We always also have Ray Cruz and introduce yourself here.

Well, I'll go ahead, Chair, if you don't mind.

This is Lisa Jefferson.

She's our assistant director, and she's worked diligently in putting together not only our reorganization but our draft uh budget proposal.

Okay, Lisa Jefferson, we're happy to have you.

If you if you'd be more comfortable, if you want to at um the city attorney's spot, feel free to sit sit up there with them.

You'll have your own mic.

You're good, you're good right there.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

Well, we appreciate all the good work you do keeping our 13,000 plus vehicles and working order.

And um, so we'll let you with that go ahead.

Floor is yours.

All right.

Well, good morning again.

Uh together, our group here will be presenting the department's proposed operating budget for fiscal year 2027.

Next slide, please.

Today's presentation will provide information on the department's alignment with city strategic priorities.

We'll give an overview of our cost-cutting initiatives, and we'll lay out our planned expenses and revenues for each of our department programs.

Next slide, please.

Relative to the city's four strategic priorities, fleet management is primarily aligned with the city's infrastructure strategy.

We provide for the fleet assets and the motor fuel used by all city departments.

We do, however, touch on each of the other priorities for the government that works strategy.

We strive to be as efficient as possible for public safety.

We service all emergency response and public health vehicles and for quality of life.

We support the solid waste health and parks departments as well as the Houston Forensic Science Center and Houston First.

Next slide, please.

Plans to eliminate the gap.

So for fiscal year 27, we're eliminating 26 positions and cutting supply expenses for a savings of 2.4 million dollars.

Almost all these positions are vacant.

Twenty-two reside within our fleet operations program, while the balance, including two executive level positions are within our support group.

Most of the vacancies to be cut are advanced level mechanics.

We just can't fill them, and it doesn't make sense to fund positions we can't fill.

If we're lucky enough to fill these 10 vacancies, we'll create additional positions and fund them within the existing budget using dollars earmarked for contracted services.

Additional cost-cutting initiatives include holding overtime expenses flat despite the scheduled wage increase.

We've completed our department reorganization with 62 personnel actions that included the elimination of 18 administrative and supervisory positions.

These cuts are in addition to those that are shown on the slide.

With regard to contracting, we've got a ratio of 80 vehicles per mechanic if we're able to fill every mechanic position when compared to industry standards of 37 sedans per mechanic or 20 police cars per mechanic.

And then we get down to five to 10 fire trucks, uh trash trucks per mechanic.

It's obviously that we're desperately short of people and uh and that we need to be strategic in how we contract our uh our work.

Our fully burdened internal rate will be approximately 110 dollars an hour.

Our contract service agreements have hourly rates that range from 45 dollars an hour for mower repair to 700 an hour for specialized crane repair.

We're gonna focus our in-house labor on work that is more costly to outsource, and we'll send work out that can be performed by contractors at a lower cost.

We're also looking to reduce our general fund expenses by contracting more enterprise department work.

We plan on contracting total operation of all airport garages and several of the public works garages.

This will allow us to reallocate mechanics from enterprise garages to general fund garages, reducing the need to outsource high cost general fund work.

Another cost-cutting initiative is training.

We lost a great deal of experience this past year through retirements.

Our goal is to expedite the development of our entry and junior level mechanics.

And finally, we plan to transition to paperless garages by issuing tablet PCs to our mechanics.

The tablets will be used to process work orders.

They'll provide mechanics with instant access to repair and diagnostic information, and they'll be capable of translating information for our non-English speaking employees.

Next slide.

Moving to expenditures, all our operating expenses are funded by the Fleet Management Revolving Fund.

In the totals role of the table, you'll see a fiscal year 27 budget request of 113.7 million dollars, which is 2.8% more than current year.

This budget is expected to provide for all labor, supplies, services, and fuel necessary to operate and maintain the city fleet.

Next slide, please.

This table provides a budget history and proposed spending plan for our department programs.

Worth noting is that we've reduced the number of programs from eight to two.

This change in program count was prompted by our department reorganization and discussions with EY.