Public, I'm Mayor Pro Tim Martha Castex Tatum, the chair of our city's economic development committee.

I'd like to call this meeting to order, and like to welcome all of the council members in attendance.

Um, council uh uh council member Mario Castillo is here, uh Councilmember Sally Alcorn, Councilmember uh Joaquin Martinez, uh Vice Mayor Pro Tim Amy Peck, Councilmember uh Julian Ramirez is here, Councilmember Abby Kamen is here, and we also have staff from uh Councilmember Flickinger's office, staff from Councilmember Jackson's office, staff from Councilmember Pollard's office, and also staff from Councilmember Carter's office.

If there are any members of the public that would like to participate in public comments, there is a sign-in sheet at the front table.

Um today's agenda, uh, we will have an overview of our CIP process, um, and that will be done by our director of finance, Melissa Dobowski, uh, David Wardlow, and Richard Vela.

Um we will review our CIP amendments uh related to our CIP process, the improvements in the DDSR fund balance.

Um that was submitted by Julian Ramirez and also uh Vice Mayor Pro Tim Amy Peck, and then we'll have a discussion and a call for recommendations to improve the CIP process, and that discussion will be held by all council members.

So at this time I'll turn it over to Councilmember Sally Alcorn who will discuss our meeting rules.

Thank you, Mayor Potem and colleagues.

You know, we've been discussing this meeting for a while since the CIP.

There were some amendments offered, and those amendments kind of spurred a conversation of how we will have a more meaningful CIP process, how we can have a process where the the and projects that a CIP, a document that comes out of this that people can rely on.

I know things happen and things have to be moved around, but we're trying to make improvements to this process.

So this is just the first of what I'm seeing as being there will be some subsequent meetings.

We'll hear about these amendments today, and then we will have all council members will offer also offer their suggestions on how we might improve the process.

I think the departments will too.

And then we see subsequent meetings where we could actually take a vote on recommendations to the administration for changes to the CIP process.

So we'll be taking up some of the amendments.

The one on the DDSRF fund balance will actually be is actually moved to the to the September 2nd meeting.

But um the but the ones that were related that Councilmember Peck did about distributing quote uh equally uh dollars and the ones that council member Ramirez had about uh uh communications and and specific uh items within projects that will change and other things.

We'll talk about that at this meeting.

Um, but that's that's kind of the deal.

Um we're you know the mayor wants us to work at these committees.

He wants our committees to he's used to the state and used to the committees kind of doing the work and coming up with things, so that's how we're seeing this joint committee work that we'll actually be seeing some ideas, suggestions, recommendations turn into actual action items on the CIP process.

Okay, we will move into our first agenda item.

Uh at this time, I'd like to welcome Finance Director Melissa Davowski.

Okay, thank you.

That thank you.

Good afternoon.

Um, so many of the slides you're gonna see in my section of the presentation uh are going to remind you of the slides that we had at the time of the uh CIP uh being proposed.

So I'll just kind of go over a background of the CIP and then we'll get into all the the fund material from our public works department and general services department.

Um so to remind everyone as an overview that Capital Improvement Plan is a rolling five-year plan of projected projects.

The plan is a live document and is subject to change due to environmental factors, funding constraints, uh budgetary constraints, shifting priorities, uh scheduling, as well as citizen input.

Uh the CIP is broken into four different component sections, uh, which are roughly divided up uh based on the funding sources for each of those components.

So the first component is the public improvement program.

Uh we also have the uh build Houston Forward, which is uh formerly known as the Rebuild Houston, the Enterprise Fund Program, which is the water and wastewater uh utility system as well as the Houston Airport system, and then the component units.

And the purpose of the CIP is to be as cost effective as possible in meeting the city's goals to serve the Houstonians.

And we have all the capital improvement fund projects in one document that's proposed and adopted by city council so that we can improve on the transparency by providing visibility on citywide needs.

Historically, probably about 10 years ago, there were different capital improvement plans, some for one for facilities, one for IT, fleet was a different plan.

So about a decade ago or more, we brought those all into one plan.

And then, of course, have the public engagement process with the city council, the website, and we'll get more into the timeline and the steps with improving the transparency in the coming slides.

So on the next slide, as far as the process, we do aim to lock in the existing projects that are in the existing CIP, and we do try to prioritize funding for projects that are already in the CIP, which generally would include cost escalations to existing projects.

As we've seen over the last couple of years, COVID coming out of COVID, cost escalations have been significant at the same time that our revenue sources have been constrained.

So we are having to prioritize which projects are the most critical and put funding to those projects as we can.

So in order to prioritize the most urgent projects, the client departments at the city, which would include anything from the health department, police department, fire, any of the departments that have facility equipment or vehicle needs, put together a list of requests for their projects that they're requesting to be funded.

They then prioritize those projects based on their needs that they see as a departmental level.

Then we ask the central service area departments to do a citywide prioritization list for those specific categories.

So that would be the fleet director, the IT director, and then the general services director prioritizing what they see as a citywide need for all of the facilities projects citywide, all of the IT projects citywide, and all of the fleet needs citywide.

And then we compile all those projects together based on the available funding, both the existing projects and the new requests that we can afford to add to the plan, and we put them together to be proposed to this body for uh adoption.

On the next slide, I'll go over uh the details of the four components of the CIP, just to remind everyone in the public improvement program.

This is where the general fund departments are funded.

This includes the fire, uh, general improvements, which would cover this building and the annex, the health department, housing needs, library, parks, police, and solid waste.

The next major category is the Build Houston Forward, formerly known as Rebuild Houston, and this is where the storm drainage and street infrastructure projects are located.

The enterprise fund program, and these are enterprise funds, they're closed financial systems closed from the rest of the financing of the city, and that includes the combined utility system, water and wastewater, and the Houston Airport system.

And when we say enterprise funded, basically what we mean here is when we say, okay, well, Houston Airport system, they have their CIP.

If we want to add a new CIP project onto the book, let's say for streets and drainage, we can't necessarily cancel an airport project and use that funding on a streets and drainage project because we're governed by the airport's case, the federal government FAA guidelines as well as bond covenants and ordinances that those funding sources have to remain separate.

The last section is the component unit section of the CIP, and this kind of is um is a mixture of some of the different component units at the city, including the Houston Parks Board, Houston First Corporation, Houston Zoo, and then all of the TURS CIP projects are included in this section of the CIP.

On the next slide for funding sources, the public improvement program is primarily supported by the general fund, which goes to pay debt service through public improvement or general obligation bonds.

We also leverage community donations, contributions, and grants.

Usually there's some matching component associated with that, but we do leverage that outside funding.

Next, we have the Build Houston Forward, formerly known as Rebuild Houston, and that is supported by revenue from the drainage utility charge, developer impact fee, advalorum taxes, the 11.8 cent portion of the taxes.

And then there also is going to be grants and collaboration with other governmental entities such as Metro, Harris County, TechStot, Federal Highway Administration, HUD, and FEMA.

Under the Enterprise Fund Program, the combined utility system revenues, which are the from the water customers, go to pay for those projects.

And for the Houston Airport system, that's supported by revenues from the airline airline fees, parking fees, and federal grants.

And then the zoo has their self-supporting revenues and Houston First revenues cover their CIP.

Slide six gives you an idea of the overall size of the CIP.

So we're just going to stay focused on the right columns for the FY26 through 30, which is where we are currently in the CIP.

Our CIP is estimated to be 16.7 billion dollars across all funding sources with the enterprise funds consuming the majority of that as you see focus mostly in the combined utility system as we're moving forward with the EPA consent decree as well as the expansion of the East Plant or some of the major drivers in that category.

On the next slide, you see a year-over-year comparison of the five-year total of the CIP.

You see it has grown over time.

We have a lot of deferred maintenance at the city and a lot of critical needs at the city, which you're going to hear about from both the Houston Public Works Department and the General Services Department.

So moving on to the next section, the CIP preparation process.

So this is a little bit hard to read on this slide, I think, but it kind of reflects in a in a flowchart format on the next slide.

Reflects in a flowchart format.

What I spoke about at the beginning when we get the we start looking basically based at the current five-year CIP as it stands, the projects on the book.

We then work with the departments to get their requests for anything that needs to be added, including working with the enterprise departments such as public works and the airport system.

Then those departments develop their proposed requests, submitting them to the finance department where we compile the requests and review the draft CIP with the mayor.

If the mayor approves, it gets sent to the budget of fiscal affairs committee.

We usually call a special called meeting at the beginning of June for a review by City Council.

If City Council approves or amends the CIP, ultimately the CIP gets adopted, sometimes being some of those arrows that say no mean we have you know further internal conversations about the amendments or additional needs that need to be addressed before the CIP is adopted.

On the next slide, this is the general timeline that those steps follow in December.

CIP kickoff meetings begin, and these are internal meetings, typically between us and the city departments, sort of letting them know of the timeline, the expectations, and the format that their requests should take.

This is kind of internal internal sausage making, I guess, for lack of better term.

We then receive those requests in the February time frame.

They're due to the finance department so that we can review and evaluate the cost estimates and get the uh the priorities of the departments in order, ranking one through however many requests they have in March.

Then throughout March and April, uh we review those uh requests with the mayor and the administration for their uh review and consideration and ultimately compile those um approved projects into the proposed CIP in June, where we upload it to our internal SharePoint site so that city council and um the department directors and staff can see the proposed CIP before it gets proposed the following week, usually in the first or second week of June to the budget and fiscal affairs committee.

And then by the end of June is when we ask for council action on the proposed CIP so that we can have that in place before the start of the next fiscal year.

And then it's not um on this timeline, but uh just to go over what happens after the CIP is adopted throughout the year on every council session, you'll see appropriating X dollar amount for X project from X fund.

Every time you see an RCA requesting those appropriations for those projects or approval on a contract that's using uh CIP related fund, those are projects that are planned for in the CIP.

So the CIP is a plan document, it's living, but as we bring those RCAs to council for consideration throughout the year, that's when the dollars are actually truly appropriated for those projects.

Um, and of course, considered uh on an individual basis at that time.

Okay, I think I'll turn it over now to um David Wardlow for the Houston Public Works portion of the slides.

Hello.

All right, thank you, Melissa.

See if I can get the chair to work first.

Okay, sorry.

Very good.

All right, thank you, all council members.

Appreciate uh the opportunity to speak with you today.

Again, just to start off, Houston Public Works is committed to ensuring our capital investments address our most pressing infrastructure challenges and working with you, uh ensure we do so in a manner to develop those projects and implement those projects that truly position us to provide the foundation uh for Houston to thrive.

I have a few remarks on the CFP process that I think will be relevant to your discussion today, and look forward to the dialogue after our presentation.

Next slide, please.

We're asked to speak a little bit about our public engagement process.

Um, as you all are pretty familiar with, Engage Houston is our primary platform for keeping Houstonians engaged in our work.

Uh we understand your frustration and share it with the delay in getting that site back up, but it was important to get it refreshed in a way that accurately communicated current project information so everybody understands what's going on.

Um you can use the site to search for project information, uh register for updates so they get pushed out to you.

You don't have to go searching for them every time, and participate and organize public meetings right through that platform.

Uh next slide, please.

We understand and really deeply appreciate that uh you know the work we do to improve our system, uh, to make investments in it, does impact people's daily lives, um, and it changes how they interact with our infrastructure.

So it's important that we incorporate opportunities to the public to provide feedback on the work we're doing to inform how those projects are being developed during the design process and also prior to construction so they know how and when we're gonna be out there, how they can make adjustments so that hopefully we're as minimal a disturbance to their daily activities as possible.

Um we also provide additional outreach depending on the project, depending what's going on with that uh to uh incorporate public feedback.

So, like the Abyssinet Street, uh Safe Streets for All project.

Uh, we went out during the design concept report process to make sure we understood the public's needs and expectations, uh, so that as we come through with the design and construction uh everything flows smoothly.

We're on a consolidated timeline for that grant funded project, so we want to make sure that goes smoothly.

Um, this also includes requests council members might make for us to participate in events they might have or other opportunities to engage the public.

Uh next slide, please.

All right, uh, and obviously, and we're gonna talk about this a little bit more next week.

Um, our capacity for investment is not unlimited, right?

So it is critical that we make decisions on how to spend those scarce resources uh based on the best available data.

Again, it's not just in everyday counts, but it's in every dollar counts.

Um, next slide, please.

I'm gonna walk through a couple of examples of how we do this with Houston Public Works.

Um, those of you who have been familiar, we've been presenting on the uh stormwater master plan.

An outgrowth of that is this uh ability to produce flood risk index, right?

So based on those 2D models citywide, uh, where we can understand where uh stormwater is going.

Uh, we can incorporate other uh data uh into that to understand what's actually impacting our residents and how they live uh to better understand what areas are most at risk.

So that's the flood risk index with those little hexagons that you've I think seen and been presented to before.

Next slide, please.

With regard to our street network, and this is a top conversation, I think, around the city about the condition of our streets.

Um, you know, we combine not just what the pavement condition index or the international ride index, I think I got that right, the IRI, the ride, how it works.

Um we use other information about how frequently the the facility is being used, what safety issues we see to make the best possible decisions about where to put our rehabilitation dollars in particular, but also where we tee up potential areas for major reconstruction uh or safety intersection projects.

Uh next slide, please.

Pivoting to the utility on the drinking water side, uh, you received a presentation last week about the efforts we're making for uh leak reduction and our our our contract with Corolla.

Um but beyond that on the longer term uh strategy for how we organize our investments to improve the the water distribution system and avoid leaks in the future.

We are leveraging um artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to predict where which line segments are gonna be the most critical for us to invest in over the next 10 plus years.

So uh that is going not just into the short-term side of it, but into the long-term planning and where we put major dollars for capital replacement.

Next slide.

Similarly, in wastewater, we're doing a similar thing, right?

We don't have complete perfect information everywhere, but we can with advanced technologies use the information we do have to better predict where we are going to experience issues from sanitary sewer overflows, whether that's a condition, age, need to replacement issue, uh, or where we're experiencing capacity constraints.

So this has really helped us pivot how we package projects up and best position ourselves for making the most out of the limited dollars we've got.

I also wanted to highlight for just a moment um that we are actively partnering with you, particularly the council uh district members, uh, to make specific project selections to direct where individual dollars go, what projects do advance in your individual specific communities.

So through the council district service fund program, obviously there's half a million dollars every year for each council district uh from the public work side of the fence, but we can actually also leverage the the general fund dollars that are currently allocated to CDSF to further that where it makes sense through the SWAT program, a little under two million a year is the base level, depending on where amendments fall each year uh to make investments on those critical uh stormwater investments that can make all the difference in uh having a program a system function properly, right?

So, not complete replacement, uh, but where we can make the little things happen that make a bigger outsized impact.

Um, and then similar on the pavement rehabilitation program.

Uh, this is something that we've continuously looked at, revisited, um, quite frankly, been putting more resources towards over the years.

Uh, and lately we've been partnering with you to select, I think, two lane miles uh every year uh where you can directly address needs that you see and are hearing from your constituents.

Uh I've been quite frankly have the pleasure uh of uh the directors asked me to share with you that starting this year.

Uh we'll partner with you to select five lane miles for local streets specifically, uh, so that you can yes, help direct us towards where you see the most acute issues coming up uh within your neighborhoods in particular.

And we'll continue to engage with you on the collectors and the thoroughfares and stuff too, but very specifically we want to make sure you have the tools to address issues you see coming up in your um in your subdivisions and and residential areas.

And with that, that's really the key parts of my slides.

I think General Services Division is going to come up, and then we'll get into the back and forth QA.

Thanks.

Thank you.

All right, Mr.

Vailer, we are ready to hear from you.

Good afternoon, Council members.

Uh thank you for having us.

I know that uh it's very important to uh to engage the public and to see where all our dollars are going.

So uh real estate design and construction, we renovate buildings, we uh build buildings from ground up uh our first slide is regard is on age charity, slide 30.

It's about public engagement.

How do we engage the public, right?

So uh our engagement is usually is regarding public-facing projects.

So community centers, multi-service centers, libraries, parks development, that's where we engage the public because that's where the public uh usually resides.

And how do we engage the public?

Uh we begin early during pre-design.

We meet uh, we have community meetings and understand their needs as as well as with the departments.

And then during the continuing through design, programming and design development, uh, we have several other meetings with the public.

And then uh GSD provides monthly updates to departments and to our client departments.

Our client departments provide public updates uh either on the city website or through their programs if it's the health department.

Next slide.

So uh facilities conditions assessment.

So in 2022, we embarked on our second uh facilities conditions assessment, which is uh really uh um a study of our portfolio.

Uh what do we own?

What are the needs of each building?

What's the cost to keep them running and what needs to be preventative and future, right?

And then what comes first?

How do we prioritize our buildings?

And I'm sure you're all familiar with this.

Uh uh, um we manage around 354 buildings for um general government, all these downtown buildings, HPD, HFD, the health department, uh library, and solid waste.

We have approximately 7 million square feet.

Our average age is 39 years old.

Um our current uh replacement value that is of buildings without land is 3.5 billion.

Um in 2012, when we had our first FCA, that uh that uh current that replacement was around 2.2 billion.

So that increased by almost a billion dollars.

Next slide, please.

So, how do we measure how a building is performing?

And usually that's done through an FCI.

It's uh referred to as the facility condition conditions assessment.

And what is an FCI?

So basically it's uh what's the needs, how much money is it gonna cost to renovate a building, to bring up the systems, the envelope, the uh roof, and divide that by its current replacement.

And it comes up with a percentage.

The lower percentage, the better it is, the higher percentage, the worse it is.

So in our case, uh uh industry standards says that uh for an institution building, and it's usually an administration building, the target should be around 20 percent.

So we are currently at 40 percent.

That is double the amount.

Um uh so uh as you can see, uh it has a uh we are at uh 40 percent, which makes it fair going into poor.

Our next slide.

If I I I am getting text that we can't hear online, um so we might want to check that with HTV.

I've I've gotten a text from one of my colleagues that can't hear online, I guess on Teams.

Oh, the volume is back.

Sorry to interrupt.

Please proceed.

All right, thank you.

All right, so the next slide on slide uh 33.

Um, we'd like to show you what the uh deferred capital investment looks like as of today, right?

So five year the five-year need is uh we're at 40 percent.

The five-year need is 1.4 billion dollars.

That's how much we need um to reduce that FCI.

Over 10 years, that will increase to 51 percent.

So 51 percent means we're gonna be in the poor condition.

And just to give you to relay what funding we have available to CIP and MRR, um, CIP funds and MRR combined on a yearly basis, we get 52 million dollars.

So over the course of five years, we'll be receiving 260 62 million dollars.

Um that's broken down in uh in 133 million dollars of CIP money, and uh is broken down into um 79 million dollars of MRR funds.

Combining the both, we're looking at 262 million dollars, right?

So, what are MR funds?

So MRR funds are given to us uh from the from the general fund, the general every year, and it's uh for maintenance, renewal, and replacement.

It excludes all security budget.

Um and uh although uh um GSD gets around 37 million, only 55 percent is used towards the uh FCA.

Next slide, please.

So the next slide is really uh a graph showing us uh where we are, where we can go, and what's reality.

And uh I will show you that uh that the blue line at the very top is the reality, right?

With the funding that we're getting, which is uh 150 million dollars short on a yearly basis, we will go from uh being uh 0.4, 40 percent to 80 percent.

So the baseline, which is the horizontal line, that shows you where we are at 40 percent.

Um FCI, that's uh um that's uh how much um what what what number we are at at this time.

If we go to uh the graph, this is green, that is that means that we get 3 percent.

If we get 3 percent, that's approximately 110 million dollars a year.

So remember, we're only getting 50 million dollars a year, right?

Um now let's say we go to uh we want to reduce uh we want to reduce our FCI from 40 percent to 20 percent to be with industry standards across uh the nation, right?

Uh so uh the red graph shows us that uh um to reduce it to 20 percent, we will require 200 million dollars on a yearly basis for the next uh 10 years.

Next slide, please.

So uh I just wanted to understand that when we comes to CIP, uh we do renovate buildings, we do uh do new construction, but only a small amount of money is going towards uh FC FC FCI reduction.

The next slide is about city facilities master plan, right?

The good news is that uh we're trying to do something, we're trying to prioritize.

So uh with the help of finance in the new administration, we are able to uh secure a uh a mass uh a contract uh um that will be uh um going to council very soon, and it's it's regarding uh uh doing a facilities master plan for the entire city.

So this uh this this facility creates a standards.

First of all, we're gonna create standards across the board for all buildings, if it's health, if it's police, and we're talking about building systems, mechanical systems, roof systems.

So that's going to be very helpful, and that's gonna happen in the next uh six months.

Um next slide.

Um so uh so what is uh the master plan?

So the master plan is uh addressing future needs of fire, general services, health, library courts, police, and all the buildings that we manage, right?

Um it will help us uh prioritize uh um for um um for the five year and a 10-year, 20-year and a 10 and a 30-year-based uh you know um future.

Um we are looking at uh service deliveries model, looking at uh at the service we're delivering today, right?

How what are we delivering today, and what could what can they be in the future?

We're looking at land across the city.

How much land do we have?

Can land be utilized for uh different needs for consolidations?

We're looking also at the financial plan, right?

So the reality the city is uh is uh is land rich, but perhaps uh not as liquid as it should be, right?

So at the end of the day, is there opportunities to consolidate, for example, like A.

Lift neighborhood centered, like Sunny Side.

So these things are going to be all looked upon across the board for the entire city.

Our time frame is uh that phase one will be done between September of uh this year till April of 2026, and then phase two will be uh November 2025 to March of 2027.

Um our phase two uh is uh going over existing and future facilities and space improvements, right?

So providing recommendations, what recommendations do we expect to come out of this report?

So uh a roofline analysis.

I know the administration started doing this earlier on, and we said uh we um we'll we'll have our uh our consultant help us to do a roof analysis across the board.

You know, what what are the efficiencies of services delivered?

Is there opportunities for consolidations, future consolidations?

Um parks has land, health has land.

We we know that uh um we have land across the city and different uh services provided across the city.

Um are there opportunities for perhaps a few consolidations?

Can we have building closures?

Can we close buildings, right?

Can we sell that land?

And then uh how do we repurpose current facility portfolio to support the city's vision and service delivery?

And uh ultimately we just had a meeting with uh uh director of um mobility and uh it's ADA.

We want to make sure that all our buildings are ADA compliant.

And at the end, uh we'd like to continue uh incorporating the Ernest and Young's recommendation.

So uh we'll see what the facility needs based on organizational structures.

Thank you.

Back to you, Melissa.

Thank you both for the presentation.

So we do have a council member in queue.

We'll start with uh council member Kayman.

Thank you to both of our chairs.

Um I had several questions uh for finance, public works, and GSD.

I'll just go quickly in order.

Um Director Dubowski, you talked about the CIP timeline, and usually and traditionally that's brought in June after we pass the budget.

Um you and I have spoken, and I've said this publicly.

I believe that the city should be on um a different fiscal year schedule as it pertains to the budget.

If we are able to move that fiscal year budget to align with uh more common practices, would the CIP timeline also need to move?

Yes.

Okay, I think it would uh need to follow the same fiscal year.

Okay, and as it pertains, and this may not be a question to you, this may be public works.

Um for those of us in our second term, y'all will recall, there was an attempt, and then the pandemic hit to realign the public input timeline for the CIP to incorporate public comment before we get to the official list so that those tweaks and changes can be uh incorporated and public feedback can be incorporated into what is presented to this body.

Has that been considered or is that being planned for?

Uh are we going to try to attempt that again?

Excuse me.

So on my end, as far as what I know, we have had um some internal discussions on that um as far as um how we could incorporate that on a better timing.

I know historically um the past practice had been to have those community engagement meetings in the spring, which was really kind of um I want to say a little bit too late in the game to get the input to put into the proposed CIP.

I know that we've um internally talked about some um ways to improve the format of that uh those community meetings.

I know in the past we've had them in each district.

Um we've talked internally about the idea of going to uh maybe divide the city into quadrants, having some more virtual options, um weekend options like we had with the um public engagement on the budget uh workshop that Chair Al Cornen um uh Councilmember Castillo, uh co-chair Castillo helped with on the budget side.

So those are things we're talking about internally, and um definitely want to move forward with some recommendations on that.

Terrific.

Uh we'd love an update when available.

Um, because as you said, right, it's we would hear from residents either they liked it or they didn't like it.

It was too late to make those adjustments when there were some really valid points that residents would bring up uh that I think we can certainly take into consideration.

I know public works and the city want to take into account.

Um for public works, uh one, thank you for talking about the stormwater master plan and all of the things y'all are doing.

I geeked out over this very early on and we met uh and submitted.

We're now as a district going to be basing our SWAT recommendations and even some of our CDF Metro investments based on the stormwater master plan.

Um and I know we're meeting on that soon, but hopefully we can be implementing those as quickly as possible now that we do have the data, but it's a really exciting tool for the city.

Um one other question, and then I'm happy to go back and cue.

Um Mr.

Wardlow, you mentioned that we're gonna, as district council members get five lane miles for local thoroughfares.

Does that mean you're eliminating the allocation for major thoroughfares?

Or director, excuse me.

No, that's a wonderful question.

Um, we've talked about for a little while now the overall condition of streets across Houston in and of itself.

If you really broke it down into poor, moderate, fair, and good, you could almost divide all of our streets up into each of those categories equally, which means that half of our streets are in moderate or worse condition.

Um to that end, we've been very aggressive in our goals.

Previously, you know, street rehab kind of consisted of around 350 total lane miles for an entire fiscal year.

We're really trying to push, and we talked about this during the budget presentation of uh achieving a thousand lane miles per year, which means that if we were able to do it and we're consistent over the next six years, we would we would really rehabilitate nearly half of all of our roads.

So that's the ultimate goal.

What we wanted to do for council districts is to make sure that you were able to focus on areas that we know less about, which are going to be your neighborhoods, while we are gonna take the onus and the focus on those areas we know more about, which are the major thoroughfares and collectors, meaning that we're gonna we're absolutely gonna take care of them and take care of them to the best of our ability, but you have greater uh control and ability to let us know where those neighborhoods need a lot of attention, and five lane miles within the neighborhoods is really going to make a huge difference throughout all of the individual districts.

And then we take our partnerships with Metro and TextDot and others to help focus on those large roads that are frankly a lot more expensive to do in the first place.

It's a lot more area, but it allows us to leverage bigger contracts to move through quicker and more effectively.

Understood.

And I think one of the things I would just flag as we shift to this or possibly shift to this, is for example, in district C, we've allocated for not necessarily a major uh large throw bear like West Timer, but there's some of those other very heavily used streets, and then on top of that though, and working with you all in our office, we're able to add in the drainage component and upsize our inlets and incorporate all of that.

And I want to make sure we're not losing that aspect if it's just a we're gonna take care of it through Metro and others, we're not always in those conversations saying no, no, no, we need to look at upsizing those inlets as well.

No, you're 100% spot on, and I think this will go frankly to our larger discussion in a couple of weeks, actually, which is uh one of the challenges we have where it comes to the CIP and our regular budget is the 25% cap.

Um just a regular old rehab mill and overlay if we hit it and walked away, really is maintenance, and that fits into that 25%.

Um we have way more than 25% worth of maintenance that we need to do, which means that in order to do this the right way, um we do right by our citizens, and we have bigger projects.

And so it's not just a mill and overlay.

You're going to get better inlets, you're gonna get uh big sidewalks and all of the other components that go with it where we can work within the bounds of what the charter says and the law says on how we can spend that money, but we want to make sure that we take care of that too.

We have no interest in losing those components.

We want to do bigger, better projects as much as we can, but also recognize that 25% constraint we have makes it difficult sometimes.

So we've got to be creative on our side.

Okay.

Back in queue, please.

Thank you.

Councilmember Ramirez.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank all of you for the work that went into this presentation.

It's it's very informative and very helpful and appreciate having it.

Uh I wanted to talk a little bit about engagement.

Um looking at the executive summary for the CIP that we just adopted, and um Director Dabowski, you you you referred to it.

Um it says public meetings are also held annually in each count city council district to provide citizens an opportunity to comment on the process and recommend projects to be included in the plan.

That that did not occur, and this is isn't necessarily for you, Director.

Um anybody who wants to take this.

That that did not occur last year, did it?

Meetings within the council districts.

Last year there weren't the overall individual CIP town halls, as you would call it.

But as public works mentioned and as um um GSD mentioned, there are public engagements throughout the city, uh, more based on some of the major projects and inputs.

And uh as uh Mr.

Wardlaw mentioned, um city staff does also go out at the request of council members when they have town hall meetings.

Um there is still that public engagement piece, um, although we haven't done those um traditional um town halls like council member came and mentioned.

We've been having some internal conversations about how that can be m uh brought back to be most useful for the constituents.

Understood.

And when when was the last time that we actually did those?

Was it 23 or before that?

By district.

I'm sorry.

Redistricting.

Redistricting.

And when was that?

21.

21.

22.

20 22 or 23.

21 or 22.

So so we haven't done them in a while.

Uh and this is still in the executive summary.

Uh I appreciate Engage Houston and the efforts that have gone into that that website.

There's a lot of information on it, and I appreciate that.

Um, but that's sort of voluntary uh by public works, is it not?

Uh do you mean voluntary as in like we don't have to have a website or help me understand the question better?

Correct.

Um there's nothing in an ordinance that says hey, you have to have a website where you have this information on it.

Not that I'm aware of, no.

Okay.

Um I I know we strive to engage the public on our facilities.

Um Director Vale, you you mentioned this, and it's in your slides, especially when it comes to libraries and multi-service centers, high priority public facing projects.

Um, recently had a meeting regarding uh one of the library research centers.

And um back to last year, the RFQ uh included a very definite uh community engagement public input uh component to it.

When we had this meeting last week, um the it included the architect, uh the design firm on it, and and they said um welcome public input, but we need it in the next 10 days, or the timeline is gonna be off.

And you know, Councilmember Martinez and Councilmember Castillo were in on the call, and we all agreed, you know, 10 days is not long enough to to get a meeting together and to alert the public so that they come out and and give uh engagement.

So is there is there anything we can do to to improve that and to set more reasonable timelines or or whatever to make sure we get the engagement we need?

Yes.

Um absolutely that's a good question, yes.

Um usually uh we have a lot of experience with the health department, and we usually engage them way before that.

So in this case, we could have definitely in the future get with the council members earlier and plan it two months in advance.

Um as opposed to having that uh 10-month uh turn 10 10 day turnaround.

I think that would be a lot better.

I appreciate that.

I'll go back in the queue.

Thank you.

Councilmember Thomas.

Thank you so much.

Um, my question is from Mr.

Vela.

Don't you go nowhere.

Uh got you.

Um so thank you for I I was able to um catch some in the office.

Um about the CIP process in fiscal twenty-four, we had a million dollar generator for the A-Leaf Neighborhood Center there.

Um and now we're going into fiscal twenty-six.

And so do we have an update on what's going on with that generator?

Yes.

Uh so the general.

Tell me something good, Richard.

Yes, it's all it's all good.

The generator is in design, and uh and it won't be done for uh this this year, but it will definitely be done for next year.

We're going with a much big generator for the entire facility, and it's uh seven, eight hundred thousand dollar project.

So, yeah, we're going forward with that generator.

Okay, I'll be sure to let Doug Smith know as he has emailed me.

There goes Doug.

See, look, I'm working for you, Doug.

Um wonderful, thank you so much.

My job's cuncil member K.

Very quickly, um, for GST Lee, thank you.

What I want to, when you talk about public input, you all with Parks Department um and others have done an outstanding job on West Gray Multiservice Center.

So I want to say that at the outset, taking the model of A Leaf, building upon that and continuing.

Um we had an important presentation where we heard uh not only on 611 Walker but HPD downtown and the status of that building.

What you're referring to in the FCA is the citywide assessments.

Um I I said this during that council meeting, but I think it would be very helpful while some of that may not be able to be made public, um, for us as council members to be briefed and understand the various facilities that we're looking at and those scores.

Um district council member impact our district in the services we provide, and they are in dire need um of rehabilitation and investment.

And that's again, I always say not a reflection on GSD.

That's a reflection on the city budget.

And you all have been sounding the alarm and doing everything you can to hold everything together.

But is it possible to have it made available to council members to review and to understand really what we're looking at citywide when it comes to these facilities?

Yes, uh good question.

I think it's uh we'd be more than happy to host something at our department where we can go over and uh talk about departments.

Uh for example, uh you bring up you bring up a good question.

When we say uh um it's 40 FCI, right?

That's for the for the entire city, and that's uh being in the uh fair condition.

But the reality, if you look at HBD or HFD, it'll be in the 50 percent if you look at them.

So there's a lot of uh, yeah.

If we go and uh compartmentalize each department, we could get a better understanding to the council members of what or we can make it by district to understand what what the FCI look like.

I I appreciate it because again, I think it was Councilmember Peck that asked the question during the budget.

If we do not start investing the way that we need to, it balloons.

Councilmember Peck, you'll remember the number.

I I don't off the top of my head, but it it's astronomical that it balloons to in that liability.

I mean, Director Dabowski, you may you probably got the number memorized of how much it balloons to if we do not address this within X number of years.

Sure.

Yeah, I think um GSD mentioned in their presentation that um could be up to 1.8 billion uh after 10 years.

Thank you.

Council member Alcore.

Thank you.

On the in that same discussion, if you could pull up the slide with the funding slash FCI report the graph.

I want to make sure I'm reading that right.

Um Richard, do you basically you have to we have to get to that 20% that we where we want to be, we have to be spending the red bar?

I mean explain how correct, yes, the red bar.

We have to be spending the amount in the red bar to get correct every year.

And if you kind of if you do an average, that's around 200 million dollars a year.

And right now we're spending 50 million dollars a year.

Which is just you know, really put uh zero yeah, we're spending fifty, we need two hundred to get to that.

Okay.

So if we spend and if we keep spending the fifty, which bar is that?

So you'll see that that's the blue bar.

The light blue, the light blue.

Okay, so then we get up to 80 and all our buildings are falling apart.

Well, that that's why this this uh master plan thing is really key, because we don't need probably all these buildings, and we don't need probably all this land, you know.

So that's we'll really be looking forward to periodic updates on that master plan.

And and you know, after uh directors talked about 611 walker, I mean we got a lot on in our head about you know the the needs that are that are coming.

So um that's pretty much sounding the alarm.

So thank you for this.

This is really helpful on what kind of where we should be spending.

When you say FCI specific funding, is that mean kind of like what we're doing?

That's correct.

Because the way we're doing it now, kind of whatever comes right before us.

Correct.

36 million dollars that we get from the CIP on a yearly basis, which goes into renovations and we separated what's for building systems, right?

That is FCA.

And $15 million for MRR funds.

Right.

That's gonna be a good question.

Okay.

Thank you.

I would I do want to add uh Randy said, hey, make sure that uh uh uh that you tell the 6-11 walker is not part of that.

Right?

So public works uh is not part of this FCA.

So this is basically buildings that we manage.

So that whole other what was that number, Randy, on what was needed?

It was like 600 million or something.

Yeah, between between Walker and Travis together, it was just shy of 700 million.

But uh and the reason I asked Richard to bring this up, uh you know, 611 Walker is just one of my facilities.

If you even exclude my water plants, just the regular facilities, I still have another 200 across the city.

Some of those are larger than the other.

Oh well, that that makes me sleep a little easier.

Do we have the total GSD?

For both?

I don't have it here.

We we are working on that assessment.

Okay.

We've never conducted one like GSD is currently good, but we're currently undergoing a refinement of working studies.

We just really want that number so we can mill over it.

Councilmember Plumber.

Thank you, Chair.

Um question Do we have a master plan on our roads, bridges, drainage infrastructure?

And if so, what is that number?

Tell me tell me what you mean by master plan.

What is how badly all that part all that is?

It's a lot more than what's in the CIP.

Um, I I couldn't tell you exactly what that number is.

Um we have various indices in each of those things that kind of gives us an idea of where we stand.

For instance, you know, we know that right now, if you remember 32 billion gallons of water that we lose on an annual basis, roughly two-thirds of that is coming from about six percent of our pipe.

You know, that six percent of the pipe, you know, we estimate the value of each one percentage to be about 150 million dollars.

So uh more than half of the network is at or about to exceed its expected service life.

I mean, the numbers are really frankly, they're astronomical all across the board.

Now, that does not mean, and and my point is as I see everyone getting a little nervous, right?

It's it's not to incite panic there because uh we are tackling these things now in a very systematic way.

We've identified that first six percent of the pipe, for instance.

We've never done that before, right?

So we know where we need to go and where we need to start triaging and what we need to hit, and we know we have to ramp this up.

So when I say, hey, I want to do a thousand lane miles, um, I'll be frank with you.

This is gonna be an astronomical undertaking for the department to try and do that.

We've never done anything remotely close.

I'll challenge that no municipality in the country has ever done that much in a single year.

Remember, our road network is larger than a third of all state DOTs out there.

We have a lot of roadway that we have to cover.

So it's a it's a huge undertaking, but we are developing those plans.

I know where the first thousand lane miles we're gonna tackle are at, for instance.

We know where those water pipelines are.

We've got a stormwater master plan that tells us where we're flooding in these neighborhoods and where we need to start putting those resources.

But it will take time to put together comprehensive plans on what that looks like.

We're working on it now.

Um I don't have an ETA, but but we are gonna continue to work with each of your offices and the community at large.

You know, I want to talk about Councilmember Cayman's question about the engagement earlier, right?

One thing that we've got to be aware of is as we visit with our folks and we talk about what the needs are that we're also not writing checks that we can't cash later on.

Because sometimes we'll say, yeah, I see you've got a need here, and I don't want to necessarily mean that that's a promise that we're gonna go fix it tomorrow, because the reality is with as much problems as we have to deal with, it may be much further down the list than someone wants to hear.

And and Councilmember, that's why I love your question about do we have a master plan?

That's why we're putting one together.

We've got to understand how we can start prioritizing these things and where it's going to go because the pot of money isn't it's not growing exponentially, right?

It gets a little bit bigger each year, which also means that the budget challenges get a little bit bigger each year as well.

And we're up for it, but it'll be hard.

Can I just ask Chair can I ask a real quick follow-up question?

Yeah.

If we can be succinct because we do have a whole nother section of the agenda so forgot my thought.

I'm sorry.

And a senior moment.

Sorry about that.

If you think about it, get back in the queue.

Council member Ramirez.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Last question.

During the discussion on the last CIP, there you know, it was talked about how you get into the latter part of it, years four and five and it's largely aspirational, right?

Because you have projections and cost escalations and things change and I think everybody understands that.

So given that four and five are way less accurate than uh the first year certainly which is included in the budget that we've just passed in years two and three.

I I'd like to get your thoughts pro and con moving from let's say a five year process to a three year process that's more realistic.

She did this and you did that.

I know that the City of New York, that's where I work before I came to the city of Houston, they actually did a 10-year CIP every other year.

So I I totally hear your point on it is aspirational once you get to those out years, cost estimates change, needs change particularly as you know we put a project in the CIP book.

The council members, the departments, the constituents see that there and they have an expectation that that's what's going to be accomplished and it does make it more difficult.

I would say that at least internally it's important that we absolutely plan on a five year time frame.

I know the airport maintains a longer CIP than that public works I know you know on the internal side has that as well.

I I hear your concern that's something we can look at see what other jurisdictions are doing but I think in what I've seen in other areas it usually is a uh even a longer time frame as far as a master plan.

I don't know your thoughts right there I and I I agree with Director Dubaski on this one of the things that's important is even though some of those things are aspirational we've got to be in a position to plan for them accordingly.

But at the same time I think we need to start reserving some flexibility for changes that may come that are relevant to it.

Advances in technology for instance I mean many people won't like to hear it but believe it or not we build better asphalt roads now than we build concrete roads and they will last longer they are able to be better maintained due to all sorts of variety of circumstances because there is better technology now than we had 10 years ago when it comes to our asphalt roads being able to even introduce a composite road for instance in some neighborhoods could dramatically decrease the cost of what we're spending there.

So if we have a five year CIP and you've got a 35 million dollar project five years out but we discover some things along the way that reduces that cost by half but it requires us to change our mindset from oh I was going to get a full reconstructed concrete to now I'm going to get a composite that allows for improved drainage and this and that for $15 million that's something that's definitely in the city's best interest and so I don't have a a hard yay or nay but I would say I'd love to have the flexibility to revisit these things because when we make long-term commitments sometimes we are maybe penny smart but dollar foolish I appreciate that.

Can I finish up Adam Chair do you want me back in the queue?

Go ahead.

Okay and just uh and certainly let's engage in the long-term planning that's that's necessary that's essential.

But perhaps what's presented to council maybe it should only be three years if years four and five are we know you know we're going to make a lot of changes.

So just a thought.

Sure we could definitely explore that.

Councilmember Kman Director you hit on my question about asphalt versus concrete because again if we're going doing all these overlays that's great but we're putting money in and does it last as long so would love more information on what we're seeing in that new technology.

The one question I had because using AI in the predictive technology as it relates to sewage I believe David had said very exciting.

Can you please remind us with the flood risk index and the stormwater master plan things like that.

Is that a caption is that capturing it in time or are those risks being assessed again with climate change extreme increasing weather have we predicted for that to identify this is what the need is going to be in these areas potentially in the next 10 years including for example bioerosion right that's a that's a huge issue that we haven't gotten to really yet.

Yeah, no, that's a wonderful question.

You know, as the models are developed, they obviously rely on the data available to us at the time.

That data, though, is as uh current as it can possibly be, which has suggested what those changes have looked like, and so the models take into account where you start seeing trend lines, right, and how that goes.

But the beauty of these models is also it allows us to continue to input data into it so it's ongoing and is constantly evolving.

Obviously, what we don't want to do is we want to say, oh, we have got a stormwater master plan.

This is what we are stuck with for the next 10, 15, 20 years.

We want to say we have got a master plan that allows for us to go and take data that's coming into us now as we've made improvements here that now starts to remove some of these hexagonal shapes that we've kind of divided everything up into to say that now the needs are going to be shifted over on to the other side as well.

So sorry, is it predictive in terms of weather modeling as well?

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilmember Plumber.

Just really quick.

How did y'all determine that 6 percent of areas that needed to be repaired right now?

The easiest way is you look at how much work we have had to do in those spots.

Okay.

So these are these are six percent of the lines where we see constant leaks, right?

If you fix a leak here, and then you gotta move 100 feet down the road in about two weeks because a new one sprung.

Um then you take those assessments and you combine it with your condition assessment of the pipeline.

So what type of material is it, uh, how long ago was it installed, even what is the potential capacity and what did the flows look like through it, all of that helped us understand where the 6 percent were.

Okay.

And then when you make those repairs, are y'all making, and I don't mean this in a in a negative way, but are they temporary fixes, or are you actually going in and actually fixing the problem when you are opening it up?

So if you remember when we presented the budget, our aspirational goal this year is to replace 3 percent of the pipe.

Uh mature utility ought to be replaced in between 2 to 3 percent annually every year.

The problem with Houston is when you talk about 3 percent of our pipe, we're talking 3 percent of 7600 miles.

Okay.

So it's it's a huge stretch, which is why in the history of this city, we have only once one time in one year ever replaced 3 percent or greater.

It's only ever happened once.

Most years, we don't even present uh replace a full percentage or even a full half percentage.

So what we're seeing today, the leaks that we have now, and the reason why a lot of repairs are temporary is because the volume of it is the result of long-term deferred or frankly neglected repairs.

And we need to be in the business now of replacing wholesale sticks of pipe with the right types of materials at the right depths in the right conditions that allow us to get out of that game for the long term.

The American Waterworks Association says something like a utility like ours with the number of pipes, uh, miles of pipeline we have, like we should be dealing with on average, like maybe 40 leaks a month.

Like we're getting 40 leaks a day in the regular season.

So we've got a long ways to go.

We got a plan.

Perfect.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, sir.

Colleagues, now we will move to the amendments.

Uh we did have some uh amendments offered by Council members Ramirez and Peck presented during the CIP process.

We have been talking a lot, we've heard from the departments now about their process to put the CIP together and how they prioritize them.

And now it's kind of our turn to talk about ideas that uh that were brought up during the CIP process and afterwards if we have additional ideas.

And a lot of these have to do with public engagement, of course, because that's our job to engage with the public about all this.

So I will pass it to, we'll go to Councilmember Ramirez's CIP Amendment 101, and he'll do 102 and 103, and then we'll do PEC Amendment 604, and then she has an additional amendment we'll bring up at the September 2nd BFA meeting.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And let me say at the outset, um, the reason for offering these amendments was not any sort of comment on the current administration and its leadership, nor was it really a comment on the prior administration and its leadership.

This is about arming council members, this councils, this and future councils with information so that council members can do their job in a better way.

In a strong mayor, little M form of government and a relatively weak council, it becomes important for us to have as much information as soon as possible so that we can do our jobs of representing our constituents and particularly our district council members.

And that's really the spirit in which this was offered.

So if we can go uh to Amendment 101, this imposes a an obligation on the administration to provide each council member a monthly report identifying significant changes in infrastructures that use city funds.

And you see laid out there the uh qualifications for the types of projects that would uh council would be required to uh be informed about.

And uh then at the bottom uh the types of information that uh would be mandated, including where each project is located, which what council district or districts, the estimated cost, and a descriptive note about the reason for the delay cancellation, redesign or alteration in scope.

Obviously, there are uh legitimate reasons why changes are made required and and so forth.

We can understand that uh if we're given that information.

And although it hasn't been a problem as far as I'm concerned in this administration, in a strong mayor form of government, it is possible for uh a mayor to act so as to punish district council members or any council member for their opposition to uh what that particular mayor wants to do.

It's possible.

I'm not saying it's happened uh under this administration or or any other, but uh it is possible.

And so this is uh a way to arm council members with information in order to do their jobs better.

That's 101.

102 allows three or more council members, and that is consistent with Prop A that was just uh adopted uh by the voters, or at least it was in 23, to object to the delay, cancellation, redesign, or alteration in scope uh within 10 days uh in writing with the city secretary, and to have that item placed on the council agenda for consideration.

Uh council would then vote to approve or deny uh the item.

And so here again, this would require three council members who agree that this is an item that should be brought back to council for their consideration.

Um then 103 would allow a council member to uh request a public hearing to allow for public comment at which members of the public could come down and express their views on a given change, significant change in an infrastructure uh project.

This is not intended to delay any particular project, but merely to give the public the opportunity to comment.

Uh I know that our city departments at this time have have the best intentions uh and and operate in very difficult jobs.

Um there are times when things are done without the public feeling they have the opportunity to give comment, and this amendment would would provide that opportunity.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Councilmember Pick.

Do we hold on, we do have a couple of council members.

Do you want um Vice Mayor Pro Tempek to make her her um lay out hers first and then we'll be able to do that?

I defer to the chairs, however you want to deal with it.

Thank you.

Um, my amendment um 6.04 is that a working group shall be established to evaluate the CIP process to determine a fair way of allocating storm drainage and street and traffic funding based on data.

Um in years past, district A received, especially for storm drainage projects, um, a lot less of the allocation than most other council districts.

Right now that's not the case.

I almost don't like this amendment anymore.

No, I'm just kidding.

Um, you know, we have had to fight very hard for any of these dollars to come to district A.

And um it seems like some districts historically get more projects than others when there's needs in every council district.

And I'm not sure that an even distribution of the money is necessarily the most fair way of doing it because every district has different needs, and some districts flood more than others, but there has to be some formula or some fair way of allocating this money where the needs of each district um are being met.

And I realize that flooding doesn't start and stop at district boundary lines, but there should be some way of saying here you know are the areas of each district that flood the most, and how do we find a process that fairly addresses those needs in each council district?

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember Kim.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um if I may uh related to Ramirez's uh proposed amendments.

Um first related to Ramire, if I may, uh related to Ramirez's uh proposed amendments, um, I want to thank thank you, Councilmember Reas, for working with district offices on this item and taking feedback.

I know you and I have spoken at length about this very early on.

Uh I had two questions related to the language, not to put you on the spot.

Um, but as it pertains to using city funds, I have a question as to what is defined as city funds.

For example, there can be metro funds we're taking in.

There's federal grants, and we have had changes related to federal grant funding.

So how are we defining what is technically city funds?

Uh and I'll I'll pause and sure.

My thinking there was funds that have come into the city's possession.

That would include uh obviously TURS funds.

Uh could include funds received from the Federal Government.

And um funds, I I'm not sure about.

Um, but you know, willing to uh take feedback on that.

Understood.

So it's not traditionally, as we think of city dollars as what is within our our tax revenue, it is I don't know if you can call it revenue.

It wouldn't it would include ad valorum tax revenue, but not just that.

Okay, understood.

Um so uh just want to flesh that out more and make sure if this is to move forward, we have a broad definition of what that is.

Um and then under 1.02 um recognizing right that we have the strongest form of mayoral government in the country, um, and that is by design where departments answer directly to the mayor.

Uh we have great working relationships with our departments, and I want to recognize that, but should something be passed at council um to say no, we're keeping to the original plan, or this is how we want to see this, uh are the departments required to act in good faith to move that project forward.

How does that work given the mayor is the one operating these departments?

Well, um the code does give um council uh some power to say uh to to direct the ways in which our departments might work.

And so I think this uh would fall under that that category.

Obviously, we would we would want the departments to act in good faith to carry out whatever um ordinances were adopted by council.

I I hope that answers your question.

Yes, sir, thank you.

And again, I I do want to thank you for working so collaboratively on this.

Uh councilmember Peck, um, as it pertains to the CIP, and I I fully support the intent of this and think it's important for us to be reviewing that.

What I have for district C, for example, we may not get as much on the CIP, but there may be another bucket of dollars for which we're getting a significant investment into the district that's not just CIP, right?

Um do you envision with this that there's a is there a holistic way in which we can look at funding so that it's not just the CIP, but here's how much is going into this district, so to speak.

Yeah, I think that absolutely needs to be a component um on that, because when you look at um grant funding, funding from other levels of government and especially the TURS funding too, that is a big component to it as well.

That if you add in TURS um dollars, then it it definitely tips the scale of you know how much even district A is getting compared to other council districts, and then we move way down on that list.

And so um I think that that needs to be a component and um in looking at fair ways of just making sure that the needs are met of each council district.

So whether that's specific dollar amounts that's distributed or just making sure that you know there's a project moving forward in each council district every fiscal year, I think that there is a way that we can make this um a fair process rather than just you know I screamed the loudest, so I'm gonna get this project this year, which has not right now it doesn't seem to be that that it it public is operating.

I screwed up me, I I did.

Um it's not operating that way right now, but in the past it seemed to be, you know, the people, you know, if you came up to council public session, or if um, you know, for whatever factors we're being looked at, um, you know, we want to make sure in the future that that it doesn't go back to that process.

I understood.

I look forward to more discussions on it and how we do that because I don't want to put something out that says, you know, district A got the most in CIP, and everyone's saying, well, why not our districts when really another district or area may actually be getting a multi-billion dollar investment in flood mitigation?

Councilmember Alcorr.

Thank you.

Councilmember Ramirez on 1.01 on the reporting.

So with Engage Houston, and I know we've had that was down for a while and everything.

Is that not a sufficient update on the projects to according to district council members?

Everybody.

I appreciate uh the efforts to put that website together.

However, I'd like for council to establish a floor, if you will, a bare minimum of what needs to provide be provided to each council member.

And there is a lot of data out there.

I don't think it's asking too much for the administration to provide a specific set of data to each council member so that they can use it, you know, to do their jobs.

So I don't I I appreciate uh engage Houston, but that is is done through the the good intentions of of our current leadership, but there's nothing to say that it can't go away, you know, uh either under this term or some other leadership.

There's nothing in an ordinance uh prescribing that something like that exist and provide information to council members.

I I understand, and I I just want to make sure we're not putting another you know burden on public works that if if it's something simple or a form or the we need to know these three things or four things that are not engaged Houston or whatever, I get that.

I do like the reporting on delay, cancellation, redesign, or alteration in scope.

I do I do like that a lot as as something that I would think that the district council members would expect uh to get.

You get if you already get I guess it's very I guess it varies from office to office, but um but thank you.

I mean that's that's that's really all I have.

And and Councilmember Peck, on on yours, I I like but and I think you're talking just you're just talking streets and drainage.

But now that we have the master plan, I mean I know that that's gonna direct direct projects that might not be kind of you know equ and I know you're you're careful to say not equally distributed, but and you're you're not saying you're saying you want a working group.

I believe I know.

And who would that working group be?

Like what who would who are you envisioning on that?

Yeah, I think that it should include, you know, of course, public works engineers, um to figure out uh some kind of formula there.

Um and yes, I think the stormwater plan it definitely needs to be a component of it.

We shouldn't just say, you know, we're going to just do projects just because the council member thinks it's important, we actually need to do it based on data based on that plan, um, but just find a way to make sure the needs are being met of each council district in every fiscal year.

Got it.

Thank you.

And then on the Ramirez 2, and that is that would ca uh that's like if there's three or more council members object, you get the report on the delay cancellation, redesign, alteration.

And then if you're not if you want uh council to how how does that work exactly?

Then you would go get three council members to object basically and then put that delay cancellation, redesign or alteration on the council agenda.

Correct.

For council consideration.

Okay.

I feel like there's gonna be fights.

Yeah.

Um I have a question for um Director Mackay.

On Ramirez CIP Amendment 1.01, I I think that a monthly basis may be a little cumbersome, especially on the big projects where there's not very much to report monthly.

Um tell me how you feel.

Yes.

I I agree.

Uh, you know, I don't know there's a whole lot of movement month over month on the list of projects.

Now the list is is pretty extensive, right?

And so um, you know, I do appreciate the question about Engage Houston and whether that's providing because all of the projects ultimately are listed on Engage Houston.

Um I can appreciate Councilmember the thought that maybe in the future if someone decided they didn't want to do it, okay, but we're doing it now.

Um, you know I think I think the engage Houston is great, but I also like um Councilmember Alcorn said like the additional information was something changes, because I've had a project that changed and we didn't find out until after at the end and it was already done.

So I think the changes, amendments, those types of things, we should immediately be made aware before they actually take place so we can have that discussion.

So I like that aspect of the reporting.

But realistically, if we file when I follow the projects on Engage Houston, there's not something happening monthly.

And so that's where I think we may need a little tweak, Councilmember Ramirez, if it's not a monthly reporting, something else.

Because the projects are not moving very fast to have a monthly report, in my opinion.

I'm certainly open, you know, to uh some edits on that.

What I want to avoid is a longer period of time.

Let's say someone says, well, how about quarterly instead?

Well, a lot can happen in 90 days.

Right.

And uh if the council members don't find out about it uh within uh a reasonable uh period of time, then their effectiveness, I think, can can be a good thing.

I guess I just think that just from how we follow Engage Houston, every project is so specific, and it it determined, you know, it just kind of depends on how long the project is going to take, what's actually happening on the project, is it in the design phase?

Are we actually you know building something?

Do we have the funding?

You know, so everybody's timeline, every project's timeline is different.

Yes, Mayor Pro Teman, and and part of uh why Engage Houston was down for some time is because the site itself was not working as intended.

One of the components that it includes is when there are changes, that the changes are also listed on there, and then everyone who is subscribed to the site and to those projects specifically is notified of those changes at the same time.

I mean, I would my my my response would be rather than preparing a monthly report is why don't we just obligate ourselves to make that council members aware immediately when we make a change.

I I don't have a problem with that.

Um but I am concerned about adding potentially layers of bureaucracy where maybe they are not necessary just to check certain boxes.

For me, as the chief administrator of the department, I am thinking about the resources and manpower that takes just to make sure we are doing something that may really in and of itself on a monthly basis have no effect.

If there are easier ways to accomplish it, we are certainly open to doing that.

But I will absolutely commit to the fact that um we must, as a department, we have not been perfect at it by any stretch of the imagination, not even under my leadership, but we must be better.

And and I commit our leadership to making sure that that transparency is to all council members, and if there is a change, that we report that to you immediately so that you are aware.

May I address that?

Sure.

I certainly don't have any problem with immediate notification of council members, you know, if that is made part of an ordinance.

Um and you know, regarding extra manpower, my understanding is that uh public works tracks these projects using uh various forms of software.

Is is that not the case?

Yes, Engage Houston.

Well, I mean, that's that's where all the projects and the details ultimately end up, right?

Sure.

But but but Engage Houston is not going to spit out a ready-made report for us to provide on a monthly basis.

But but you have internal software that you use.

Let me let me talk about the technology status in public works.

Uh it's an absolute mess.

I mean, it's beyond an absolute mess.

Some of my folks are keeping track of certain things on spreadsheets.

Some people have a proprietary piece of software that others don't know about.

Some folks build in-house dashboards.

It's a long-term uh push for us right now, and this is part of our ongoing reorganization plans to really try and find a central place to house that.

But that's why Engage Houston is that place for us right now.

Frankly, it's why it was so concerning to me that it was not accurate as it was portrayed.

There was actually three or four websites combined because of the same thing, different people running different stuff that had different information about the same projects.

And so I know there was a lot of frustration by the public where it was down for an extended period of time, but that was a necessity so that we made sure that we were reporting things accurately and that the site was functioning the way it's supposed to.

It's designed to be able to push information to individuals in real time.

As soon as we upload it, it goes out there.

90 percent design is complete, we're ready to go.

We're going to construction tomorrow.

Up there's been a change, there's not going to be a street light or a stop sign on this corner anymore.

That's that's the intention for it to be.

You know, I appreciate that.

We recently heard presentation from Solid Waste, and and they've certainly had some challenges with the software that they've had.

But you know, uh tell us what you need, you know, in that regard, and and I'm sure council will be willing to help you out on that.

Um in terms of uh, you know, the manpower, you've indicated that you know you you guys can shoot for immediate notification uh to council members, and and that's possible.

Is that right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilmember Davis.

Thank you, uh Madam Chair.

Uh a couple areas that I'm concerned about in this whole process.

Uh let me start with Councilmember Peck first.

You were you were speaking earlier concerning previous projects within your district.

Can you give me um double delay?

Can you give me at least kind of like an estimate about how frequent you projects did not get started or completed within the past term on an average?

In other words, how many by projects did you think should have been done that did get done or was even considered?

Did you do it?

Um well I can tell you that in so in 2019, District A was getting less than one percent of the available dollars um for storm drainage projects, and then some of those projects that were supposed to happen that fiscal year didn't even happen.

Got it.

And so um, you know, a lot of times it looks like a project is moving forward, and when you look at the allocation of um money for each council district, something might look really great, and then come to find out that those projects aren't even happening.

So it makes it a little bit more difficult to calculate that each fiscal year with plans versus what was actually spent, which is um when we get to that section um chair for um ideas of changes, that's actually one of the things I have on the list is you know, we need to look at dollars in terms of what's planned, but then also what actually was spent in each council district.

Yeah.

And and and that yeah, less than one percent, right?

So with that, I wanted to ask you that first where I refer to um Councilman Ramirez's uh amendments, because the title of this is called infrastructure transparency.

So with the recommendations making as if it's already determined that is not being transparent in regards to the district council people who are the ones who are more should be concerned in how the project is moving and what is done.

But with that understanding of projects that didn't get done, and I'm sure that would that will reasons offered to you as to why it didn't happen, I'm sure, right?

Yes, we were aware when they weren't.

Got it.

Okay.

Now to to Councilman Ramirez, um, you know, several things here rather bothering.

Number one, under 1.01, you talked about and in search of an estimated cost.

What what would that an estimated cost waiting for council to determine what?

I mean, we're gonna uh determine it by material uh estimated cost based upon time.

Uh I'm just what what what are you referring to follow location project and estimated total cost?

Well, um you know I I uh it's um that that's gonna depend on the project, and I would imagine that public works or or whoever has got um information related to what that project is gonna cost, estimated total cost.

I uh I'm not sure uh how else to break that down.

Well, I I guess my question is if you asking for estimated cost, what what is the the reason?

Are you referring to it based on the district council person's project, or are you talking about the vote on it for count?

I mean, I'm just trying to understand a project.

I think he's just referring to any changes in estimated costs.

Yeah.

Estimated costs.

But listen, we have um lots of council members in the queue.

So I want us to be good stewards of our time.

Oh, come on.

Um if everyone could just kind of address their concerns and then let's move to any suggestions that we have.

Um councilmember Davis, anything else that you want to ask about that.

I think it just dealt with the change.

Sure costs.

Sure.

Okay.

Councilmember Martinez.

Thank you, Mr.

Pro Tim Chair.

Um, just want to say I appreciate the uh the advocacy on behalf of district council members, uh, Councilman Matramides.

Uh, but I will say that uh in regards to uh 1.01 and 1.03.

Um I've I feel pretty confident in having conversations with with the administration and departments uh about what projects are happening.

Stay pretty uh pretty uh abreast on everything that's going on and the opportunities to be able to go back into community.

I just had a uh a meeting about a week ago uh that had to do with changes as well.

And uh even at that meeting, there was folks that didn't like the original original design that were there to support it.

So it those those conversations are always open, at least from my office, I'm sure with my colleagues as well.

Um what I do have a question on, and it's more I guess maybe to Randy, uh on Engage uh Houston, it's all public works projects.

Um I think to Councilmember Ramirez on on 1.01, uh it says any any funding, city funding, um TURS management district, maybe not management district, but we do have a lot of projects that overlap in District I.

Uh, and we had a meeting a couple weeks ago.

Um tech stop projects, TERS, um, and and so uh I I wonder if engage Houston can be a a place where we can compile a lot of those so that way folks I get I get uh calls about what's happening with um a TURS project, I get calls what's happening with a George R.

Brown expansion project, what's going on with this project.

Could we dump all that information on engage Houston?

Yeah, I I think that we absolutely can continue to improve engage Houston and what's on there.

And even if there's additional project details that council members would like, we would be happy to to work to include those as part of it.

And if that includes uh projects that we're working on with other departments, we would do it.

Now I don't we wouldn't take on just a textile project, for instance, right?

That's their own thing, but if there's something we're doing together, sure, we should include that.

My assumption is everybody's going to permitting center for something, right?

Correct.

At least if they're in the city of Houston, and so y'all should know about it.

And um, I think you know, I think that's probably one of the only challenges that I probably see, and it's only because there's a lot going on in District I from downtown to hobby up to northeast part of the district.

And so the if we can have that one placeholder as engage Houston, I know we that was a conversation about how do we coordinate things that are happening uh around the Toyota Center, around downtown, mail overlays that are coming through HGAC funding.

Uh so if we could utilize that as kind of the the place to dump all information, uh that way uh we can direct uh constituents to that that one site.

We'll get to work on that immediately.

Thank you.

Councilmember Castillo.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Councilmember Ramirez for uh putting forward these three amendments and council member peck.

I do appreciate a lot of of what they're trying to do.

Um for one point oh one, I I agree that monthly does sound like a almost too frequent of a report for these types of projects.

Um but with respect to delay cancellation and redesign, um my suggestion would be, and I and I know public works is saying, you know, we could just notify y'all immediately, but putting something in here that says, you know, within a certain number of business days, we will be notified so that there is something we can consistently expect and we can all work with each other to to meet that goal.

Um I ask, is there a certain number of uh business days you would suggest?

I would, I mean, I think something reasonable reasonable is three or five, you know, knowing that if there's gonna be a redesign, there's gonna be a change or a cancellation within five days, we are notified because uh, you know, as someone that has had a project removed, uh people come to me for questions and answers.

And if I don't have the information, um it's frustrating for constituents and it's frustrating for the district council member.

So um having something that will at least reassure us that we will be notified, we will be informed.

Uh that's important.

Um council member Peck's amendment for the task force, um, with respect to data-driven decisions, you know what decisions are being made that aren't data driven or that you're trying to avoid it.

So I think all of the projects um that are moving forward now, it's all based on needs in some regard.

Um it's in that, you know, there's flooding issues or there are street condition issues, but it's the more of the process of how the projects are being chosen to move forward versus other projects.

And so this would just create some kind of formula or plan moving forward where we're still using the data, but also using the data to determine the projects that go forward.

So a more just transparent sort of way of operating in general.

Yes.

Okay.

Thanks.

Councilmember Kmer.

Thank you.

And um going back to Councilmember Rirez's uh amendment with 1.01, how I had interpreted it by identifying both within the city rights of way, right, geographically and specifically what we're talking about that I think there is traction for, which is delay cancellation redesign above a certain threshold.

Because there are examples where this has happened.

I'm not suggesting that's intentionally, and I'm not suggesting that we don't necessarily not support some of those changes at times, but when there are changes, council, especially the district council members and at large, as I would say in those areas, need to be made aware and given the time to let the community know, get that feedback and to the council members' point, whether it's Prop A or another mechanism, engage in such a way to ensure that the project moves forward as intended or as desired by the community in the safest way possible.

So I hope that we can capture the spirit of that because there are examples.

Um Director, I really appreciate your commitment to engage Houston.

I will say that, and if I'm working off of bad information, I will own that absolutely, but there are projects listed at least in district C that do not have the previous information prior to this year, or those community meetings or those previous design plans.

Uh there are some projects that aren't on there.

And to council member uh Martinez's point, Engage Houston doesn't have everything, right?

So there's city partnership projects like our TURS projects, and oftentimes, for example, in district C, I have worked to move things off of the CIP to a TURS, but it's still a city-based project that came from the City of Houston, right?

So whatever we can do to include that information, um, but I I do want to ensure and what I'm hearing and capturing that is that when it comes to changes, especially those that have come before council, and I interpret that also as meaning when we vote on a TERS budget and we've said yes, this is a project we want to move forward on when there are those changes, that's a council action that council needs notification of and the opportunity to engage and uh remedy if possible.

One thing related to 1.03, um I'm concerned about the politicking involved, especially as a district council member.

I'll just say, for example, if a council member, district council members from another district decided to uh request public hearings or start something related to something not in our district, how do we um respect the knowledge and representation of the person in that district?

Um so I I think with 1.03, one suggestion I would have is um creating a higher threshold than just one council member or if the district council member, something along those lines.

Again, we want to encourage public hearings, we want to encourage engagement, but um I'm just gonna use my my friends here.

If someone's in Kingwood asking for a public hearing on something that's a neighborhood project in district C and wants a public hearing on that, I think that requires a little bit more engagement by that that district alone, or not alone, excuse me, in collaboration.

So I don't know how to mitigate that and not burden public works with uh 40 hearing public hearings a month on top of everything else that y'all are doing, right?

Speed cushions, for example.

Uh so just how we work through that to flush it out a little bit more.

Thank you.

And if I can respond, um, just thinking uh along with you, you know, how about if it said something like if a any council member who represents you know that particular area where the project is?

Um staff from council member Flickin's office.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh Councilmember Ramirez on 101.

Have you um spoken with public works or procurement about how this might impact um the way in which we receive bids from potential contractors and the um as the potential for increased costs if projects are delayed due to this process?

Well, no, I haven't.

We requested feedback and the opportunity to collaborate.

And we haven't uh reached that stage.

And so part of what I would be worried about, especially if we're looking at many of the plans and projects for which public works and our contractors go out to complete uh are field verified a lot of times as they begin digging up and doing the work, and it ends up creating um changes kind of as they go along.

And so if they're out in the field and they're having to make do these uh field changes and uh those you know small pivots and and it ends up c triggering this uh clause and then it has to come back to council for review, um, you know, however long this process may take, uh that contractor is g they are getting paid for just sitting out there not doing work.

They're gonna end up demobilizing, going to a new site, a new new project, and then they'll end up coming back whenever they get the chance.

Um so that could create a lot of um, I think unintended uh consequences and costs for which uh could could really impact how far dollars go.

Well, uh Dustin, I appreciate that.

And uh we we certainly want to avoid unnecessary delay, and that I think is one reason why uh the trigger is five percent or more, right?

So so you have to it has to be significant and um and and I should acknowledge at this point uh this these amendments are continuations of the work that was started by a couple of other council members, Councilmember Kamen and Councilmember Castillo.

So certainly appreciate their their work on this.

But again, the intention is not to delay uh but but to give council members uh heads up on significant alterations.

Councilmember K.

No, that that I was just gonna piggyback on that.

I think the 50,000 came from when, again, prior to state law changing, um, if we have voted on it, there should be an opportunity to have review of that, right?

So it's not for smaller scale change orders, and it's also why you have, I believe, Councilmember Ramirez, you added in the 5 percent or or more or 50,000, whichever is greater for larger scale changes, not oh, we just hit the wooden pipe or the clay pipe, and we got to go deeper to see what's down there.

Which does happen.

Thank you.

Um Step and David from the administration also had a couple of questions.

Good afternoon, Council members.

Um thank you for for hosting this.

I think the thing that I've heard uh overwhelmingly from all of y'all is that you'd like more communication.

Right.

And I I think Randy is a great exemplar of that.

Um I have a couple of clarifying questions about this that I'd like to get an under understanding of.

And the first with 1.01, um the $50,000, I think I heard was tied to previous thresholds that the state set.

It is now 100,000.

Is your intent to um is your intent to just put forward five percent and leave it at that, or is it five percent or one hundred thousand dollars?

You know, Stephen, um appreciate the question.

I'm I'm open, right?

I'd like to know what what other council members think about that.

Again, the the intent is not uh overburden the administration, but uh to give council members a heads up so that we can we can be more effective.

Got it.

And is that five percent, let's just say five percent for now?

Is that five percent inclusive of the contingency that we typically negotiate into um it's a standard practice inside any project negotiation that you're gonna have a five to ten percent contingency?

Everybody expects cost overrun in projects like these.

So are you saying it's five percent on top of that?

Or are you saying if we hit any of the contingency within a project?

Uh five percent.

On top of the what is passed at council?

Because you all pass the value of the contract includes a contingency fee.

If if we have have passed it and um it includes that, then I would say five percent over that.

Got it.

Okay, over the amount that passes council.

Okay, thank you.

Uh the second question is uh really just uh it's a a thought around 1.02.

This is really similar to what's already enshrined via Prop proposition A.

Um and the question that I have is would you be amenable to um one?

Is there a distinction that you have here?

I understand why you want it to occur.

Is there a difference in what you view Prop A as as a tool?

And then second, the second question is um I recognize that you put within 10 days of receipt.

It is a really laborious process to get something on the agenda.

It's actually something we're working on fixing.

Um but uh the are you amenable to adopting the same uh turnaround times that we that city council has already enshrined inside rules I think 24, 25, and 26 of uh 2-2 around Prop A.

Would you be willing to accept those?

Well, you know, at the time we considered those, I had I had some concerns.

And Prop A includes uh determination of lawfulness.

That's right.

Which adds time in.

So I don't know that I'd want to go that far.

Um, 10 days, I'm open to uh considering practical considerations.

Okay.

Uh so thank you.

And then with 1.03, um I I have I I one, I do have similar concerns, thinking as a former district council member staffer.

Uh I do have concerns about the ability.

Also, we we tend to have a lot of projects that will bleed over multiple um council districts, and so if there's one council member that wants it for their district or the other, are the other two compelled to have it as well?

I think that there should be some clarification here because we're gonna have to be reactive to there's a bunch of shalls in this, and so we're gonna have to be responsive to the shall.

So I would uh I'd appreciate some sort of uh detail in what the expectation would be.

Um, but the the thing that I'll say is um as a person who used to prepare reports like this for previous mayors and for council members, we tend to do about 300 to 500 projects a year.

Um, and this is across all of our CIPs, right?

These are things that range from something small repairing benches inside parks to something big.

Uh I have personally put anywhere on average of eight to ten hours of work inside producing one report.

With 300 to 500 projects, you're asking for a lot of time, a lot of time out of staff.

And I do think that there are going to be some pretty significant impacts to the way that we can conduct the work.

We would have to bake this into the number of hours that we would assume staff time goes into it.

Obviously, there is direct cut cash cost to projects, which is what we would pay a third party, but there's also indirect cost to the city, and that's via staff time.

And so there's with the number of projects, I'm not implying that uh we should not do something like this.

Again, I think the vibe that I've heard from y'all is we need more communication about what we're doing and when we're doing and when those changes occur.

But I would uh I would ask there to be consideration around once engage Houston.

I do love Engage Houston.

I think it's one of the best ideas that we've had.

Uh when Randy, uh just as a little bit of context, when Randy talked about how the technology is a mess uh in my previous role with Extinction, I was the person who helped figure out that their technology was a mess.

Um he has reports, that's actually the first time I met Randy.

Um and it is.

And so engage Houston is representative of a um a really good way to push information out that they are doing like bail-in wire and duct tape on the back end to feed information into it.

They're working on it, and there's a really good technology person out that he is high that Randy has hired out of uh public works right now working to fix those issues, but um as we start to see engage Houston satisfy more of the desires of the body for information and change, I would ask that we minimize the back end of reporting where you think that automated updates on a website or automated reporting can occur.

I'd ask for us to be mindful of the amount of staff time that's good would go in to continue to fulfill things like a public hearing, right?

If we can get information off a website, do we really need that public hearing?

Right.

Well, you know, I'm perfectly willing to have that conversation.

Uh and I've expressed that since we took these up months ago.

Uh that hasn't occurred.

As to the public hearing uh point you made, um again, if if you have specific scenarios where you know how's this gonna work, this might be a problem.

Uh I'm willing to consider those as well so that we end up with a good product.

So feel free to share offline.

Thank you.

Yeah.

I I think that um we won't solve all the issues today, but I think this was a good start to the conversation.

We do have five public comments.

Thank you, Mayor Project.

Um if we would like to just kind of mill over these comments from today.

Um and then Council Ramirez, you can um visit with the administration.

Um I know Vice Mayor uh Pratem Peck, you wanted to add in a suggestion for improvement.

Um do you want to do that now?

You want to wait till next meeting?

Because we'll move to the public speakers right after you present your suggestion.

Um just due the time we can do it at the next meeting.

Okay.

So we'll move to our public speakers for public comment.

Is Laura Gallier here?

Lara Gallier Kevin Strickland.

I like the uh setting down part.

Thank you for that.

Um I've been I've been here many times.

I've introduced myself before.

Um I'd like to thank Councilmember Ramirez for his good faith engagement with the community to make this uh ordinance happen, and also Councilmembers Cayman and Castillo.

The recent changes you got were the result of a very diverse group, a working group of Estonians who care about good government governance, regardless where we sit on the political spectrum, far left, far right.

Um I want to remind us why we're here.

Transparency is the floor, not the ceiling for good governance.

All right, it should be the starting point.

I feel like we're often listening to the comments today.

We're treating it as a nice to have.

It is not a nice to have, it is a must have.

Um, so we're gonna reject any framing which says one, it ain't broke, no need to fix.

It's completely broken.

Dozens of examples.

Um council member came and talked about some of them.

Austin Street.

Without the transparency which comes from FOIA's, we wouldn't have known that the mayor always planned to remove it, and he was never originally programming it as a waterline drainage project.

Two, it's too difficult.

We heard that today.

I would encourage public works to listen to the new Solid Waste Director, who will happily bend your ear for an hour, explaining how he got his arms around the data to fix the big problems with garbage pickup.

We know that public works has the software to easily generate the required reporting.

The CIP already exists, for example.

Um talking about Engage Houston.

Engage Houston was down for months, and even though it's back, it's very incomplete.

So engage Houston to Councilmember Ramirez's point about the website, it's not the solution.

We won't know when engage Houston has been updated or what the updates uh have been included at that site.

Uh, second on that point, um, I've heard a lot of speaking of I from the council members.

This transparency ordinance is for the public also.

We are extremely frustrated at the lack of transparency from this administration.

Again, I will remind you it started with Houston Avenue in February of 24 when I sat here and tried to bring it up.

Most recently, Oxdon Street.

Um another thing that hasn't been discussed today.

There's a staggering amount of money that's been wasted because we didn't have any eyes on the projects that the mayor was going to change.

So I'll give you an example.

Telephone Road, we learned yesterday, 489,000 for the re redesign.

Montrose Boulevard, 400,000 for the redesign.

Houston Avenue, 100,000 of District H funds wasted and one million to remove.

West Alabama, 90,000 for the redesign.

Shepherd Durham, phase two, 203,000 for the re redesign.

Those are just a small number of projects.

My last sentence is please do not ignore or dismiss the amount of support in the community for this ordinance.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Barbara Carroll.

This kind of project reporting proposed by this initiative is a fundamental basic tool for any project manager.

I know this because I'm a registered professional engineer, and I have worked in some aspect of project management for over 30 years in the oil and gas industry and the development industry.

These proposed status reports by the amendments are really just enhanced Excel spreadsheets.

Requiring this report is not about council members foregoing having the ability to pick up the phone and call a department head.

That's never going to change.

That should always be there.

But imagine if every council member called every department head every month to get an update.

Now that's what I call a burden and a waste.

Providing these reports will improve efficiency to y'all's working day.

In particular, this ordinance would have a major impact on a project that is near and dear to my heart.

In November 2022, almost three years ago, the residents voted to approve a 40 million 47 million dollar bond for the construction of an expanded facility to house and care for the homeless pets in Houston, Texas.

Yet, after all this time, little or nothing has been done to construct the infrastructure approved by the voters.

I find this sad.

But if the upgrades to the BARC facility, and by the way, I love BARC, I was there this morning.

I am there six to seven days a week.

The squeaky wheel gets the oil.

So in the end, accountability, efficiency, and transparency are not just buzzwords that we're using.

And it's not just buzzwords the citizens of Houston are using.

They are real aspects of project management that are attainable and are essential to good governance and what Houston's Houstonians deserve.

By the way, I love living in Houston.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Thank you, Miss Carroll.

We appreciate you being here today and for your comments.

Ruben Garza.

Is he available to speak?

Ruben Garza.

Star 6 Dominique Mazok.

Good afternoon.

I'm Donald Masock.

I am in the Council Chambers.

Earlier today, I did take the 96 to the red line aid that uh flying software walked over here.

So I'm didn't put any more oils on the air.

The thing that I'm a little bit upset about, one thing I am good about.

I was going to mention it, but between Julian and Amy with these amendments, is something that I was I've been concerned about.

Is that the city on the never administration horseshoe with other members, because there's uh flow, you know, turnover.

They planned something, they went through all the all the work, they went to HGAC, they got everything, or the council with uh a tourist or management district, and then just because the the new guy, new sheriff of town comes in and says, I don't want this anymore.

I mean, I'm sorry, there are certain things that uh a new person has to come in bite his or her tongue.

And I think this is a very good.

I've been talking about this.

I think we need to look, uh you've heard me talk about we need to look at the possibility of changes charter so that there's some checks and balances on a strong mayor.

I think this is a property student, and what y'all are doing here today is good.

A project, and any, I'm gonna bring up this example.

I know this is this has been a migrant headache for you, is Montrose.

And my thing is it started out as a Montrose project, then it was a city, then it was a metro.

I think uh particularly these projects that deal with the city and metro.

Maybe the thing is there needs to be a task force.

Some from the city, some from the from the tours or the management districts, and some from Metro, but we're all on the same page.

In a meeting like this, I think there should be a representative from Metro, at least available on phone or Zoom or Teams or whatever y'all gonna use for that.

Uh lastly, you know, y'all had this handouts for everybody.

My thing is if you go to an ATAC transportation policy council meeting, and I don't know any of you been there, I don't know who FL you've been there.

This is the full full fake pledge ballot.

You get that off the internet.

My question is why can't y'all when you have you know we had the PowerPoint presentations of today?

Why wasn't that available ahead of time?

So people like us who are currently down here to speak, we can look over this, and maybe we can see something wrong.

Uh as and lastly, on a well, we got some uh people but managed today.

Well, I don't can't stand about certain council, I mean committees.

You know, uh most of them have the public comments at the end.

The staff leave with the public comments start.

Maybe the the staff needs to hear from the people who are the city, those of us who are out there, you know, either driving, shopping, veteran, whatever.

I think that's uh uh I'm glad you got, but also too, you'll see me tonight.

I did sign up to speak tonight.

All right, thank you, um, Dominique.

And we typically um would try to post those um slides.

We got them today, so we'll we'll do our best to try to get that to use.

We've helped uh speakers absolutely basically wrong.

We agree.

Uh Andrew Sneed.

Hello, Mr.

Sneed.

Look, uh, I'm here to talk about why I support the infrastructure transparency amendments proposed by council member Ramirez.

Uh, when changes are made to infrastructure, it's important to involve local stakeholders and council members.

This allows residents to share their experiences and preferences and equips council members to support their residents.

There's currently a lack of clarity when it comes to the obligations of the city when infrastructure is changed or removed.

We need to ensure that there's a fair, streamlined process that is codified as law.

Um providing information to elected representatives is the best way to make sure the trade-offs involved in infrastructure decisions are balanced.

It means residents can have the assurance that they can hold their council members accountable.

If a change is justified, we'll have no problem meeting the criteria, and what is expected of the city will be clearly defined.

It's reasonable to expect Houston Public Works to provide this information before a shovel hits the ground.

Uh, in my working life, I'm a data engineer.

You really should be able to glue this information together.

It it really should be pretty straightforward.

Um that's the best way to create trust when it comes time to make big decisions that affect public infrastructure in Houston.

Uh include stakeholders, streamline the process, and ensure accounts of accountability with city council involvement.

Thanks.

Thank you for your comments.

Um Dominique, I did want to tell you I received a text message from the director um of finance, and she said she had to leave, but she did hear you and she is still watching, so she wanted me to reiterate that that she's still listening.

Uh we do have a speaker online.

We called Ruben Garza.

Are you available?

Ruben Garza.

Hi there.

Um sorry, I'm appearing virtually, so if you have any issues hearing me, please let me know.

Uh hi, my name is Ruben Garza.

I am a uh local leader for the Strong Towns Houston chapter.

We're part of a part of a uh national nonprofit dedicated to you know financial resiliency, safe streets, and uh account and local accountability.

Um, you know, there's been a lot of fantastic conversation talking about the logistics and the implementation of some of these amendments, and in particular, let me first come out and say that you know I'm a huge proponent of and support uh council member Ramirez's transparency amendments.

Um a large reason being that these codified transparency into our local system of government, as we've uh discussed and heard uh debate today.

Um a lot of our issues with transparency uh in this current system of government rely on personal relationships, uh which of course, you know, our council members should be maintaining good relationships of public works as well as other departments, but we need to move beyond a relationship focused um move beyond a relationship focused structure of governance and instead institute something that is testable, repeatable, and is current and is baked within our system of uh governance um as well as giving access to the people of this information so that way they know what's going on in their neighborhood.

Um the core principle of strong towns is financial transparency, and so by including costs in these monthly reports, um we are able to kind of figure out what is the exact cost going into our project so that way we can do you know just a quick cost benefit analysis or something quick and uh easy to understand that helps us know what money is being sunk into our infrastructure and whether that's gonna be a good investment in the long run.

Um and I know there was a debate about you know what cost are we talking about here.

Obviously, we can discuss uh labor and time, but I think you know, for a start, the report should be including just our dollar costs that way we can understand what is exactly going into our communities.

Uh I appreciate our local officials and our uh public bureaucrats were coming out and telling us about something like engage Houston, which is fantastic.

It's a great start, but something like Engage Houston needs to be, as I said earlier, codified and made part of our city government, not just a nice thing to have in case um someone wants to look for information.

And and lastly, on as far as the institutionalizing part, I think we kind of get it backwards when we're talking about talking to public works in the in the administration when really when the administration is the one housing all the information with regards to these projects, it should be the in administration providing our elected officials as well as the people the information before uh we essentially have to react to what's going on in our neighborhoods.

Uh thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

We appreciate your being here.

Uh next speaker is Doug Smith, and as he comes, I do want to also recognize public works and GSD are still in the building and listening.

Doug, hello, Doug.

Hi, and I just have to say I appreciate your staying too.

It doesn't happen a lot, and I think it's important.

Um it was alluded to not directly in the talk about the CIP about public comment.

And I would like to say that I think it's critical that the public be involved at the beginning of the process.

Melissa's timetable showed the CIP process started in December.

I would like to suggest that department uh district meetings be held September through November.

Uh, we used to have those, and who knows better what's needed in your district than the people that live there.

So I would really like to stress I think that's important.

Um sorry, the second thing just uh skipped, I should have written it down.

Well, uh there's one thing that I want to mention that Randy talked about 32 billion dollars, 32 billion gallons uh of uh water being wasted by the city.

And I thought about this before, and there's got to be a huge cost associated with that, and I don't understand why they can't contract people, contractors, to get all of those or as many of those uh things fixed as possible.

Uh Publixworks is an enterprise fund, they could, if they had to issue debt to do it, but it's just appalling to me that 32 billion, 32 billion gallons of water, that's more water, I think they said than is used by Fort Worth.

And I just wanted to throw that out.

It wasn't something that uh well it was brought up today.

And um, I'm sorry, but the second comment that I had uh I've completely lost.

But anyway, I'm I do think it's important that uh citizens be involved at the beginning.

Oh, the other thing, okay.

Here it is.

Um I should be happy that we're gonna get our generator at the A Leaf Neighborhood Center, but I'm not because it was in the 24, it was in last year's CIP.

And I would have thought that at that point they would have started planning for that generator.

Now I'm hearing that it's not gonna happen this year, but they're gonna start the planning, and we're gonna get it next year.

And uh sometimes citizens are frustrated with the way government works, and unfortunately, I'm frustrated at the way this process was held.

And I just have to mention that.

Thank you.

It's in design.

It's in design.

I know.

Yeah.

And they're saying planning.

It's in design.

Action.

When it's in design, we're we're glad because it's moving.

Okay.

And that design should have started last year when it was in last year's budget.

We don't disagree, Doug.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

We don't disagree.

Letitia Gutierrez.

She had to leave.

I think that is there anyone else who would like to speak?

Is there anyone else who would like to speak?

Is there anyone else who would like to speak?

All right.

Councilmember Alcorn.

You have announcement.

Before we adjourn, the next BFA meeting will be Tuesday, September 2nd at 10 a.m.

to discuss Councilmember Peck's CIP amendment regarding the DDSRF fund balance.

In addition to the city's financial policies, including Councilmember Kamen's budget amendment on the budget stabilization fund.

Economic developments next meeting will be Wednesday, September 17th at 2 p.m.

This was a great discussion.

We will plan a follow-up meeting date TBD.

I think that Councilmember Marez and Peck heard feedback.

Thank you.

If there are no other comments or questions, we are now adjourned.

Thank you for being here.