Good afternoon.

It is Wednesday, December the 17th.

And the time is 2 p.m.

I'm Mayor Pro Tem Martha Castex Tatum, the chair of our economic development committee, and I'd like to call this meeting to order.

Say.

We're gonna go ahead and call the meeting to order.

Um I do want to welcome the council members and staff that are in attendance.

Um our vice chair Fred Flinkinger is here, Councilmember Julian Ramirez, um, councilmember Joaquin Martinez, and staff from Councilmember Thomas's office, Cayman's office is here.

Uh thank you for being in attendance.

We also have staff from Councilmember Castillo's office joining us.

Uh we will um this meeting is open to the public.

It's being held in person and virtually.

So we are also broadcasting on HTV.

Council members and staff, if you hold your questions until the end, uh, council members that may be on virtually, if you'll use the chat pod.

Um there were no members of the public signed up to speak before today.

However, if there are any public speakers present here in the chamber that would like to speak, there is a sign-up sheet at the front table on your right.

Uh public speakers will have a chance to speak after the conclusion of the presentations.

Um, and any additional questions after the meeting can be emailed to the district K office at District K at Houston TX.gov, and we'll forward those to the respective departments for your responses.

Uh, our first presentation today, council members.

Um, I see Director Horde has joined us.

I'm gonna give her a chance to calm down and uh get a get herself together from her last meeting.

I know she was running to and fro.

We'll start with the municipal utility district, uh 390 board chair.

Um I think I think assistant director is gonna make comments first.

We'll start off with assistant director Curly, um, and then we'll have a presentation by um the utility district 390 board chair Deedra Rasheed.

So um, Director, Assistant Director Curley, if you are ready, we are ready to hear from you.

And before you get started, let me also welcome uh our colleague, Councilmember Sally Alcorn to the meeting.

We're ready for you.

Thanks so much, Mayor Pro Tem for this opportunity.

Good afternoon, Mayor Pro Tem, Vice Chair, City Council members.

Ms.

Deedra Rashid, President of the Municipal Utility District 390 board, is here to present a very exciting and informative presentation regarding the development within the boundaries of the district.

Before she begins, I would like to remind the committee of the financial policies presentation that I shared in October that included the City Park 380 agreement.

At that time, I provided the update of the agreement as required by the policies, but I wanted to let the committee know that the City Park Agreement, City Council approved in 2016, provided for the critical infrastructure that resulted in the development that Ms.

Rashid will discuss during her presentation.

The City Park 380 agreement, just to remind everyone, has two parts.

Part one is the City Park Agreement, which supported residential and commercial improvements, necessary roadway improvements, which included the extension of City Park Central Lane, and related drainage utilities.

A bridge over Sims Bayou, four lanes east of Orm Drive from Highway 288 east or the proposed collector road, two lanes of East Orham Drive from the Collector Road towards Cullen Drive, and a proposed North South Collector Road.

The agreement was recommended by the administration and improved by and approved by City Council to generate a positive economic impact and public benefit that's now being realized.

Ms.

Rashid will now talk about the great job she and her team have done implementing these plans and the impact on the community that we all serve.

Assistant directing, you said we did that in 2016.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

I like to stand.

Hi, Council members are here.

If you'll stand behind the microphone, we want to make sure that the folks that may be watching can hear.

Yes, perfect.

All right.

Um, MUD 390.

I think she described to you the demographics.

We're hoping that we can be the example to let other communities know what can be done with the partnership with the city of Houston.

And we hope that as a MUD that we have made you proud.

Um, so I how do I go to the next slide?

Just say next slide.

It's magic.

Okay, the magic.

Um on the screens, you will see the board members.

I am honored to have my vice president Lisa Graves here with me.

Um, Matt, our attorney, our general management Phil Martin, um, our outreach community engagement team, Argentine, led by Argentina James and Pam from Hill Day and Roger.

Um, all of that makes it happen.

When we started this, we knew that there had to be not just us engaging with the community, but informing the community.

I think some of the breakdowns with a lot of the community groups and organizations, whether it be TURS or MUD, is that we may do a lot of work, but the community doesn't know about that work.

And so it was important for us to let them see what was happening with city dollars with their tax dollars and how that was um equaling to something else.

Next slide.

If you look, you'll see our demographic.

So again, like we heard the assistant director Kirby say, we are the one that you're gonna see when you go off of West Oram.

When you go down 288, you hit that Oram exit.

That's us, that's the beginning of us.

Hopefully, when you get there, you'll see what a difference it is.

We like to call ourselves the woodlands inside the city because we were able to take a community that had very little development and bring it in.

We like to think of that because even the things that we're able to provide for our residents is something that we don't have to come and put more pressure back on the city, but we actually create our own income to pay for the amenities that that community has.

Next slide.

There's three communities in there, they're called City Park, City Oaks, and City Gates.

There's over 31,000 that we serve in that community.

Um I hope that you get a chance to see the demographic and the educational levels.

It's pretty diverse.

The income levels, the average house value in that area is that around 377.

377.

That's the income.

She said the house value.

Yeah.

The house values, yeah.

The house values around 389,000 right now.

Um, the reason for that, it was part of, I don't know if you guys remember when the city was doing this in 2016, it was part of the original mixed development, where we believe that in order to produce a community that can stand on its own and that can generate incomes to do quality development, quality roads, quality schools, and bring in those things is to make sure that you not only encourage home ownership, but you also empower other incomes to be in that that can sustain quality developments.

So we're hoping that you will see anywhere in our community from homes that are at 80,000 all the way up to homes that go right up underneath a half a million, and that's the variations that you are seeing in that community.

We are also one of the rear communities that's the destination time because right after you come out of that uh the convention area, the Toyota Center in that area, we're the first level development off of 288.

And so we like to be able to be there.

We have a lot of our neighbors that work in the medical center because it's so centrally located, and that that's something that we have prior for.

Um we started off, we were a food desert, we had different areas, and now you'll see in the future slides what we've been able to create.

Next slide.

So one of the things that we decided was when we met with Houston.

I don't know if you all remember the county had something to where there was a uh a question on constables and constable security and their services.

What I want to say to this community is that we started with HPD, and we feel like HPD is a fighting force, and we have the greatest amount of respect for it.

But we also know that they're understaffed, and we knew that with the tax dollars that we created, we could go into partnerships.

So three different HOAs came together in a partnership to hire constables for our community.

We joined with it as a MUD to make sure that we offered that same protection to the commercial areas.

As at that time, HPD constables were saying to us that the increase in commercial entities would mean an increase in crime.

And so, in order to make sure we stemmed it, we did that.

And because as a MUD and someone who you've invested dollars in, we wanted to make sure that we weren't investing in these type of communities only for them to turn into ghettos and hoods.

So we had to bring the protection in with it.

Parks and recreation.

We fought for bond dollars because everyone knows that when you ask for developments like a Starbucks, like a Chick-fil-A, like those development, they want to come into an area that looks nice, that has a certain look to it.

So we went ahead working with our commercial entity.

We held a what we like to say a 360 security meeting where we book brought in the constables, the sheriff department, as well as um HPD.

And the reason we did that is that we saw that there was a stem in crime from the Hiram Clark area and and then on the other side in the Brunswick Meadows area.

In doing that, we coordinated stings to go through that weekend just as a MUD, working with HOAs and partnerships.

We were able to stem that back.

Now we're one of the lowest crime areas within an area that's sanguished in high criminal activity.

Um, I say that to you because I'm hoping that you're seeing that the money that the city has invested is going far more than what we would even normally be able to pay for.

Roads and infrastructure.

We've had our road bonds.

We are working on that as far as the water supply, the sanitary, the sewer, the maintenance, the storm sweaters.

We are still doing all of that while adding in these additional things to relieve things off of our cities and other municipalities, and to make sure that our tax dollars are being extended to the farthest that they can, while still assuring that our community has not seen an increase in taxes, which I'm sure until this year, we we may see maybe a percentage of uh or two on there, but up until this year we have not.

And so I'm hoping that that will make our more conservative council members happy to know that we have not done that.

Next slide.

So if you look there, you'll see some of the assets that we've done, the walking trails.

We also have doggy centers and quite a few of them.

We also have made sure that I don't know if you all were aware of the child that drowned in Pearaland when the mother went into one of those retention ponds because it wasn't well lit, they didn't find her for almost three to four days.

We decided once we saw that that we would be responsible, making sure that if we did walking trails that attracted children and families that they may go to at night or later hours, that we also required lighting around those areas.

So all of those areas actually have lightings in our communities, and we have required that in working with developers to make sure that they are not signing over to us attractive nuisance that draw in children without safe environments.

The other thing that we really stressed about is those water figures that normally you have the canals and they have the big open without the grates where you can have a body that'll travel through there and you won't find it till it's halfway downtown.

To the best of our ability, we asked them to put grates on each of those.

So if there was any children or small things or any emergency happening, that that would happen.

Some we didn't win that battle, so they're not on all of them, but to the ones that we could, we did.

Um the other thing is we did fountains in the front.

The reason we did the fountains is the additional lighting.

We actually took the constables and had them do a video, and when they did a video, they put one constable in the area and the other one with a camera, and he was three feet ahead in front of him, but in the dark, you couldn't even see there was a person.

And in doing that, we knew that that was part of the criminal activity that we had to fight against, which is why we also did lighting in a lot of on all of the park areas.

A lot of those communities have the park areas, but not sufficient lighting for our kids.

We wanted to make sure that the MUD did that in coordination, of course, with HOA, which takes over the maintenance of those facilities once we place them in.

So it's no extended cost on the taxpayers from that.

Next slide.

Now we have Rodney Ellis's park, and we are very excited about that.

I shouldn't say Rodney, Commissioner Ellis's is bringing Hills at Sims, and we're really excited about that development because it gives us a park area in that area.

One of the things we have not had is a lot of things for our kids to do safely, and an areas for our seniors to walk that is safe, and we're hoping that when you pay that much amount of money, no matter what amount of money it is, and you're a homeowner that you feel like home is home, and we're doing all we can to make sure they do that.

But he's doing walking trails, and one of the things we spoke to the commissioner about is making sure that his walking trails would actually connect into our trails that we did in the mud that go around the area or around our water facility areas so that um the homeowners would not just see it as a hole in the ground that collects things, but we actually have planters around there, we have fountains around there to make sure that the community, though it's functional, it's also pleasing and something that will encourage more commercial assets to the community.

Next slide.

Um we have a local grocer coming.

We've been a food desert, and most MUDs wouldn't be having this discussion with you, but we are having the discussion because it matters to us.

We have had a food desert, it's within nine miles.

I have been told now that we now have an anchor development.

The good news is all of the development that because of your agreement has been brought into the community.

We are going to have, and I think it's gonna say in a future slide, so I'll just bypass it when it gets there.

But we're going to have a McDonald's that came, but we also have a Starbucks, a quick trip, we have a wing stop that we brought in, a dominoes pizza that's there, a jack in the box that's there, and now HEB is bringing one of their own markets there.

So we're pretty excited about the upcoming developments.

One thing I can tell you with each of those is billions of dollars and millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars that we're putting back into the roles that's gonna go back into the city of Houston as well as ours.

And so I'm hoping that where you gave us a dime, we gave you back $10.

You know, I'm hoping that you see that every single development that you made in at least MUD 390 has come back to the city tenfold.

Next slide.

Now, I think I've already somewhat touched upon this, so I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this, but I will tell you that we currently um have over seven officers in our area in MUD 390.

When you come into MUD 390, you are on camera.

On each of the ends, you we have cameras that have a um, there's some that have just the license plate reader, but there's other full motion cameras where we've had an increase in criminal activity.

Those cameras are ones that you can HPD can click into, constables can click into, sheriffs can kick into, state police can be any facility they are access to.

We also did that to stop the trash dumping because we saw some corners of the district where there was a lot of dumping, illegal dumping.

We would like to let them know that we will prosecute in 390.

So we take pictures.

Um precinct 7 is currently the contract, not just with 390 though, precinct 7 is also in contract with City Park, City Oaks, and the commercial entity to provide officers in that area.

Um we are happy that we are trying to do a model of community policing.

I mean, we know when our officers have birthdays and we know they know where our points are, we see them every single night.

Officers have made a um concerted effort to make sure that they meet with the commercial entities so that we're all moving together.

If there's something that happened in Domino's, we know all the way back to our community what happened, when happened, and if we need to increase officers to shift something around.

And that is what we call the MUD protecting the investment that has been given to us.

Next slide.

Social media.

This is Hilday and Argentina James and her team, which is spectacular.

One of the things I told you at the very beginning is if people don't know what you're doing, and I often say this to elected officials over and over again who say to me, Well, I worked on this and I worked on that, and they get to campaign time, and then everybody's like, You did nothing.

And I would say they if you don't say you did it, they don't know you did it.

It doesn't matter to them because they don't know.

So what we do is we make sure it's on social media.

It's on Facebook.

We have a site that you can click into at any given time and find out what has happened, what happened in the past.

We have our board meetings uploaded because we push transparency.

So our documents are uploaded.

Any projects that we have, you can access right there at the on your fingertips because we believe in government with integrity.

We had our groundbreakings, and I'm gonna get into that project because that's the most exciting one for us.

But we have the website that connects you into any count, any particular board member you want to have a conversation with, you can click into.

You can click into us via email, social media, or just a phone call.

We are one click away at any time.

Next slide.

So this is what we want to say.

In that agreement, look at what we've done with the little that you have given us.

And I don't mean little as in it's not the greatest amount, but I mean little as in I want you to believe that if you gave more, we could do more.

That's my wink wink.

Okay.

Um, again, blue wave car wash, taco bell, jack in the box, um, wing stop, panda express, whataburger.

Um, all of these have been cut brought in under MUD 390 in our commercial, uh, our output for a commercial.

Just today, we were talking about another one that would actually add over 40 million to the tax rolls almost, and that's again us saying you give us a little and we'll produce a lot for you.

Next slide.

This is our baby, the Sheila Jackson Lee Harris County MUD 390 administration building.

I am hoping that you love this.

What we heard from homeowners over and over again is that they paid the same amount of HOA fees that Shepherd Park Terrace did, but they didn't have any amenities.

What we also heard is respectfully to our chair, the closest thing to us was the Hirem Clark Multi-service center, and that was uh to a lot of them still a drive from our community.

We don't have a multi-service center close to us, we don't have those things close to us.

You have Sunnyside and you have Hirem Clark, but they're both miles away from us.

In this community, we intend to do small business hubs where small businesses can come in, they can have their phone calls made out of this building, they can hold conferences in this building.

We intend to do the after-school care programs where kids can have a place to safely sit and be able to do their studies and and have that benefit.

We intend to make sure that there's a sports complex where kids can then be able to do to do leagues and things right there in the safety of their own community.

It is a gated thing facility, so it's something that we believe, and we will bring to that community a substation, a precinct seven police substation, which will increase the security and all the homeowners and the commercial entities right there in that community.

We're really happy about it.

And I want you to know it's not gonna be all government.

We believe in private public partnerships, so we are encouraging all of those that do business within MUD 390.

Where's your your community contribution?

Where are you meeting us halfway?

Because we're definitely gonna be paying more in roads, road services, and water and utilities, and we want to make sure that you're being responsible to the community you serve as well.

I want you to know that we did not make the building something that looks like just like a normal multi-service center because we wanted it to be something that the community would be proud of.

Next slide.

Um, right now, the building by the numbers.

I hope that you see where it is there.

It's a 10,000 square foot building pool that will be privately funded.

We want to make sure that we have the um completion of it right now is set for fall 2026.

It will be the only thing in that region, even close to providing anything for children, after school children, small businesses, the only thing there that will have that hub coverability, and we're really happy to do it.

The closest thing to us is an HCC building off of airport, and that's two exits down.

Next slide.

The groundbreaking highlights.

We had a groundbreaking, it was great.

Um next slide.

We were proud to have a lot of elected officials who came who visited and were able to participate with the community.

Is that how I'm done?

Uh DJ, thank you for the presentation.

I think it's important that we continue to amplify how we are utilizing our 380 agreements in the city.

We get a lot of questions around those.

People want to know how we are utilizing those, and so this is good information for us to have.

I do want to recognize uh Councilmember Davis for joining us.

Uh Vice Mayor Pro Temp Peck has also joined us, and staff from Councilmember Thomas's office is online.

We have a question from Councilmember Alcorn.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Didra.

Great presentation.

Um, how many you said 31,000 people in the area?

How many homes?

Or 3,000.

3,000 homes.

Okay.

And that's not um, council member.

Uh when I say when I say homes, actually homes, because we still have three multi-um carp um apartment complexes in the community as well.

That of course is 3,000 includes the apartment units.

It does not.

Does it not include it?

Yeah.

Those would be additional, but they're not counted as homes because if they're not paying into property taxes individually, but paying its property.

What's your MUD tax rate?

Um 67 67.

Ladies and gentlemen.

What's the word?

Let me remind you what ours is.

Um, so you're telling me about the financing for the Sheila Jackson Lee building.

Uh and and let me defer because I'm glad I have our legal counsel here on up, Matt.

So that he could go into a little bit more details with it.

We went out for bond for those.

We actually had the community vote on it.

We asked the community.

Yeah, I'm wondering how that all works in the mud.

We we put it before the community for a vote.

There's nothing that went into that building that did not go to the community for a vote.

Well, how much of the bond were did you uh did they vote on?

Yeah.

Hi, good afternoon.

I'm Matt Reid with the you can talk on that other microphone.

Yeah, okay.

Hi.

Um council member.

Um, the money that the city of Houston is contributing toward the MUD for purposes of the road projects, right?

Is separate and apart from the money that's being used in the tax bonds for the funding of the administrative building.

Got it.

Back in um we had the bond election in November of 21.

Leading up to that, we had a couple public engagements for uh taxpayers and residents to come out.

Um some presentations were made, and legally, the MUD can't use tax dollars or any of its money to support a proposition one way or the other.

Right.

Um, but questions were asked, concepts were proposed.

Um we had uh 38 million in park, these are tax bonds.

Unlimited tax bonds for parks, and 50 million for water sewer and drainage okay um bonds, which can be used for administrative facilities along with the park facilities.

Um part of that presentation was an administrative building similar to what you see here, other parks.

And those are that that's finance with water sewer bonds, yeah.

Water sewer and drainage.

So the TCQ rules and uh the bond propositions that are passed um can be used for administrative buildings.

So that's what that's technically what it is uh is an administrative building.

So the taxes that are levied by the MUD to support the debt service on these bonds, they're only the residents of MUD 390.

Okay, they're paying for it.

That bond election passed.

I don't have the specific numbers, um, but I well above overwhelming, yeah.

What yeah, usually day in day in and day day out.

This is all that I do, and we had a really good turnout for a mud election, and it was overwhelmingly.

Okay, so and it's interim.

Um, council member, it's not even in the normal election cycle.

So people who come out during that are intentional.

Sorry, just one more.

What what's the cost of the building?

Projected cost of the building.

Uh currently it's uh 7.3 million.

Okay.

Yeah, and that's that's actually not counting uh the land cost because we needed the land for that, so we're acquiring that as well.

Okay, thank you very much.

Yeah, and council member, I hope to just uh expound a little bit more on that.

We were intentional about making sure that there was nothing that did not have voter voter vote voter support.

I mean, obviously.

Yeah, and then and the and the parks in that bond election, they're getting the building, water sewer work, and the parks.

Yes, ma'am.

So uh, as with any MUD uh that's financing development, DR Horton City Gate community.

Um, probably a lot of you know the model is the developers come in, yeah, they take the risk, they put down the water sewer drainage, and then they look for reimbursement from the mud later on.

So DR Horton, for example, is being reimbursed as well.

Thank you.

And we get all your questions.

Well, that that that was the last question in the queue.

So thank you, uh, Deedra.

We appreciate you being here and the entire team for the presentation uh for being here today.

We are I do want to uh let you know I'm getting a uh received a message from Councilmember Shabazz.

She is also watching online, and she wanted me to make sure you knew she was online.

So Councilmember Shabazz is watching online.

Oh, can I ask you one thing while I'm here?

Sure.

Um while I'm here and I have the council.

One of the things I we are struggling with still is the trash and the homeless issue underneath 288 and Almeda Genoa.

We feel the city's love on Orim, but we feel a little neglected on Almeida Genoa from 288 all the way up, the meridians and everything.

In fact, last week there was an entire mattress there.

And so just I don't think your council member has a hot team.

When y'all have a mattress on the Esplanade, you should call the district D office.

I'm a dish on here, right?

She's along here, she's having their hot team.

Yes, Councilmember, we need a hot team.

She has one, but I also needed help with the the homeless in the homeless situation.

We definitely can work with that, work with you on that for sure.

All right, thank you.

Thank you for bringing that up as well.

Our next presentation uh, council members will be from Director Celynthia Hord with the mayor's office of business opportunity, and she's going to present our OBO uh first quarter update.

Director Horde, thank you for being here.

I know you've been super busy this season, this quarter.

Um, so we are ready to hear from you.

Thank you so much, Mayor Pro Tem and Council members.

Yes, I'm very short.

Thank you.

Um thank you for allowing me to present our first quarter kind of update based on some things that came out of disparity study and what we've been working on.

Um I won't go through everything in this report, but I did want to provide you an update on what's going on, not just with the goal setting and the program, what's going on uh with our um divisions, and so what you have in front of you.

Next slide, it's just a year-in update.

You guys are very familiar with our mission and vision.

So I'll go to the next slide.

Um, so what I want to present today is basically our focus and priorities for 2025.

Um, some of the things that we were setting forth to work on, um, our wins and accomplishments, and what we're moving forward with in 2026.

Next slide.

Quarter one was really really good for the MWSP program.

We reached a 39% um participation rate, which exceeds that participation rate of 34% that we project for the year, but this is just quarter one.

Did really great.

Um, of the 487 million that were um allocated in awards for goal-oriented contracts, 191 million of that went to minority women and certified firms um that are small businesses.

Um that was 41% to black owned business, 24% to Hispanic owned businesses, 11% to Native American-owned businesses, 10% to Caucasian women, 4% to Asian, and 9% other.

And that report went out this week, so you should have a copy of it in your email.

I've also placed the link in this um in this presentation for you to see the entire report.

It will outline the um the participation by departments as well, all the awards by departments, and it outlies like the industries as well as the ethnicities.

Um, our focus and priorities for this year were many.

Um we started with increasing our community engagement, offering more avenues to access capital.

We know that that is something that many of our small business owners struggle with.

Increasing the transparency of our department, adopting the new disparity study data, amending our chapter 15 ordinance, uh, training our internal and external partners, not just on the ordinance, but on the contract compliance that we are charged with uh ensuring.

We knew that our directory had some expired firms, old firms, firms that had gone out of business since the COVID pandemic, and so we wanted to scrub our directory.

Streamlining our certification process, we're gonna talk about that a little bit later.

Updating our departmental policies and procedures in accordance with the new chapter 15 ordinance as well as many SOPs that we needed to update from a couple years ago.

Creating a contract compliance SOP, administrative manuals, employee manuals, onboarding, offboarding manuals, our FAA compliance for our DB and A C D B programs and our advisory board engagement.

We do have an advisory board that's very active.

So I'll take this by divisions.

Next slide.

Just to touch on some of our wins and what we did accomplish in our data and reporting.

One of the areas of concern through the disparity study was our data and how we were collecting that data.

So we finalized a disparity study, but we also started collaboration with HIITS through our CIP funding.

We were awarded $2 million to work on optimizing our data.

So we've already started that process.

Phase one is to begin the data improvement project, which is locating where all of our contracts are coming into the system, ensuring we're not missing any, and that that information is imported directly from our new updated SAP program software into the B2G software.

Enhancing the B2G now by adding OBO customizations, and I'll talk about that a little later as well.

Streamlining our awards report.

Some of the feedback that we also got from the community is that the awards report is very long.

So we've taken that you'll see and cut it in half so that we've consolidated the data more in graphs by charts so that it's easily digestible and not as wordy.

Um drafting a new reporting dashboard for our website.

We are currently working on a new website.

Um if you've ever been to OBO's website, there's 30 different ways to get to one document.

And so we are going to streamline that working on adding more dashboards, and so you can see our compliance reporting as well as our certification right there on our website and where we are with that.

And then collaborating with our departments on closeout.

Um there were many older contracts in our LCP tracker system as well as a B2G that had never been closed, and they may have been projects that ended a couple of years ago.

So we went through a very extensive process with all 22 departments to make sure that we were closing contracts that were actually not open.

Next slide.

Lee joined us at the beginning of uh the year last this year and has just taken the division by storm.

Um we have updated all of our policies procedures, we have new SOPs, um, standardized a lot of our training materials.

We now have a test that we administer to our staff and we expect that they pass it with flying color so that everybody's on the same page and we're um administering the program in the same manner.

Um we've also migrated most of our documents over to SharePoint so that we're not looking for them in different spaces.

We've optimized LCP tracker.

That is the system that monitors the certified payroll to ensure that our staff isn't, they were previously doing a lot of outside computations, and so they would take LCP tracker and then they go into some spreadsheets and then they come up with data.

We've been able to optimize that by utilizing all the systems and red flags and bus buttons and bells and whistles, and LCP trackers made our work very um efficient.

Um we have created new um specialized modules in B2G now.

We're working on some closeout modules that'll streamlate that pro streamline that process as well.

Um, our close-out process, we've had uh conversations with HPW and gotten some compliments that this is the fastest that they've seen closeouts.

So we clearly uh Lee and her team are doing something really uh great with the closeout process, and we have a great collaboration with the uh Houston Public Works Department and their OBO staff.

Next slide.

Our certification team, that division manager is on vacation today, but uh Vanessa Aplon lets in leads that team.

Um you know there was such a backlog with certification.

Um there are these complaints that we're taking a very long time.

We have updated our workshops, added new certification modules for processing our certifications, which includes the personal net worth module.

Um we've also incorporated new training for our staff.

We have taken, and I wanted her to be here.

We've taken the backlog, we had 358 uh certifications in the queue in September.

Um, Mayor Woodmeyer allowed us to pause the certification so that we weren't receiving any new.

We got those down to zero by November 30th, and so we can start with a clean slate December 1st.

So currently there's like 15 in the queue.

So it's really nice that we're able to streamline that.

And we're looking to improve our processing to a 90-day process is the goal.

So we streamlined the process for applications to a two-tier process.

And what that means is if you were a BDC and you got an application, you will work that application to completion.

Now we expect that the tier one applications that are really simple applications, one owner, two owner partnerships that are really clean.

The BDC should be able to get through those in 30 days.

If they're not, it escalates to a senior BDC for them to work it with their experience, and then that BDC can take on a new one so that we have a steady flow through our application process.

Next slide.

Brandon's done exemplary work, and a lot of you have worked with Brandon with your council districts and putting on lots of events.

Thanks to Councilmember Martinez and Councilmember Ramirez, Councilmember Castillo, all of you who have chipped in to get that position done.

We have that person on board, working collaboratively with the Chamber of Commerce in the community.

We re-established the bonding 1.0 program and we graduated 16 businesses from that.

We also implemented a new bonding 2.0.

The 1.0 is a like an introduction.

But bonding 2.0 sets a contractor up to go beyond the $1 million in bonding and helps them to understand the claims process, the accounting, and all of that.

We had that program in the spring.

We graduated 23 small firms from that program.

We have an IMP, which is our interagency mentor protege programs, the continuation.

We do it every year.

We graduated 20 small businesses from that program.

It prepares them to bid on projects.

Many of you attended, thank you so much, where we had over 200 attendees, and we were our board was able to fundraise for us about 41,000.

We created a successful future founders program with Councilmember Thomas, which is to support young children, middle school, high school, who want to start a business, and went through how to write a business plan and do your pitch, coffee and contractors with councilmember Martinez, our financial symposium with councilmember Davis.

We had our turnaround job readiness program.

We've had over 1,000 attendees at our workforce development programs.

So the directors, community meetings, I had about 13 of those, and as well, I've met with you guys 42 times.

So lots of conversations with the council members.

And so we also implemented this year a new Meet the Primes, where we allowed an opportunity for subcontractors to meet prime contractors that not only work with the city of Houston but the other entities here in the city and the region, and we expanded our Meet the Buyer event where we had 700 attendees just last week.

So Brandon and his team, and I will say his team has been two people for quite a while.

So now Brand is fully staffed, so you can look for him to be doing even more in the community, but I'm very, very happy with what they've accomplished.

Department Services, that's the group that sets goals on contracts, worked on goal setting, good faith efforts prior to award and deviations prior to award.

This year they developed the comprehensive training and exam that I spoke about earlier for contract compliance.

They developed training materials for chapter 15.

They were the uh two-man team that went in out and did all the chapter 15 trainings.

They did uh over 24 chapter 15 workshops with over 733 firms attending from around the city.

Um so they made a big splash and getting the information out on the changes to our ordinance, um, all while maintaining their flow of contract reviews, and so they did about 318 goal waivers and 135 contract specific reviews.

Uh, remembering that department services only does contract reviews if they're non-compliant at the department level.

So the departments do their own contract specific goal setting, but if something comes in non-compliant, they will send that back to us.

Next slide.

Sorry, next slide.

And so I'll talk a little bit about some of the programs that we talked about implementing as far as the disparity study.

Um, a lot of these we are working on rolling out now.

Um, one of the veteran and the veteran disabled veteran on small business certification.

We are working on that now.

Um, we are working with B2G.

There's been a lapse in time, a delay in them developing because of all the DBE changes, which I'll talk about in a little bit, but that has kind of set that back a little bit, but we are on track to get it done hopefully by the end of next month.

Um, the personal net worth cap will be associated with all of the certification types and each of our certifying application types.

We have the flexibility with disabled business owners who will now be able to be certified if their workers have that certification, but they don't, and they can show us verifiable way that they are disabled.

Um we have removal of the construction SBE cap for the 4% that's been on there, the expansion of the SPE to all our procurement categories, our mentor protege program.

We are working with several organizations, RHCA, Regional Hispanic Contractors Association, Houston Contractors Association to put together a very meaningful and robust mentor protege program for the city of Houston.

Um we're working on a small business hub, small business reserve, and the contractor rotation.

Um then we also had the new participation caps that came out of our negotiations for the disparity study.

Next slide.

So just a review of that, uh, the participation as you're aware, we put those caps in place based on availability in the market for those groups that did show no disparities.

So instead of where there was no disparity removing groups, the groups were allowed to remain in for participation up to certain caps based on their market availability.

So this was the information that was presented on August 20th of this year.

So just a recap of that.

And so next slide.

For 2026, we're looking at the new website, of course, with the dashboards to be included, reducing our certification timeline to our 90 days, implementation of the veteran on small business program, disabled veterinal and small business programs, and the new goal setting model, re-establishing our DBE participation, community education, more of community education, our contractor rotation program to be expanded from HPW to other city departments, a small business reserve.

We talked about that very um during the disparity study.

The small business reserve would allow contractors who are certified to bid competitively in their own marketplace for contracts between 100 and 500,000 dollars.

Um the small business hub, which is a collaboration for business to business, and the mentor protege program that I just spoke of.

Next slide.

I think this is our last one.

Um just kind of an update on what's going on in our world.

Um the MWSBE program is back up.

We're now taking applications that was paused from September to December 1st.

Applications we're now receiving those.

Um we're hoping that the by March 1st, um hoping this month, I mean, sorry, January, next month, but at least by March 1st, we should have that veteran-owned small business program up and running.

Um, the delays again came from the DBE pause that occurred at B2G had to make a lot of adjustments because they serve a lot of the certifying agencies nationally, and so that put them back on developing any new modules and any new applications.

So that's been a little bit of a delay for us.

As well as the federal proceedings, um, we did finish our trial, was completed uh last month, and so we are now awaiting um briefs that need to be prepared and submitted on behalf of both the city and the plaintiffs, and then we expect a ruling, but we probably won't have anything until early spring.

Um, the DBE program that rollout, um, we're hoping to be back up and running by early spring.

Uh, currently the DBE program, which is our federal program and the ACDBE program are paused, um, and there are no new applications being taken.

There's no participation being counted.

Um, the process that we're gonna be following here in Texas is that Text Dot will take the lead on recertifying all of those agencies that were previously certified or decertifying those that do not respond.

Um currently they are working on bringing in subject matter experts to do that.

Once they have indicated which firms will be recertified or decertified, that list will come to each certifying agency.

So Houston will receive its list, and then we will um certify them in our system, and then we can start the program back up.

But Texas has to come on as a state, and we can't come back on individually, and so that's the DBE program.

Um, and currently, as you're aware, the hub program has changed to a disabled veteran program.

And we previously had an MOU with the state to uh certify, but now that is void because our certification was just for the M and the W.

And so we're currently not accepting hub applications.

That is concludes this report.

And any questions you might have.

Director Hort, thank you for all this information.

And I I do want to um just say to you that as I look through your presentation and think about all the meetings that we had when people were talking about all the barriers that they faced to participate, that you and your team have been very intentional about combating and alleviating those barriers.

When I look at um the bond, you know, a lot of people talked about, you know, how do we get bonding capacity?

We you know, we need help with um meeting the primes.

We need help with access to capital, and all of the programming um that has been done has centered around alleviating those barriers.

So I wanted to just amplify that that work was great work.

Um, and thank you for being intentional for our business owners in the in the city of Houston.

And then I had a question about um when you are doing the certification process, you said we had 358 in the queue in September.

We paused.

What do you think is the what is the biggest holdup or what takes the longest?

Is it was it the staffing, or what what was the biggest hurdle that the internal team had to getting people certified?

There were a combination of things.

So I will first say that um the beginning of next last year, we we had a consultant to come in and look at our process.

Um, one of the things that we found is that we were taking applications at 80% document completion, meaning we accepted the application and didn't have all the documents.

Then our team would take eight months getting somebody to respond.

Hey, send us this, send us that, send it.

So this is whole back and forth.

So we've gone to a 100% documentation.

So if all the documents are there, you will receive a letter that states what is missing and what we expect to have in that, and then it's taken out of the queue.

And so that was taken at a lot of time.

Um, and we've gone to a three contact model where we will reach out to you via email, phone, email, and if there's no response, it's also out of the queue, so that we can move on to the next one.

I found that we were holding a lot of applications just based based on non-responsiveness, um, but it was adding to our timeline.

And so we've taken that process out.

Staffing is still continues to be an issue.

We still only have 13 people.

Um, but we've also been able to get a couple people uh from SPD, some overage from SPD to fill some of that uh vacancy that we had.

That makes sense.

And then my other question was talk about how we are going to roll out our veteran small business program.

Have we gotten to that yet?

How we plan to do the rollout?

Yes, so the veteran on small business program, we will accept the certification that veterans have received from the SPA, meaning they've already been vetted for ownership management and control.

We won't have to process them.

Um it's like we do our LGBT.

We have a um an MOU with the chamber.

We receive that, we verify it via their website, and then they're added to our directory.

Okay.

And then the my last question is we got the report.

Um, and I haven't gone a deep dive, but I did a little summary on the report.

I think the numbers are great.

We exceeded those goals.

How do we get that information to our business owners?

Because I think CD if you go to the the slide that has what the goals were and and what we actually accomplished I think it's going to be prudent for us to make sure that not only do we have this information but the business owners in the city of Houston who are doing business in the city have this information and that they're digesting it it was another one that said like we reached the 39 percent yeah that one I think that this um summarizes what our goals were and what we actually did and how do we let our business owners know that this is this these are our results from quarter one because we go to meetings and we see people and they say oh yeah I can't I I never get business oh I'm not getting business and I'm not getting business I want people to see this information have access to this information you know do we have a rollout plan to share it or do we do we need to work on doing that we can put in our newsletters I think I think we need to shout it from the rooftop.

Yes if if we can have council members to share it um as well we um will be sending this out to the chambers to the different chambers of commerce to their members as well one of the things that we received feedback was the transparency of seeing this um on the website and so that's what we're working with the webmaster on is how we're going to display this each quarter it'll be on the website there will be um a tab just for reports and you'll be able to see this report the quarterly reports and then the um for each division what they are accomplishing as well so we will have it to be more transparent on our website thank you very much we do have a couple of council members in queue we'll start with uh councilmember Davis thank you madam chair mayor pro tem uh director thank you for your presentation outstanding I I'm really overly impressed by uh your presentation and some of the goals and objectives that you have completed um let me say to you first and foremost the uh uh madam chair acts about the veterans and disability rollout which is one of the things as you know I'm concerned about because we have so many of the veterans disabled veterans who are seeking these business opportunities so I'm glad is that you brought that up and that we will be working uh closely with you because I work with the veterans and military affairs office of the mayor's office with Dr.

Jones and of course we have so many veterans that are asking about it.

So I'm certainly you will be hearing much from me and asking and how do we get that out because we do want to get that information out.

We did a town hall last year with the veterans the first one that was done Dr.

Jones and I we did an emancipation and we did it there on emancipation in the emancipation park area.

So we're trying to get that done because one of the things that we discovered about veterans is a lack of information collectively to get it out there.

So we're gonna work with you there as well as also I want to um thank you for uh and your office and your staff for working with us with the financial symposium which was really a bigger uh than what I to be honest expected it to be but it was a great success we had well over 300 businesses attended it and it went off well um and certainly your staff and with you partnering with me and getting that done along with um Hill Day uh Argentina and uh absolutely was just uh phenomenal in that respect so I certainly want to thank them for for that uh last and I'll come back if need be chair at the queue but but I just wanted to mention the um the the pastors meeting that you attended that we do monthly which is the Minister Advisory Board and we have some 50 to 60 past that meet with us and you as a rock star in that they ask you a thousand questions and I'm sure your office has been flooded with people getting back to you from those pastors so we're going to be fully engaged and uh and uh congratulations on uh the accomplishment on the disparity because you did a marvelous job there uh and I think we've got it covered to your credit in the mayor's office so thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Um I think it was May.

I don't remember the what month it was now.

Maybe and there was there was some discussion and what it didn't what ended up happening, as I recall was that count council voted uh in a split vote to adopt the data from the study so that the city could go into court and have something to rely on and defend defend that lawsuit.

Is that your recollection?

Um that was part of it.

That was the rest of it.

So the um adopted or the ordinance that was adopted was forced to adopt the disparity study to uh provide a report back to the administration on how we proceed with the goal calculation and participation and to take that data to be able to present for the court proceedings whenever they were.

Okay, yeah.

And and it was my understanding, since it was the the data that was being accepted that whatever recommendations float for that or from whatever uh recommendations ultimately uh you guys arrived at, that would come back before council.

And I'm looking at slide number 13, where you've got this grid and you've got some some numbers uh that represent I'll call them goals or caps.

Um the information in slide number 13 was never brought back to council for adoption.

So it was brought back through the EDC committee on August the 20th.

I think I think it were here for that.

We presented like all the recommendations going forward, the new programs as well as the caps and participation in August.

But but these numbers were never voted on by council in slide 13, were they?

No.

So it wasn't proposed for a vote.

It was proposed for a report back to the committee how we were going to move forward.

That's how the ordinance was written.

Okay.

I'll I'll tell you it was it was my belief that the council was going to get to vote again on the numbers that were ultimately adopted.

And I've spoken to a couple of other council members who had the same feeling.

So anyway, I I'll go back in the queue.

Okay.

Well, I I mean, these are the numbers.

I don't know if we if we need to um I mean, if if council members have a a differing opinion on what those numbers should be, I think we definitely can have those come those conversations.

Councilmember Flickinger.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Director, for the presentation.

Um I went to the uh Hispanic female contractor awards here several months ago.

It was sitting at a table from with somebody from Austin Construction, and they were actually the one responsible for handling their MWBE programs, not just with Houston, but with multiple places.

And she expressed frustration at the ability to replace a MWBE participant that was not performing.

Um is is there much difficulty with that?

How does that work?

I mean, essentially she told me that she had to have approval from your office in order to be able to do that.

Correct.

So the policy is if you are going to if you submit to a participation plan to us, so you're a firm and you come in and you say I'm gonna have 10 firms to participate.

Um our expectation is that that opportunity is provided to them, you have a letter of agreement with them, and that they will be provided that opportunity.

If for some reason, via change order or performance you want to deviate, you send a deviation request to our office and it is approved based on the feedback we get from the uh we receive from the prime, the sub, and then we provide an approval.

It's never a delay unless they have not submitted the correct information.

Um I'm not sure which project this is on.

I have no idea.

So um even if they were replacing one MWBE certified with another MWBE certified, they still have to have your approval?

Correct, because we want to know that the replacement is not gonna impose upon the opportunity of another sub.

So we have to know the percentage that you are replacing them with and that they're doing the commercially useful function that that line was for.

So if your function was to be a painter and you're replacing it replacing them with a plumber, we have to make sure it's not taken away from another plumber who was already on there, or that it is not impeding upon you using them in a different commercially useful function, and we did not approve when this award was made.

And so each of the pro the firms on there, they have a function based on the NASE code that they are going to perform, and we just have to check and make sure that it's not going to impede upon someone else's performance and take away from their performance, or that it's going to not have help to meet the goal based on a commercial useful function that's in the contract.

Okay.

So it's not a lengthy process.

We have deviations all day, every day.

We try to get them out in two or three days.

And so maybe this was a specific situation.

Okay, maybe one off.

Yes.

Okay.

The other question I have is can I finish this up and be done?

Yeah, go ahead.

Um, how do you confirm the net worth for the small business applications?

So there's a personal network that's submitted into the modules and B2G.

We'll ask for three years.

Um there's a specific statement that accounts for the balance sheet.

It's a balance sheet for the business, but it's your personal net worth, which includes everything but your home and your insurances.

So it includes like trust, uh, bank accounts, all that is submitted.

Um, and then it's calculated in the system.

Okay, so essentially it's self-reporting.

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Elk.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Senator Celentia, for your presentation.

I um I did get a uh some questions from just consider in stakeholders interested parties about also that impression that Councilmember Ramirez had that um there would be some kind of additional council action setting forth the program details.

I don't remember exactly.

I just knew we were passing the numbers to go for the court case and everything.

I did get the sense there was going to be something else.

If it's a report, that that's fine.

I I just I want to probably set the record straight with people because I think there's a little ambiguity in the community that we're not taking it up again as a council.

So if you could just kind of go give me some I will go back and pull the ordinance.

Um according to legal, it was not a vote, it was a report back on what the outcome was based on the availability, how we would include those firms that were that show no disparity or those groups that show no disparity.

Okay.

And so does anything have to be changed then based on the results of the court case?

We don't have the results back at right, but when they come when it comes back, we'll know whatever the judge his ruling is, would then we'll know what we have to change, if anything.

But the discussion about whether everybody's small business or there's disparity, that that's set.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilmember Ramirez.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And director, uh, following up on Councilmember Alcorn's question.

What what is the trial over and we're just awaiting the judge's ruling or the trial is over.

Um we have until February both parties to uh provide the judge with briefs, and then there will be a ruling from there.

Okay, so the judge hasn't decided uh what to do on the program.

Question And so the decision is only being made on the MBE.

So the judge is not deciding on the WB or the SBE.

He's only deciding whether the MBE will remain or how it will remain.

So he could say take all this where you got the caps, he could say take it all out because your study so there was no disparity, take it out.

Or he could say leave it the way it is.

I think it's narrowly tailored.

You really narrowly tailored it even more, so you can keep it.

It's up to kind of his ruling based on what was presented, just on the MBE portion.

Okay, so you're saying the court uh apparently is gonna leave the WBE and the SBE intact?

Correct, that was not a part of the complaint.

I see.

I see.

Okay, so last topic I wanted to cover was um the reapplication for certification process.

Uh I know was there a deadline for firms to go through that in the No.

So the IFR, which is the interim uh final rule from the federal government comes from the Department of Transportation, is very open-ended and extremely vague.

And so what it says that is a state has to recertify all of its DBE participants and come back online at the same time.

So really every state is doing it differently.

California is doing it one day one way, Texas is doing another, Illinois another, as long as you do it as one unified group.

So we're using the TUCP, Texas Unified Certif Unified Certification Program.

They're gonna take the lead through TechSoup because they're the lead on it.

Um so there is no timeline.

Um they're trying to get this done as soon as possible.

My understanding is they had contracted with the subject matter experts who are going to conduct the recertification.

Hopefully, by January, those people will have their contracts and they'll be able to start.

They will have um they will be able to go into our system, our B2G, and actually go through that certification process with each firm individually.

We will not touch it until they finished.

Okay, and I know a OBO was doing a number of trainings for four primes in here here in Houston.

Is that process ongoing or is that concluded?

It's ongoing.

So we're in the process now of taping that workshop, the chapter 15 workshop, but we conduct other workshops as well.

And so there are prime workshops that we conduct that will be ongoing as well.

Um workshops with the subcontractors and the departments.

So the department services unit, they roll out all the trainings.

And what happens if if a prime or a subcontractor doesn't go through the training by the end of this year?

So it's no timeline on it.

Um let's say you bid on a contract next year and you never went through the training.

Um when you get ready to go into B2G, it will alert us and you'll have to just go online and review the training.

We have to verify that you reviewed it so that everybody understands what we're asking them to do.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Davis.

Thank you again, Madam Chair.

Um Madam Director, in regards to Councilmember Ramirez's concern regarding the disparity breakdown in discussion of what you come up with as the if you had discussion with those stakeholders or people who are regarding the disparity presented.

Yes, that was part of the chapter 15 rollout.

Correct.

So those 24 workshops that were conducted with the 733 folks, that was this rollout.

So we went through the participation, the caps, how we're gonna look at it, how the goal will be set, the three separate goals for MWNS, and how that will um how that be calculated with all of those firms.

Good deal.

Did you get any feedback as to anyone that was in the actual we did?

Um we conducted a survey at the end of each one so that we could have kind of a feel of where it was.

People said that the information was um very helpful.

Um we got nothing less than a four on the one to five scale, 4.5 on most of average, um, that the information the was very comprehensive, it was very helpful.

Um if people wanted to come more than once, they could.

So some people came back several times.

Very good.

Thank you.

Councilmember Mayors.

Uh thank you, Madam Chair.

Just to follow up on that.

And I'm not criticizing the training or the presentations that were made.

Uh, I did receive some feedback from stakeholders that they did not agree with with the numbers in in this particular slide that's up on on the board.

So training may have been fine and they may have understood what what y'all were saying, but um uh I did receive feedback that were not in agreement with those numbers.

So I have one more question, um, Director Horde.

I remember we did some augmentation for compliance consulting.

Um, are we still utilizing that?

Is there still a need?

Or do we um are we still using um compliance consultants?

We're in the process of getting a contract.

Um we don't have one right now, so our team is taking on all the uh compliance.

Um, but we are working with um HPW to work through some funding so that we can um employ a firm to have staff augmentation, hopefully in the next couple of months.

Okay.

If there are no other questions and it doesn't look like anyone uh from the public has signed up to speak, uh council members, I would like to let everyone know that our next scheduled economic development committee meeting uh will be announced.

Um we are done for the year.

Thank you for your participation, Vice Chair Fleckinger.

Thank you for those times you stepped in and all of the work that you each have done on the committee.

Uh we will stand adjourned.

Thank you, Director.