Welcome to the June 2nd, 2026 Budget and Fiscal Affairs Committee.

I am Sally Alcorn Chair, and I am joined today by Mayor Pro Tem Martha Castax Tatum, Vice Mayor Pro Tem Amy Peck, Councilmember Joaquin Martinez, Councilmember Twilight Carter, Councilmember and Vice Chair Mario Castillo, Councilmember Joe Panzarella, Councilmember Julian Ramirez, and staff from Councilmember Tarsha Jackson, Councilmember Mary Nana Huffman, Councilmember Tiffany Thomas, and that is it.

And Councilmember Pollard has staff here too.

We will begin this meeting with the monthly financial report.

So I'll invite the controller's office, represented by Will Jones and Melissa Dubowski, Director of the Finance Department.

We also have Councilmember Willie Davis in the horseshoe.

So the floor is yours.

Can we lay it down?

Yeah.

That's good.

All right.

Uh good morning, madam chair and members of the committee.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide the monthly financial report for the period ending April.

Um, for the general fund, the controller's office is projecting an ending fund balance of 276.5 million or 10.4% of expenditures less debt service and pay as you go for FY26.

This is 23.5 million lower than the projection of the finance department.

The difference is due to lower revenue projections than the finance department.

Based on our current projections, the fund balance will be approximately 77.3 million above the city's target of holding 7.5% of total expenditures, including debt service and pay as you go.

Based on our current projections, the fund balance will be approximately 76.9 million above the city's.

Turning to the enterprise funds, we are projecting no changes from previous months amount in the aviation combined utility system convention entertainment and stormwater funds and the dedicated drainage street uh renewal funds for the commercial and paper bonds.

Um the city's practice has been to maintain no more than 20 percent of the total outstanding debt for each type of debt and a variable rate structure.

As of April 30th, all outstanding debt is within that threshold.

Uh thank you very much, and that concludes my report.

Thank you.

I do want to welcome Councilmember Tarsha Jackson to the horseshoe colleagues.

There was a uh monthly financial report delivered to everyone.

It's the newest one is not online.

We're seeing so um there are some around if you are looking for it.

Go ahead.

Okay, good morning.

This is the 10 plus two financial report for the period ending April 30th, 2026.

Fiscal year 26 projections are based on 10 months of actual results and two months of projections.

There aren't very many changes this month since we uh went through the general appropriations process last month.

Um so the major change, or it's not even a very major change, but the only change that we're projecting in the general fund is on the revenue side of a hundred thousand dollar change, um, which is a variance from the prior month projection due to an increase of sale of capital assets to reflect higher than anticipated land sales.

Um for sales tax, we're not making any changes to sales tax at this point, but um just to give an update for uh the month of March receipts.

Uh we received 89.2 million dollars, which is 4.47% higher than the same period last year, and about uh $7.9 million higher than budget.

Um, we'll continue to monitor sales tax as it is a volatile source of revenue.

Um, in order to meet the current estimate of 920 million, the remaining periods need to come in about three percent below prior year.

So we still think that the projection is a little conservative, but again, we'll continue to monitor.

Um, on the expenditure side, the expenditure projection remains unchanged compared to the previous month.

Uh so together with the small change on revenue for sale of capital assets, we're currently projecting the ending fund balance to be 300 million dollars, which is again 100,000 higher than the previous month and represents 11.3 percent of estimated expenditures, not including debt service and pay as you go.

Um, again, uh concurring with the controller's office, we're not projecting any changes to the enterprise special revenue uh or other funds, and that concludes my report for this month.

Thank you very much for your report.

Not much changing in this month's report, so really appreciate your attention to it.

Uh, I did want to just um I don't see anyone in the queue, but I did want to just uh um director, if you would talk a little bit about item, um it'll be item 14 tomorrow, the annual budget.

I know we'll be just actually voting on it next week, but uh there's several things within that.

There's the reorganizing solid waste within um public works, amendings chapter amending chapters nine and two related to solid waste and public works, establishing an admin fee for solid works, authorizing the right-of-way fee in the C US and making the transfers.

Just that the different facets will all be incorporated in the budget ordinance, correct?

Sure.

So all of that will be in the budget ordinance.

Um there's several items on council tomorrow.

So it's the budget ordinance.

We have something called the continuing appropriations item, um, which is related to the budget, then we have three items related to the LGCs of the city that will authorize the transfer funds to those LGCs, and then we have the master bond ordinance that's related.

So all those items are related to the budget.

Um tomorrow the plan is to have the public hearing to get additional public input.

Um that's at nine o'clock tomorrow morning on the budget.

Um, and then the plan is to have the council members offer your amendments on the table and then tag all of the budget-related items so that we can come back the following week to discuss the amendments in full and take action on the vote on the 10th.

Great, thank you very much.

Councilmember Ramirez.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for both for the presentation.

Just looking at the projections from both of you, finance and controller, and they're about 23 and a half million apart.

Uh, where where do you how would you describe or why would you describe there's a difference there?

Um, Director Dabowski.

Um it's primarily related to uh we're pretty much in line with sales tax at this point.

It's primarily related to the intergovernmental, which has to do with the TURS municipal service charge.

Um I think that's about 16 million dollars of the 23 million.

If I'm not yeah, that's correct.

That's that's the primary reason, and we we're working with the with the team just to get a better understanding of the projection.

So maybe next month or so we'll we'll be ready to adjust our projection, but that's the primary difference.

All right, in that uh higher than anticipated in incremental collections, um, is that just because values have increased or is it related to the municipal services fee?

Um so um and uh Gwen Tillitson and Jennifer Kurler and her team could probably give you a more detailed response, but um the way that the municipal service charge is calculated uh relates to looking at um property valuation for those TERS.

In the past, the fee has been calculated based on a 2017 value, and they're bringing those values not fully current to sort of minimize um easing in any changes to the fee, but bringing them up to I think a tax year 21 figure in the way they calculated those.

And as the individual TERS budgets are have been coming to council over the last couple months, um that charge the the recalculation of that charge is included in all of those TERS budgets.

Um, so it's included on the expenditure side and their budgets, and now we're reflecting the revenue side on the general fund.

All right, and looking at the month-to-month breakdown page five, it shows that in March there was an increase due to higher incremental collections, the 16 million figure you were talking about.

Is that the effect of moving to using the the 2021 uh values?

Is that what we're talking about there?

Yes.

All right, thank you.

I have had some questions on the municipal services fee calculations, and and I was just briefly whispering to the mayor pro tem something we should probably delve into a little bit more, um, perhaps in economic development or another VFA or joint or however we want to do it.

But I think there are some questions about about um how that fee is calculated.

Sure.

Yeah, and I think um Gwen and her team could uh really do a deep dive on that.

Um, they have uh um a report from the consultant that helped them formulate the calculation initially, um, and I'm sure they'd be happy to walk you through that.

Great.

Councilmember Maris.

I just uh once again would say that I'd love to see a copy of that report that has been referred to.

Uh I don't think it's been released to council and it's been completed for a number of months now.

Thank you.

I'd like to welcome Councilmember Tiffany Thomas to the horseshoe.

And I don't see anyone else in the queue, so thank you very much.

And we will move on to the next agenda item, which is the upcoming financial transactions by finance director Melissa Dubowski.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay, um, I'm here this morning to present the upcoming financial transactions on behalf of the finance working group.

Um, so this month um we have two items to go over.

Uh one for the general obligation, so this relates to the tax or never tax and revenue anticipation notes, series 2026, and then for the combined utility system uh commercial paper expansion program, we'd like to lay out.

So on slide three for the tax on revenue anticipation notes, so we call this the trans, sometimes you hear it referred to.

Um, this is our annual note sale that we do uh every year, you may remember where we do a pricing and then come down to city council to have city council approve the terms of the pricing.

So a little bit about background on why it's necessary is that the trans program helps us manage our working capital needs throughout the year.

There's a timing difference in the city's fiscal year between when we collect the bulk of our revenues, which are property taxes, which come sort of all in sort of a big spike, usually in December, January, February, and our expenditures throughout the year are fairly even since most of our expenditures are payroll related.

So, since we uh collect most of our revenue during that December, January, February time frame, uh we do uh get to a low point in our cash uh towards the December time of year.

Um, and so that's where we uh initiate the trans borrowing, which is a short-term borrowing.

Um last year we did it in October, and it's important to close on that transaction before we get to our low point in cash.

Um, so going through this process is a efficient and cost-effective way to address this temporary cash shortfall.

Um, we work in consultation with the controller's office to do a competitive process.

Like I mentioned, we do an auction upstairs in their conference room and then come down to city council to present those results on the purchasers of the notes.

Um, so on slide four, just going through next steps.

Um, we are still calculating the total size of the trans.

Uh, once we complete those calculations, we will present uh RCA to City Council in July, and we'll conduct that competitive sale process in August.

Uh the results will then be uh presented to city council as we do annually, and we plan to close on the transaction in August.

It's important to note that we do have to repay this short-term borrowing before the end of the fiscal year.

So, again, it's a short-term borrowing that we do uh in alignment with our annual process.

So moving on to the next item.

This is the combined utilities system variable rate exposure.

So this gives you a snapshot of all the commercial paper and variable rate demand bonds that the combined utilities system currently has.

The commercial paper program currently is uh sits at about one billion dollars, and you see that in the top box series B1 through B7, and this lays out the size of each commercial paper program and the bank that's our partner on those programs.

Um, these programs provide um interim liquidity for us to complete our capital improvement plan.

So we borrow on a short-term basis before we ultimately fix out that debt into long-term fixed rate bonds.

So moving on to slide six.

What we're proposing to do with the commercial paper expansion.

Um again, this is used for to implement the capital improvement plan.

And we do have to have uh these commercial paper programs in place not only to draw on so we can pay our invoices, but also to appropriate contracts against them.

Um so as we're moving forward with additional projects with the combined utilities system with the East Plant with the consent decree, we do need to increase our financing mechanisms in order to be able to initiate those projects, enter into those contracts, pay the invoices so we can continue on with implementing DCIP.

So we need to uh increase this, these lines so that we can continue on with those programs.

So on site seven, uh we are moving forward.

Can you have her repeat that can you repeat that last statement one more time?

Sure.

So uh the need for this commercial paper program is to, I don't know if I want to repeat it exactly, but the need for the commercial paper program is to continue on with implementing the CIP.

So the CIP for the combined utility system, as you know, is large.

It has the East Plan, it has consent decree projects and others, right?

There's a lot in the CIP.

Those are some highlights.

And so in order to implement that CIP, we have to have appropriation capacity in place so that we can let contracts against appropriation capacity, so that we can enter into contracts to get the work uh going and started, and then we'll use the commercial paper lines to also pay our invoices for those projects.

So we draw on the commercial paper lines to pay the invoices.

Ultimately, usually annually, we do a bond issuance where we refund the commercial paper into long-term fixed rate debt.

So since we're uh entering into all of these large capital improvements we're doing, we don't have enough commercial paper capacity to enter into all these large projects.

So we're doing a combination of things, right?

Like we've talked about the loans from the Texas Water Development Board, that helps, the WIFIA financing, that helps.

We also need to expand our commercial paper program.

So what we're proposing to do is to add an additional 500 million dollars of capacity to the commercial paper program.

So the finance working group um worked together in April to issue a request for term sheets out to our pool of qualified banks that provide us liquidity.

Um and we did select um uh one of those um from the proposals that we got, they were evaluated by the finance working group.

And again, for a reminder, the finance working group includes the finance department, the controller's office.

In this case, since we're talking about the utility, the public works department, legal, and then we have outside financial advisors and outside bond council that assists us.

So we evaluated the proposals and the working group recommends to select Morgan Stanley as the commercial paper provider for 500 million dollars.

Uh, that will initially be extendable commercial paper, which allows us to appropriate against and then ultimately will become commercial paper we can draw against to pay the invoices.

So, based on the recommendation from the working group, we will be uh bringing an RCA to council in July so that we can move forward with um extending that program.

That concludes my presentation.

Thank you.

Director, not related to these specific um transactions, but on the administrative trash fee that will generate the 20 some million dollars.

Is our plan to borrow uh against that for um solid waste operations?

We can that's um a little bit separate from what's being contemplated here, but we certainly can because those revenues become revenues of the combined utility system, and when we issue debt from the combined utility system, they're called revenue bonds.

So it's basically based on the fees and the charges and the revenue that we receive, we can issue debt against that to leverage um you know capital purchases up front.

Got it.

Thank you.

Any other questions on these transactions?

Okay, seeing none, thank you very much for your presentation.

Okay, thank you.

And we do have a couple public speakers for these uh first two items on our agenda the monthly financial report and the upcoming financial transactions.

We have Doug Smith first.

Great to see you, Doug.

Thanks for coming.

Just one comment.

I find it interesting that this late in the fiscal year, the uh finance department and controller are still $23 million dollars apart as far as what the uh balance is gonna be.

They explained what it is, and it sounds like it'll get fixed next month, but it's still is difficult to understand that.

Uh relative to the commercial paper that Melissa just talked about, you know, I've been here uh about the DDSRF and the fact that they sit there with half a billion dollars at the end of the year.

And I think one of the reasons they said that was because they have contracts that they have to uh reserve money for.

My comment is uh, and I've thought about this for a long time, they have the ability to issue commercial paper because they know uh that they're going to be getting money on a monthly basis uh from the water from the bills that we pay uh our water bills that we pay, and I don't understand the the reason that they've given that um we need to reserve the funds for contracts we've entered into, I don't think is a is a valid argument.

And I think as we look into that, we can talk to them about that.

And my feeling is they should be ending the year with very little money unspent since there's so much to do, and you know I've mentioned this month after month, so and finally uh on page 14 of the uh monthly financial report under the hotel occupancy and tax and civic parking, uh they show that uh as of April 30th, 2026 they had uh they did refunding bonds in the amount of about a billion three hundred thousand dollars, and as of April 30th, 2025, total bonds outstanding were only five hundred and sixteen million dollars.

And if you're going to refund bonds, if you're gonna issue refunding bonds, you have to be refunding something that was outstanding, and I don't understand how they can only have had a 500, 500 million outstanding and refunded a billion three.

Uh and I'm sure there's an explanation, but it's just we'll get we'll get you something on that.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, Doug, for being here and appreciate your comments and and we are gonna we're we're gonna satisfy you one day on that ending fund balance, I promise.

And uh someday I'm gonna have you sit down with Samir for like I'm gonna lock you two in a room.

Um, okay.

Uh next we have Dominic Mazat.

Okay.

Okay.

Sound like Masak.

I mean the boardroom.

I mean, excuse me, the hall.

Okay, Chambers.

Okay, um, six to the red lines over here.

Is that a good trip?

Speaking of metro, I think I mentioned last time using the the new cars as a pool for people like can ride Metro to a meeting or whatever instead of using a car.

Also, too, you have the tunnel system, people could walk in downtown without getting into the heat.

Also, too, the community connector is free to call it up.

So those are some ways that we that the city can reduce its cost by um using other means of transportation.

My concern about all this is number one, we have the uh public hearing at the at the city council tomorrow, tomorrow morning.

I think there needs to be more meetings.

I think Mario, you you're you're on to this when you had the night court, the city council having the that means I think we could have had some at night with with some of the council members throughout the city.

Um I mean you can have more than one uh public hearing on a on an issue.

Uh second of all, uh I know that the comproller had had his little booth out here and Charlie Kirk, and he he was he's challenging uh the budget, which is his prerogative.

I do agree with that.

Um, and my thing is my feeling the city with the way things are done with all these uh you know, you got the budget and then you get these other other budgets like the airport and the utility things and all the kind of thing is the city budget is like the square root of negative one or the small italic I or J.

It's irrational.

I've read the budget, I can't figure out heads and tails from it.

Also, too, if if a turd or the airport or something else goes belly up, gets to the back stop here.

So I really think if you don't have a budget, the city cannot operate, the city cannot operate in a deficit.

Those are things in the those are in the state constitution and in the city charter.

So I think we need to have as much transparency as possible.

I think we need to start with with the budget, like in February.

Like right now, Metro starting their budget for uh October, why can't we start early?

I mean, uh and get people in people involved and don't have it at, you know, the more people the more let's put it this way.

I think the more government is transparent, the more government, in this case the horse in the city will be trusted.

And uh if you'd have to do things differently, that's fine.

And I think too things like the change with the uh putting uh trash collection within the water department, I think that needs to be go go through a social justice thing and empowerment impact statement and the whole nine yards.

And with that, I'm gonna send it back to you, uh, Sally.

Thank you so much, Dominic.

Um, Councilmember Ramirez.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Dominic.

Your your point about starting the public engagement process on the budget earlier, I think is is well taken.

I mean, typically the engagement doesn't really start until the budget is released.

But if you're talking about setting priorities and what should be in it, that process to your point really should start earlier than when it's released.

So I agree with you on that.

Yeah, I appreciate that that comment too.

We did we did we have been really trying to increase public engagement.

I know council member my vice chair Mario Castillo and I had one virtual evening meeting.

Um there's a meeting tonight, I think, in sunny side.

Um, tomorrow.

Oh, I'm sorry, tonight.

Third ward tonight, sunny side tomorrow, to additional meetings, evening meetings on the budget.

Um, you know, I do the budget survey, which we're about to talk about, but yeah, more engagement is always better, and really more time.

And more time.

Okay, got it.

Thank you.

We did build in an extra week, that's what we've been able to get.

Two extra weeks.

So, we've got work to do.

We've got work to do.

Thank you.

With it, thank you.

Thank you, Dominic.

Really appreciate it.

Like to welcome my colleague, Councilmember Alejandra Salinas to the horseshoe.

And we will move now to our next agenda item.

And I am thrilled to have my friends and partners at Rice Kinder Institute.

We have Dan Potter, I know, who is the director of the Kinder Institute, Houston Population Research Center, as well as research analyst Dan Simberger.

You know, colleagues, I started this when I first got elected, and it was like a little Google form, you know, that we created in our office, and you know, we we got as much traction off of that as we could, but then I I've hit the big time when when the Kinder Institute decided to help me out because it's so much better than my my surveys that we started off with that really just ask people's priorities.

Um I will start by saying this wasn't scientifically distributed, like they're like they're also gonna talk about the Kinder Houston area survey, which is scientific and brainy, and they do that all the right way.

Our our budget survey is just sent to whoever you guys help me get it out, I get it out, everybody you know that I talk to tries to get it out.

And and um, that's just whoever fills it out.

So I just want to make that clear, but um the floor is yours, and I'm I'm really grateful for your help.

They do not charge me anything or the city anything for this, so I'm very, very grateful for this um this contribution.

Excellent.

Well, thank you, Sally, so much for the opportunity to be here this morning, and thank you uh uh, all of the council uh members this morning for us to be able to join and share with you both the results for the budget survey as Sally was mentioning, as well as our 45th annual Kendra Houston Area Survey.

So, real quick, in case you are not familiar with the Kinder Institute, um, are we driving the slides or is there somebody else driving the slides?

Perfect.

Next slide.

Um, so uh at the Kinder Institute, we have our uh mission of improving lives through data research engagement and action, and really what that looks like is this morning is this opportunity to not just have our data and information sitting on shelves, but getting shared with decision makers and people that can take that information and use it.

And so we appreciate this opportunity.

Uh, and we have that mission with a vision for a prosperity for all.

And what that means for us is we know Houston is an incredibly prosperous area, one of the most prosperous in the entire country, but we also know that that prosperity is not shared among all of its members right now.

And so, how do we develop a future Houston that continues to be prosperous, grows in its prosperity, but also opens up for more opportunities for others to share in that prosperity.

And so, again, thank you for the opportunity for us to be able to working working with you all on that.

Next slide.

Um, and so uh at the Kinder Institute, we have five different research centers uh focused on things like education, population, community, health, economic mobility, and housing.

This is to say that our research touches major sectors that involve uh life here in the Houston area, and we are definitely interested in making sure that our research is not done in silos, but rather that we have research that is intersecting.

After all, we were talking about the challenges that the Houston area faces.

We're talking about systemic structural challenges.

You cannot fix those with singular siloed pieces of research.

And so uh we are uh always looking to collaborate and integrate uh and uh look at these questions across different uh sectors here.

And so that is the Kinder Institute.

I now want to hand this over to Dylan Simberger, my colleague here, to talk about what you have found this year with our your two cents budget survey.

Cool.

Uh yeah, uh this is working, I think.

Yep, cool, awesome.

Thank you, everyone.

Uh thank you for having me here.

I'm uh Dylan Simberger, I'm a research analyst at the Houston Population Research Center at the Kinder Institute.

And just as Dan said, just gonna talk to you a little bit about the uh findings we found from the your two cents budget survey this year.

Uh next slide, please.

Uh so just a little bit about an overview of the survey that we conducted.

We conducted it from April 14th to May 27th and received about 920 responses.

Again, as Sally said, uh, this is a uh convenient sample of city residents uh that's participating in an open access survey.

So pretty much what that means is if you happened upon the link or a QR code and you were able to click that link or scan that QR code, you were able to get into that survey and let your voice be heard.

Um we invited participants to participate at these uh or in the survey through meetings, social media, and also through some word of mouth as well.

And a big shout out to Councilmember Alcorn here for taking on those data collection efforts because that was not us, that was all Council Member Al Corney.

So thank you very much for uh helping us collect this data uh for us to analyze.

Everybody, yeah, yeah.

Uh so a little bit about uh oh, if we could go back just really quickly.

Uh so the survey asked residents about their preferences just for city spending on some major programs and services, public safety services, and then some uh community programs and services as well.

And then we also asked about willingness to support increased taxes and fees to improve some city services as well.

Next slide.

So here's a look at our respondents by city council district.

Uh, we were able to get their location just by asking them what city council district they live in and giving them the who is my council member web page to assist them in that.

Uh just the main point here is we were able to hear from someone everywhere.

Um there is uh we were able to hear from someone in every city council district, and you can see that distribution over there to the right.

Um, next slide, please.

So the first thing we asked people about, Doug, you gotta work on Alice out there.

So the first thing we asked respondents about were uh major provided programs and services.

And so we asked uh respondents if they wanted to see the city spend more, spend less, or spend about the same on 13 categories of programs and services.

And so that was things like addressing homelessness, economic and workforce development, the Houston police department, as well as infrastructure.

Uh next slide, please.

And so we when we look at the top five uh programs and services that have the highest level of support for increased spending.

Far away, we saw that it was infrastructure, right?

About eight in 10 respondents said they wanted to see more spending on infrastructure, and we really didn't see anyone saying that they wanted to see less spending.

Uh we also saw that nearly six in ten wanted to see more spending on solid waste management as well as programs addressing homelessness.

Uh, next slide, please.

Uh then we also looked at the flip side.

We looked at the top five programs and services that have the highest levels of support for decreased spending.

And so what we found there was about one in four respondents said that the city should spend less on the Houston Police Department.

And then we also had one about one in five said the city should spend less on the Houston Fire Department, economic and workforce development, as well as housing programs.

Uh, next slide, please.

And then, of course, we know that the city's grappling with some budget constraints this year, and so we know we needed respondents to grapple with these constraints.

And so after we asked them how uh they wanted to how respondents wanted to see the city spend, we also asked them if they would be okay with the city spending less on certain programs and services.

So it's kind of a if a push comes to shove moment, would you be okay with spending less on these services?

And so what we found here is again infrastructure seemed to be kind of off the table uh for residents.

Uh 96% of uh of respondents said that they wanted to see the city spend uh more or about the same, and only 10% when asked if they would be okay with spending less said that they would be okay with that.

Uh but then there was one service uh that most respondents were okay with decreased spending for, and that was economic and workforce development, where seven in ten uh respondents said that uh they were okay with spending less on economic and workforce development.

So just to stop you there for a second.

Everybody wanted everybody wants us.

This happened last year, too.

Everybody wants to spend more on everything.

I mean, let me be clear about that.

Everybody wants to spend more on public safety, more on infrastructure, more on economic, but they just want to spend explain like the nuance there.

Because I don't want it to be like people don't want us to spend money on this stuff.

It's just they want us to spend it.

They but they're okay with maybe if you have to decrease one area.

We're learning as we're going, right?

It's Sally, and so last year, exactly to your point.

Everybody said, hey, spend the same or more, and really more on everything.

And of course, you all know your own budget just doesn't allow for that.

And so this year, in addition to asking the question of spend more, spend less, or spend about the same, we we again got to that point, like, okay, the budget for the city is really needing us to make some really hard decisions.

And so if we had to cut somewhere, would you be okay?

In other words, could you live with us cutting the budget in certain look certain services and programmings?

And so the left column in the table we're looking at right now, this is a reaffirmation.

People want you spending more, people want you to spend in the same as you have been in the past on these different services.

Again, 70% on economic workforce, 90% on parks and green space, 75%, 79% on library services spend the same or more.

But if you had to start cutting services somewhere, this is where you saw some people going, okay, look, again, push comes to shove, fine.

Economic mobility stuff, cool.

Uh, we see a little bit of that, like 50-50 coin flip barrel parks and recreation, but again, that's also one of your highest percent of people saying, hey, do not really touch that budget at the end of the day.

If you had to, okay, fine.

And so, you know, for us when we look at this, there's sort of this long-term residents continue to want to see investments being made in the city in the city, and obviously so.

There's not really a long-term solution here in terms of like I can just constantly take from certain programming.

And again, part of this is just people do not want to see this happen.

It's if it had to, here would be what people would be comfortable with.

And then to go back to one of the things Dylan shared earlier, infrastructure's off the table.

People are not interested in seeing those things.

Got it, very important.

Thank you for doing that a little bit deeper dive into that.

You can go on.

Yeah, yeah.

Now we can go to the next slide, okay.

Can I have a question on that?

Sorry.

Sure, go ahead.

I don't know if my button worked or not.

Um, could you just dive a little bit deeper into what infrastructure means here?

Because that can be a lot of things.

That's transportation, that's drainage, that's housing.

What is infrastructure mean in this survey?

Yeah, so um, in the survey, we gave people like an EG uh next to infrastructure.

Um, and so that was things like roads, that was things like better drainage and water pipes, electric grid, things like that.

But also, you know, in our other survey work when we asked people about infrastructure and we asked what they'd like to see improvements in infrastructure on, that's what we hear as well.

We hear things like better roads, we see your better drainage, better water pipes, better electric grid, things like that.

Uh next slide, please.

Cool.

And so the next thing we asked our uh respondents about was public safety services, and so uh knowing that uh there's not really much we can do about less spending on public safety, we said the suppose the city was going to spend more on public safety, and so would you like to city would you like to see the city spend a lot more, a little more, or about the same on uh 10 different categories of public safety services?

And so that was things like emergency medical services, uh police investigations and patrol, as well as traffic enforcement.

Uh next slide.

And so what we learned here um is if more were to get spent on public safety, uh, these are the top five uh that respondents wanted to see either a lot or a little more spent on.

So seven in ten respondents want to see more spent on mental health, homeless, mental health, and homelessness programs so about three and ten want to see a lot more spent on those programs and another four and ten want to see a little more spent uh coming up after that we had police investigations and patrols where about three and ten wanted to see a lot more spent there and then another three and ten wanted a little more spent next slide please uh the next thing we asked respondents about was about um if they would be willing to support increased taxes or fees uh or implementing a fee to improve services and so we asked about things like garbage parks and recreation addressing homelessness public safety as well as library services uh and the main thing we learned here is there are about two and three respondents said they would emplo uh they would support a garbage fee um but there were really a lot lower or there were lower levels of support among other fees so uh garbage fee was the only uh fee that kind of passed uh majority level of support whereas the other ones uh the other fees kind of uh did never reached above uh majority level of support uh next slide please and so uh after uh respondents told us uh if they would support a garbage fee or not uh if you said yes I would support a garbage fee we asked you how much of a garbage fee would you support and so what we found here was about half of respondents would pay uh five dollars for a garbage pee or garbage fee so about uh that seemed to be the sweet spot five dollars seemed to be about the sweet spot for about half of respondents and then we really saw lower levels of support uh once you reach those higher dollar values um so five again five dollars a month seemed to be about the sweet spot for half residents in terms of the garbage fee that they would pay uh next slide please and so in summary kind of what we learned from this survey was infrastructure is definitely a priority for residents uh they want to see more spending on it they do not want to see less spending and they definitely do they do not seem to want to tolerate cuts to infrastructure as well.

There was also a lot of support for uh public safety investments that was geared towards mental health services as well as addressing homelessness with police patrols and investigations coming behind that.

And then also we saw that respondents were really not okay with uh weren't weren't really okay with budget cuts except to only very few city programs and services again that 50% uh number that people were okay with spending less on parks and recreation 90% initially told us that they wanted to spend more about the same so these are not cuts that people want it's just what they would be able to tolerate right um and then finally we saw uh as we just went over we saw some openness to paying for improved garbage services but that was really only uh about two and three said they would support a garbage fee but that was really only around the lowest fee amount so again five dollars a month was about the sweet spot for about half of residents or respondents there.

Uh so with that I'm gonna hand it over to Dan to talk a little bit about that.

I'm gonna pause here and answer some questions first about that.

Thank you very much for um for going through this with us I'll start with Vice Mayor Pro Tempeck.

Thank you Chair and thank you both for this councilmember Alcorn thank you for doing this every year I think as a district council member you know I think I hope that have a good pulse on what's happening in district A but to hear citywide what people are wanting it's very helpful so just wanted to say thank you for doing the survey sure it's it they want infrastructure they want infrastructure they want infrastructure.

Thank you madam chair I just want to say that the um survey results align with the hood annual action plan particularly around um housing homelessness uh the housing department led two meetings and that's how we um outline our fifty million dollar allocation and it's it's very similar um individuals were also interested in leveraging uh C D BG dollars for a more public facility so it aligns with the park space um health services there was a tremendous amount of support on making sure that those struggling with homelessness and or job readiness had the funding so this aligns in multiple spaces so I want to thank y'all for getting this in front of you and then Doug you got to get back on your job we only got 23 people doing the uh survey so you got to get on your job thank you.

So I I did hear some rumblings on the sample sizes from different districts and I do just want to say that go back to what we started with.

This is an open access survey, and so if you saw your district and weren't pleased with the numbers you were seeing.

Let us know.

We are happy to work with you to figure out how do we get this survey into more people.

So you know, connect with Sally, Sally can help make sure we're getting folks involved.

We appreciate everybody's help and getting that thing shoved out.

And so, you know, thank you so much for helping this survey find its way to to different people, and uh let us know how we can help support that effort moving forward for sure.

Thank you.

Councilmember Davis.

Thank you, madam chair.

Um, great job in pushing this out there on the survey.

Uh and and I think you answered that in the closing.

I was just wondering about the surveys that were done by districts.

Um that process, of course, you saw some larger than others, and I was just questioning about how that process worked.

Did you, you know, in terms of each district, the 11 districts.

So how did you use that process?

Was it like a call doing the daytime or evening, or what what did what did you how did you go about that?

I think that's more of the next survey that they reach out.

This one was like what it what do y'all call it?

You have the name for it.

It's a we convenience sample.

Convenience, it's a convenience.

If you find it convenient, and there's also some good information in the in the appendix, colleagues on by breaks things down by council district.

Um, some a deeper dive into all this.

Further, I have um so many great comments.

I get the open-ended comments, and we're gonna put those in some kind of format.

Uh my office is for everybody to read a lot of instructive.

I mean, it's hard to just answer yes, no, more or less, but when people have time to write down what they want, I find that to be a really helpful part of the survey.

So I know I've been reading out some of those during pop off, but I'll assemble those um with no names attached and and let everybody know kind of where how that how that kind of broke down with the comments.

But appreciate your question.

I think in the next survey they talk about that's what that they can go through how they contact people.

Thank you.

Um, Councilmember Martinez.

Thank you, Chair.

I definitely want to first first and foremost lift lift you up for continuing to do the survey and then for the kinders to pick it up as well.

Um, for the most part, I would say that uh a lot of the the responses are in alignment with the district I as well.

Um, I do want to talk about the uh garbage fee.

Um, although we're that's not what we're doing this year.

I think the pathway towards a garbage fee is something that folks have been wanting to see happen as well.

Um, as long as there isn't uh better service as well uh with that comes along with it.

So it's good to see that uh right now that's probably the only one that they're interested in in uh you know paying a fee for, but we definitely need to talk more about just fees in general as we had our budget workshops.

There are several departments that are saying they haven't increased fees.

For example, one that I've was uh surprised surprisingly uh uh I didn't know that we were doing weddings at the municipal courts, and we charge a hundred dollars.

Um with the increase in in uh pay and then having folks to now work maybe those Saturdays or during the week, we really need to start looking at uh what that increase looks like.

And I think most departments probably have some kind of fee structure that they've been talking about for at least 10 years, maybe.

Um the other one that I want to talk about, and then you know, Councilmember Thomas mentioned uh CDBG funding.

Uh I'm not sure if there's a way where we can in this survey, uh we can start identifying ways because again, uh, you know, those are federal dollars, and then we get some some state dollars when it comes to mental health to some extent, but to identify ways where um if those are priorities, how do we uh, and maybe the afterwards, like how do we take action to address those at our state uh house or at the federal legislative uh with our Congress uh folks as well, because again, uh the city can't continue to do everything.

You know, we talk about homelessness, it is in our front yard and backyard, but quite frankly, the city of Houston shouldn't be doing this alone.

Um I've had conversations with folks about what is uh Harris County Hospital District, what is their responsibility with this as well?

So it would be good to kind of as we're educating folks about what this budget looks like and what other importance uh or where their priorities are, how do we get to that in end goal, which it's gonna take more than just the city as well.

Thank you for that.

Councilmember Flickinger, thank you.

And kind of follow-up on one councilman Martinez's comment.

Um, is this distributed to our state reps and state senators?

Anyone know?

I'm gonna put that on my to-do list next year.

We send it out to all the super neighborhoods, all the civic clubs, we w get it to mainly city folk, but I mean, I think it'd be great if they got the results as well.

And then the other question I had is I I understand this is just access, and whoever sees it can fill it out.

Is there any way to have it where it towards more representative of what the city looks like?

I mean, obviously, I look at district C here, they're represented without a doubt.

I wish mine was represented as much as they are, but I didn't know if there's a way to kind of massage the numbers to where you can say, okay, these are the results we got.

This is what the city actually looks like.

Had it been an equal participation, this is probably what the results would have looked like.

Yeah, there are ways in which we could explore that.

Um, some of them come with a price tag, which is always a limitation in terms of how you can hear from different populations.

Part of it is also done statistically, which is to say applying sampling weights to help to adjust for uh overrepresentation of older adults and underrepresentation of younger adults, wanting to uh make sure that we've got a more prevalent uh representation of uh Hispanic or black residents as opposed to white residents or Asian residents, and um using those kind of different mechanisms.

Um drawing the sample is a really important piece of that, but also so are the numbers.

And so, to your point, like with district C, really, really good turnout on this year's uh survey.

And so if we were able to find that kind of turnout across all different districts, it gives us a lot more statistical power to be able to start using the data to to adjust it to make sure it is more reflective, as opposed to sort of this is who we heard from, period.

I obviously the greater number of responses, the better the data.

Uh so anyway, I I love this whole thing.

Thank you, Sally for doing this.

That's not lost on me.

Um, but like you said, uh to have a better representation that that takes money.

So uh thank you for the work.

Sure.

Um, okay.

Thank you all, and thank you to everyone.

Even if you had low participation, I am so grateful to my colleagues for pushing it out.

Uh I do think it's instructive and and uh really appreciate uh Rice's work on it.

And now we will move on.

If any of you were at the Kinder area uh kinder annual survey lunch, you saw Dan Potter on parade.

Man, it was amazing.

He was he was just he lit up the room and was so excited about this survey.

This is the real deal.

This is the real survey that really breaks down and gets a good statistical sample from across not just Harris County, but I think Fort Bend at Montgomery now.

Um, and obviously the 45th year uh tells us a lot.

So with that, um Dan, I'll the floor is yours.

Wow, thank you for that.

That tea up there.

And uh now now I feel like I have to put on a a bigger uh thing.

But actually, if anybody saw the luncheon, I will do my best not to quite get to preacher mode again.

Um, and so uh yes, thank you all again so much for this opportunity to share with you the results from our Kendrick Houston area survey.

Uh, this is our 45th annual survey uh year of doing this, um, and that makes it the largest, longest-running survey of its kind in the country.

There is no other city that has this kind of data at their fingertips, and so this is such a great benefit to the Houston area to be able to look at both where we are, where we were, where we are, and using that information to understand where we are going.

And so this year's report focused on three big things the economy, the environment, the importance of social connections.

So let's talk a little bit about what we found on these things.

So when it comes to the oh, real fast about the survey.

Uh so the Greater Houston Community Panel is the mechanism we use to conduct the Kinder Houston area survey, in that uh we heard from almost 9,000 residents living in Fort Bend, Harris, and Montgomery counties.

This includes the city of Houston.

Uh, we are following the same adults over time, and so we're gonna look at some things this year that look that show some change happening over time, and so because we are following the same people over time, that change is signaling something different in the way that people are thinking and experiencing life here in the Houston area.

And then going back to the comment made earlier, uh, one of the ways in which we hear from a representative sample of respondents across these counties is using incentives to make sure that we're connecting with people uh uh throughout the year.

So, Grandpa Houston Community Panel is our mechanism for this year's data.

Uh, in terms of results, uh, first our key takeaway, we are much more concerned.

Uh uh, next slide.

Uh, we are much more concerned about the economy than we have in the past.

And so let's look at some data points on that.

First, uh, next slide.

Um, we can look at jobs and job optimism.

So, over the last decade, uh, you've typically had somewhere between about 60 and 70 percent of residents saying that they felt like jobs in the Houston area were either good or excellent.

And what we saw this past year was the single largest drop we have ever detected in Fort Bend and Montgomery County in that optimism, and the large second largest drop we've ever detected in Harris County, behind only the 1982-83 oil crisis that we experienced.

A 29 percentage point decrease.

Um, and just to be clear, while this is about perceptions, we can look at the numbers behind this when it comes to thinking about jobs.

The Houston area in 2025 was projected to add 70,000 jobs.

We added less than 20,000 jobs, and so while these are perceptions, these perceptions are connected to folks' reality.

In addition to people's salary on our on our uh job situation, next slide, we also asked folks to talk to us about what they thought the biggest problem was, and the economy emerged as the biggest problem facing the Houston area.

This was up significantly over past years, with about one in four residents identifying it as the biggest problem.

We of course had other problems that were listed uh lifted forward, including crime and safety, cost of housing, as well as traffic.

Uh, next slide.

Um, in addition to people's concerns about the economy, we also have concerns about the environment.

And this is an interesting one because you know, with 2024, as you all are fully aware, we were experiencing it seemed like natural disaster on a weekly basis.

Uh 2025 was relatively calm, and so we wanted to know if the Houston area was going through a sort of out of sight, out of mind moment when it comes to the environment.

And what we ended up finding was no, in fact, Houston area residents are very much committed to some of the concerns that they have about the environment as well as its effects on their health.

Next slide.

We were asking folks how concerned are you about the impacts of natural disasters on your area, with natural disasters being things like flooding, wind and hail, cold and freeze, as well as extreme heat.

And what we saw over and over and over again was high levels of concerns.

Here, what we are looking at is this level of concern, people saying that they were either moderately varied or extremely concerned by income level.

And the key here is we're all concerned.

Does it matter if I'm making $15,000 or $150,000?

We are all concerned about the impacts that these natural disasters are having on our local communities.

Next slide.

We also asked about some of the um uh environmental uh, think about this as uh contaminants that might be happening.

And so here we were looking at things like broken or aging municipal pipes, uh lead exposure, illegal dumping, even having access to clean drinking water.

And here we again see relatively high levels of concern, but we also see a lot more spread when it comes to that concern, although one of the things for us to also acknowledge here is that while we can look at, for example, lead exposure, um 49% of people making 150,000 or more that they were concerned compared to 75% of folks making less than 25,000.

This is a statistically significant difference, sure.

It also still means that half of residents making over 150,000 are concerned about lead exposure from old pipes.

Same thing can be added, same thing, same thing can be mentioned about uh the nearby waste management or water treatment facilities, as well as having access to clean drinking water.

Yes, there are differences by income.

You're still talking about even among those folks who are making over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year raising their hand and saying, I am concerned about the exposure that I am having.

And what this translates to, next slide, is that about 70% of residents are saying that when they're thinking about the influence of the environment on their health, they are concerned, either moderately very or extremely concerned about the effect the environment is having on their health.

Next slide.

And then finally, one of the things we wanted to do this year, we know that we are living in some very divisive times.

Uh, you can look at research that is being done across the country, and it is pointing to us having more divisiveness right now in our society than we have experienced in the last 30 years at least.

Um, and so rather than us doubling down on let's talk about how divided we are, we wanted to talk about well, what's the opposite of that?

Connections.

And so, what is our connectedness look like?

And not just what does it look like, but what are its benefits?

And so there's three different types of connections that I want us to talk about here real fast.

One of them is knowing one another.

Um, the other one is going to be personal and professional connections, and then the third one is social cohesion.

In terms of knowing one another, we asked folks, hey, what are your attitudes about uh certain policies?

What are your attitudes about certain moral issues?

And then not just what are your attitudes, but what are do you think the attitudes of others are?

And so we can go to the next slide.

And on this next slide, what we're looking at here is we're looking at a question we asked around uh a perceptions of universal background checks for gun sales.

And so we we looked at this across political parties.

And so we asked, if you were a Republican, what percent of Democrats do you think support universal background checks for gun sales?

And they said 74% of Democrats would support that.

If you were a Democrat, we said, well, what percent of Republicans do you think support universal background checks?

And they said 35%.

Now, right there, one of the things for us is we think we are different from one another, and we think that there's not exactly a ton of support out there.

The reality is, Democrats, 97% supported universal background checks.

But perhaps the stop the press's moment here is that 91% of Republicans support that as well.

Where we sometimes sit around here and we get told this is a divisive issue, there's nothing we can do, it's third rail.

This isn't divisive, this is a unifying issue.

This is something that can actually bring us together.

And so this is one of the things is if we don't know this about one another, if I have a perception of, oh, you belong to that other group than I do, and so you must think this way, and you think I think the other way, well, we're gonna fight with one another as opposed to recognizing how unified we are on certain things, and then being able to do something about it.

And so this is the benefit of knowing one another.

Next slide.

When it comes to our connections, though, it also matters beyond just potential policies we can put into place.

It also matters for our wealth, our health, and our sense of safety.

And so let's look at each of those real fast.

Uh, next slide.

When we're talking about our wealth, one of the things that we can think about, is the control that we have over our financial situation.

So here, this is something that we would think about is economic mobility.

Um, what are the things that are related to economic mobility?

Well, we might think about our own current income.

The more I make right now perhaps gives me more confidence about what I will make in the future.

And in fact, we do see that to be the case.

If I am in a household making less than 25,000, I feel like there's about a 50-50 shot that I have control over my financial situation, whereas it goes up to about 70% for residents that are making 150,000 and over.

That is again a statistically significant difference.

It also pales in comparison to the difference that we feel uh based upon our personal and professional connections.

If I do not feel like I have the connections I need to get ahead, I have a 36% chance of feeling like I have control over my financial situation.

That goes all the way up to 85% if I agree that I've got those personal professional connections to get ahead.

So our social connections matter for our wealth both now and into the future.

Next slide.

It also matters for our health.

And we here we're looking at our physical health.

The report contains several other indicators.

I'm picking out a few right here just for us to talk through quickly.

Um, again, what are things related to our physical health?

We might talk about, well, our income again is gonna structure our health.

And in fact, we'd say, yes, that is correct.

Again, if I'm making less than 25,000, I got a 41% chance of saying my physical health is very good or excellent.

That goes up to 70% if I'm making over 150,000.

Again, statistically significant, very important.

My social cohesion, what is social cohesion?

Social cohesion is about the connections I feel I have to my neighbors.

How much do I trust, care, respect, and take uh take care of uh my neighbors and the folks that I live around?

If I have low social cohesion, I have a 41% chance of rating my physical health as very good or excellent.

That goes up to 60%.

Now, that is not as big of an increase as what is associated with income, but I don't have a hundred thousand dollars that I can just give to people to raise their incomes from 25 to 150,000.

I do have friendship and connections that I can make with my neighbors, and I can see that paying off in almost the same magnitude as that 100,000 increase.

And then finally, our sense of safety.

We saw on that earlier slide crime and safety, the second most common biggest problem lifted forward here, but we also saw that across all three of our counties that we're looking at, and we know these three counties have very different experiences when it comes to the objective crime data.

And so we wanted to try to unpack the psychology of safety.

And so we looked at this one particular indicator, sorry, we looked at several indicators, we're gonna look at one indicator here in the presentation.

I feel safe walking alone at night in my neighborhood.

Um, we looked at that.

How is that related to a variety of things?

We included income in this model, but income actually did not matter in this model net of other things.

One of the things that did matter was my general feelings of unsafe.

Do I feel unsafe almost always, or do I never feel unsafe?

Well, if I almost always feel unsafe, I had about a 50% chance of saying I felt safe walking alone at night.

That goes up to 84% for folks that were saying that they never feel unsafe.

And again, that social cohesion piece.

Uh, if I don't have that social cohesion, if I don't have those connections to my neighbors, 58% likelihood of saying I can walk alone at night, up to 83% for those folks that have those connections with their neighbors.

So again, that ability to overcome our own sort of challenges that we might feel through the connections we have with others.

Next slide.

And so social connections are more important than many other factors when we uh look at this.

And again, if you don't necessarily have policy motivating you, motivated selfishly.

My health, my wealth, and my sense of safety is benefited by the connections that I can make to others.

And when we talk about our social connections, we are talking about something that we can all do.

It doesn't take me sitting behind a named uh placard here in City Council.

We can all be doing something about building social connections.

We all have roles, you all can absolutely play a role as well.

I just want to make sure this call is not missed for everybody else as well.

Um and so I believe that is the uh I think this is yep, all the Kinder Studio's research made available for free.

Kinder.

You did that fast.

I really appreciate it and appreciate your enthusiasm.

Um, Councilmember Carter.

I just wanted to say thank you.

I attended the luncheon and uh you have such good energy for this, and and you know it's information that we can all use, and and I just I appreciate your energy for the work and your passion.

Obviously, it shines through for all of us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'm sure most of you have looked at it.

I mean, there's much more to be found in this.

It's so helpful, it's so helpful to us as policymakers, and and really just to keep our finger on the pulse of what's going on.

I don't see anyone else in the queue.

Um, Dan Dylan, I can't thank you enough for all the good work you've done for the city of Houston.

Thanks for coming.

And we have a couple public speakers who want to speak on this topic.

Um, Laura Gallier is virtual.

Oh, she's here.

You're here in real life.

Come on down.

Good morning.

Thank you for doing this survey.

Um, as far as the number of people who took the survey, I live in district C, and I had to really I did a real push to get people to fill out the survey, and there was a lot of resistance to it.

Um so I tried to, you know, ask people like what are you what are you resisting?

And they liked being able to do the free form comment at the end of it.

Um, but just like Councilmember Panzarella mentioned when even when I got to the question about infrastructure, my answer was, well, it depends, you know, because I might care about health clinics, but if I answer this question, you might hear bike trails, right?

And so the breakdown that you did for public safety, I think would be really helpful to do on infrastructure.

No, that's a good point.

We'll we'll do that next year.

Thank you.

Um, and um you won't be surprised when I say this that on the question of if we have to spend more on public safety.

I consider that the wrong question because not spending more on public safety needed to be one of the questions.

If you uh it was a leading question to say, well, we have to spend more on this, so do you want to spend a little bit more, a medium about more, bit a medium amount more, or a lot more?

Um, so to give uh some people that I know wouldn't complete the survey because they were not going to answer that question at all.

Um, and the other thing about the results about public safety, the breakdown was really helpful because it shows uh uh an interest in crime prevention, community-based crime prevention, and it shows a lack of interest in traffic enforcement, which you've heard from the community uh uh loud and clear lately.

Um, so that is all I had to say on that.

Thank you.

Really good points.

I appreciate your interest in that and for letting us know.

Um, next, Sarah Raymond.

Hello.

Hi there.

So, um about this um survey.

It says this is a city of almost four million people, and you have like 29 people in certain districts responding.

This is not a really good reflective of Houston, and don't put it on us to do your job.

Okay.

Another question I had was with FIFA, and there's reimbursements that there's a $65 million public safety grant that the city of Houston got.

I'm just curious to know if there's ways that in the public in the police special services fund, there was a 4.2 million decrease.

Uh dealt that was attributed to the FIFA reimbursement.

So I'm I was just curious to know if there was any way to decide if there was other places in the police budget that are being covered by the FIFA reimbursement that could potentially be also added on to that decrease connected to the fee for reimbursement.

So we can ask about that.

I know I did ask about the police special services fund and that decrease, and that was the response I got, but we can ask where that's being re put somewhere else in the budget.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for coming, Sarah.

Appreciate your comments.

Okay, we are now to our last um presentation, and thank you, colleagues, for bearing with me.

This is the open space ordinance that we've been talking about.

I'll invite the director of uh directors of the director of planning, Von Tran, and director of parks, Kenneth Allen, to present the amendments to the open space ordinance, which were recently approved by the planning commission on Thursday, May 28th.

Uh colleagues, you know, we had a couple meetings on this late last year and early this year, and uh I'm very interested in amending this and making sure that we have uh more equitable distribution of our parks funding.

This is capital funding for parks, not not operations.

And um, as you also know, I am very interested in increasing the fee uh that developers pay that has not been changed since 2007, and we are talking about that.

We're not gonna do that at this time, but um by the end of the summer.

Well, I hope to be back at Planning Commission discussing that.

Um, you know, even CPI put it at about eleven hundred and thirteen dollars, appraised values put it at about fourteen hundred dollars.

Um, the max um due from state law is about twelve hundred and sixty dollars.

So we're gonna have some stakeholder engagement, and we're gonna be talking to um residents and people in the development community, and I expect to be back with that aspect, that amendment um later in the summer.

But we're going ahead now with the um amendments that are brought forth, and I'm gonna let the two directors uh lay those out um for us now.

Oh, and there will we are gonna take a vote to advance this.

We I know we rarely vote.

I'm trying to bring back the vote of committee, so I think we have enough people.

We're gonna vote to advance this favorably for um for consideration by full council.

I mean it's coming anyway, but I'd like to give it a stamp of approval.

I am supportive of these amendments, and and I hope after you hear more about them, you will be too.

So the floor is yours.

Thank you.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Vice Chair Castillo and council members.

I am Von Tran, Director of the Planning and Development Department, and with me is Parks Director, Director Allen.

Also in the audience is Tammy Kim from LIGO for support.

Should you have any questions?

Again, thank you for inviting us back to give you an update on the proposed changes to the open space ordinance in your packet.

Hopefully, you have uh the proposed red line of chapter 42, division seven, parts and private parts, which we are bringing forward for your consideration today.

Slide two.

I will begin with a brief recap of the process that brought us to this point and provide a summary of the proposed red line, which has not changed since the first draft.

Slide three.

So on February 3rd, we presented to this committee an overview of the open space ordinance and relevant provisions of section 212.201 through 213 of the Texas local government code.

On March the 3rd, we returned with the first draft of the proposed red line.

Following that meeting, we presented the same material to the planning commission, held public hearings, and on May 28th, the Planning Commission recommended forwarding the proposed red line to city council.

During the public hearing period, which began on April 30th, we received 13 comments in total, four written comments from two individuals, and two from uh from two organizations.

Chair, you also spoke at the planning commission as well as eight other organizations, which we collected comments as well.

Importantly, there were no objections to the proposed red line.

Six comments recommended increasing the fee and lie, and one organization objected to raising the fee and lieu.

While the fee and loo adjustments are not a part of this red line, we anticipate conducting more in-depth evaluation of the fee and loo structure and additional reporting from Director Allen, of course, in the coming months.

Our immediate goal today is to bring the ordinance into compliance with chapter 212.

We are here today asking for your consideration of the same proposed red line presented to you on March the 3rd and subsequently recommended by the Planning Commission.

Next slide.

So this is the summary of the proposed changes in the red line.

As a reminder, the primary purpose of these amendments is to bring our ordinance into compliance with Chapter 212 of the Texas Local Government Code, which took effect on January 1st of 2024 and applies to cities with population over 800 800,000, including Houston.

In order to comply with state law, we are recommending the following changes.

Adopting a lower fee cap, not greater than 2% of the median household income.

And for multifamily, we recommending, we recommend transitioning fully to a fee-only approach, collecting fees at issuance of certificate of occupancy, and establish establishing an appeal process as required by chapter 212.

We also recommend allowing 30 percent of fees collected to be used in different sectors, extending the obligation timeline from three years to five years, and transferring fund management authority from the parks board to parks director.

Next slide.

So this concludes our presentation.

Madam Chair, I return the floor to you.

Thank you.

And in addition to the stakeholder engagement we're going to do on the fee structure, there we have heard from colleagues that about the reporting of where the money's been spent.

And Director Allen, you sent me some great information, which is all on my website, and I think we're going to do a little bit deeper dive into that for people to have people want to know, you know, where all the money has been spent.

It's been spent to improve parks.

Um, but these these changes, like uh the director said, really met no.

I mean, there everybody was in favor of them at the planning commission.

I think it was a unanimous vote.

Um, if I'm correct.

Okay, good.

I looked before then.

Um, so I don't anybody have any questions about what we're doing here.

Um, allowing you know that it used to be in the sectors they all that you had to spend all the money within that sector.

Now we're allowing 30 percent to go out across the across the city.

Um okay, council member rameris.

Thank you, madam chair.

Thanks for the presentation.

Was any thought given to uh I'll say overlapping uh potential sources of of um funding for parks, for instance, TURS is right.

So if someone lives within a TURS, um, sometimes TURS money is spent on on parks.

But if you don't live in a TURS, obviously uh can't live with them.

You don't you don't have that possibility.

So I'm I'm wondering uh if you guys thought at all about whether or not this 30 percent should be spent in those areas where uh folks may not have access to TURS funding for parks.

Absolutely.

Um it's it's a really good situation to be in right now in terms of being able to spend the money 30 percent of it in any sector.

We have multiple partners that we work with from tourists management districts to parks board, um, many commissioners, and we have to coordinate where this money is going and why it's going there.

And the great thing about um this fund is that every time we want to use it, we have to appropriate it, and we need city council approval.

Um I have a central process within my office to track and collect um everything we spend and where we're spending it on.

So it's and I have a partnerships office that work with all the partners to determine priority wise what what we're where we're going and why.

And to that point, getting council approval, does that does that apply even if the expenditure is less than $100,000, let's say, or is that something that can be done without council approval?

Every every time we dip into the fund, we have to have council approval.

So there's a record on what we requested and why um and council records, but internally we we do track it on the spreadsheet.

All right, thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem Castax Tatum.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, directors, um, remind me how we got to the 30 percent number.

Certainly, what do we do?

How do we decide 30 percent was the.

Yeah, I I think this has been working uh in a similar way with the sidewalk fee in lieu, and so it mirrors that and in practicality also with Director Allen's uh support over the years of him managing this and looking at the disparities.

Um there's a slide um that uh showed uh where a lot of the new developments were happening, and it's in areas that already have parks.

So the ability to have that 30 percent, and his judgment, of course, with approval of council and partnerships with other um agencies uh would make the most sense.

But long uh or short answer is that it mirrors the fee and lie for sidewalks.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Martinez.

Thank you, Chair, and uh I'm definitely supportive of this because I think um, you know, it kind of touches a little bit on what customer Ramita says.

There are um different parts of the city that really could use a lot more help financially.

Uh I do uh would like to see what those guidelines are gonna be, because again, I think you know he brings up a good point where there are no TURS.

We do need a lot more help, but where we do have TURS that still cannot afford to do these larger projects.

I think the biggest one that uh everybody has kind of put in the forefront has been Levy Park.

Uh that's a pretty rich TURS, and so they're able to do a lot more.

But for example, Gulfgate TURS, you know, we did a master plan, but to be able to really uh you know update a lot of the parks in that in that area, it's gonna take a lot more time, and so we will need some extra help with with you know with this uh with this open open parks uh fee.

But do you all have that sense of what the guidelines will be?

I know you you have already got the done an assessment of where the parks are, how they're ranked, overlap that with where the TERS are, where the opportunities are.

Yes.

Um, one great thing is, I'm working with Houston Parks Board, you know, our mayor is focusing on neighborhood and pocket parks.

Of course, we have regional parks that that has help already with, you know, from conservancies, but what about those small pocket parks and those neighborhood parks?

We have a hundred and thirty, I'm sorry, a hundred and eighty-six neighborhood parks that were identified that need improvement.

So we've already did 50 of them, and now we're the mayor's uh Let's Play Houston campaign, we've targeted eleven that'll be done within the next two years, 25 total that we're working on.

So you you match this parks dedication fund with private funds or with a partner, then you have a bigger impact.

Right.

So that's one way we're kind of deciding where to go.

And of course, safety.

Uh if there's anything concerning safety or hazards, well, we don't need a park improvement uh overall plan.

We can address those with park dedication funds.

Let's let's just say the HVAC system is out and we need a new system, we can use funds appropriated to take care of that.

Uh the 30% will allow us to do that in any sector.

That's a small project, right?

Huge projects.

Um we leverage with partners to get more out of the dollars that we do have.

I I appreciate you uh talking about those larger projects, but also specifically about like the HVAC systems, the lights, stuff that are supposed to be regular maintenance.

I don't know if this is still the case, but um maybe about a handful of years ago, I was told that if you were to break down the maintenance uh um fund that we have for all the city parks, the so on's around 1200 a park.

I don't know if that was the case.

Well, we have a lot of inventory.

I know we need more to maintain, but that's if you were to split it up equitably, it would probably be less than two thousand dollars that you would have towards a park to do the maintenance, and that we really need to make sure that that that is being looked at because uh I could be sharing with folks.

Um for the parks department, I I really feel like there's three real core services.

You know, it's maintenance, you know, delittering, mowing, uh, and then once we do that, then everything that is extra ancillary that we should we could start focusing on.

So now as a parks director, I tend to disagree because of the human side of what we do from a recreational standpoint, all the youth that we touch, all the programs that we offer, that's a huge part of health in the city.

But from a from a maintenance standpoint, we can't use the funds on general maintenance.

It's got to be new, it's got to be a major replacement, lights, prime example.

We've we're able to install LED lights, which which is safer, brighter, um, things of that nature.

No, I and I can respectfully disagree as well uh director, because if you have some something like Walter Jones Park, there's no programming there because of the Walter Jones Park.

Oh, yeah.

There's no programming there because the facilities are just they need a lot more help.

So it you know, it's almost like chasing your tail, and I I get it.

I know we need more funding for the parks department, but again, I think all parks should at least have base level of what they should look like, uh, so that way at least community can enjoy them, um, even if it doesn't have programming at that point.

I agree.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you very much.

And colleagues will take our vote in a second, but I do have a couple public speakers on this item.

Thank you very much.

Directors, you guys have worked a lot on this, and we look forward to these changes.

We're going to be coming back with the fee structure and also perhaps a look at the soft costs and direct costs on the um changing on changing that.

So more to come on open space, but um I'm gonna first hear from the speaker's lists over there.

Oh, okay.

The people who signed up, Doug Smith, I uh came here and I think a lot of my concerns have been addressed, and it's really comfortable to hear that.

Uh I thought about this and thought this fund was a good way to fill holes in the uh uh the city budget because they could allocate some of this to some of the uh park expense.

That's not the case because it all has to be appropriated uh individually by council members, and I think you have some information on your website.

You said regarding this, but I think that a more detailed report on where the money uh was spent would, and I mentioned this before at the planning committee meeting.

Uh, some kind of report that shows where it was spent, and I don't know whether that's available or not, but uh I was very happy to hear that uh you all appropriate every penny that's spent out of this fund, so it's not going to fill holes.

Right, we have and we have some of the items tomorrow on tomorrow's agenda, our park dedication funds.

And there is there is a report, it's kind of in three different parts or a couple different parts on my website under the parks tab.

Okay, of where money has been spent.

Thanks.

Thank you, Doug.

Next, Vanessa DeLeon Diaz.

Good morning, Chair, Vice Chair, and members of the committee.

My name is Vanessa de Leon Diaz, and I am an intern with Friends of Columbia Tap.

I am here today because this ordinance is not just a line item.

Instead, it is a careful choice about the kind of city that Houston wants to be.

I want to draw your attention to a story map that Friends of Columbia TAP developed with Rice University students with aid from the Coalition for Environment Equity and Resilience.

I will give you this copy.

This story map is not a data exercise, but a portrait of structural disinvestment in local Houston communities.

Houston has 21 park sectors.

Those whose boundaries were carefully drawn along the highways.

Highways who are built through eminent domain displacing black and brown neighborhoods.

The park sector boundaries didn't fix that injustice.

They instead helped promote it.

Sector 14, which includes Memorial Park, has collected over 21 million in developer fees.

Meanwhile, sectors on the east side of the loop, which are communities with higher poverty rates, higher social vulnerability, and more people of color have collected only a fraction of that.

Some sectors have committed committed every dollar they collected because they had so little to work with.

And then there is the private funding side.

They control 73% of all conservancy revenue in the city.

This means that the communities who need parks the most are generating the list philanthropic investment.

This is exactly the cycle that I am asking you to interrupt today.

Thank you.

I'm with you, and we appreciate your support.

You're doing a great job as an intern.

Thank you.

We've got a big future ahead.

I appreciate your support for this.

We'll move on to Mervyn Onan.

Did you hear?

Do not see Mervyn Taylor Valley.

With SEER.

Hi, Taylor.

Good morning, everyone.

I'm Taylor Valley Presley, the parks equity analyst and advocate for the coalition for environment equity and resilience.

We have been in support for the proposed amendments, and I've previously gone to public hearing um at the planning commission to support these efforts, and I'm so happy to see that everything's um continuing to move forward.

Um we're all really excited about this, and I think um Director Tran and Alan on their work.

I just really ask that the actual fee amount is taken into consideration in the near future.

I know um we previously mentioned that now is not the greatest time to allow more time for research and outreach, but I just don't want this to go unnoticed for too long.

Um the $700 um $700 developer fee has been the same since 2007, which is nearly 20 years old now, and this absolutely needs to be raised in consideration of our parks to help build a community um just as much as the actual homes do.

We ask to please keep this in consideration and to not look um at the current recommendations as the end but the beginning to making this ordinance more beneficial and equitable to the people of Houston.

Councilmember Martinez, you mentioned that some parts like a specific part that you mentioned just has absolutely nothing.

So this is going to be really important to raise eventually raise these fees to help support this.

So thank you so much.

Thank you, Taylor.

Don't worry, I'm not gonna let any time slip away before we address this again.

And next, Dominic Mazok.

Never mind, you were on a different topic.

My apologies.

Karina blessed.

Hello, everybody.

Good morning.

Morning, Chair.

Thank you so much for having Friends of Fonday Park being able to speak on behalf of Fonde Park, which as Martinez says knows, is um located in the Gulf Gates.

So the H.

Bard headquarters is also home for a Greg Park.

Great historical first NASA location.

That park, Brookline Park and Fonday Park are in an area without a management district and not under a TERS.

The tourist comes and it gets all the money from Gulfgate and it takes south.

So I'm here to also plead with you all to continue in your efforts to raise the $700 fee because if my property taxes have been raised since 2007, the developers' fees also have to be.

We have gotten a tremendous improvements that are coming, but we still do not have a covered area so that the community can meet in our super neighborhood six and nine.

We do not have a community center.

So for civic clubs and other residential uh events to take place, we really would like to see covered areas in our parks, and that is also uh true in Brookline and Greg.

So thank you so much for your council member Martinez.

Would like to address you.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh, and thank you, Karina, for being here and your advocacy.

Um, we are looking forward to the improvements that are happening at Fonday and wanna just um I'm not sure if you're aware, but Brookline is also one of the parks that we're looking at doing some improvements soon.

Um, it'll be following up Andover Park, which is uh in the hobby area.

So uh Brookline is is top of my uh top of my radar as well.

Um it is a park that is under it's been underserved for so for so long.

Um and and the communities there in that in that specific neighborhood should be uh having something where they're accessible, uh clean, safe, green space.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for advocating for recreation.

Recreation is so important, it's a crime deterrent.

Every dollar that you spend on parks is over three dollars in return.

Non-medical social uh hot drivers of health.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Thank you for your advocacy.

And now I will recognize colleagues at Mayor Pro Time Castex Tatum.

Thank you, Chair.

I'd like to uh make a motion for us to take a vote of the committee in advance to a vote of the entire body.

All in favor say aye.

Aye or any discussion.

All in favor say aye.

Opposed, no.

Motion carries.

Thank you.

With that, before we adjourn, our next meeting is a special called meeting next week, Monday, June 8th at 10 a.m.

to review the proposed fiscal year 27 through 31.

Yes.

CIP plan.

So the fund never ends.

We'll do the CIP next week, Monday, 10 a.m.

And we are still waiting to reschedule the July BFA because of the break week.

Okay, this meeting's adjourned.

Thank you.