, 1750, and 2275 at the bottom really was kind of where we started.

In 26, the the rates increased, and that dark green color shows the proposed 27.

But I want to point out that we're still not fully bringing in enough revenue to provide the services that we perform.

I also want to point out to the right side, we really looked at each individual business unit or business line item within the services we provide to come up with a monthly overview for each of these particular programs.

You can see that breakout there.

So as we lean into a few other fees real quick, and then we can have some additional conversations about solid waste.

We also are always looking at our different business components to make sure that there was full cost recovery.

And we are also able to leverage any other revenue as we save for those future expenses.

So here you can see a couple the landfill environmental fee, not to be confused with the other environmental fee.

This is paid at the landfill, and uh Republic, our landfill operator provides this over to the city as a function of that particular group.

You can see there's about seven and a half million dollars there between those two.

This is an example of revenue that we could leverage and save for that future pay-go rather than using it to subsidize the rates in a long-term strategy.

The last three that you see here, overloaded carts, extra back fees, and nothing out trip.

I just want to explain those a little bit further.

So a couple years ago we realized that that some of our customers were causing us extra expenses on the city side through our WM contract to allow for these overloaded carts when the lid is up and there's trash overflowing, or when they set extra bags down, it takes extra time for the crews to collect that material.

So we did start the conversation and were able to move these new fees forward with $6.3 respectively.

Over the last year, as we really lean into this, you don't see a huge number of extra bags.

We see some overloaded carts, but we want to make sure we have full cost recovery.

And it takes staff time and some other components to make sure that these individuals are making sure that those line items are put into the water bill, entered into the system, and verified because we don't want anyone to have a charge that's incorrect.

The last one is a nothing out trip charge.

Sometimes individuals will call for us to go out and to go, they call the call center and WM or one of our city crews will go out and to collect material that's supposed to be there.

Sometimes that material will not be there, and we want to make sure we have full cost recovery.

So if we go out and there's nothing out, there is still a charge.

We do communicate that to the residents when they call in the call center for this particular service.

Cody, when it comes to uh cost recovery, when you're looking at items like uh overloaded carts, for instance.

Uh the technology upgrades that uh council you know has supported in the past, are those beginning to help us out in that regard in terms of maybe reducing the amount of staff involvement with verifying that, then now that we have the properly equipped trucks, they can see this and then you know give us that uh electronic you know confirmation.

Absolutely, and I really appreciate that.

So, our our our garbage and recycling trucks, they are equipped with smart view technology, and so that smart truck technology has cameras that we're able to log in and see the footage from that particular route for that day.

So if someone was to call in and say that their trash was missed, for example, we're able to verify that rather than going into the field, we're able to look at that that footage.

And I think to your point, we're able to also verify extra bags and overloaded carts because we want to make sure those charges are absolutely correct, and we have that footage to to discuss with those homeowners.

But it does save us that field time to get out there and we are able to leverage those those gains.

Absolutely.

Yes, you have to do we can go back to 19.

You can see the yes, it's perfect.

Um, so I know what you're proposing for 2027, but we look at the gap.

Is there a plan for 2028 and 2029 to close that gap?

Or do we all propose something just a plan moving forward?

Absolutely.

So we're looking really carefully at all of our financial models to understand what all of the ins and outs are and how this fund looks moving forward.

What impacts are to our expenses, where we're able to leverage and cut, and we are hoping to be full cost recovery within two to three years.

So hopefully by 29 or 30, we are seeing that we are just looking at incremental rate increase to rate increases to maintain rather than trying to have to fill this gap.

So again, hopefully, this is the top of that apex or uh a two to three year strategy to close that gap fully and then maintain it moving forward.

This is uh year two, I think we presented last year of about a four to five year plan.

We thought if inflation leveled out, it'll be more of a four-year plan.

Inflation hasn't leveled out and gas prices are up, all those kind of things.

So it's probably more of a five-year plan we started last year.

Just working to close out the conversation here.

Our ultimate recommendation from the environmental services department is really to adopt a master fee schedule with respect to each of these three three funds for environmental protection.

Again, really focusing on a clean and safe city and developing out our sweeper program.

Again, consumer health, our entire goal is just cost recovery from those individual permit holders.

And then for solid waste rates, two key points, continue to close that gap and to prepare for those long range solutions.

So over the next few weeks, we'll continue to receive feedback, communicate carefully with all of our stakeholders with the respective fees, and then we're also of course we'll continue to develop out that long range plan to continue to refine those costs for our future capital.

So thank you for your time today.

Thank you, Cody.

Oh, go ahead, Chris.

So, with regard to just the size of the residential waste, so it's waste waste management, correct?

Um we're now tenth largest city.

We're a million people.

Um, waste management already had an issue with the subcontractor not being able to fill the contract.

Have you guys considered changing the way this is and not putting all of our eggs in one basket and maybe breaking the city into regions and having multiple you know providers um provide services so it allows us to make sure that those contracts are competitive.

Absolutely and I appreciate that conversation.

So we are a large city and we know that a single provider is is one way to do that.

And as we look into maybe a new request for proposal for for collections or any other function within our department we're always looking to maximize our efforts and so that could be something that we look at in the future absolutely thanks uh Dr.

Wittenberg going back to the environmental protection fund for just a second let's see the uh the per FY27 proposed expenses 18.8 million um do you know off the top of your head because maybe I missed it but what was it for 26 as far as the expenses?

About 18 point I was it's I need to look at all the allocations and what is adjusted I'll have to circle back with you on the specific numbers but um I would say this is it's effectively the same with just a few increases for those allocations for other departments.

Okay got it because I guess one of my concerns is the uh the campsite cleanup um because I can't remember if it was it three million and twenty four that was spent and then I think it was six million and twenty five but I remember it doubling it was pretty stark and so I know we know those costs aren't going down and so what I would just ask is and maybe we discuss this in public safety or I don't know where but as we undoubtedly spend more on that campsite cleanup um working with uh PD as well and fire and all the stakeholders there to figure out you know what we're doing to um I guess prevent it as much as possible as well so we're just not always spending more and more and more to clean up certainly for those that are looking for services City of Fort Worth is known to have a lot of services so we certainly want to make sure we're offering those but for those who just say no I'm good I just want to camp here want to make sure that it's not the entire burden isn't just falling on the taxpayers who have to spend money on cleaning up because all they're doing is just moving from camp to camp anyways.

And I know y'all are doing an outstanding job of getting them cleaned up rather quickly but it seems like we're just keep chasing our tell and spending more and more money every year and as it increases you know those expenses are just are just gonna go up so maybe we can have future discussion on that and what we're looking at to help bring that back.

Thank you.

I actually think that that's a valid point um that we you know as we continue to spend more money on these cleanups but we really need to be asking ourselves is is this the most appropriate way to combat homelessness I think the answer is not PD and fire because that's not a prevention that's a tool that moves these people around in large part creating the the cleanup so I the charge is for city staff I think to look at um neighborhood services and what we're doing on the prevention end and the the ending of housing or I'm sorry of homelessness.

So when you do that I think it's fair but I think we need to look beyond PD and fire because those happen after the fact and they don't uh necessarily prevent the homelessness and because you're right this is whack a mole and we're gonna continue to pay uh for the camp cleanup because we are just moving people around the city so what are the solutions?

Well and that is why and we've talked about this I appreciate Tara Perez and what she does I call my homeless czar they we have to do a holistic approach to this it can't just be police and fire but it has to be neighborhood services so we I am seeing it being done in my district and I think that it works this holistic approach but uh but that is why I um I love what the upspire team does but they go out not just by themselves there is the hope team and other teams that work with them to get those unhoused individuals who want help to get them help and so I agree with you it can't be uh just one piece it has to be holistic and I think Tara is doing a good job of uh of coordinating that for us I think at some point we have to what's the cost benefit?

And if we continue spending money on cleanups, which we need to continue to spend money on cleanups, people don't want homeless camps.

What's the tipping point?

When do we say we're spending so much money on cleanups?

How much more effective would it be if we took that some of that money and put it into prevention.

And I agree, and just to make sure that the one of the key words I mentioned there was stakeholders.

So it's all those parties you mentioned in and again, good, I'll just reiterate the point is, and we've we've had this discussion at nausea, but I don't think it's something that needs to go away.

So discussion we need to keep having is you have two for lack of better words, two camps, folks, and you have one who wants the help and the resources.

Those we absolutely have the resources.

We could certainly use more, I'm sure.

And that's where Terry and her team, they're doing a great job.

But then you have the others, and there's a family that I actually talked to, they're veterans and trying to get them help.

They're like, no fam, we're good.

We're just gonna sit here, we're gonna do our own thing.

This is how we want to be.

That's the ones who we need to figure out what are our other options there.

Not just saying, hey, if you're homeless in a camp, we're gonna go out and clean it out and you know boots you off somewhere else.

It's a matter of taking care of those who want the help and then figure out how we're gonna prevent those who just want to be a blight.

So understood.

Good discussion.

Yes, go ahead and say, just one more comment, Cody, since we're on the topic of homelessness.

I mean, I think it's helpful publicly for you to address the work we've done, East Lancaster, and the support you've gotten from Councilman Nettles and myself on working with our shelter partners, and I don't know what the solution would be if y'all weren't there to clean up that area, but can you walk through the work that we've done so far?

Absolutely.

So thank you for the opportunity to recognize that great team and the effort that UpSpire is helping with our city staff to keep the Lancaster Corridor clean and even the greater areas around downtown.

So we have made a couple of programmatic adjustments since last fall to have one dedicated crew out in the Lancaster Corridor and around downtown pretty much every single day.

We noticed that there were also some needs over the weekend, and it was really difficult to clean areas up following a weekend.

So we were able to stretch resources across a seven-day period.

So we always have coverage.

We have uh now I think nine to ten individuals that are out there throughout the week, really working to keep the area clean.

Our city staff inspect every day twice a day to during the week to make sure that things are moving forward, and I think it looks tremendously better, and we've heard great uh positive feedback from our partners in the area and many people who visit the area.

Thank you.

Thanks, Cody.

All right, next up we have uh Chris Harder who's gonna give a presentation on water and sewer budget rates.

Good morning, Chris.

Good morning.

If I could, I wouldn't mind starting with just kind of a just additional information related to the San Antonio water system.

They recently their board uh took a four-year rate increase plan to their city council, and they're gonna be looking at um some significant rate increases to Jay's point to kind of catch up with infrastructure.

So I I would just say that we we when we benchmark, we look really uh competitive with a lot of our benchmark cities.

So today I'm gonna be going over our proposed budget and proposed rates.

Uh my finance team just loves this picture, and we recently drained and cleaned that storage tank, but we did not find a pot of gold at the bottom.

So uh if you've seen presentations from the water utility in the past, we start with just the overall increase in our budget, and it's looking at about 8.7%, but I'd always just uh predicate that with the fact that our system is growing and it's growing substantially.

So even though our expenses are growing, our revenues will be growing as well.

So I'm not gonna be presenting an 8.7% rate increase to you.

So that 58 million dollars, that 8.7% uh budget increase, it's kind of broken down by these main categories.

O and M is the largest uh this year.

When you look at OM, uh, you're talking about uh chemicals, power, personnel, um, in this case meters.

You saw an MNC on June 9th, that was a fairly large MC related to meters.

This will be our first year that we're actually gonna be doing meter replacement.

We started commercial meter uh installations in 2016, so now those some of those meters are all 10 years old.

So we're gonna be replacing some parts and components of those meters.

Um and then one of the things that uh and you look at that OM, there is a focus this year in terms of increased plant maintenance.

So we're gonna be really um focused on replacing a lot of instrumentation, a lot of the equipment that's uh needing replacement, so there's an increase in the budget in terms of OM at our plants.

The TRWTRA, TRWD is our raw water provider.

They have a I think a 12% budget increase that accounts for about a 6% rate increase, like us, they are seeing their system grow.

And then on the TRA side, I think their their increases are more modest, about one to about 3.5%.

But taken together, it's about $12 to $13 million increase.

Capital, we're again increasing our capital expenditures.

We're about 60% of that increase is on the cash side.

About 40, 45% of it is on the debt side.

And you know when that when we talk about cash versus debt financing of capital, we usually use debt for growth related capital cash we try to do for infrastructure renewal.

And then transfers out, as our budget grows, you'll always see the transfer out component increase because part of our transfers ounce as relates to pilot, which is an asset valuation, as well as street rental, which is based off 5% of our gross service revenues.

And then on top of that, there's just some allocations that are also increasing.

I think one of the largest ones relates to the IT allocation.

So I mentioned that our capital expenditures is increasing.

This is our capital plan.

If you've seen the capital plans that we presented over the last couple of years, you know that we are really focused on trying to uh get a lot of the growth-related infrastructure installed.

So you still see in 2027, just like we had in 26, just like we had in 25, some pretty um pretty large expenditures.

And uh hopefully we will have most of this uh construction done by the summer of 2029.

But you know, we are going to be bidding out the Mary's Creek project here in another month.

That's about a 430 million dollar plant uh project.

We're in the construction on the Eagle Mountain plant expansion, which is a $300 million project.

We have pipelines that are going to those plants, and we have uh when you start talking about miscellaneous facilities, those are pump stations, lift stations, uh tanks that uh store and pump our water and wastewater.

Uh I will make one other comment.

If you see major transmission vanes uh in 2027, 172 million dollars.

A lot of that funding is related to replacing the large diameter cast iron transmission veins, which has been in the news just recently, that it has.

That is to fund the PFOS treatment at our Holly uh complex.

And we've applied for a water development board loan with loan forgiveness to fund that.

So there are rules that are potentially being modified related to PFOS and related to uh the requirements in terms of the schedule.

So we'll be following that.

Uh obviously, what we would like to do is we'd like to build that without necessarily impacting our existing ratepayers.

As far as any PFOS litigation, I know that uh Leanne has said before that it's kind of on a not much movement there, it's it's still coursing through you know the legal system.

Um you'd like to add anything in that regard, Chris.

So we we did file uh a lawsuit.

We opted out of the 3M and the Dow settlement.

We opted into a BS B ASF and TICO settlement, and we recently got some settlement payments on that to the tune of about four million dollars.

So that has not even uh, you know, we've already spent about nine million dollars to do the design on that uh that treatment plant expand or treatment plant process improvement.

So, you know, what we're really looking for is some type of uh cash infusion before we go forward with uh an actual construction project, right?

And while we're on the uh uh capital improvement plan, you mentioned earlier IT, and you and I have talked about this before a few years back.

Um, you know, you had some um you know older systems, some legacy systems they're in place, and the idea was in and please correct me if I'm wrong, or are we going to a more centralized IT support of whatever new equipment that you adopt software to support the current plan systems?

Our IT staff will still be uh maintaining our uh our business uh functions.

So we feel like that's a pretty good model, and keep in mind that we are in progress right now on a skater replacement project as well as we just started the uh billing system replacement project, so you know having uh IT staff dedicated to those projects that are going to see them from the beginning to the end is pretty critical.

Okay, so you will have specific members of the ID department who are uh you know trained on those uh water systems to maintain them.

Yes, okay.

Thank you.

So let me talk about the uh the projected growth.

Uh this goes to what we anticipate in terms of revenues.

So we are anticipating our retail accounts growing by 2.32 3%, retail water usage uh and sewer flows growing by about two percent, and you can see that that's down from last year, those that five and four percent, those are almost like a catch-up type number that we used last year, but we think that the two, two and a half percent is probably going to be something you're gonna see more frequently coming from us in terms of uh growth projections.

So I mentioned we had the 8.7% budget increase.

This is what we're looking at in terms of uh a revenue requirement.

And even in order to meet that budget, the 3.6% on the water system corresponds to about a $10 million funding gap, and the 2.85% on the wastewater system corresponds to about a six and a half, six point three uh million dollar revenue gap.

So, how are we gonna uh how are we going to adjust our rates to uh recover this revenue requirement?

So you remember last year we changed around our uh residential tier structure, and we left the lower lower two tiers uh the rate alone.

We're planning on doing that again this year, so the lowest two-tier uh rates are not going to increase.

The rate increases on the upper two tiers are very very modest, and on the residential sewer side, a very, very small three cent uh per CCF uh rate increase.

So what does this do to uh a residential bill?

So the uh different rates that I just presented are related to the volume.

We also have a fixed charge that's uh based off of your meter size, and that goes with all accounts.

The uh fixed charge related to the water uh meter is gonna be about 70 cents per month for a three-quarter inch meter, and about 45 cents per month for the sewer, same size meter.

So, what you're looking at is whether you're an efficient, whether you're a large, you're gonna be having a dollar fifteen in fixed charges added to that bill.

Then when you add on the volumetric charge, whether uh your efficient or typical, you're gonna see under a dollar fifty increase per month on your water bill.

And like I say, uh we do benchmark our rates uh with other utilities statewide, even national, and our our rates are really competitive.

So we're pretty proud about uh the financial stewardship we've had of this utility, so that we're not uh necessarily uh up on the high end like Houston is like Corpus Christi is and some of these other utilities that just have some fairly large uh water and wastewater bills.

So we um we did have a meeting with TRWD.

We feel like their rate has uh fairly fairly firm.

Uh we have some meetings coming up with TRA.

They uh bill us from both the Denton Creek plant and the central plant, so we'll be uh anticipating finalized numbers from them.

And then uh we presented our our wholesale rates to our wholesale customers last week, uh, and then we have uh uh couple more retail rate stakeholder meters meetings.

Again, these are preliminary rates, uh, but with that I'll ask for some feedback.

Great questions from what has the feedback been so far, you know, from those retail stakeholder meetings and wholesale, just generally.

So one of the I guess one of the items that we look at is obviously everything is based off cost of service, and so these the stakeholder meetings, they have people from the uh industrial side, commercial side, residential side.

So they're representing their um you know category, and so what we try to do is we we present our allocations, we put put everything together and show that that rate for that customer is based off cost of service, and so that that's really I think very appreciated from that group.

One of the things that we we do look at is when we benchmark um the scale from the lowest tier to the upper tier on the residential side.

We're on the very very low side of that, and you know, what we've done is over the last couple years, we've put a lot of the rate increases on the residential tier on the upper tiers because that is also the tiers that are driving a lot of the capital improvements, right?

Plant expansions, the tanks, the pump stations.

So, you know, I think that we're in the long game, but we're gonna continue to kind of follow that strategy is that it also promotes conservation.

It's it's that kind of usage is what's driving a lot of our capital investments, but we are on the low side there right now in terms of the scale between the lowest tier and the upper tier.

That's that's a one of the discussions items we generally have.

Any questions?

Thanks again, Chris.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Alright, next up, we'll call on Jennifer uh Dyke to give us a presentation on stormwater utility fees.

So good morning.

So I will start my presentation with a brief history of the stormwater program background and our functions, and then we'll talk through our budget planning considerations and our proposed um fee increase and our needs and how that will benefit the Fort Worth residents, and then of course, our impact on the ratepayers.

So the stormwater utility was started in 2006 by Fort Worth City Council in response to devastating flooding in 2004 across the city, so significant number of homes and businesses flooding as well as loss of life.

So our mission has always remained the same to protect people and property from harmful stormwater runoff.

Um so we are funded by a dedicated um stormwater utility fee that is on the water bill, as Brady discussed earlier, and that's paid for property owners with impervious surface, with a few exceptions shown here on the slide.

So impervious surface impacts runoff, which in turn impacts our stormwater infrastructure, and so that is what drives our stormwater utility fee.

We have four primary functions, which are really focused on public safety.

So first we maintain our infrastructure.

So we've got uh miles of engineered channels, we've got drainage pipes, we've got culverts and inlets across the city that we regularly maintain.

We mitigate our hazards by reducing risks through capital project, and because we can't afford to just go build everything at once.

We have a very um important flood warning program.

So that's uh flood risk mapping, education, communication, um, and our high water warning flasher system that you see here on the screen.

And then finally, we establish and continuously improve and review our development regulations, focused on making sure that there is compliance with our development regulations and keeping both those new residents as well as existing residents uh safe from new developments, and all of these work together again focused on a public safety function.

So as we planned for fiscal year 27, several key factors came into play.

So again, just like everyone else, is we're experiencing higher economic costs.

So this graph here shows actually construction costs from the National Highway Construction Board.

And so you can see that's huge over the last few years.

The broader economic climate, of course, has also impacted materials, professional services costs, labors.

And then at the same time, we're continuing to refine the understanding of our citywide needs and prioritizing and again taking a tackled phased strategic approach to looking at our level of service.

And so, of course, we want to balance all of this with ratepayer affordability because we know everyone is experiencing these higher costs.

So the realities on the prior slide really shaped our proposed fiscal year 27 fee increase.

So we're recommending to keep the fee increase small at 5% to minimize the impact on our ratepayers while also continuing to help our program improve the level of service that we provide to the community.

So the new revenue from this increase would support these three areas shown on the slide.

First, it would launch a new program dedicated towards mid-size flood mitigation projects, which are generally in the 1 to 15 million dollar range.

It would increase the capital funds we put towards partnership projects, and then it would fund a new position focused on improving channel and stormwater facility maintenance agreements, or what you often hear as SWIFMAs, improving the asset management and inspection for those.

And so I'll go into each of these in a little more detail.

Before I do that, I wanted to touch on the impact of single family resident residential ratepayers.

So for a typical tier two home that's shown here in bold, they pay right now $729 a month on their water bill, and so that would increase by 37 cents more a month and go to 765.

So at the very top, you can see the smallest tier one homes would pay 18 cents month more with this rate, and then the largest tier four homes would pay 73 cents more a month with this proposed rate increase.

And I'll circle back at the end of the presentation and share the impact on the larger rate payers as well.

So these two pie charts show the division of the new revenue for the next two fiscal years.

Most of the revenue would go towards the capital mid-size flood mitigation improvements that's shown in green here, and then with the next towards capital partnership projects and purple, and then the smaller amount to the new position for asset management and inspections.

So you will see that blue slice towards that position larger in the first year because that includes the acquisition of a vehicle that's mostly a field worker.

So we would acquire the vehicle and put more money to that in the first year, and then of course that goes down just to pay for that position operational cost for the second year.

So the mid-size flood mitigation projects is really important.

As you know, we've been getting a lot of rain over the past few years.

So we've got challenges across the city.

We've identified 83 areas with roughly 500 million dollars total of needs identified in past engineering evaluations just to understand our flooding across the city.

On average, these projects cost around $5 million each and address neighborhood level flooding that can impact homes and businesses and roadways, but the needs don't reduce without the investment.

And we expect this list to continue to grow as we continue to evaluate more areas and we continue to have more rain events and get more reports of flooding that require investigation and more detailed engineering evaluation.

So without this dedicated funding, the improvement needs just remain unfunded.

I wanted to highlight a couple recent mid-side flood mitigation projects just so you could see how beneficial they could be.

In West Cliff, so that's a currently going on project, but it's it's nearing completion.

I know residents are ready for us to be done out there.

That was around a 16 million dollar project, and it will reduce flooding for 57 properties at the end.

And then in recently completed Greenfield Acres, and this was a four-phase project totaling around 16 and a half million dollars, and that will mitigate flooding to around 66 properties or it has.

And both of these projects were actually partnerships too with the water department and the streets group as well.

So these really just show how impactful mid-size flood mitigation projects can be, especially when partnering with other groups at the city.

So changing to focus on partnerships.

Partnerships projects are one of our cost most cost-effective tools.

Over the last 10 years, we've provided funding towards 28 partnership projects that are led by others in the city, contributed around 12.6 million dollars in stormwater capital investment towards these other projects.

So these projects reduce flooding, protect lives, they extend the life of our existing stormwater assets and avoid future retrofit costs.

They also really minimize that disturbance to the community because we're able to put money towards a larger project so people can get new streets and new water and get some stormwater benefits as well, all at one time.

So we're not having to go after the fact and disturb the same residence in a generally short time frame after the improvements are done.

So increasing dedicated partnership funding allows us to participate more in projects led by other departments benefiting residents citywide.

We've contributed some stormwater funding towards the Wagley Robertson arterial improvement project.

This will mitigate a very hazardous road overtopping location shown here on the slide.

There was a rescue here in 2021.

Multiple reports, we get there all the time.

We never would have been able to do that just with stormwater funding alone.

So we were able to help contribute some funding towards the arterial project to help make this happen.

Another example here is shown in the historic south side.

Here we partnered with streets to relocate a drainage pipe to improve future maintenance.

And then the third major area of need is improving asset management for our stormwater facility maintenance agreements and city engineered channels.

So our current inspection capacity really limits how well we can prioritize our maintenance needs because we're only able to prioritize based on what we can inspect and condition assess.

So this graph shows here just the recent growth over, well, not recent, but growth over time of stormwater facility maintenance agreements across the city.

So now we have more than 1,000 across the city.

If I can ask a question, Jeffrey, at this point.

Yes.

I want to go back to I guess slide 13.

You said you're limited in what you can inspect.

Is that primary driver number of available staff that are trained appropriately to do those inspections?

Correct.

How many do you have compliment-wise?

That can do inspections.

So we have one position right now, and they are focused on the SWIFMAs, the stormwater maintenance facility maintenance agreements, and then we have one position focused on channels.

So what we're proposing is one new position that would do both to help with both.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, so I talked about having over a thousand SWIFMAs now across the city.

So these private drainage improvements come from detention ponds, drainage retaining walls, channels, and they're really critical for storing and conveying that runoff from private development to make sure that the private development doesn't make the flood risk worse.

But every year we're identifying more and more locations that aren't being maintained appropriately, and inadequate maintenance can lead to public safety issues, and then also just aesthetic issues as well.

Okay, so this just talks about what Mayor Pro Tem Flores just asked about.

So we're really proposing this position.

The little infographics here on the slide show that with this additional position, we can look at around 110 more SWIFMA locations annually, and then five more miles of channel.

And then it will also help us to have a two-person dedicated team that can go out there and do drone inspections.

So that can really help more easily inspect really hard to reach areas.

We're able to go and inspect those a lot faster and easily with a drone.

But then we'll have to pull in someone from another team to do that.

So we'll have another position there that can help get more drone inspections done.

So again, all of these are focused again on making sure that the infrastructure is being looked at more frequently, focused on public safety and maintenance.

Let's see.

So this slide just kind of summarizes what the benefits would be of our proposed fee increase.

So again, improved public safety, reduced flooding, more partnerships, improved maintenance and prioritization of capital projects and maintenance improvements as well.

Okay, so as mentioned earlier, we really looked at affordability when focusing on our fee increase.

So over the last several years, our stakeholder group has shared that smaller fee increases are easier for residents and businesses to pay, but they continue to remind us of the impact of our proposed fee increase in addition to all these other costs that the residents across Fort Worth are paying.

So that it's important, of course, as Brady talked about to look big picture at all the costs.

So as mentioned earlier, our stormwater utility fee is based on the amount of impervious hard surface on properties.

So properties with more hard impervious surface pay more.

So earlier I mentioned that the average single family resident would pay 37 cents more each month for our proposed fee increase, and that's because they have a smaller amount of impact on our stormwater system.

So this table shows the impact of our proposed fee increase.

The top two lines on a small commercial one-acre site and then a medium commercial 10-acre site, and then below that our top 20 rate payers.

So circled in red is the city of Fort Worth, so we are the largest ratepayer.

So you can see the two blue columns are really focusing on the monthly payment increase and then the annual payment increase for the larger rate payers.

So just using kind of a 10-acre medium commercial development as an example, their monthly payment increase would be kind of a $60 increase more each month and totaling $730 more a year due to this fee increase.

So I do want to mention again that that is because they've got more impact on the stormwater system.

And we do have stormwater utility fee credits available for these larger land uses.

So specifically Fort Worth ISD has mentioned in the past the impact that these rate increases can have on their student education.

They are one of our high users of our stormwater utility fee credit.

So the Fort Worth ISD does renew their credit annually.

So this table just shows the history of the stormwater utility fee.

And again, our fee was started in 2006 at 290 a month.

So that was pretty low compared to needs, but that was the starting point.

And then there was an initial four-year ramp up that you see here, and then there was around an eight-year gap where we went without a fee increase.

And then in the past few years, we've been taking a very small approach to ramping the fee up a little bit at a time to really help tackle these citywide needs and increase the level of service that we provide to the community.

So we're really continuing to focus on very small phase strategic increases of our stormwater utility fee.

So with that, I'll take any questions.

Charlie.

Thank you, Mayor Protein.

I want to go back to slide 18 for one second.

I know you'd mentioned four uh four with ISD, and I'm glad you did, but I want to take a look at the other ISDs as well.

Um, just from those five.

Um, that quick napkin marine math is wrong.

It's 109,000.

Looking at some of the other ones where you have like Bell Helicopter, Amazon, obviously large businesses who are certainly for profit, and I think we all agree our ISDs are certainly not.

Um, and even the 17,000 increase is going to be a huge hit on a school district.

Um so what is the the process that's being related to them as far as hey, here's a proposed increase, but here's how you can apply to get a credit for that, or I guess what does that process look like, or could we just carbon just say nope, we're not gonna charge these ISDs more money that they really can't afford.

So, what we did last year and what we were planning to do this year is kind of following this budget work session presentation, we mailed letters um or sent emails to all of our ISD points of contact to let them know that council was considering a potential fee increase and then remind them of our stormwater utility fee credit um to remind them again that's available to them, help give them information on hey, if you want more information, we're willing to meet with you to figure out how to set this up or how to you know renew your credit every year.

So that's the plan with both the ISDs as well as the top 20 rate payers is to reach out to them after this meeting um and help coordinate with them just so they're not caught off guard because of the the large increase to them.

Okay, got it.

Well, I will make sure, especially for the two in district four, uh, because unfortunately, once again, we know one that does not respond well to emails or postcards.

I'll put you directly in touch with them.

Okay, that way they can discuss it because with everything else going on.

I'm sure this is something easy to just kind of slide by not notice until after the fact.

I'd be glad to give them a call.

Thank you.

Jennifer, um, what uh just a couple questions.

One on the percentage breakdown of the fees.

I mean, how much actually goes to maintenance that we have going on currently, how much is for capital needs, and then how much is savings towards future capital projects.

Right.

So going back to the fee.

So focused on the the fee increase, um, all of the green and the purple all goes towards capital, and then the blue amount will go towards the new position, which is oper an operational position.

No, I'm talking about just currently.

The whole storm, the whole storm water fee.

Gotcha, gotcha.

So I would say around half of the fee goes towards capital.

We always try to put more to capital.

So around half of it goes to capital, and then the other half is operational, which includes our maintenance.

And second question, and just for consistency's sake, the last two presentations had a deficit of this is how much we need to increase the fee to cover all of our needs.

Do you have a number on that?

So we're a little bit different in terms of not like water where we've got to build the water infrastructure and people are using the water.

Um, it really kind of comes down to impact on the ratepayer and what level of service we want to give to the community.

So we've got I would say over a billion dollars of needs known across the city.

But of course, we would not want to, you know, suddenly charge that much for it.

So we're really just take again taking that small face approach of how can we continue to maintain the infrastructure in a way that reduces the impact um on flood or improves public safety, as well as continuing to improve that level of service, really focusing on where we're getting those complaints.

So that uh SwiftMed position, we do get a lot of complaints about our stormwater maintenance facilities, and that's why we brought that one up.

Okay, um, I'm just thinking more of separating into different silos in my mind on maintenance.

How much does that actually cost us annually to to break that down and then how much does it cost us?

I know that number varies on the needs as they come up.

We've seen that through Arlington Heights and the other neighborhoods across the city.

We don't know they have a flood issue until they have a flood issue, and so then we have to address that.

But I guess just an ongoing maintenance of our system currently.

If we could get a number on exactly how much that cost, okay, um our taxpayers, and then if there is a deficit, what does that look like to cover the cost?

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, I can follow up with the specific breakdown for each year, but again, and kind of what that maintenance entails.

So we go out and we don't maintain the whole system every year.

So every year we try to maintain a certain number of cleaning so many inlets and so many miles of channel and so many pipes, so I can uh provide that information back to you as well.

Jennifer, um, we get a lot of complaints about overgrown channels.

So I just wanted to get an idea of um how much it costs to clear out one of those.

This is a smaller channel, maybe.

So if it's a maintenance, I can't tell you the cost off the top of my head.

But we do all of our maintenance in-house, um, and so I can follow up specifically and and maybe pull an example maintenance cost.

It is much cheaper for us to maintain the channels frequently enough.

If we don't maintain them frequently enough, then they can have larger issues and that can lead to a capital project.

So we're really maintenance is very important to us.

If we're maintaining it the right way, then we're reducing that need for a larger, more expensive capital project.

So with just this addition of a new inspector, I guess.

So we're only going to be adding an additional five miles that are going to be inspected.

So yes, because they would be broken between both channel inspection as well as the SwiftMed channels inspections.

Yeah, I'd like to see that cost just because I know that we do have a lot of uh miles that we need to inspect, and just vegetation just grows so quickly, and a lot of those can turn into capital and a little more expensive.

And I and I will say, when when we talk about maintenance, we do vegetation maintenance, so we mow three times a year typically, as well as then we'll do more um sediment maintenance.

So we're moving sediment to make sure the channels continue to convey the stormwater away from homes and businesses.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Great.

Any other questions from anyone?

Thank you, Jennifer.

Next up, Christiane Simmons, and she's going to field questions regarding the budget responses we received so far.

Oh, Jennifer is so much taller than me.

Goodness.

Yes, hello.

So we have one budget response today, and actually I will let Lane and Lauren.

Oh, yep, see, I already see I already see a finger.

Yep.

Okay.

Alright, Christiana, you already have a question.

I don't have a question.

Thank you so much.

This is exactly the information that I was looking for when we talked about how this would really impact our bond.

Um I think for the um for all of our public-facing folks in the room.

When we talk about this street maintenance fee to the public, I think illustrate using this graph to illustrate what it saves us is gonna be key in getting um community support because when I see the what was it, 30, yeah, 34 um 34 percent of our streets get taken out of the bond.

I just think of um how much more we can do in our bond for our libraries or firehouses or our parks if if we're shaving off 34%.

So thank you for that.

It's really exactly what I wanted, and I just want to go on the record.

Um, I know that y'all took the time to put in here about uh the potential impacts or our exemptions or discounts to that fee, and I just want to go on the record of saying um I wouldn't be comfortable exempting or discounting anyone given the information that's in the IR.

I'm passing with my eyes your thanks on to Lane because it was Lane and Lauren and Jess who really refined the VR.

You're welcome.

Um that graph was created in response to your um comment uh that we could create something like that to help communicate the benefits, and it was a really good idea.

So yes, I went back into that.

And um, yes, it is remarkable, you know, even though our street maintenance fee would be spent on our good and fair conditioned streets, um, it also has a direct benefit to those poor conditioned streets that are in that backlog waiting for funding because we're um to Jay's point, instead of digging a hole, you know, with a backhoe, we're we're moving to a shovel, right?

We're we're um trying to get to close the gap, and then we'll stop digging the hole, right?

But until then, our goal is just to get there over time as uh as quickly as we can to close that gap so that we can save ourselves and our residents uh money and wait time for their bond programs to get selected for the bond and all the benefits that are associated with the fee.

Right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Alright, thank you.

And we're still with me, right?

For our last agenda item of the day.

Uh so Christine Simmons with the Fort Worth Lab.

Um, I do want to say I appreciate the time and attention.

I know this was a longer budget work session.

Um the budget's always complex.

It feels especially complex this year, I think, with our significant gap.

Um so we especially appreciate being able to bring you along the way with rates and fees and get your feedback.

So this is very helpful.

And we were also worried about timing today.

So I just want to thank our partner departments who all stuck within their time limits that we gave them.

Very focused and helpful presentations.

So I'm closing out today with a progress report on the budget priorities survey.

So we have about a month of data since I was last with you, and I mentioned I'd share back before the break.

So we'll do that together.

So as a reminder, we brought this idea forward at our first budget work session, and you approved the idea, which we appreciated.

We get feedback sometimes about not going to the public until the budget's really baked.

And so this idea was to try to get some early feedback on priorities.

We did a digital survey, it's still open now, it'll be open for a couple more weeks.

It's located on Connect Fort Worth, and we kept it intentionally short, six questions, just centered around service delivery.

We had a mix of question types.

So some are open-ended, some are like a likert scale, checkboxes, all questions were optional and all questions are anonymous.

We just asked for council district or zip code, and we did offer it in multiple translations, and we just kind of we just kind of said, you know, we're we're developing the budget, your feedback will help us kind of prioritize where we're going here.

So no promises, but just a great input option.

And so it launched on May 12th after we came to you and then did some tweaking to the questions based on your round of feedback.

I know some of you have shared the survey since we sent it out to district directors, so we're very appreciative of you doing that.

Um CPE has been a great partner in getting this survey out to the public through the website and social media pushes.

Um we've we have it on all our screens at all the different city facilities.

Um, and right now we kind of cut the data for this presentation at the end of last week, but we have just under 1,400 responses at the end of last week, which I think about this number kind of two things are true.

Number one, that's just a fraction of our population, and we know that.

Um, but number two, it's still a significant amount of public engagement with the budget survey that we wouldn't have otherwise received.

So uh, and I'll note that actually in our historical the biennial community survey that we do, their number for statistically significant is 1600, which maybe isn't enough, and but we can talk about the statistical like sampling methodology.

Now, of course, our methodology isn't quite as targeted as theirs with duplicate responses and that kind of thing, but you know it's um it's worth noting that it's still a still a good um level, I think, of voluntary engagement, especially on budget, which maybe isn't always everyone's favorite topic.

So, um, question one.

I'm just gonna when are we um how long will this survey be open?

Yeah, we're gonna leave it open, I think for two more weeks till the end of June.

Okay, thank you.

Yes.

Anybody else?

Okay.

So I'll quickly run through the questions.

Uh, question one is just which city programs or services matter most to your quality of life and how do they make a difference?

So open text response and our analysts pulled out some some themes.

Uh these are actual written responses, but they're uh indicative of some of the larger themes we saw.

I don't think you'll be surprised by any of these, and you'll see the rankings later, but police, fire, and EMS certainly on top of people's lists as well as streets and mobility and parks and libraries.

So, really kind of core municipal services as you'd imagine people would respond on.

And you can kind of feel free to read that wording.

Um we received really some very thoughtful text responses to this question.

Uh, the next one, which three city surveys, I mean, services or programs would you want to protect most?

And you can see them again in order, fire and police ranking there at the top, streets, parks, animal, and library, and then you kind of have a mixed middle response there.

Um, we did caveat to people uh this is just general fund services that we're really surveying on.

So we had some notes at the bottom, like this isn't water or solid waste, for instance, stormwater.

We still had some people respond with those, so they're grouped together in the other category.

Um, and I mean, I'm just gonna say this since this is a public presentation.

Just because it's ranked this way doesn't mean this represents what the city thinks is important.

Um, and I think sometimes it shows hey, we might need to educate the public on the benefit of some of the programs that might be ranking lower, right?

Um, but this is just like a general survey of the public and how folks responded.

Um, and then we moved into like a kind of dragging Likert scale about how acceptable would it be if the city had to reduce a service level.

So shorter hours, fewer staff, maybe not a total elimination, but just service level impacts.

And so this is uh sorted by like very most unacceptable to least.

And so again, you see the same themes there: public safety on top, streets and mobility on top, uh, emergency management.

People did not really want to see that reduced parks, environmental, and then the dark blue is it would be very acceptable to reduce service levels here.

So just interesting data points.

And then I thought this one was interesting as well.

To help balance the budget, the city may need to make choices about service levels and taxes and fees.

So which option best matches what you'd prefer.

Uh, and so we received uh the most popular response so far was 44% to maintain or improve services, even if taxes or fees would need to increase.

Um, another 18% said they'd prefer to maintain current service levels without changing taxes and fees.

This is one of those questions that's like you kind of have to have a status quo option.

Um I think we all know that this is almost impossible to maintain current service levels without changing fees or taxes or finding some pretty big efficiencies, but it kind of tells us what people's level of you know uh expectation is, I think with the status quo.

Let's see.

Um about a third of people expressed a preference for reducing some services, either to keep taxes and fees the same or to lower them at that 10% mark.

And then of course we always just put an I'm not sure so that we're not forcing people into a choice where maybe they don't feel educated on one of the other four.

So interesting there, and then we had um participation across the council districts was very little uneven here, but you can kind of see how it spread.

Uh we did have people who don't live in Fort Worth respond.

I think that could be, I think in some cases it could be employees, which we didn't ask.

Um I also think sometimes there could be commercial, like stakeholders or you know, business business folks that maybe work in Fort Worth and have preferences around taxes and fees and services.

And oh, I thought I had a map.

I do have a map.

In your version, you should have a map.

I don't know what happened to mine.

Um, but we also have it mapped by zip code.

So some people skipped the zip code question, they kind of wanted to share their council district instead.

Um, and then you can sort of see on the map that you have in front of you the shading of of where the participation landed.

Um I will share, I think by the end of the month.

Um, you might remember for the bond, we gave you like a link to a dashboard that kind of showed more detail on the comments and where people were responding and on what we have that for this too.

Um, and so we'll share that link out with council offices in case you'd like to explore more of the detailed comments in your district or see any other themes that we just pulled out a few here, but you'll be able to kind of poke around and see some more detail.

We've um been tagging themes both with AI and with human to see like how the AI performs on picking up themes in the responses.

So that's been an interesting project.

Um, so I'll share that out.

And like I said, it'll be open for two more weeks, and then we'll close it so that we can be building the budget through July.

We'll have a couple different scenarios I'm sure that we're building in July, waiting for those final appraisal numbers at the end of the month.

So that's kind of where we where we sit now.

What questions do you have, if any?

Well, I have one to start off with.

Uh, if you go back to uh slide eight on Q3.

Um, curious to have a survey uh contextualized economic development programs.

And we can have a kind of a, for me, a larger than expected, very acceptable uh category for reductions there.

I mean, were people, you know, assuming these are incentive programs for the most part?

I think so.

I think the descriptor there was about business attraction, like comma incentives.

It didn't necessarily target like revitalization or any of those items.

So it's a short descriptor.

So people may have been, you know, thinking more about incentives on that question, yeah.

Yeah, and it's interesting you mentioned revitalization programs because we have the any bridge improvement programs, and then I see that they were neighborhood services, you know, again.

I was kind of wondering what what your interpretation of that is.

Yeah, for neighborhood services, um, I think we called it housing support and community development programs, just some broad um descriptors there.

Uh, and so yeah, people maybe they could be conflating the two with those short descriptions.

I'm not sure.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any questions?

I guess uh if we can stay on slide eight for a second, one maybe it'd be good to get Chief Hill to talk to whoever has beef with fire and EMS or accepting uh cuts there because that certainly doesn't make sense.

Um, but I think if you go down uh as well to the uh economic development programs, and we had nearly 25%, but so that'd be a very acceptable cut.

I think that's a really good story for our economic development folks.

Um I guess really to do a better job of explaining why those have a huge impact on their on their taxes and their actual bills to more commercial development, bring in big better businesses, better jobs, etc.

So I just really want to point that out because that was pretty pretty start.

I think you're right, and actually, I don't know if JR is here, but in her budget blitz presentation that she did for mission and vision, she put up the 6535 tax-based composition.

She's like, this is our mission and vision, we would like to see this flipped over.

So to your point, I think there's a great education to residents around why economic development and business attraction is so important.

Thank you.

Thank you, Christian.

Um, can you talk a little bit more about how y'all are gonna build out the scenarios based upon the feedback we're getting from the public?

And I guess what I'm getting to is I know there's a lot of nice-to-haves that when we have a huge budget for shortfall like we do, what are the need to have?

I guess as we continue this conversation with the public, what other feedback can we get?

I don't know if you can change the survey at this point, but building upon the feedback we got about economic development, neighborhood services.

Are people clear about what's in there?

Are they not?

And then what are the kind of the extra programs that are nice to have, but not necessarily need to have as we can try to close that gap.

Yeah, so I'll talk about the survey and then I'll defer.

I'm sure Jay would like to comment on this.

Um so the survey will end in two weeks, and then we'll we won't do another version.

What we'll do then is go to the public with the recommended budget.

So in July, it'll be, you know, the city management team, the department head sort of finalizing the budget scenarios, but I'll let Jay talk about sort of core discretionary kind of how we're thinking about some of that.

Sure.

So I mean, going back to the survey specifically on the economic development side, I think there's part of the traditional economic development for worth is the idea folks look at it like corporate welfare, right, in general.

Well, we base our our we base our tax breaks on new taxes coming in from that corporate.

So in theory, if they don't show up, we don't have taxes to provide the benefit on.

There are a few programs though within economic development that are more upfront, like the EDIF fund, which is cash that we have on an annual basis.

So that from your perspective is nice to have.

That's one of the areas that we're looking at that might be reduced significantly in order to be able to so it's it's those kind of things uh just specifically because economic development kind of stood out there that we'd be looking at where you it's it's not it's a ability to reduce what we put into the budget, but doesn't have a direct impact on uh on the actual ability to bring or or consent a certain company to come in.

Of course, one of the issues that reason we created that is because we do have a hard time competing for headquarters, for instance, that are coming into an existing building and are not necessarily building bringing in new taxes, but have would bring in high-paying jobs, and so that's one of the reasons we created that whole area.

So it's a balancing act.

When when we talk about nice to have, I would love to have every council member send me an email on what you think is nice to have, um, because uh a nice to have for one person is a critical thing for another.

Um, but it would give us a gauge of what's there.

I mean, you could say the neighborhood and pro improvement program is a nice to have you eliminate four and a half million there, but then there's a neighborhood that we're not then targeting that is not doing well in the city.

That it's a program that's been been in place for us.

On the other end of it, you could say that having uh uh newer vehicles for police and fire are nice to have as compared to other cities that don't have the dollars to do that.

But for the police police and fire folks that are using those vehicles, they see it as a basic.

So um at the end of the day, I think the whole management team departments have done a good job of trying to provide us the information that we need, and again, those are the kind of things we're looking at um there will be where we're where we're projecting right now there will be significant um impacts to our services and in various areas and then we are using the survey and we're using the general feedback from the community when it comes to public safety being the top things that we need to maintain right that uh transportation and streets and those kind of things are way high on the list parks libraries animal control but none of the survey is new or to me it wasn't surprising is what comes back all the time well one of the things too and we're going to I was just sending my staff I think especially and Chris I'd like to see us really push this in our districts because it's heavily weighted one way uh with some of the other districts and uh I think many times our residents don't often see these things and don't respond to them and like other districts I've asked my staff to send it back out I've got a couple of meetings but we've got two weeks left to go and I'd like to see an increase in the number of things because I do think public sec many of the things will stay at the top but some of the things may rise toward the middle.

So I think it's important then we get it back out to some of our districts where and Jeanette I noticed yours too is um yeah it is lower and so I was just telling my staff we're gonna make a concerted effort to increase that.

I have some specific concerns about us um I appreciate the survey and it is incredibly helpful to help us gauge um where our residents are at regardless of who has or hasn't uh responded but I I do agree we could always do a better job of making sure it's well rounded um when you look at what I want to caution is using that as a Bible for how we're going to um to at this table I know maybe staff but at this table using it as a Bible as to what we do want to look at cutting and not cutting because when I look at those results if I'm just a regular city of Fort Worth resident and even if I'm marginally engaged right I'm still going to that survey and the the things that we see are the most important are the things that everyday residents will encounter every day it is their roads it is their fire it is their police regardless of what job they have what neighborhood they live in they're gonna get on our roads they probably they God forbid might need 911 either EMS or or um fire or PD so those are going to naturally be important.

The vast majority of our residents don't ever encounter development services.

They don't understand what not funding development services does to the overall economic impact of our city that's our jobs here on council is to make sure we're taking that public input and then using the the knowledge that we have on how the city runs holistically so I just um I hear a lot of conversation around the table about you know well what this um survey did or didn't say and I think it's a great tool for us but I think it's incumbent on us to make sure that we're not um just looking at that as the guide for what we're gonna cut.

Right.

Well and development services part of the general fund but it pays for itself with its fees right and so if you cut the service those fees would come down and then you end up no but I'm just I just use that as an example of a department that um you know or emergency management.

Most people don't know what they don't know what it does.

They're not encountering it.

And I'll just add uh to that um I think when we start talking about the nice to have's or the must haves it can become a slippery slope.

You just said it Jay you know something from me might be completely different for Jeanette or anybody else and I think it's important I'll say this as uh my comment uh decreasing neighborhood services would be a non-starter for me uh because it's so much that happens in our neighborhoods um that have not seen development service they have not seen growth, have not seen economic development.

And so those neighborhood services uh improvements, what we're doing, um and what we did in Ascrest and what we're doing and um I've got the new neighborhood that we have new Mitchell Boulevard is significant improvement that's going to uh help the quality of life for that neighborhood.

Um and I think that we around this table know that we are the tenth largest city, and so um as we grow that uh we're gonna have more responsibilities.

And so I think we really have to take uh a jab at what our tax rate is gonna be, and it's what our city service is gonna be because starting cutting services is not gonna be ideal for the community.

Charlie, thank you.

Um I think we we talked about this last couple budget years too, as far as nice to have, need-to-haves, must-haves, and I think we all have different opinions, sure.

I I think for for me specifically in the the district that put me here, like one of the biggest issues that we're facing right now is a lot of his messaging, uh, especially around this current budget.

Um, you know, whenever we see, again, I know I go after it all the time, but you look at something like public art, which is now it was tied to the bond, got it, but we're looking at all these rate increases and we're telling them, hey, we're gonna increase these rates, we're looking at a budget deficit, but we're gonna go ahead and put in this.

And it reminds me of time of years ago when a client I did work up front for them, it was a little over a thousand dollars.

They couldn't pay it after because their deal fell through six months later, he's on vacation on a beach somewhere.

It's like, wait a second, did you actually need that?

I mean, you could have paid that.

And so I think it's messaging and how we push this out.

Um, you know, certainly having the discussions on needs to have nice to have's and and what we're gonna cut and where we're gonna cut it.

Um, I think we're gonna have to have those difficult conversations for sure.

Um, you know, especially whenever you start talking about public safety.

Uh, but as far as like a non-starter for me, I'm sure we all have non-starters like that development services.

Absolutely fair for for councilman nettles, for that way.

I think for me, non-starters talking about any sort of tax rate increase as we're already doing all these other things that certainly do seem nice to have.

Um great examples.

I haven't heard any nonprofits come to my office.

I don't know if anyone else has anything different saying, hey, can we help you fill in some potholes?

It just doesn't exist.

No one said, Can we help you with some of your street lights?

Can we help you with some of your infrastructure?

Not a single nonprofit has reached out to our office to offer that, but there are certainly nonprofits that do work in spaces where our city services are also working, so maybe leaning more heavily on our nonprofits to do some of that and lift some of those burdens.

Uh and really just just like what we're doing in the military right now is burden sharing.

So we need to figure that out too.

Good discussion.

Jeanette, did you have something?

Are we sharing our non-starters?

Because if we are, of course, environmental services.

You know, we have a housing crisis, and so we need how however we want to do it.

I mean, Jay suggested sending an email.

We could talk about neighborhood services.

Jay was being facetious.

I don't think he wanted those emails.

Well, yeah, actually we ain't freaking out right now.

She's like, wait a minute here.

The individual emails are great.

They're not a quorum deal.

Yeah, because then you can share your thoughts.

Sometimes it's harder to do it in public, right?

Um, or anyway, when we meet one-on-one.

Part of this whole at the end of the day, we have to come to a balanced budget, right?

So you could you can do the extremes, and if you want no rate increase, we're gonna cut $50 million out of the budget.

Nobody on this diet would be happy.

On the other side, we can increase the tax rate by four cents.

And some people might be okay, but some people might not.

Those are the just the you know, the easy two the two of somewhere in the middle is probably the answer, right?

At the end of the day, and a lot of it's gonna be contingent on what we get from Tad in July on the commercial on the commercial values, and I think uh so as we put all these things together, we're gonna have as you saw today in the the staff, the departments, Dr.

Wittenberg, uh Chris, uh Lauren's team, uh everybody did a great job presenting and using data and using actual costs to come up with the justifications for why they're asking for those rate increases.

If the the council as a whole doesn't want to see a rate increase, we can cut back services and reduce that.

That's the kind of feedback we're we wanted from you all.

Um, when it comes to the to the final decisions on the budget overall for the general fund, we're gonna be leaning hard on those type of data, that type of service levels and those kind of justifications to get us there.

So, and just to add to that, Jay, uh just what uh Charles was saying about um giving the information out.

I think we talked about uh even the tax rate uh when we do the no never no uh new never no new revenue tax rate we're saving I think uh the resident a hundred and twenty dollars a month or something like that I I don't I can't remember we'll end up showing all those different I think showing that because when you start talking about you save me a hundred dollars versus I'm paying an extra hundred dollars and I keep all my services that might be a different different um story around this guy is I mean I know not raising tax revenue is is you know non-start of a lot of people and it's a and it's also a political tool that uh the federal government have been using the state government have been using on local cities and so I think getting real dollars what we're saving what we're not saving for what we're getting is going to be very crucial to our discussion.

Great good discussion around thanks Christian uh before we uh conclude our meeting I did have a TPW related question that Lauren can answer if you come to the podium something's up I wouldn't know why.

Uh is it true that there's a significant uh birthday today I that is not true I do not age she doesn't age and I think it's yours well you know twenty-two looks great on you thank you sir that is the correct answer happy birthday Lauren we appreciate you all right folks uh we talked about it already but any budget related future agenda items anything else okay moving on and we thank staff for doing these presentations for us uh you know we're rates and uh fees you know for city services I think it's important for all of us and I think we understand the gravity of it you know when it comes to you know budgets uh in our city budget uh sustaining those current city services and improving on said city services or a growing population it's very important you know especially when it comes to uh delivery of it and I think all of us here are bearing in mind what those uh potential impacts for our residents are so this is going to be uh a very interesting discussion going into it as we start giving Jay some feedback and um making some final decisions.

So thanks everyone and we are adjourned at three minutes before twelve