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.