Mic sounds

on.

Good evening.

I'll now call the work session of the Richland City Council to order the times now.

531.

So tonight item 1A is a discussion and direction regarding the North Central Texas Council of Government's charging and fueling community grant for electric vehicle charging stations.

And JP, would you like to present that to us, please?

Yes.

Council.

Thank

you, Mayor.

Council, JP DuKay, community development providing an update and some requesting some direction on the North Central Texas Council of Government's EV infrastructure grant program.

So they received roughly $12 million a while back with the sole purpose of trying to build more EV infrastructure throughout the 16 county region.

And uh some of the criteria that they utilized when picking which cities they were going to fund were uh areas that would fill uh locational gaps, public accessibility.

So when we had two proposed locations, had to be publicly owned property, not restricted to private fleets or employment vehicles only.

Uh regional distribution, and uh so essentially making sure that there was equitable distribution of where these EV charging uh ports were going to be located throughout the 16 county region.

We submitted our application on uh October uh of 2025, and the location that we picked was the link parking lot.

We chose that location uh because it had received the the most amount of kind of daily traffic for parking in comparison to some of our other publicly owned properties in the city, and it was in the best condition, uh hoping that it would be the most accommodating for these types of improvements.

Uh we did request two level two stations, which would include four dedicated um parking spaces.

This was not staff's recommendation, this was the recommendation of the engineering firm Kimley Horn, who we utilized to prepare some of the preliminary plans to submit as a part of this grant.

So that was their recommendation that would make the most sense for our location and for the the general funding.

The um application numbers, there was 109 applications submitted, 59 projects were recommended.

Richland Hills was one of the 59 that received a recommendation.

As for project costs and

funding sources, the total estimated project cost is roughly eighty-seven thousand dollars.

The uh COGS grant uh reimbursement is eighty percent of eligible construction costs, so we're looking at um a reimbursement of roughly 70,000, and the remaining 20% is planned to be paid by a vendor, which we haven't worked out any of those details yet.

We don't even have a vendor that we are uh negotiating anything with, but by the COGS grant uh guidelines, that 20% will be funded by a third-party vendor, which would come out to close to 17,000 dollars.

Then COG would reimburse us 80%, you know, roughly $69,000, and then the vendor would cover that remaining 20% close to roughly 17,000.

When it comes to financial considerations, again, this is a reimbursement grant, and so the city would just need to be prepared to advance eligible project costs before the COG would reimburse us approximately that 80%.

With that, again, there's not really any serious uh budget commitments, but we need to make sure that we have the cash flow to finance these kind of temporary um obligations.

Ongoing costs and operations, the grant established a operating period of roughly four to five years, uh, which it's estimated to be roughly $3200 every year.

80% of that will be paid by the third party vendor because they'll be taking care of all of the operations and maintenance, and the remaining 20 20% of operations and maintenance would be reimbursed through uh the COG grant.

Uh

I know there's been a lot of conversation about user fees and potential revenues associated with these uh EV spaces, and the grant does not establish any charging rates, revenue sharing requirements, or an operating fee schedule or structure.

These terms will be negotiated between the city and the selected EV charging vendor following council authorization.

So essentially, if uh this third party vendor is going to be handling uh the bulk of operations and maintenance, not only over the next five years, but however long we we enter into an agreement with them, they're obviously going to want some level of return on investment and some funding source to pay for those.

On top of the 20% of the construction and installation that they're going to be paying, which is roughly 17,000.

So we would have to work out some agreement with them as to what those user fees will be for people to use these spaces.

And

again, any of any of the revenues associated with those users.

Again, we don't have exactly a breakdown of what that'll look like, but that's something that we'll have to work out with the vendor, and you'd assume that they will be requesting the overwhelming majority of whatever those revenues are.

Yeah.

Requested council direction.

Uh one, you want us to continue to proceed with this grant, and two, is there any um issue or lack of comfortability with temporarily advancing uh eligible project costs while we await reimbursement from COG?

This would be down the line, but we're talking you know, anywhere from 70 to 90,000 of money that we'll have to pay up front as we await reimbursement from the council of governments during the construction and uh implementation of this program.

So ultimately it's no cost.

Uh sorry, basically, but we could we

could be out of we could be out for a year

if it takes some year

to

reimburse.

So according to the guidelines, the reimbursement timeline is 45 days.

Okay,

but that works.

We we have to um we have to make sure that we're providing you know payment uh like that the payments were processed formally and that whatever work is you know taking place is underway.

And then once they review all of that, it's a 45-day window for reimbursement.

What fund is it originally coming out of?

Uh,

economic development.

Uh the yeah.