San Angelo City Council strategic planning session 3-2-17

[0:00:02] Call us a lot of things, but they cannot say we're not propped. It is nine o'clock. I am calling the meeting together, March 2nd of 2017. This is the workshop, strategic planning. I do it this time, call the meeting to order. Item number two is the workshop agenda. A is introduction and overview of the strategic planning session and I suppose that be a good spot to start. That's it man. I'm trying to get over to you and let's take care of introduction and overview of the strategic planning session. First of all typically in a situation like this we try to make these as formal as possible. We want council to relax and really we really want all your ideas but before I get started We do have cameras that are pointed in our direction, normally I would stand up front to do the presentation, but I'm gonna do it from here for the sake of the cameras as well. We do have, we are recording this meeting, and it can be viewed of course by our citizens. I do wanna start off with just an overview of the City Council workshop this morning. We're gonna start off in my presentation, just kind of talk a little bit about strategic planning, why we do it. Talked a little bit, very briefly on our vision, and mission statement and values which is something that was done over a couple of years ago. I do want to share that because everything pretty much is tied to the mission and vision we started looking at our goal was moving forward. I'll do a quick primer on our sales tax challenges. I do know that Tina did make a presentation last week but I do want to make sure that as we move forward to discuss the CIP and our five strategic parties that we are very well aware of what challenges we are facing especially as it pertains to revenues. For Morgan will do a presentation she has done a couple of presentations last couple of weeks last Thursday We did have a form at the McNeese Center where she did share the CIP or capital improvement plan with the public

[0:02:06] We got some good input. She also shared the CIP at a meeting held by council member Lane Carter this past Tuesday She'll also be sharing information as far as what we found from surveys that have been submitted through our website And also what we discovered from those meetings as well item five will be a developed developed the city council CIP priorities We will have Rick and Sandra working on what we call the level two items, which are the Anything has to do with parks anything has to do with Standards of living and Michael and Morgan would be talking more about the level level one items, which are more of the infrastructure items Then we'll do an update of the top of the top five strategic priorities We have, of course, the five directors that are responsible for those areas that will be doing a presentation to update city council members on each one of those, where we are, where we're heading, and also certain considerations we may have. Item seven is to develop the new strategic priorities, I'll be working on that with all of you. Again, we've found that it's best to focus on a few strategic parties to keep our, we know that we have limited resources available to us. We want to make sure we stay very focused on the top five priorities. City Council may elect to expand that to six or seven, but over the past four years we have had those top five priorities that we feel have been per amount to the success of our city. Then item eight, we'll be discussing this expense reduction strategies with Tina and Michael. What we may be able to do to reduce expenditures and meet some of the, perhaps some of the ideas and some of the priorities that you have put before us. With that said, the purpose of strategic planning is basically setting direction and priorities for the next year. We want to know where we are today and where we want to go as well. So again, we'll be discussing a lot of what we are today and where we want to go here in the future.

[0:04:06] And it allows us to continue moving forward with the established priorities. And it also allows us to make any adjustments as I mentioned a while ago as necessary. When is it done? We do this annually, normally on February or March, right before the budget process. We want to make sure that we discuss our priorities, our CIP, what it is, the direction of the city council, what that is, so we can make sure that we can tie any monies necessary for the achievement of those directives. Who's involved? You see everyone here really, city council, city manager's office, all the directors. Basically what this does, does ensure a different thinking styles. We have a well-rounded perspective, we have the diversity experience of the City Council members, and we also have the directors here because they have other fields of expertise that they can chime in on and assist with. The agenda focus, again, as I mentioned, while we're right now, we'll be doing updates on the priorities that we currently have and where we're going as well, and how are we going to get there? And the reason I have staff will create strategy and action steps. We just need direction from the City Council members, Typically, on any strategic planning workshop, you're looking at between three to four days to formulate when you go through a SWOT analysis and everything that you do. It typically takes about three to four days to come up with a good well-rounded plan. What we have done as staff, we work on the short-term priorities. We focus on the core services of each department, why those departments created in the first place. I have had those submitted to me by all the directors and it focuses more on the short-term this year, what they want to accomplish, the goals for those core services, and those are the things that we work on. What we want for you is direction on the intermediate and long-term goals, which is in the form of the CIP, and also the strategic priorities. Once we receive that directive, the staff will come together to look at the SWOT, to look at the strategy and creating those action steps to get us to the point where we can achieve those directives that City Council set for us. Just a quick discussion on vision and mission statement.

[0:06:06] As I mentioned a while ago, a couple years back, we did an exercise to determine, you know, what it is that drives the city. And I just want to make sure that I cover the vision and mission because goals should be connected to that as well. And the vision and mission drives the goals and strategies and actions should always align with the vision and the mission. So what is the vision statement? A vision statement just spells out the future direction of an organization and where it sees itself in the long term. It points to where the organization is heading. And it should be something pretty simple of one sin and something that staff and city council members, anyone can really memorize and remember whenever it does come up and as you're working on your strategic priorities. So what is the mission statement? The mission statement describes the reason an organization exists and it is used to help guide decisions about priorities, actions and responsibilities. And of course all of these are focused around our core values. The meetings that we've had, especially with staff, we have focused on those core values and we do look at our core values as excellence in service, vision and resolve, stewardship and accountability, productivity and efficiency, innovation and resourcefulness and of course professionalism and respect. Indian, all of these core values drive our vision and mission statement. So what is the vision of the city of San Angelo? We came up with to be the Texas standard for opportunity, prosperity and quality of life. As I mentioned a while ago, it's a one sentence, but it covers the full gamut of what it is that we would like to accomplish with the future of our city. We envision opportunity either for our citizens here or individuals who may want to come and invest in our community through economic development, prosperity and everything that we do, whether it's our budgeting, making sure that we are a discolese sound, making sure that we do enact Programs that help our community prospers one of course a quality of life And that usually deals with health the health and happiness of our citizens. What are we doing to make it better for them?

[0:08:08] Do we implement programs for example? We've had the the project on the Consul River the River walk Health is something that's important to our citizens They want to be able to get out there and walk and enjoy what San angel has to offer So we take a look at all of that and we realize as a staff and after also meeting with council members a couple years back that this one statement alone actually covered everything that we would want for our community and be the Texas standard for that and have that as a focus for all of us. When we went on to the mission statement, we realized that the mission statement is closely connected to our vision as well and for us it's to deliver excellence and services through best management practices, dedicated, caring and productive workforce, innovative solutions and a strong commitment to fiscal responsibility. All these that I've mentioned right here as far as our mission statement are closely tied to that vision as well. So again, I wanted to make sure that I share this information because as we move forward in any of the decisions that we're making, we should keep these core values and these vision and mission in mind. What that said, I do want to move to the next item that was on the list and that's to discuss our current state, when we look at what we are at this point, we had Tina talking to us about the challenges that we are facing, and as we look at this workshop and moving forward especially for this coming year and this next budget, we do have to keep in mind that our revenues, especially are closely tied to three big areas, and that's our property taxes, our franchise fees and also our sales tax revenues. Any time any one of those areas is significantly affected, it does hurt the city and we have to come up with ways to work around it or work within that. So I do want to start off before we start discussing the CIP and everything else with sharing that information again. And we do have it in the packet that I gave you.

[0:10:08] Tina had handed out this information that has a graph. And it just shows the first five months of this fiscal year where we are with the sales tax revenues. You'll notice that in October and keep in mind that these are these months are usually two months ahead or two months behind from the actual month that we receive those revenues. We look at October it seems like we're starting to balance out we're at 0.39 percent or almost break even with our sales tax revenues but then you notice that in November, December, those numbers significantly dropped off to negative 10% in November, then a negative 18 in December, then we saw an uptick in January of 4.3%. But then in January, we saw a drop again, or February, I'm sorry, we saw a drop in February of 2.33%. Now February numbers are tied to December sales or revenues received back in December. We do caution, we do know that we need to be very careful as we do projections moving forward. We know that revenues and consumer confidence was affected by the most recent election. We feel that some of these numbers are pre-election numbers. We also know that the December numbers, which is negative 2.33%, that seems to be more online sales this past year than in previous years, so that may have affected that as well. So we have seen a drop in our sales tax revenues. At this point, we are trending currently. We're short $416,000 from projected. And we also know that we continue on this route compared to last year's numbers on this trend. Then we'll be about $998,000 short by the end of this fiscal year. That's if nothing changes and we continue on that same trend. So we do want to make sure that we keep that in mind. And we do address that as we move forward. We know one of the last items on the agenda is going to be to discuss expense reduction ideas.

[0:12:08] We'll get to that point. Once we do discuss CIP and our strategic objectives, we'll get to the point where we discuss also, OK, how can we accomplish some of this? And what do we have to look at from our expense reduction idea? We have already implemented some of those expense reductions, but we also would like to get some of your input as well. That's what I have on my part. Next, we are. May I ask the question? Yes, sir. This sales tax is very revealing. We know that we're short. We know that we don't have any money to work with. We know we've been short for a year, and if the trend continues, we'll be a million dollars short at the end of our fiscal year. That's it. We can stay here to four o'clock, and we can go through every one of these things, line by line, and we can listen to all of the wish list and all of the things that people won't, but realizing that we have no money. And we have obligations that we were unable to pull feel in the fiscal year last year. How much time does the council want to devote to this today? Do you want the readers digest version of this? Or do you want to go through everything line by line, realizing that we are on a very serious slope right here with sales tax, and we have not even full failed our obligations for 2017. I just wanted the council to kind of give me an idea of what you wanted to do, Harry? Well, I'm gonna make a comment, and I don't want this being viewed negatively, but we're gonna have three new people here. Sometime, we could have up to five new people sitting on this council by July. So, I'd still like to go through a portion of this, because we know that some individuals that are sitting here today, even though they wanna do what's right for the citizens for this community are not going to be here to ensure that this can be done. So let's for the benefit of Lane and I and possibly Lucy and Charlotte, let's go through

[0:14:16] even if it's an abbreviated part what we think priority should be and knowing that at some point in time whether it's this year or the next fiscal year, these things are going to start turn it around and we want to make sure that we have some inputs so that we can give the staff some direction on that. Anyone else have any comments and I don't mind sitting here at four o'clock if it's necessary. I agree with that. I hate to waste time and if we don't have the money to do the things that we're already obligated to you know it doesn't do us any good to go through all the things that we would like to do. I agree with Harry we got to start sometime and now's the time we can't and keep putting items off, starting to plan for it now, whether we have money or not, get it on the list now and work for the future. I also agree with Harry and Lane, and the real possibility of our having our projects ready and on the shelf whenever any type funding may or may not come available is very important and very crucial right now. Well, go ahead and loosen. Oh, I was just gonna say that I agreed with that, because whether we have the money or not, if we have something in place, that, like Charlotte just said, if the money was to come up or we were able to get it somehow, then we could say, okay, this is the next thing that was on the list. And then even so, if nothing happens this year, we'd have next year to go on that same list. Well, I'm only one that's a short term. I'm more interested in the abbreviated one because I would take to do something that would build future councils into an automated tax increase. I mean, if the council wants to do it, I'll have this for it. I don't want anyone burning across from our yard when we increase the taxes. That's kind of where I am.

[0:16:16] You and I are not going to be here after middle of May. I just wanted to get this out. I wanted everybody to understand. I wanted council to have say so. So Mayor we do have a presence Doing one other small comment I would suggest that even if we don't do a full-blown one of these things We probably should get together with the new council in either August or September because With the possibility of having up to five new people sitting on this council We really need to give them an opportunity to have some input even if it's really late and maybe look at what we want to do for future things. We know we're going to have three people and possibly five new ones. So I just say from the staff perspective and whoever's sitting in your position, Dwayne, I'd like to try to do that for future things. I know it's not going to be full-blown, but if we do, it abbreviated one of these things at that future time, your time, then everybody's up to speed. That'll work. That's all ahead, boss. Go ahead. And so that everyone understands it regardless. I'm out of here about 4-3 because I have a dentist appointment. Okay. Well, I'm following you then. That way the lady's over because they want to be at 4-0. Okay. With that said, we do have a full presentation. Again, it's really important to us to to update the city council members on each one of the strategic priorities anyway. And we I definitely do want to get your input on the CIP. We've had plenty of discussion on that from our citizens and surveys as well. And this is what Morgan will be talking about next. So with that said, I'll hand this over to Morgan to discuss the CIP items. Thanks, Morgan. Good morning, y'all. I wanted to kind of touch base. I've been out in the community talking quite a bit about the capital plan, but I haven't been in front of y'all yet. So I wanted to kind of give a framework of what we've done so far. Of course, we had City, staff, project managers, proposed plans, and projects in January.

[0:18:19] We drafted those and got them published for the public review and went live with the online survey on the 10th of February. And I'll get to those survey responses what we have so far shortly. We did have a public forum on February 23rd. But in addition to that, we had a, well, I'm sorry, I'll get to that in just a second. We did share with folks that it's for things that have a useful life of greater than three years. It's generally things that cost more than $50,000. Right now, your capital plan has almost 100 projects, 45 of them are underway right now. So you'll see a lot of water transmission lines, lift stations, items like that, that are pretty standard items that we do every year. In addition to, you know, one-time things like the City Auditorium Fire Training Center, items like that that are capital projects that are underway. We also have proposed in the plan approximately $300 million in projects planned to begin over fiscal years, 17 through 22, which of course is the span of the plan. Sandra and I are going to get into that in just a second about how many of those are funded, how many of those are not funded, and when I say funded, I don't mean it has budgeted dollars this year. I mean that we've identified a stream which should be able to fund it. It may be a future debt issue as we do this street debt issue over time. It may be future water fees as we replace fire hydrants, things like that. So we have identified a funding stream over this time period that should match with it. Because that's one of the things that comes up again and again and again in these public meetings is, well if it says it's funded, but we don't want to do it, can we talk about it? Yes, it's at the Council's pleasure each year when you adopt the budget each time you approve a dead issue that are these projects before us today Are the ones that are important and we want to reassure folks in the community that that is true as well? That there is opportunity for some discussion there for items which are not Related to restricted funds or grants or things like that

[0:20:23] So as Daniel mentioned, we did have our public forum February 23rd at the convention center We had several folks there speak in favor of certain projects, suggesting additional items. In addition to that, I was before the Rotary Club, February 17th, and had good dialogue at that meeting related to the Ford Ranch, related to streets, of course, and water supply. And those folks had lots of insightful questions as well. And then, of course, Council Member Carter was kind enough to host a town hall meeting February 28th. And I do have the details from that meeting. I'm sorry, mostly what was shared at that meeting was related to the drainage remediation at the Butler Farms area, Foster Road and River Valley Lane. In addition to that, items related to college hills drainage remediation, historic train depot, one individual in opposition of our spur parking garage project in line with, you know, divesting it to private sector. And so lots of folks at that meeting as well to be able to weigh in and share their opinions. In addition to that, I'm gonna be before the Kiwanis Club, March 14th, and so we're just hitting any groups that'll welcome us to speak. We have 123 responses so far in the online session, and so we're really trying to push that to get even more, because that is the one that's often most convenient for busy folks, people with busy schedules, but we certainly would like to see 10 times that sharing in the online opportunity. So I have some additional media appearances try to share that to really get folks to weigh in on these items because as dollars are scarce we need it to be even more clear what the community wants to happen. At our public forum on February 23rd that I hosted we certainly saw support for sewer projects that was more of a maintenance type item as we got into discussion with the gentleman, support of four contro projects in general and this river valley lane foster road. I do want to share that there's been a lot of passionate support for the projects at Foster

[0:22:28] Road related to the drainage there. There were four individuals at my meeting and additional 17 at Mr. Carter's meeting. So we have more information on that shortly. In addition to that with the online responses, as I mentioned, we've had about 123 responses As of Friday, the 24th, each week we pull that data and go over it as a group in my office. I think you won't be surprised by the things that they're supporting. Each of the 123 respondents, everybody's encouraged to pick their top three items. So, of course, of the 123 respondents, 93 of them said streets were important. We hear that. We want to stay the course on streets. That's important to hear as we go out for these future debt issues. a second of course that we're not surprised to hear from is water supply. In addition you'll see a couple dozen folks in support of a splash pad, not necessarily at the pool but perhaps at other parks, something for kids entertainment and youth. Fort Concho improvements had some support, convention center improvements, police station had about 44 in support so far, comparable support for the animal shelter. So you'll see, again, I don't think you would be surprised by the things that our online constituents are weighing in on. In addition, some folks, there's a narrative, the survey's two minutes to fill out, I really want to encourage folks to check it out. But there's an opportunity to weigh in and provide some narrative, and my staff and I do read that, and we'll share that. There's some specific suggestions related to Englewood Drive, a community recreation center, like a multi-generational item, sidewalks, a playground in the Bluffs area, and anything entertainment kid-friendly for youth. So we're getting those kind of responses. And with that, one of the things you have before you in your handouts is a summary of all the projects that have been submitted so far by staff.

[0:24:29] The first couple pages there are level one items, and those are items which we've identified as infrastructure. So that's where you'll see streets, that's where you'll see water items and the total for level one items approaches $200 million. The next few pages of that are the level two items. You'll see in our level one items the vast majority of those are funded. Either we have budgeted dollars now or we plan to have budgeted dollars in a future fiscal year over this plan period. So, one of the things that we wanted to take the opportunity to do today is there are nine projects which are not yet funded in the level one tier. They are items identified as infrastructure, but we have not yet identified where we would fund them from. Before we get too far into that, in this idea of an abbreviated discussion, we think we still want to know what is important to you. So as we discuss, we would propose that we continue to discuss these unfunded items and get your ranking of those items so we know what to give the most attention to as we move and think moving forward. Are you okay with that? Okay, because there will be two rounds where we want to get your opinion about priority And just to give us an idea of what to be thinking about. All right, go ahead more. So the other sheet you have is a half sheet like this. Each of the council members have this. What we're looking for is we've listed the nine projects, which are level one, which have not yet been funded. There is an opportunity at the bottom to state other if there is an item that you don't see in the plan yet to be considered at this time. And so what we propose to do at this time is to rank these one

[0:26:33] through 10, one being the most important project to you, 10 being the least important project to try to get a handle on where these would fall. We do have staff on support to be able to speak to what each of these projects are, because I know it is early in the CIP process, and we haven't talked necessarily about these projects. For example, the drainage at Foster Road and drainage at River Valley are new projects proposed this year, and so we can provide details on each of these if you'd like to go down the list or if you feel like you're familiar enough with them and ready to rank them, it's y'all's pleasure. Let me follow up on one thing that you talked about briefly about Morgan Sewer, Sewer Upgrades, and I think there are some opportunities that we need to talk. We spoke earlier this year about the necessity of upgrades at Lake Nasworthy. If we decide to do any more development at Lake Nasworthy, we are definitely going to have to upgrade sewer lifts and those sewer opportunities out there. I propose that we take a serious look. I know this has got to go back to the citizens, but we take a serious look at that almost $14 million that are out there in the late NASworthy Fund to see whether or not we can use any of that for any of the upgrades that are there. Now, I know this is probably going to be a drop in a bucket for the amount of dollars that we'll have to spend out there. But quite honestly, it makes no sense to me to keep that money out there if we've got needs and knowing that the lake, whether it's business or property owners, are going to increase over the years. if we don't have the necessary infrastructure out there right now, we really need to need to look at that seriously. Yes, sir. That's a good point.

[0:28:39] I think, Morgan, what we'd suggest is if that gets traction, if that is important, we'd suggest that is the right-in item, right-in number one, so that we know, we're anticipating coming out of this meeting with of the possibility that Council would say, bring, develop this idea a little bit and bring it back for a discussion. Another, they're on this draft, Morgan. Yes, sir. You're not in any order now? That's correct. Okay. They're only ranked that top couple pages with level one and then the following pages as level two. All wrong in the subject of improvements in roads and talking about land and that's worthy. The housing sub-development by the private developer with the houses across the road from the rec camp there, they're going full strong and developing and planning to start building. We don't have a good road that services. It's not really a road. It's kind of like a country path. And we really need to consider replacement of that road at some point in time in the very near future. You know, I think years ago the discussion of that road was trying to, I think we also needed sewer service out there. So that would be a tremendous project and we probably need, if you want to discuss it further we probably need to get somebody up here from streets or engineering or utilities to if you want to discuss that further. But certainly I'm sure South Concho is on the

[0:30:40] streets listing chain. So it's on that listing. Probably you'd want to coordinate the utility work and the street work like we're doing in other areas. I'm going to go ahead and bring up one thing that I'm going to say is a priority and I consider that should be on the CIP. It's not listed, but we have meat and confer. I consider our police officers infrastructure. They are assets. If we don't fulfill our obligation to give them their raises, to keep them here, we're going to have other entities coming in like Border Patrol or other outside PDs recruiting. And we're going to have a mass 30 officers go through our training and leave. We don't fulfill that and get our infrastructure of our police department and our women and men in blue satisfied. We're not gonna have anything to protect anything that we do on the CIB. Lane, we do have an item that will be discussed here on the priorities which deals with the salaries and that is the area where we'll have some in depth discussion as far as what you're talking about. And we don't understand the importance of our police officers. importance of the services our staff provides so again we'll be discussing that per se and by definition it's not I do understand what you're saying as far as infrastructure but it's not really defined as as infrastructure which is what we're just going to right now but we are going to get to that salary is part of it and we'll go more in depth into that okay we have Lisa Molly we have some numbers that she can present as well and she'll have some really good information in order for city council members to base a good decision on as well but I do understand that thank you. As you go through that list this is the short list Rick and Sandra are gonna do a similar kind of exercise with you which is a much longer list are there any other projects you'd like information on or to

[0:32:42] express on in that level one group then if if there isn't any are we ready we'll So we'll collect your entali, you're liking when you're ready. You can either do it at this point, if you have any questions for any of our staff members, we're able to do that. Or if you like to ask questions later, that's fine as well, but we definitely would like to get that for our information to make sure we understand what the City Council's preference is. Either right now or afterwards. Michael, can you briefly tell me about this Foster Road and River Valley Lane? I mean, I don't want the whole thing. I just want to know what is their main problem right now that they're having. Well, Shane, are you the man on that? Well, Shane's coming up. I'll just say I think that has been the number one live commented item, as Morgan has held these CIP meetings. We've had more people show up as advocates for some solution there, no question that, is that a fair statement Morgan? I would concur, the drainage at Foster Road is proposed at $1.6 million and the drainage at River Valley is proposed at $470,000, so those two projects together are related to the Butler Farms neighborhood. Thank you. What was the first hit? What was the buffer on that? 1,600,000. So two million? Together. And now we affect one neighborhood? That's for the Butler Farms neighborhood. And I understand this as well. But we've got drainage projects all over town that we have problems with. We've had it on the Capitol Improvement list for years.

[0:34:42] I mean, we've got to the Pulliam Street, we've got East Angelo Draw, we've got 14th Street, we've got 19th Street, we've got areas that flood every time they rains and Avenue P, we're working on that. So, we've got a lot of drainage issues all over this city that we've been aware of for years and years that we just keep pushing down. So, getting a line. We need to keep those people in mind as well and I understand mother farms has a problem, but they're not the only problem in San Angelo and they just recently come to the table. Hey, can you tell us what's going on out there? Recently, as more construction happens on that end of town, we are seeing a little more runoff. This coming through, basically, there's a low water crossing. As you leave the loop and heading, you know, heading into Butler Farms area on Foster Road, is basically now a low water crossing, and as more development happens in the area, it gets worse and worse, and more land is cleared. The flooding issues and conditions continue to get worse out there. Now, it is fairly unique out there, as into that sub-division, butler farm sub-division, that is Foster Road is the only road in and out. And when we do have a significant, significant rainfall. It does actually, I guess, prohibit travel back and forth through that low order crossing during the rain event itself. So definitely issues there on Foster Road and those are the kind of the issues that the citizens have brought to the table when they're talking about it and talking about it with staff as well too. We are looking, you know, at other things as well too, working with the Bentwood Group for regional retention on their property to try to keep their water on them. And so hopefully that would help alleviate some of it as well too.

[0:36:44] We do have, of course, right now with the last year, we had significant rainfall last year and coming into the winter and summer. So we are seeing some natural seeps and we're keeping a lot of water on that road. and we've had to go in there at that low water crossing and pull the water back off the road because it was so soft that we were actually, we couldn't keep enough material on it to keep the potholes covered. So we went in there and kind of rebuilt that low water crossing a little bit, pulled the water off. We've helped it a little bit there. Of course, as we get into spring rains, we're gonna see a significant, hopefully see significant heavily rainfall and see some runoff and that's gonna cause us more issues as we move into spring. River Valley Lane, as you go down, there's four or five houses, I guess, on River Valley Lane, and maybe one or two other properties right behind it that are actually water, as water's coming into that area, it's ponding and pooling right there and not draining, fast enough off of it and we're seeing water actually come right up to the edges of houses and in the neighborhood and it's an issue, but again, like the mayor said, we have those issues all over town, so that's kind of a quick summary of what we have going on in those areas, and so I can go into further detail if we need to, but that's what we need to do. Real quickly, the college hills drainage problem that we have, where is that water actually coming from? That one comes from all, it comes from the other side of the loop on college hills, it comes from a lot of it is coming from right there sunset, those areas sunset drains, all of that drains down into college hills, of course we do have water coming from the other side of the loop into that area, and then but all those, when you start going down Oak Forest and you start all those roads that you go down there, they all drain into college hills and then College Hills takes it to the Red Arroya. So College Hills is one of

[0:38:49] our major it's a major drain for the city and unfortunately that's streets are our primary channels for drainage. So all that housing as that hill goes up all that straining all that drains down into College Hills. Everything from soil Ross on the outside of the loop to the inside of the loop there along from I'm so lost to college hills, all of that in the commercial that has built an abbreviated that goes right down to college hills to the bottom area. There's no drainage of any kind. And those houses have flooded numerous times, right? Yes. The first couple blocks from Sunset, those houses are now with all the millen over, the still coating that we've done on college hills over the years are now below the highest point of that street. time it's flooding on one side and a car drives by and splashes it into the yard it's just even making it worse going into those houses. So is there any efforts that we can do to grade that to get that channel ditch to shoot it down towards the retaroya faster? So I guess I'm laying I mean this is as big a problem in a a longer problem than the problem we have off the road? Yeah, I mean, the College Hills drainage issue, I mean, it was identified in our master drainage plan back in 2000. So I mean, yes, it's been an issue for a long time. And again, I don't necessarily know that we have enough layers of silcoed on that road. That road, I believe, was actually re, some of that road in that area was actually reworked back in say the late 90s. And I don't know that we've had enough silcoats on that road to have raised the crown enough to be pushing that water that far. I think it's just the more development we've had in those areas we're seeing more water

[0:40:49] actually come into that area at a faster rate. And so we are seeing flooding. You know, there have been homeowners on college hills over in that area that have gone in there and built up their curb inside the city curb, built up another curb inside on their property to keep that water and that splashing from happening. They've done that as personal property owners to help alleviate that situation from their property. But again, yes, College Hills has been an issue and was identified back in 2000 in our master drainage study that was completed. And one thing I didn't- I would say that I think as a city we're obligated to- Help those first couple blocks out. Yes, people have been- And put those curves in and up to help that. In the reconstruction, and it's not going to be a complete solution, but, you know, something that we're going to look at and as we're moving forward, that's in our portion of, well, South College Hills Boulevard is from the loop back up to Avenue EN is in our year five reconstruction plans within the bonded, you know, the bond funding program that we set forward. So it It is on the radar for road improvements in that area, which will help. We can help adjust some of that drainage at that point. It's not, with the funding available, it's not going to be a total drainage solution on College Hills. But we can definitely do things to help the immediate problems that we're seeing. And one thing we did in the CIP a couple years ago is to look at a five-year plan of the infrastructure and capital needs of this city, it's a little short-sighted. And so we have the five-year plan that's level one and two that's before you today, but in addition to that, we have what's called level three, and so there are things that we're aware of that need to happen and they're in future years beyond fiscal year 22, and College Hills Drainage Remediation is on there, two stretches of it at 4.7 million each, and so they're not on a future year because we don't think they need to happen. They're on a future year because they're massive, if I could.

[0:42:52] And those and that number the numbers that you're quoting are 17 years old now, too, so right so we expect that when we did Attempt to do these projects that it may be in excess of that it would almost certainly be in excess of that So that's why it's not listed on here as an unfunded project But it's certainly our opportunity to listed it as other if we need to capture that bring it into the five-year horizon Instead of out there lingering as as a future project beyond One thing I'd like to also speak on that you touched on is the key word on the Foster Road was the one way in one way out So we have an issue on People trying to make it to the hospitals for on call We have issues for emergency services to be able to get in and out if that road is flooding And I can't I don't I think it's in the hundreds of how many houses are out there at right now 178 I believe don't quote me on that But that's enough to where that can be creating an issue if there is truly an emergency emergency And that is flooding two feet or so that I have seen. That's going to give a risk for those citizens and our emergency services. We don't have to go into it now, but if sometime you'd like to discuss the history, I know that Charlotte and Duane were here when we faced that unfunded mandate that created the stormwater utility. That was about quality runoff, not quantity. what we're talking about today are quantity issues. Quantity of water that runs off in the problems it creates. Now for my next question is, what is public work? What are we talking about? Is that the combined public work facility? Is that one? Yes, so that's 4.5 million. Yeah, that's, it's basically out there on St. Anne Street where we have street and bridge and storm water and the water utilities, most of the water utilities functions out there. We were looking at actually building and combined,

[0:44:52] basically a large office building, for all of our groups to be put into one facility instead of multiple different old dilapidated buildings and shops, and come together in one public works facility, and that was actually looking at bringing parks over from their facility as well too, putting them into that facility and basically combining everything in one structure, one building that will actually house all of our employees. As some of those structures out there that we're using, we're built in 1965 and we've certainly expanded services and staffing since then, it's difficult to operate with. We have outgrown our facility. I've got two questions. What all does it entail for the battery backup system and the signal replacement? Are we looking at signal replacements on major roads or all around town and are the battery backup systems, just those? The battery backup systems are actually, it's a federal mandate to add the battery backups to all the signalized intersections, especially the ones that go across railroad crossings. And that's a whole scope of the town or just that certain ones. The, I believe what's in front of you there and I'm not looking at it exactly there, But I believe what's there is for the whole scope of town, battery backups on the entire system. Of course, when the electricity goes down and all the signalized intersections go dark. And so this would allow a length of time, an hour and a half, two hours, that these systems would still operate on battery power if we have an electrical outage. Or there's a pole lock down, any type of things like that. right now currently PD has to work those intersections as best they can when we have outages in those areas until we can either get portable stop signs or

[0:46:53] something out there to create a four-way stop condition until the electricity comes back on so that's what that is the signalized replacing all the signalized intersections in town most of our most of our signalized intersections are well past their lifespan 40 plus years. Most of them were actually we've had to go into a yearly inspection of all the poles because we're starting to see some stress fractures up on top of the poles from the wind and everything just over the years. Most of these signalized intersections are 40 plus years old and so it's just it's time to replace them. It's like any other the rest of our infrastructure issues it's they're just old and then we're out. Thank you. We back up just a little bit before we get way past at the city fuel site improvement. Who do we share that city fuel site with? Is it the county and the school system or just the school system? It's our fuel system, but we actually, we sell fuel to the school system, to Snazal ISD. We also, the region, region 15, region 15 center here. transit, we have, we actually sell fuel to multiple different, multiple different nonprofit agencies or tax agencies. Is the million dollars that you have on here though, but can some of that money be absorbed by the other facilities who are using it to pay a portion of that improvement? It would be, it's proposed to be funded by internal service fees, but that would be fees charged to our own customers, all of our customers for using that facility. Yes, is the answer. Thank you. And also we're talking about drainage. I remember back in the May 14th storm. I think every house on Lincoln Park East and Lincoln Park West flooded. I mean, water measured in maybe inches in all of these houses. So we've got drainage problems all over town.

[0:48:55] And another thing that I'm interested in, that I don't see anywhere is our civil defense silence. and I don't remember hearing mine yesterday. I did hear about two weeks ago when we blew up just during the month to check them, but I've not heard myself with a fence siren in the last, I would say four to five months. And we're coming on storm season right now, those things need to be operating. To me, that would be a number one priority. So, and I don't even see anything on there about this. I think there's some complications with the software installations, they're causing some issues in chief, done, can probably speak better to that than I can as far as how that's working in the communication systems and how that's working. I would be my number one priority right now for everything else. I wasn't there at noon yesterday. I didn't know that it did not go off. I didn't hear mine. I got one. I'm right under it. I'm going to go. I'm going to go. I don't think so. I'm currently right now with that CAD system that got put in place. There's no way to check the sirens. I'm also working on another system for alerting through the phone system, one because most of these sirens, probably at least three-quarters of them, date back between the 1950s and the 1970s. So it's outdated technology that is almost obsolete to try to get parts for what Ryan Ward told me. I am hoping to bring a proposal to counsel. PD uses an an axial right now. There's another system that we can tag on with an axial that works like the amber alert. So if we send an alert out, it will go out to all cell phones and land lines and if people enter the area, it will come in and it's not a sign up deal. It will come to all phones. So if we have a severe storm warning, it will come across all phone systems.

[0:50:56] And I'm almost through working up all those numbers and stuff to do a presentation to Council. I hope maybe the first meeting in April. That's one of the one priority and we just city current right now the only way we would know if they aren't working if somebody tells us that one's not working and the one of them is not working. Okay. Thanks chief. Okay. If you don't have any more questions or discussion. I have another question. When I was looking at this over here on the level two I believe, yes level two projects. There's a okay park that. That's the next topic. Can we finish this? I'm just looking through it and I have all parks. Okay, that's what I'm going to ask. That's what I'm going to ask. If we're done with level one, then we can... Alright, if we're done with level one, then We can, we'll come around, pick up your sheets and start to level two discussion, is that all right? I mean, does this take time to talk? I don't think it's spelled out specifically, it's just counseled up, it's requesting. What is it all together? Now, that's Redwood Neighborhood for her. Sandra is passing out a packet that will kind of go over. So once everybody gets that, you'll be alright. More test.

[0:53:02] Thank you. Right here. Everybody's got their sheets. The first thing we'll do is you'll notice there's one sheet titled 2015 Priority Projects. So the last time we went through this process was at your retreat in 2015. We did not do it last year. So you'll see that sheet which is just a summary of what you did last time. It's this single page. If you go to the spreadsheet which is There's the multiple sheet group. We're going to go over that just briefly. The first part is to sort of bring you up to date on what has happened since 2015. These were several of the things we were working on. So the first one is the 19th Street sidewalk construction. That's complete. The North Chadburn sidewalk enhancement 7th to 14th, that's complete. We constructed a fire training facility that is opening this month. We did the PD boat storage building in dock, that's complete, the auditorium renovations, that is scheduled to open this October, Fort Concho Bandstand is complete, Foster Communication Coliseum roof, that is complete, the McNeese Convention Center improvements which were sewer lines and then they're doing some roof work. Sewer lines are complete, the roof work is in progress, it's working on that, demolition of the carrier building that is complete. Fort Concho Barracks number six floor that is complete.

[0:55:03] Fort Concho heating and cooling course that's an ongoing item so some of those are complete but that is ongoing. You'll see the next category of Fairmont Cemetery Phase 1 which was a column bearing construction that is complete. Bradford neighborhood park has been completed. Civic League part edition of the fourth water basin complete. Red Royal Trail complete. Lake as where the boat ramps at Spring Creek is complete. Dog part of it is complete, the rest is scheduled to be complete this spring or early summer. The Bosque on the river is complete. The next page shows the things that are currently in the works or in the progress of being done. This is the transportation enhancement project of MLK, the sidewalks, curbing, bike lanes, so forth. It's underway, scheduled for completion of Spring of 18. station number four that is the funding has been identified and the plans are drawn we're nearing the bidding process on that. Fort Concho Visitor Center which is barracks one and two you'll remember there's half since sales tax dollars some for that but they'll have to get additional grant dollars they are currently in the process of selecting the firm to design and that'll be coming to council I don't I think it's already gone. For Concho, Officer Quarter's one, room, OQ-1, the rear room and roof repairs. It is proceeding in 2017. The barracks, mess hall three and four, you'll remember that's an anonymous donor that is bringing those forward and we have approved architect to do the design work on that. office building those are ongoing things that we do there as far as maintenance goes those are in progress and then you'll notice under parks you have the neighborhood park renovations the one that is funded moving forward is Brentwood at this point station 618 parking that's associated with the demolition of the

[0:57:07] carrier building there's funding identified to start that and the design work is in process. 29th Street Sports Complex renovation those are some have since sales tax dollars and you'll be having a recommendation of a design group coming to you soon. Texas Bank Sports Complex Quad 2 that is currently designed it is in the bid phase and then the late NAS worthy boat ramp is under design. So that kind of gives you a summary of what has happened since 2015, what has actually already been done, finished in that timeframe and what's in the work. So you can see, that's a lot in a short period of time. Just a real quick comment so that people understand. On that second page, where we just talked about Rick, a good portion of those dollars are private dollars. They're not all public dollars. So when people say, well, why don't you use those monies for the parks to fix the streets? to remember that what we're doing is leveraging some of those public dollars to gain a number of private dollars to help fund these projects. Yeah that's very good point Mary. A lot of these are like I said you know some of these are our donors that have come in a few of them are or have some sales tax with for voter specific dollars for specific projects and so forth so good point. One thing that I like how Morgan touched on there in my town hall was she explained that going along the lines of that was you have certain strings of money coming into each fund and you can only use that for those funds so just because the money's there doesn't mean that you can shuffle most of it around and use it for other projects because some of it's dedicated grant funding private funding specifically for those. And that is exactly right. And where possible you'll see it on a lot of these projects we really try to leverage those dollars or additional grant dollars or other funding. Otherwise, a lot of these projects,

[0:59:07] we just aren't able to accomplish if we don't leverage those against other funding sources. So what we'll do now is, you have, after those two pages, is a list of all the other remaining things on the CIP that are really not related to what Michael and Morgan just talked about, which are more streets and water and those kind of things. Sander prepared a one-page list here, 2017 is listed, and these are the things that are on that spreadsheet, but in just more of a one-page readable format. What we want to do is allow you to go through those, and what we want you to do is circle the 10 that really speaks to you as being our highest priority. If you see something that's not on this list, then let us know. And in answering Lucy's question, on the park and recreation category, which is the last category on the second column, it says restroom facility's neighborhood parks. That's where the MLK is, because the request was specifically for restrooms at MLK. So that's listed under that restroom facility neighborhood parks, because it was more than just MLK. There were, there were several. So make sure you're on the 2017 page, not the 2015 page. As we circle the 10 projects, do you want us to number them? Well, what we're going to do is, sort of like we did last night, if we have time, we're going to let you circle your top 10. And then y'all may need a quick restroom break after you're done with that. And Sandra and I will tally those things, and we will put them up so that we can see what those top priorities came out to be. And then if need be, if there's some that are all jumbled together, then we may let you revoke at that point. Last time we got up with sticky notes on the ones that we categorized as high.

[1:01:13] So we'll do it that way. If you want a number of them, that's fine. But you don't have to. Carl, say my plan is listed twice. Are there two separate ones? No. Mark it off. Art bad. When I'm done. 10.

[1:06:16] 29. Yeah. 10. 30. 10, 29. Let's get this show back on the road. We're ready to go. So we tabulate on your results and we have good news. Several of the items that y'all categorized as high priority which are the airport management plan, radio system, 2.5, mobile data terminals and fire and port cross the roof replacement. Actually, if we're using Morgan, they have funding identified with them. So those high priorities that you put as a high priority are remaining high and actually they're moving forward because they've got funding associated. So we don't need to find that. You don't need to find funding forward. So those came off of your list to vote on because they're going to happen. In addition to that, anything that got two votes or more is on the board or on on these sheets, we've got the park restaurants, which includes MLK, and actually MLK was mentioned, I think, a couple of times specifically. Riverbank Stabilization, Fort Concho OQ-2, Fort Concho OQ-8, River Trail, this is River Trail, 19th to Kirby, versus Riverbank Stabilization. Santa Fe Trade Depot, Wayfinding, Chadburn Street corridor, water billing, slash customer service offices, the police department offices, and the animal shelter. So Sandra has given you each five sticky notes. Go put those on your top five, because you just sit down, so we figure you need to get up again. You just take those and put them all on one, you could do that, but that's your choice. Y'all need just some exercise.

[1:08:29] He's the best. How is that? How is that? What was it? That was the best. He knows. He knows. I'm not going to answer this message. He knows. Colors that nobody would have. Oh my god. Oh yeah. Did you? Yeah. How the fuck is say well? Not sure. I'm not going to do it better. I wouldn't think you've done it with the media. Okay. Well, we will take these and give y'all a report, but just kind of glancing. everything. Everybody can probably kind of tell what looks like the restrooms, the park restrooms, the Chadburne Street, Police Department, Depot are the high getters. So that kind of gives us what we need. Our goal is to, you know, leverage dollars where we can. We have grant opportunities. For instance, the Chadburne corridors, one you've been hearing about where we're trying to leverage grants against existing dollars that may happen. But we'll look for those opportunities in these areas as well, and that helps us get a little guidance as to what we need to focus on.

[1:10:30] So I appreciate y'all's help. I'm done and we're here to answer questions if you have any. Okay. Any questions for Rick? Okay. I have one more thing on CIP before we move on completely away from capital projects that please encourage your folks to do the online survey, is that cosetx.us slash cip input. So if you're watching live, or as you encounter folks in the community, please encourage to route them that way. Kind of individually, we hear projects, but this isn't way for all of us to be hearing the same voice. So, cosetx.us slash cip input. Thanks. Very good. Thanks, Morgan. Up next, we do have an update on the top five strategic priorities that we've actually have for the past several years. We'll do it. It would be five of the different individuals, we'll be presenting each one of these items. We'll start off with a water supply, which will have Bill lying to him appear and do his presentation. He doesn't have a powerful presentation up there. And once he's finished, we can go directly to addressing the issues or concerns or any ideas that you may have for that one strategic priority. Or we can move on to the next item to the all five representing, but I do feel that while it's still fresh in your mind, it might be good to kind of go ahead and address it at that point. With that said, Bill, this is yours. Good morning. Good morning. We'll start by just kind of thinking through that we had, this year, one of the top five record rainfalls, the most rainfall, the annual precipitation average for this area is about 24 inches or less. It was in the mid 30s this year, which is a great thing. However, as you can see from this slide, IV is still at only a 25% capacity, and the other ones have, while they've picked up some water,

[1:12:32] just we're still, it's still kind of critical, as far as the water supply in the reservoirs. Currently we have, based on the calculations that include the evaporation and use, And it's based on no significant inflow, about 36 months of water supply, which means that from the CRMWD that with no inflow, IV would be offline in September of 2018, roughly. So while we anticipate that there will be some rain, there will be some inflow, that it's still, I think, important that we continue to look at water supply and plan for how we make sure that we have a long-term supply for St. Angelo. So I wanna just kinda walk through some of the different things that we're doing, some of the things that the Advisory Board had looked at and just kinda talk about where we are and what we're thinking. Just the Advisory Board had made a recommendation and you agreed that we look at the expansion of the Hickory to its full capacity. There's currently 15 wells in the well field that produce about 10.8 million gallons a day, roughly 12,000 acre feet a year, which is the ultimate allocation that we would have from the Hickory well field permitted capacity. The groundwater treatment facility here in town will treat about eight MgD, so the plan One is to expand the treatment facility first to its maximum capacity of 12 M.G.D. And we're in discussions with the engineer that did the Hickory Project to expand that. The well field would be additional wells. We have permits for an additional seven wells, but what we would look at is what we would

[1:14:32] need to have significant or appropriate backup or redundancy because the current 15 wells will produce our maximum allocation but that would be all the wells running so any hiccup in that we wouldn't have that available so it just needs to have some redundancy. We don't anticipate moving forward with that piece until some other things are worked out as far as the ranch and other issues associated with the current project that's finishing up. This isn't exactly water supply, but it's definitely tied to our water supply and our use of water. Last May, you approved a contract to do with CDM Smith to do a water master plan. The water master plan is specific to the distribution system, the actual delivering the treated water to citizens. A master plan is necessary for us to understand what our production pumping and storage capacities are because we're required to have by law by the T.C.Q. to have a certain amount of pumping capacity and storage capacity based on the number of people and connections that you are serving. So, as the city grows, we have to understand and make sure that we still have those proper capacities. It also looks at growth, growth projections based on our land use plan, and then develops a capital improvement plan that shows us what we will need to do, what we will need to install not only in pipe infrastructure, that not only would be hours, but also for development. We need to understand the size of pipes that need to be installed during development, but also again for understanding that and making sure that we have the pumping in storage capacities. We'll look at future demands and it also impacts obviously our water supply to make sure that we have appropriate water supply to meet future demands when we anticipate those coming online. As part of this, Mr. Plan, we're doing a leak detection, which is being under doing it now.

[1:16:39] So in that process is actually listening to the pipes and to try to identify if we have any specific leaks, so we've identified areas where we think that we might have some older areas, different types of pipes that might be leaking, and so that we can get a handle on where are we losing water right now and so we can focus efforts on on fixing those places currently another piece of it is to do a risk assessment we are as you know making sure that we have rehabilitation projects associated with the street plan to make sure that we don't build new streets over old lines and have problems so but at the same time there's other areas of the city that that we know needs rehabilitation, needs some work to be done. We don't want to forget about those. So what we're doing is doing a risk assessment to understand those areas that we need to really focus on now to have the most potential not only for having failures, but also having a greater service level impact if we do have those failures. So we want to understand those, fold that into the street plan and make sure that we're using the dollars that we have most appropriately and also reducing water loss as much as we possibly can with those dollars. And one side note on that, you can too, Councilman Thomas' thoughts about Lake Nazworthy. We are currently talking to the engineering firm and to amend that contract, we'll be bringing that back to you to do a master plan basically using the land use plan that was done for Lake Nazworthy to understand the sewer needs and the rehabilitation and expansion of that to be able to properly serve the projected growth for NASworthy. There, as you've talked about, there's a lot of problems out there now, and we need to understand not only what we need to do, but what it's gonna cost, which goes right back to your comments

[1:18:40] about how we fund that. I'll talk in a minute about the West Texas Water Partnership that you're all familiar with. I ain't a little bit more detail, But that partnership is looking at a long-term supply. When it was first initiated, that long-term or that supply might not have been so long-term, it was looking at how the three cities, Abilene and Midland and San Angelo, would develop new water supplies. Because of the severe drought, all three entities have spent quite a bit of money just trying to make sure that they have drought-proofed their systems. Abilene and Midland have both spent about $250 million each. And what that's done is kind of changed the focus of the partnership to more long-term. So what that means is that we're in a position like they were and are in looking at how do we meet our more short-term needs. You know, we've talked about recently how we would use our effluent, which is approximately nine million gallons a day to, as to shore up or augment our surface water supplies. That has been looked at in a lot of the initial study, looked at what would be the best way to be able to do that indirectly or directly. And it was decided that probably directly would be the best option as you know we pursued that. Obviously that's not probably a good option for this community right now. But the fact remains is that that water is there, and there might be other ways that we can use it, and we need to take a look at it. One thing that got lost in that project, though, that I think is important to talk about, is when we talked about the dollars for the direct puddle reuse project, it included funding for some much needed upgrades to both the wastewater treatment plant and the water treatment plant. And so when we took that off the table, those issues kind of got lost, but the real issues

[1:20:42] and they need to be still back on the table and how we're going to meet those needs. And then also as we look at those things, how does that fold into future water supplies that we're not sure what that's going to be right now. So as we take a look at that, we need to understand the bigger picture. So we had this discussion with the advisory board, excuse me, and we talked to them about how we might move forward to develop a plan that took all of those things into consideration so that we really had a good plan for moving forward. And so we developed a scope for that that basically is going to look at all of the existing potential water supplies that we have. Included in that would be the upgrades, the needed upgrades to our treatment facilities. Again, taking into consideration what might our future water supplies be so that anything we do to both the wastewater treatment plant and the water treatment plant would have those end goals in mind. And then how do we, what are some options that we might have for utilizing our wastewater effluent? And how do we do that in conjunction with what we're doing now, which is sending it to the irrigation district? How could we, you know, how can we do both, still do that, but have it available in times where the city might need that supply and be able to augment our supplies with that. So a couple of options there would be to do a, currently we do not have a discharge permit, which means we don't discharge it into any water body. We send the wastewater to the irrigation, or to our holding ponds and it goes to the irrigation district. To have more use of that water, we would need to get a discharge permit where we could actually drop that water into the river and then pick it up downstream either through some process with some things that we've talked about, this one's called river bank filtration where you

[1:22:44] actually pull it through the ground and that adds, it's an additional environmental buffer or take it all the way to ivy and augment the supplies there in ivy. But at any rate, we can't do anything with it unless we have a discharge permit and we look at how we improve our plant to be able to improve that effluent to drop it into the river. And of course, as you all know, our water treatment plant is, while it does a good job and you have to commend the folks that operate that plant, they do an excellent job of treating water, it is very old technology. It's very old, it's an old plant, parts of that plant were constructed over 100 years ago. So it definitely needs some upgrade. We need to take all that into consideration. And then, and probably one of the biggest issues here is how do we schedule that? How do we put that into a plan and a process so we can fund it and know when we need to fund it and what piece we need to do when, and so that fits into our five year rate plan so that we have the funding available and necessary to do that. We have actually sent out an RFQ and we have received proposals and we'll be bringing that back to you pretty soon in how we start the process of land out this plan so we know how we meet some of our future needs. Excuse me. And then finally back to the West Texas Water Partnership. The partnership has been in existence since I think about 2010 and they've done a lot of work in looking and trying to identify groundwater supplies primarily that would be available for us in the future. And there's several have been identified, unfortunately, nothing's close, but I think everybody understood that, is why it makes sense for three entities to be working together to do that. A couple of those potential supplies have risen to the top, and at this time it's to the point

[1:24:46] where we actually need to go out and begin the process of proving up, is it a real viable supply? I guess the downside of that is now we start to spend real money because it's going to take some money for the three entities to go out and do that work. And so we'll be talking to you about that sometime in the not too distant future about what the next step is for the West Texas Water Partnership and actually identifying if there really is some potential projects. A presentation, an update on the current water supply. We did. The city council didn't name that as a number one priority a few years back and it continues I think moving forward as as the one of the top priorities we hear streets as well But water still continues being a top priority We wanted to get your input if you had any questions for bill or any thoughts or comments as far as the direction They were going we definitely would love to hear from you But again our recommendation is to leave this one as one of our top priorities But again, we want to hear from you just a real quick comment So, citizens understand the technology that we're using at the water treatment plant is about 1920s technology. We really need to seriously consider figuring out what that priority is so the citizens understand that we need to move this into the 21st century. Well, I've always felt that wastewater and fluid is the way of the future. I think that's it's not a matter of if it's when and I would like to move back toward that. We were moving that direction and then we changed our mind I'd like to see wastewater affluent reuse put back in the in the capital improvements 10 million gallons a day or water per day that

[1:26:48] we're losing there's no reason to lose it okay any other thoughts on this one first we need focus more on the actual plant right now focus on the water loose use and the loss that we're having through the failing system I think that would be the number one priority that I would stick with. Bill thank you appreciate it. Up next on the top five priorities are our streets and of course we have Shane Kelvin up here to do his presentation as well so same thing once he finishes his presentation we'd love to hear from you any thoughts or any suggestions any considerations that perhaps we haven't looked at yet. So with that Shane. Okay, what we're gonna do is kind of give everybody just an update on where we are currently within our year one phase and then kind of go through the go through what we're looking at the of course year one we're well into the middle of we've we've got our funding in place and we've we started work actually started work on MLK I mean we're digging in we're digging in the street so I mean that's exciting that we're actually we're starting to see improvements and move forward with this so but again I don't necessarily know that I want to read through every one of these and let y'all kind of read them yourselves to some degree but you're one with them okay and of course Bell Street well into well into the design phase of it working through working through some of the issues that we've encountered with it but well into that design phase and hoping that this fall we're actually going to start seeing some real work there as well to digging in the ground. So, moving forward, again, gear one projects, South College Hills, 306 to Valley View. We're ready to get started on that. Then, of course, south and boulevard, that little stretch from Sherwood Way to the Wal-Mart Sam's signalized area that goes between

[1:28:48] the two stores there. Getting ready to get started on that is Resubbert kind of winds down with their Sherwood Way project. We're hoping that we can ease right into that Southland project and, of course, hopefully to minimize any traffic issues that we're going to have with it as well there, too. Again, more of our Year One projects, North Chabron, US-67 Washington, which basically Houston Hart down to Washington, working, you You know, Rick and his group from the planning side of things and working towards trying to leverage our dollars for this street work to also include enhanced pedestrian improvements in that area as well, too, so we're looking at some grant dollars there. So that one's going to be pushed back just a little bit, but again, working on South Chabron from Washington Avenue L and that's where the cities that's where we our maintenance efforts stop is at Avenue L and then the state picks up from there and of course North Chabron Street 67 to 29th and then from 29th to 43rd we're right now projecting to use our new Benedicti machine that that we've required to do that portion of North Chabron. Start getting into your three projects. Don't necessarily go through all of it, but North Chabron, again, on there, kind of, it's kind of a, if the funding works out right, we're going to do it in the year one funding cycle. If it doesn't work out right, it'll be bumped to the year three funding cycle for the Millin overlay. It's kind of, it's one of those areas that we have to kind of make the funding, the projects fit with the funding. So, but again, working through that, Glenna Drive, Sunset Drive, Southwest Boulevard, Rockbrook, to Twin Mountain,

[1:30:50] and of course 29th, the other portion of Glenna there, and North and South Johnson. Your five projects are this is where we talked about earlier the College Hills area hopefully with the recon it doesn't necessarily this the funding that we have in place doesn't necessarily address the the drainage issues that we were talking about earlier on College Hills but this will definitely help anything that we do in the design portion of this will definitely help with those issues as we move forward but again to recon College Hills Boulevard and then Harris and Howard finishing up your five there going into your seven Avenue Inn and there's as we move through some of these we're looking at and I in one of the slides as we get get on past this just a little bit but looking at Smith and Sunset and some of those some of those actually we believe some of these streets for the rehabilitation efforts are actually going to be prime candidates for the new Benedicti machine and so hopefully we'll be able to utilize the Benedetti machine and the recycling process, that way to actually take some of these dollars that we have allocated here and push them further down our list of streets that actually need full reconstruction and hopefully make those dollars go further. But again, going through there, and then year nine is finishing up the Southwest Boulevard from basically drive back around to the loop, where the loop comes around, I think where the caverners and whatever that Western story is, kind of in that area right there back, just to give somebody kind of a visual list of how far that goes, and then, of course, South Johnson Avenue and the Knickerbacher. Again, some of these stated for recon and rehab, I believe

[1:32:50] that the Benedictine machine will actually help some of these as well, too. Things that we're currently doing, the Southwest Loop Throw 6 to Rockbook, that whole project is at 60 percent designed right now, and we actually, when we did this, when we went out with our RFP and we got the IDIQ for the engineering services, instead of breaking it up into the two project timeframes, we actually had the engineers do the whole project. Street at one time instead of doing half the street and then get another engineering firm to do another street so we're actually actually getting some of these plans put on the shelf a little early so but we'll be ready to go when the funding is available. For and yes sir. That's kind of right in front of it's that problem we've got right in front of McDonald's Yes, sir. Okay. Yes, sir. Yeah. And on the year three projects, just to let you all know, coming up, we will be coming back to you for additional funding approvals for the, to gain more money. So we can go ahead and design work this fall, coming into, to get ready, to get the designs on the table ready to go as soon as funding becomes available in 2018 for the year three projects. Probably look forward to seeing Tina come back to y'all in January, February time frame of 2018 to start the leading process for the year three bonds. Just a quick update on the asphalt recycler. It's approximately 50% completed in its build phase. Mr. Benedeti sent me some pictures this morning, so it actually looks like a machine now. It's instead of just a bunch of metal laying on the ground so that's it's exciting news for us. I expect it in May and these are some of the streets that we

[1:34:52] really believe are going to be ideal candidates for this new machine and hopefully you can see some of these streets up there on there that actually we were having our reconstruction list so we're again we're hoping to push these use this machine to push these dollars these bond dollars even further into our list of streets, street needs across town. As far as the seal coat project and the preservation going into the third year with the funding that Council gave us, this is kind of the map how it breaks out over the eight-year cycle and kind of how we have it lined out based on square yardage per year and also not only that but also kind of where we had areas that work that had seen some seal coating prior to kind of trying to kind of trying to make sure that the roads that need it the worst get it first type thing and so you can kind of see it's a little odd shape map but again it kind of breaks it out evenly in yardage square yardage and allows us to make sure that we're putting the product down where it needs to be placed first. And just so you can get an update of what's out for bid right now the seal coat project We're currently fixing to have it put out in the bidding process. You can see a little bit up there off of Bell Street, up in the top right-hand corner up there, and then another area. Start getting over there just south of Borgerger, Woodway area. And then we have some look at the alternates in the orange down at the bottom, depending on what the bid process come back in. And what it looks like is to how far our dollars will go, trying to stretch our dollars as far as we can stretch them. So we put some alternates in there as well too. Is there a government question?

[1:36:52] Yes, sir. All these beds, what can the Benedeti do? Will that be a cost savings? Not for this process, not yet. The silco process, of course, is a preservation process. The Benedeti process is basically a rehab when we're actually going in there and completely re-having a street to get that, get the pavement surface back like we needed. And until we get that machine in here, we get comfortable with it. We believe, again, when we look at it, based on the machine itself and what we've been told you can do as far as where you are. We've been just going to take about 10 years to do so we still have to preserve the streets and so this is the most cost-efficient way we have to preserve the streets. We realize that nobody lacks the silicone process, the hot tar, or nobody lacks the rock and the loose rock that comes along with this process. So we understand it's not a preferred process, but it's one that's necessary and will continue to be necessary until we start getting all of the streets with the Benedictine machine rehabbed. Now, once the rehabbed, hopefully that will prolong the streets life long enough that we can cut back significantly on the seal coating process. Shane, pull that slide back up or you show the streets you can do with the Benedictine machine. So you're going to get it in in May, it takes about 60 days to learn the process for your crew, whatever that number is. Do you anticipate that you're gonna be able to do all 12 of these particular streets yet this year? I don't know that we'll get them all in this year. That's, some of these streets segments are fairly long,

[1:38:53] but these are the, you know, we wanna make sure that we're on the streets that this is our candidates for this process. We want, you know, we're concentrating on our arterials and collectors first before we go off into other streets as well, too, and so. I understand, but I mean, citizens are going to be interested soon as soon as that they see that machine the first time they're going to say well one is going to be on my street so you know you've got a list of priority streets that you're you're planning on doing I'm just trying to get up I would I would right now I'm gonna say probably two years to get this done so as good as it sounds there's gonna be pressure for a second machine got a new counsel That was something that I was thinking about, too, if we're looking at what's our annual cost for seal coating. Is it 4.5? We're currently on the seal coating, the specific process itself, we're doing between three and three and a half million a year, and then of course the other processes that go along with it, the crack sealing prior to the seal coat, level of work, all of those other processes that we do prior to the seal coating process or have cost associated with them with them So we do spend four to four and a half million on the entire process But the actual contracted portion of it is between three and three and a half million This is just my opinion if the machine cost one point two correct You have a drastic cost savings to get another machine in here and start that secondary to our Reconstruction's focusing only on what would have been sil coated and you're gonna save millions If the we get the machine in and it works like we believe it's going to that those thought processes have started working through our minds as well to as to the savings that can be achieved through instead of still coding putting them into this machine and then using those dollars that would have been placed here to

[1:40:53] start working on our concrete streets things like that that we're not addressing currently right now that do need to be addressed as well too so over $600,000 a year that was a drop in the bucket for what needed to happen and I'll tell you right now as far as a priority the City Council did establish moving forward it's really helped this program now where we're looking at what Shane just mentioned the four million for maintenance but also the reconstruction mill and overlay that we're going through certificates of obligation, which would be about 8 million a year. So you're looking at about $11 to $12 million per year now that the commitment from the city moving forward saying that streets are a priority. We're seeing it right now. And again, we're just trying to make absolutely sure that they don't get to the point where we can't use those streets. And we were actually getting there if had the city council had we now worked together to move forward and make this happen. So again, the plans in place we've heard from our citizens that was a number one priority they still have on the list so again any thoughts and ideas from council we'd love to hear them what what year they gonna do the seal coating in district to Marty 2020 2020 I can read the map you bring that map back up Lucy I was fixing the handshake on Cog Street so is that going to be in 2018 yeah it's it's actually in this this year see that little red up there a little red up in the corner uh-huh that includes Coke Street down to down to St. Anne Street. Okay that'll be on 2017 this year yes that's in this year's that's in this year's contract. Thank you. And then Marty's in 2020. That'll be mr. top. No let me forget that. Any other thoughts on this again it is a one of the top top two priority streets and water they're

[1:42:56] kind of interchangeable as far as a level of priority for the city in the past. Our recommendation is to leave it on there as far as still one of the top five priorities that we do have. But anyway, regardless, Shane, thank you for your presentation. I appreciate that. Next up is the discussion that was a priority that was established. It actually moved up last year. The police station moved up to number three on the priority list. We do have a presentation. Michael Dane will be doing the presentation on this, but it involves the bank property and maybe a change of direction. Again, we'd like to hear your input on that as well. But with that said, I'll hand this over to Shane. I mean to Michael. Thank you, Daniel. As Daniel mentioned, police station is one of our top priorities. The City Council contracted for the purchase of the first financial bank building with the idea that it was good value, the property could be used to satisfy this need, but it was good enough value that it could be used in another way if necessary. We had an architect under contract who estimated the cost to either renovate the existing facility for to clear the land and rebuild in the neighborhood of $38 million to $39 million and early estimate suggested that a property tax rate increase of approximately $3.7 would be necessary to fund that. That there is a placeholder in the current financing plan for approximately $5 million, But the other $35 million would need to come from a tax rate increase. And the early discussions about that involve where that council would direct the voters to

[1:45:02] make that decision in a bond election. Plus is associated with a project like this. It's a long-term solution. We get it done and not have to worry about it. We hope for an extended period of time. And we'd get an energy efficient result. Obviously, a big, open, old facility like that is going to be less efficient as it exists rather than new construction, minus is high cost, and a property tax rate increase, and the timing, we're in a down economy. If we look at a facility like this, we're probably not going to be able to avoid a high cost. So, changing the timing or location is probably not going to create an avoidance of that cost. It'll just create a different kind of timing that goes with it. One of the things we've done as a result of concern about a tax rate increase at this time is develop a possible alternate use for the building. That would be assign the building to public works. includes water operations and engineering. Primarily, there or of note, there is utility billing and customer service functions are part of that group. Building is set up for that kind of activity. Office activity with some counter-oriented bill paying kind of activity. If we were to go that direction, I've talked to Bill and Tina.

[1:47:04] They could work out how to pay for the building with cash. There'd be no debt necessary at this time for that scenario. We've looked at the facility with Bill and Allison. We've done a cursory review of the furniture that exists in the facility. We've had a discussion with bank personnel, and we could probably work out a deal for the furniture, which would be a benefit to both. we get good quality furniture at a severely discounted price, they are going with new furniture in their new facility. So it's a benefit to them to not have to mess with the existing furniture and find a solution for that. They can use the building as is and are open to working with other departments for additional space in the building. So the building could be a solution for our customer service experience and it could be a solution or a partial solution for other city elements who have needs. They can change the signs, move in and go to work. Talk to Al Torres over in building our chief building official. He said that there is no change of occupancy required. The operation is similar or same as the current operation. No planning or permitting issues there that he could think of. One of the benefits associated that by moving those functions over there, it reduces the burden here. We're keenly aware of the burden that exists on this campus at this time because of construction

[1:49:07] that's going on. We're getting ready to go through an eight to ten week cycle where that's going to be increased as some work occurs out here. And they're not actually in this facility at this time. One of the issues to work out would be the drive-through. We currently have drive-through service, and we've talked before about the tenuous nature of that because of the age of the equipment. When the bank began their construction project, they tore down their drive-through, they created some drive-through capacity over there at that location. They rent space in that outbuilding, recall that that outbuilding is not, we do not have that under contract. So they have a rental agreement with that building owner, and they have constructed drive-through type equipment to facilitate that kind of activity. If we wanted to retain an active style drive-through function, function, we would need to consider our options for that outbuilding, either leasing or purchasing that outbuilding. We would need to purchase the drive-through equipment type improvements, which are installed, and we would need to increase staffing. Right now, recall that when you look at that customer service function where you pay your bill, those people can work both, they can work their drive-through and they can work the front counters, that drive-through is operated from that outbuilding, and those drive-through

[1:51:08] tellers would be dedicated to that drive-through. So we would lose the efficiency of being able to work both sides. I think what we would recommend is not to completely, we have customers who have mobility issues, and it is a convenience for them to be able to drive up and drop a payment either into to an active drive-through or into a drop box that can be accessed by vehicle. I think if we were going to consider that, our recommendation would be if you're interested in keeping costs as low as possible to construct or have constructed a drop box, so those customers could still make those payments from their vehicle and not be required to come inside. That would allow us, that would allow them the convenience the drop box without us having to come up with additional staffing or purchase or lease the building, all those costs which could be avoided. If you want to consider that further we can develop some estimates and bring that back. My recommendation today is that we assigned the building to Public Works that you direct staff to begin just a little more formal stage of discussing the purchase of the furniture from the bank, that we reopen police station discussions both short-term and long-term. Recall that the police station, there are issues which need to be addressed in the short-term. We would need to begin that discussion, find out exactly what those needs would be, and then determine a timeframe, a plan or a strategy for developing the long-term solution for a police station.

[1:53:10] And I would expect we would put a group together that would include a cross-section of stakeholders, perhaps some representation from council, from city management and from PD, from building our facilities maintenance group to develop a short-term strategy and a long-term strategy for a police station facility. And then, of course, staff should bring back to counsel any actions necessary to accomplish these items. We've got Bill and Frank here to talk about their needs or their preferences. We're available to discuss that if you'd like. I really think, at this point in time, based on what I've heard from the senior staff at the police department is that that particular building at this time, because of the cost, and what they think the citizens would likely do or not do in down sales tax year, they probably are going to want to do something different with the building that they're in. Is that right, Chief Carter? Eventually, yes, sir, but going back piggybacking off Mr. Dane there, I had the privilege of setting in the architect meeting back in August. And for clarification, it was $38 million, the price tax for renovation of the bank building, $40 million to Bill Brand New. The building itself was $77,000 square feet, just for clarification on monies as far as remodel versus brand new. Chief, will you talk a little bit more about, of course, So we're looking at this other option, but we know that the priority was the police station,

[1:55:11] and that's what was discussed by the city council members. What are your thoughts at this point moving forward as far as the police station and where you're currently at? I think the building in its current state would better serve other city offices. It's moving ready. It'd be less burden on the taxpayer right now and down economy. I'd like to see the economy become ripe again before we approach the taxpayer. Sixty percent of our force works out of a vehicle, so that's not my priority at this time We can make do with the police department. My priorities are on competitive salaries and pay raises and additional manpower So 77,000 square feet moving and ready what are the the public horse needs 77,000 square feet well good question And it's not 70,000 square feet as it exists now. That's redeveloped. That's renovated slash new facility. The existing facility is closer to 40,000 square feet. And they don't need all of that space. They can use the facility and the furniture as is, but they did say that they would be open to assisting other departments who have needs. And while we haven't worked that part out, they are open to that. And we've had preliminary discussions about who might have those needs. We've also had an inquiry from the county about some of the work they're going to do on their facilities. And would we have some space available to them? So I think there are plenty of options out there. Because hadn't there been some talk about municipal court maybe moving in there? That is one of the things we've talked about. The architect who did the work, the needs assessment and worked all this up gave us a proposal for $59,000 to study what it would take to move municipal court in there.

[1:57:13] If we decided to spend that money, our concern is we would likely hear that renovation, a smaller level of renovation to facilitate municipal court would trigger a significant number of code update requirements to the rest of the building which would drive the cost up into the tens of millions just like the first project did. And so I think we can consider those things and I think that's one of the things, if we put this task force together, committee together to discuss those options, we can still go that direction. The key is we've got the building in our position. We're operating the building in a way that benefits the citizens and minimizes the cost. If we get a year down the road and that committee says that's still the PD location, we can still, because we own it and control it, we can still go that direction. We just have to find solutions for those other functions. Do you think we ought to take it to the voters first and let them make the decision? I don't think the time and drive right now with the economy the way it is and sales tax being there. And I agree with you. I say we watch the economy. I want to look at some of the properties available that the city owns, that's vacant, that's ample room for us and then look at this project down the road. Again, if there was money set aside for the renovation for the CD, I would like those to to be diverted into or pay salaries and increases and of the manpower. We've got to protect our interest in investment here. I know at the federal level, they're going to be pushing very hard for more law enforcement officers. The last time that happened, we lost seven in a very short amount of time. It's anywhere from $50,000 to $75,000 to get one of these officers up in train. So maintaining our investment is very important. We're short-handed as it is. We're authorized 165 bodies based on state and federal recommendations, which should be a minimum of 180 officers.

[1:59:15] Thank you, sir. We are actually at 166 on paper right now with 11 them bending in the academy, and we're actually working with about 157 right now in the streets. But again, the federal and state is average is about 1.9 per thousand citizens, which puts us at our population based on about 105,000, 103,000, minimal 180 officers. And we're authorized 165 at this time. You still agree that there's still an effort police station in the future, correct? I do. OK. Big as concerns are parking, of course, office space. And as we continue to grow, we're going to need more and more office space. But again, my priorities right now are salaries and increasing our manpower to make our citizens safer. Chief, as far as making due with what you have on now, the police station, how long do you think you can make it do? I mean, there have to be some changes to that current police station. What are we talking about? HVAC is probably one of the biggest things. Of course, evident storage space, which I think if we can accommodate at our community service building, the walls are not falling down. Again, these officers would much rather see their compensation a little better over a police building. And I support that as well. That's a good question, the HVAC system, question about how to operate the building as it is. We've had some preliminary discussions about what it would take. That placeholder for that $5 million could be used to buy us 20 years extra life on this facility for 10 years, depending on where that task force took us. How hot does that fire burn for the new long-term solution? But there is a little capacity if we use the portion of that to satisfy some of these needs, that could be done. But the answer is, I believe there are things that need to be done to buy time in the existing facility.

[2:01:16] That's what I wanted to express to council members, that there is. It's not gonna be free to keep using the existing building. We think responsible use of that facility would require some investment, but not anywhere near 40 million. Any other questions? Hi, Doug. Okay, thank you. I'll volunteer to be on that committee if somebody thinks my input is good enough. You're going to be around next year? I will be. OK. You're one of the two. It's probably the senior member with one-year service in. I'd like to volunteer also. I don't want to volunteer. I don't need it. That is our presentation on that part of it. As you can tell, of course, there's been some changes. in new way of thinking, especially because of the economy. We do want to make sure that we do keep this on the horizon because this is really important to us as far as the police station. As you saw again, the response we got back from our citizens, they still think that that is a priority and it should be. But we'll have to reevaluate it and take a look at how we can make do with the current police station, if that is the will of the city council moving forward. And we can discuss as far as what the chief mentioned a wall ago, as far as pay that will become up next with Sleece and Marley who will be doing a presentation on salaries, which is another area that the city council did prioritize a few years ago and we've continued through the years as well. With that said, are there any other questions about police station or any other comments? Mike? I do want to ask, how do you feel about that recommendation? Do you agree that that's where we should go for now? is one of the two councilman is probably going to be here. I think that's a good use of that particular building. So I'd go forward with it. I'd like to see that as put court time into the bank building. That could still be an option.

[2:03:17] We get them in there, and we want to spend that $59,000 to study that option. I'd like to find a cheaper way to study that option. I'd like to give a friend at the police station, I think, but I'd like to see this court. Well, and I'd like to him to serve if he's willing to serve on that task force to consider those options? I think we possibly may want to look for a different person to do that study. You know what, are you saying you're willing to participate in that group? No, I'm not. No, what I'm saying is, maybe for $59,000. $58,5, low-beats. No, I guess what I'm saying is, If I understood the 59,000 is by the architect that gave us the study for the jail facility and possibly we don't need that expertise since we're talking about public works in municipal court. Possibly we can do it with a different architectural firm that could give us a study of a little less expensive. is what I'm I think everybody would be on board with that. You know the thoughts on this item Lane do you feel good about it? He's building for now. He's as is. We're about police races. Okay. I would like to go with work, you know, let's see what we have right now. And at least use the building that we've already purchased and spend some money on. It's a new Saturday. Well, the bank has told us they expect to be ready to close early to mid-June and be late June. So we're nearing that point, knowing this direction allows us to firm up some details

[2:05:19] and we'll bring back actions that are necessary for council. Thank you. Thank you. Next up on the priority list is the salaries, the competitive salaries, again, as much as Waldo was one of the parties established by the city council members. I'd like to invite Ms. Mason-Marley, our HR Director, up here to do a presentation on that part of it. And then we'll address as we talked about police salaries and any of the salaries that she'd like to discuss. This morning. Thank you, Daniel. Good morning. Oh, okay, good idea. I'm here to discuss the competitive salaries goal, which is number four on your current priority list. And I thought the good way to start would be to give you a brief overview on how positions are evaluated and the process that we go through in establishing where they belong in the pay grains. So just to start, we do have 32 pay grades that the consists of all of our general classification employees non-civil service folks. And then we have 18 civil service grades at pay grades as well. So that gives us a total of 50 pay grades that we continuously evaluate. We have 302 full-time job titles across those 50 grades. Each job classification that we look at is analyzed to see what grade it should be. And so all of those 302 we have reviewed initially when those positions were created, and we look at a document that we call a job description questionnaire that factors in 15 different measures that are looked at for positions. It ranges from complexity of the work, consequence of errors, what type of supervision do they do, what type of budget responsibilities do they have, and that's That's just to name four of them.

[2:07:21] But those particular factors are very important from an HR common practice to look at where a job should be paid. And so we assign a grade based on how those factors are analyzed and what point values we assign to those answers. And then what we do on a basis of every other year is we take 220 of our classifications and we survey those against 13 comparable cities. The council back in 2008 established a list of 13 cities that they wanted us to compare ourselves to based on a number of different factors that the council considered at that time. And since every single city has different pay grades, the one thing that is common is that there is a midpoint in those ranges. They may pay differently at the minimum of the range and they may pay differently at the maximum of the range, it may be a wider range or a more narrow range depending on how the city functions. And so what is common in all of those grades is going to be the midpoint or the middle of that range. So that is what we compare and we look at the midpoints of all of our ranges against the midpoints of all of those cities and we determine where we fall. So as again, we do do that every other year. The last survey that we performed was in 2015, last year was not a survey year, this year would be a survey year. And we have sent those surveys out at present and are awaiting the information that we have that will receive back from those cities. I included a summary that you received in your packets which told you where we fall presently with our particular positions. And just to go through a brief history of what happened, in October 2015, the police and fire

[2:09:24] civil service employees received a 6.26% increase and our general employees received a 5.12% increase. Those increases brought the police department to 89.25% of the survey, which the current agreement had a cap built into it and when the numbers were broken down, it came to 89.25% of the survey. All other positions citywide range somewhere between 86 to 90% of the survey data. In September 2016, because there was not funding to fund the pay raises, the police Police Department voted to postpone the date of their increases until April of 2017. The cost of those increases through the meet and comfort process totaled $635,960, which would have taken their pay salaries to 95% of the survey cities. By postponing it until April, the city would only be required to come up with half of that in this particular fiscal year or six months which would be $317,980. I believe I also included in your packet the details of the breakdown. In October 2016 then there were no pain increases citywide. The average increase for the surveys cities was 3%. So this caused our city averages to drop without doing anything on our part to somewhere between 83 and 87 and a half percent, excluding police and fire. Police stayed at 89.25 percent because their numbers were based on the previous year, which

[2:11:24] is based on the agreement, that's how those calculations were done. And then the fire dropped to about 83 percent, but that's a little bit of a misnomer because And at the same time, if you recall a couple of years ago, fire changed to a single pay rate for each classification. They don't have a pay range. They implemented something called loyalty pay, which is added salary to them. But there's no way to compare that. And so HR right now is trying to figure out a way that we can properly survey that because it really isn't an ad pay like so many other differences that they receive. So I think what has happened to our ranges certainly takes us off the mark, but there hasn't been anything that we could do about it because of the funding necessary. That is really all I wanted to talk about as far as salaries go, specifically competitive salaries. I am prepared to talk about the meet and confer agreement and where we are with that if council wishes me to do so or if you have any questions on the salaries. Can you just give us Polices at 80 what percent? Fire is at 80 what percent and the rest are at what? Okay. PD is at 89.25 percent. Fire Department is at 83 percent with an and our general employees are from 83 to 87.5 percent. Lisa, from a perspective of dollars, what's it going to take to get everybody to 95 percent? Because I think that's what the citizens want to know. That's what the people up here want to know. And I believe that Morgan has those numbers, or Tina has those numbers on the different percentage rates. So if you wanted to go from 87 and a half percent

[2:13:27] for the high end to 95% so an 8% pay increase that would be almost 2.4 million dollars for general fund excluding meet-and-compar. It includes fine but it doesn't include that's correct. When we last calculated meeting comfortably but with six hundred thirty five thousand dollars that's correct so three million three and what's what's a a one penny change in property taxes gain the city one hundred and sixty three thousand dollars any other questions that i can answer if we were to look at fire and police what would how much would that be 8%. Oh, I don't have fire broken out separately right now. I'm sorry, but we could try to get that for you. Oh, I do have that. Sorry. That would be almost 1.5 million. That fire. Fire and meat. Is that for this the rest of this fiscal year or is that a 100% So happy that if we talk about half a year, we can talk about half a year because some of

[2:15:28] them are going to be here to bring all of the remaining numbers in just a second. That's a challenge that we face at this point. I did talk about the drop in sales tax revenues at the beginning and we'll talk about some actions we've taken at this point to reduce our expenditures. That's the challenge that we face. look at the city management looks at the whole city to make sure that we've maintained fiscal responsibility. What do we do in this instance? I do understand, especially the police officers. I'm one of the ones that does believe that you want to make sure we do everything we can and move everybody up to the 95% that city council had established. However, I know at this point with that said there are some difficulties associated with doing it right now we really have to take a really hard look at current operations and determine if in fact can we find other areas that we can reduce our expenditures whether there's maybe perhaps service areas we do know that the majority of our expenditures tie to salaries and benefits which is over 70 percent that's the way most cities operate because we are a highly service group. So again, the challenge that we face is knowing that we do have a sales tax drop off even this year. We're very hopeful that that's going to change in the coming months, but we don't know exactly what that's going to do just yet. The only other way really to address some type of an adjustment would have to take a serious look at our current expenditures and say, okay, we're willing to cut these certain service areas to make this happen. Because we really don't foresee from a revenue standpoint, aside from monitoring the sales taxes, other main revenue sources that we have, and I mentioned

[2:17:30] property taxes and franchise fees, we're not going to see an increase really in those areas. Those are the three big ones. So that's the challenge that we face. What do we do at this point? I got a question it's one point if we take all of all the city to 95 it'd be for the rest this year. It'd be 1.5 million basically. That's just hiring. For half a year would be $1.5 million. For everybody. But like Lisa said that was using the 87% mark for the general employees and that does not include the 83% where fire would have to move a lot further than other employees. That's that's taking everybody that's at the 87.5% ranking and if we recall it was an average between 83 and 87 and a half that all the employees. So we would have to move fire from 83% to 95% that would be a 12% pay raise for them to get them at the same level. Well, okay, it's the risk of being shy. If we took everyone eight percent, it'd be one point five. Yes, sir. Okay, my I guess my question is that's pretty easy said. It's pretty easy done. What happens if the budget time next year, if we do that right now, what happens if budget session next year, if the new council doesn't want to go up to if they don't want to obviously part of it's gonna have to be with tax increase I mean that's the only way you're gonna get there yeah I don't I don't think you're gonna cut three million dollars out of the budget I certainly hope you don't that means we had a lot of slow so what happens if they decide they don't want a tax increase that's a major problem for us because once we commit to one and a half million right now next year we're looking at $3,000,000 because in October that's going to be done all over.

[2:19:31] Right. It does. It does not only have the meat to have the meat, so. So. Sorry. And then in October we'd be paying that $3,000,000 and also at this same place we are right now trying to give pay increases for this next coming year as well and to pay for meat and comfort for that year. Well that hasn't been negotiated yet, but. Right. You know. I was taking those and I thought you said that the fire and police together would be all much more than five million. That's how I understood it also. So maybe. OK. And now you said fire and police together would be almost one point. Right still we can't. That was for an entire year. I will ask clarify for me please clarify. That was for an entire year. OK. The 1.5 was for the entire year for firing police. Yes, ma'am. OK. But he does not include the other employees. That's correct, right. And to take all of our employees up 8%, you said it was 3, 2, 3, 9, right? 3, 3, 8, 9. For an entire year. And I believe that's for a general fund only. Is that correct? That's correct. And for a half year, we're looking at 1.5. but then in October we'd have to have that 1.5 plus we'd have it needed to get next year. Yes sir. Start budgeting now. That clarified it for me. It's a tough topic. I mean I know that it was a tough topic just last year as well and we're taking a look at this. Because I know that genuinely the city council really look at this as a priority as the staff as well. And we have gone back to look at our expenditures. to look at different areas where we can actually reduce

[2:21:31] and save some money to the point of holding as far as the hires for justification before we move forward with hires, but other things that we've done as well. It is a big challenge, you know. Again, we, I personally want to see it happen for all staff members, especially, also for the police department of course, but here in the lies of challenges, how do we make that happen? As Marty mentioned, cutting $3 million right now, we're really looking at certain service areas, we'd have to take a look and say which ones are a lease of a priority for a city, and then start reducing that, which more than likely would go along with cutting staff as well. That fire dropped to 83%, but that's because they went to a different type of scale. Yes, sir. What was that scale called again? What did they add? It's a single classifications. I don't know what they call it, but there's one rate of pay per title. There's not a range anymore. And so, because they just pay one range, plus loyalty pay on top of that, that one range gets compared to the minimum of the range of the other cities. So their percentage dropped, but their actual pay didn't drop? No, they're paid to not drop. So that would be the percentage if we gave the police department what we lacked in the 317,980 dollars. What's that percentage? You mean their pay rate increase? It's 7.31% for police officers, 9.65% for sergeants, and 9.68% for lieutenants. I do have a handout that I can pass that to you and you can see what the scales would become.

[2:23:33] So before we go any further, is there any way that we can come up with that $317,000? I mean, is there something that we don't have to buy this here that we can wait on or I'm just asking me. They would. Well, don't forget the three seventeen turns into six thirty four. Yeah. In October. It's ongoing. You know, I've been on the council a while and have been very proud of the fact that we have held our tax rate or rolled back a penny per year and felt like we were doing our part you know to the citizens in cutting our budget so that we could find raises in other areas. However, at the risk of the campaign year myself in looking at the property tax everywhere I go everywhere, whether it's an organization meeting or a neighborhood group meeting, people think the city has raised their taxes every year. They don't know that it breaks down into city and county and school. And furthermore, they don't care that it breaks down and maybe the city has raised, but the city raised a value. So there's a total unclear understanding of what we have done for the citizens in rolling their property tax back, but there's a very clear understanding that they feel that their police officers in their firemen are underpaid. And quite frankly, I'm to the point now that I don't want our firemen underpaid. I don't want our police underpaid anymore. And if we have to look at a property tax increase to make this balance, then so be it. Well, I'll take the other side of that. Because I'm telling the citizens out there are suffering the same exact problems we are here. And if we just start hitting our citizens more to make up for the city than all we're doing is all we're doing is hurting our citizens even

[2:25:37] more. This is not a city unique problem because every family in this city is going through the exact same problems and they're cutting their budget so that they can live within their means. So, no, I am not in favor of any type of attacks increase of our citizens unless they choose to raise their taxes for some type of a police station. Now, I will not support attacks increase I wasn't talking about police station, I was talking about individual races. Well, the way I said is, they spend a lot of money hiring and training these officers, and then for us to turn around and leave them due to the fact that they're not getting paid, what they should be, I mean, comparable to the sister cities is kind of like wasting, or wasting money that we don't have to begin with. Unfortunately, we do have that in every department. Every position that we hire goes through a training. There's a lot of expense in just getting them through their physicals and all of the preliminary things that we have to do before we can hire them. That does rain true for every department that we have as far as hiring that we do have costs. Now, one of the things that I will also bring up is that the police department, presently as of today, has 43 officers that can retire today. They have 20 years with the city, 43. And so I don't know so much that their biggest concern should be that people are going to leave because they're going to get paid someplace else. They're going to have people that are going to retire. And so that's certainly a concern that we have. Now, across the city, we have 119 people who can retire today. And those people have 20 years of service. We also have 60 people today who can retire because they are of the age and

[2:27:41] have at least five years of service. So we've got the breakdown in the different departments of where those people are. But I do know that Pia right now has 43 of them. Lisa, are there turnover patterns at all across the city? Not significantly right now. We have years and years of data. We report that every single month, but right now our turnover is very low. Very low. Across the city? Across the city. Well, not to pile on, but we heard Chief Carter talk about staffing levels also. We have that similar issue in the fire department where we are nearing or have surpassed the point where we could use, is it one more, Brian, ambulance crew or screw? So your questions are appropriate for pay for current folks, but to compound it, we could use additional police and fire officers also. fire his is a similar situation where they have a significant training burden and investment in their folks. And of course, when oil is up or when the federal government is hiring, we compete for those positions. When oil is up, we compete organization wide. So it is a challenge, organization wide. age five years of service plus age 60 or greater it's a total of 25 I said 60 sorry that's wrong so we have a total of a hundred and forty six citywide that can retire today those are people with adequate time just at this city yes or in total with TMRs okay my quills the amount that we had set aside for a

[2:29:45] renovation of the police station I'm sorry I didn't how much do we have set aside for renovation of a police station, was it five? There's no cash. There's a placeholder for $5 million in debt. But that was created 10 years ago as a placeholder, because we knew something was coming up. And I don't have on my, took my tongue, the equivalent of the tax rate in that. It's likely to be, well, 3.7 cents would get us 35 million, it's gonna be less than a penny for 5 million, to be one-seventh of that. That'd be half a cent, approximately. Looking at 317, 980. Lane, what was the question? I'm sorry. Come back to me, I've got some thoughts going. Okay. Let me just bring up one other slide update on meeting confer. Presently, you know, our agreement that we're currently under will expire on September 30th of this year. As of, you know, last September, we came to an agreement with the police side that we would wait until April 1st to look at salaries. If April 1st comes and goes, and we have not reached some sort of an agreement between both sides at the table, then the current agreement will become null and void on April 1st. We will no longer have a requirement to have any sort of a pay increase for them. And reverting back to 2013-14 salaries, correct? Not salaries, no, but reverting back to 2013 changes that we've made, and I do have a list

[2:31:45] of those for you that I can pass around. Civil service law is really specific, and I know Theresa can answer any questions you have on that, but anything that was achieved through meet and confer must revert back to the civil service guidelines. And we initially thought that salaries would also fall in that category, but there's no language to that in the law. So it's all the things that were benefits that came under the meet and confer agreement. Now, when I say that agreement goes away, it does. As of April 1st, if no pay increase has been implemented or an agreement reached. But that doesn't mean that meet and confer and the city goes away. Meet and confer and the city would have to go away. If they wanted it to go away, it would be both sides of the table would have to reach that agreement as a mutual agreement. And we are, you know, at present, would be ready to start negotiations for sometime in the spring to start a new contract, 10-1. But if we are out of compliance on April 1, then we will have to see what the other side wants to do. So the first thing I see here is that if we revert back to civil service that to lose an assistant chief. That's correct. not necessarily the first thing, but it is the first thing on that list. We're going to have an experienced gap and we're going to have a mass exodus of police officers. When those feds come around and they start recruiting, or other departments come around, they start recruiting. 30 or so of our young officers are going to be gone. So we either find that 317, 980, or else we're going to have that exodus of police officers officers and crime will increase like it did back in 2008-2009.

[2:33:49] I think we would face the exodus whether we came up with that money or not. For retirees or for... I think for the Border Patrol and for ICE and whoever else are coming in, I don't think it's enough money. Do we have any idea of what our property tax assessment will be for the coming years? year, excuse me, it could make up a portion of that. Or fiscal year 18 is what you're referring to. No, ma'am, we don't. It's very early. We are in conversations with the appraisal district. We are at risk of some pending bills in the legislative session right now that could impact us negatively some quite so. So I know that fiscal year 17 property tax came in at a much less percentage than we had anticipated. And so I would expect something in line with that unless some of this pending legislation such as Senate bill two comes forward. It could be quite. This is the, again, the difficulty. We do want, we want to get council input on this. At the expense of reducing other expenditures or redirecting priorities It is going to be difficult to come up for those monies now if you say just 2017,000 that's that's for one group and want to make sure that counts will be supported with just that adjustment for one group We will work toward a solution as much as we possibly can We just hope for some direction and make sure that we're on the same page as far as what we should be looking for what we should be doing We've had a lot of discussion now, not just about one group, but two groups and then the whole group altogether.

[2:35:49] What is, I mean really at this point the direction that we need is what should we be looking for and should we consider reprioritizing certain parties we currently have, certain expenditures are going out. There's capital equipment, there's all certain things that I've been brought up in the past that I've heard about that we could hold off on and redirect monies but I want the council to understand that once we make this decision, this is a permanent expenditure that will be on the books year in and year out. So that means whatever reduction we make in any other area will have to be a permanent reduction as well. So again, we continue monitoring those revenues as they come in. I anxiously await every month and Morgan sends that to us as far as an update and projections. And it's just really tough because I cringe every time I open up and realize that the numbers weren't where we were hoping that would be. Because I know what that means. I mean, it's going to be difficult to do those increases for police officers, which, by the way, I know they deserve those increases, I do. It's just become the challenge, trying to make sure that we bounce it all out throughout the whole city and the needs of the city as well. So- Citizens really have asked me, at least, since I've been on council to make sure that we take care of our first responders. So, if there's a way that we can save dollars through the rest of the budget, I certainly would like to see if there's a way that we can meet this 317 figure for the police officers by the April 1st deadline. Now, for the rest of the employees out there, I want to tell you that the challenge is gonna be for this council and the senior staff is to find those dollars in future years. But I still want to be committed to making sure that everybody gets to that 95% range.

[2:37:54] Now, how we get there, I think, is another way we'll have to discuss. But I said we'd like to make this a priority. Are you talking about police, not only are police and fire, when you say first responders? Well, citizens really wanted to want to take it both ways. We know what the figure is for the police officers. And that deadline is April 1, if they don't, we don't meet that 317, 9, whatever it is, then they automatically revert back because meeting confer is done. And when that happens, according to this particular sheet, there are a lot of impacts on the citizens. The first one is you lose an assisted chief. You no longer have the ability to have part-time officers. And there's all kinds of other ones in here that are challenges. And I did budgets for good year for a number of years, so I understand that salary and benefits drive every budget. Mine with 67% cities is 70% approximately. So I understand where that comes from. But we need to figure out how we can get to that particular number. I would say, Dan, to your question, Marty, I want to start with the police officers. And let's do what we can do on April 1. But let's also make this a priority so that Daniel and his senior staff know that we want to make sure that we go down this road somehow or other. Which makes item number eight, expense reduction strategies very important. It does. We have said we don't have the money to do everything we need to do. Well, I mean, this is a part of, we're hearing right now from a council member that we would like to look at the possibility of starting with PD on April 1st. And as far as the second responder, this is what we're looking for.

[2:39:54] We're looking for that input so that we can come up with a plan, hopefully that will work within the directive that the city council has given us. Daniel, I'd like to agree with Harry as far as trying to find the money to get this paid. And also, though, I'd like to see the fire come this year also to get their race. I'm just asking if there's anything that you can redirect the money that maybe we can wait on that till a better year where we do have more money to spend our can afford some equipment or whatever it might take in order for us to get this this money that they need ongoing expense that will continue next year and also double yeah basically what you're talking about is making sure we come up with a solution that's long-term expense wise because that's permanent expenditure as well so I'm hearing from two council members at this point that we're looking at ensuring that by April 1st we come up with a plan that will allow for that increase. A third council member, I mean, I just again, I just want to make sure that we hear this correctly. So I'm hearing police officers and firefighters, is that correct for responders? But right now, primarily as a police department. Our commitment is to the police department. That's our commitment. Make and fire. Any other thoughts? What are you saying, Dwight? Well, I'm saying that we had an agreement with the police department to make and fire. We would have made this if we were able to. We don't have an agreement with the fire or with the rest of the employee. And I think they're all important. And I would hate to give one a raising and not give another a raise. But we do have an agreement through me for the police.

[2:41:55] And then once we fulfill those obligations, we look forward to that extra personnel on fire, the extra ambulance that they're needing. We can't just neglect them. But in October, we're gonna start all over with this again. Exactly. So anything we do today, we're just going to double in October and it does again our we don't have enough money right now we don't have enough money and that's a management concern on our part of the city council concern but it's really a management concern and finance concern because we do have to make sure that's one of the the things that we want to be responsible to our taxpayers and ensuring that that we do remain physically responsible with everything that we do so we're saying that there's gonna be some sacrifices then if we go this route there's gonna be had some sacrifices that would have to be made. This fiscal year and also for the years to come. We've had an increase in our budget over the last few years. Used to be $50, $55 million, now it's close to $70. But we still don't have money. We have an increase of our annual budget. Where in the past years it was $50, $55 million that we worked with now, it's at $70. but we're still fighting to find money. What has changed? Where's those monies going? To where we cannot find 317, 980? I don't think the general fund has gone from, has increased by $15 million over the past 10 years. How long? Over the past 10 years? I'm sorry, I thought you said two years. No, a few, I said a few, but. Then the, the salary is a moving target. And it is so hard to keep them in that 90% or above, because it is a moving target with the cost of living and trying to tie that to the national average. And it's difficult. It's not an easy job.

[2:43:55] But it's something that we're going to have to face every year, and it is a struggle because it is a moving target. I do want to point out that's, I mean, Lane, that's a good point that you're making. I know that, yes, our expenditures have gone up, you know, along with the priorities City Council had to establish as well as to make sure that we are more competitive of salaries but also I talked about earlier that when I first showed up here we had over just a little over 600,000 set aside for students and we're dedicating now as Shane talked about about about $4 million of that so there was that increase along with increase with employee salaries it's not that that we're being irresponsible or spending I mean we definitely take a look at every single department every single line I'm an expenditure to make sure that we sure that up and that we're at where exactly where we should be. Expenditures yes have gone up but that's in relation to priorities that were established to make sure that we're more competitive with our salaries and also that we're addressing infrastructure concerns so that's where those money actually went that's where the expenditure went up. So what happens with meat and compare if if we find part of the money and not all the money. It's a good question. I have to go back and discuss it again, wouldn't you? We'd have to reach some sort of an agreement before April 1st. Say we found a hundred thousand instead or two 15s to the 315s. That's what your question is Marty. Yeah, I mean, what if we find we're talking about 8% what if we find money for 6% we would have to have a meeting prior to April 1st, come to an agreement between the two sides, take it to a membership vote and then implemented on April 1st. I think you're on a trail there. I mean, I'm in support of trying to find money without a doubt. I don't know and, you know, we joked about it, but, you know, to be serious, you know,

[2:45:56] it's going to double in October, whatever we do. And we're building future councils into a tax increase. I don't know how smart that is, but possibly for y'all have to be concerned about it. So I certainly won't. But I'm just saying, what if we find 6% and we don't find that percent? This number is really kind of small. when you think about October, and when you think about meeting comparison going to say, OK, where do we go in October? We go past 95, I take it, I'm not real abreast them. Well, a contract doesn't exist past September 30th of this year, so that's subject to that. OK, so it'll go away? OK. Also, other cities move their compensation packages. And so typically, they may not. that that's exactly that's exactly right and that that is the key is depending on what they do is where we either if they were to cut pay we'd move ahead if they were to leave it the same we'd be the same but if they give raises we fall farther behind because I think and certainly I know police firing in all all all all employees would be happy with whatever they got but whatever we do now, we're going to be lucky to keep that to maintain that in October, a little long give additional increases. And 4% is better than no percent. We've had a couple of meetings about cost cutting. We may talk about that here in a little bit if there's time, but those directors that were in that meeting, their primary concern was for further lower level employees.

[2:47:57] We've had at least one year, Duane and Charlotte, I don't remember what years they were, where we did different raises for different people at different levels. And the directors had the same opinion that we ended up with in those years from council, which was my primary concern, speaking for them, their primary concern was for those lower-level employees who were struggling to pay bills. So I think you'd find a flexible mindset among directors about Taking care of those lower-level employees first, but anyway If they go up on April 1, we saw her problem. We just made an additional $367,000 It's 1215 and I've got to I've got to get that walk around. So y'all keep going. What do you want to do? Dwayne, does that mean I can come and visit with you about September and ask you where that money is? Yeah, come ask me again. I think that to finish off the conversation and the presentation by Lisa. Thank you, Lisa. Again, on our part, we'd like that direction, and then we would do everything we possibly can on our part to meet that direction as well. I think that'll come in out of number eight, expense reduction strategies, let's see what we can do, and we'll make a decision at that time. We can leave it at that then, and then when we get to that point, we can kind of revert back to that increase we're just talking about as well. Okay, so this isn't dead. Not yet. Okay. Good. Yeah. But I'm all in favor of looking at the cost reduction. Y'all ready to break? Yes, ready. Let's break. And then give John about, what, two minutes?

[2:50:00] Mayor, we are the fifth of the parties that we had, and that's development services. John is here to give us an update on that, and I think it'll probably be a pretty quick update, right, John? Just a brief update. Just to review a little bit back in 2014, we looked at the development process and established some goals in how to improve the development process, largely that the goals boil down to reducing the time it takes for permit applications to go through the process, providing good customer service to people, and ensuring consistency in our processes, treating everybody basically the same so that they don't get a different answer depending on who they ask. Some of the things that we've already done, we established a one-stop shop where there's basically one point of contact for applications. Concurrent applications review used to be that you had to wait until if it was a series in your development process, you had to finish the first step before you could move on to the second. We simplified that and allowed things to happen concurrently. application meetings are big. Our applicants have found those to be very helpful. We would hope that more people would take advantage of those coming in and saying, hey, this is what we want to do. What's the process? What kind of things do I need to be thinking about? Because we find that people that go through those pre-applications have a much easier time through the development process than the folks who just come in without sitting down with us first. And again, we've put in place some controls to help ensure consistency among inspections and permit reviews and those sorts of things. We also made some process improvements including just revising handouts, making things simpler, easier to understand for citizens, additional training for staff and our boards and commissions. Again, those pre-application discussions are critical and just increase use of checklists, for example, so that applicants know what they

[2:52:05] need to provide, and it helps our staff in reviewing things to go more quickly because they've got that checklist in front of them. We continue to do our customer surveys. We would encourage more people to answer these surveys, but we do get quite a few back. As we reported to you about a year ago, those surveys from 2014 to 2015 showed a big increase in the number of people satisfied with our development review process. Those flattened out a little bit from 2015 to 2016, but that's largely because the numbers jumped up to around 90% satisfied. And so it's a lot easier to go from 70% to 90 than it is to bump above 90%. But that's about where we sit today. The various different questions show about 90% of people are satisfied and believe we're responsive and helpful to them in the development process. So really this is my last slide of what I want to end with is talking about some of the things that are upcoming. The big one is our electronic permit tracking and plan review software. You all authorized that almost a couple years ago. We are now testing that internally and we're about to roll that out within the next few weeks for selected testing. We've worked with some of our common applicants who come in quite a bit and so we're going going to have them go through this process to make sure we've got any kinks worked out before we roll it out to everyone. But rolling that out will be later this year. What that will allow is people to apply online, basically submit their application without coming in, submit those digital applications. It also allows us to send those out for review to everyone right now. We make a lot of paper copies that are distributed out for review. This will allow all that to be done digitally through emails and those sorts of things. The other piece we like about this, I think our customers will like, is that they will have a login, they can go in and see their project, see what the status is.

[2:54:09] They can know who's already reviewed it, who hasn't reviewed it, and for those departments that have already reviewed, they'll be able to see those comments even before we submit to them their official comments. We're also working on a development handbook. Again, we've improved most of our handouts, but we want to do some flow charts and some frequently asked questions, again, just to help make it easier for applicants who are coming through the process. We want to make sure that they're following the rules, but we don't want to make it difficult for them to do. That's not really what we're going for. And then finally, we're looking at some selective ordinance amendments to address some of the issues that have been identified. We meet every other month with the development task force, which includes our local builders, engineers, realtors, a variety of people. Actually it's open to anyone who wants to come, but we talk about what issues they're seeing out there in the development process. And as we get that feedback, we're looking at other changes to implement. Just one example of that last one is next month the Planning Commission will be looking at some changes to the subdivision process. We're going to be implementing an ordinance change to allow for a pre-application so that customers can get us their information earlier. We can have reviews and more feedback to them before they actually have to submit their application. So we've got a whole list of things like this that we want to make improvements in the process and we're continuing to roll those out as quickly as we can. With that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. What are we looking at in a residential permit? We're still working on 24 hours to get a permit. That's our goal. Again, I think we're pretty successful. And I want to come back to you. If you recall about a year ago, I came to the council, a council meeting, and gave you some of those statistics on the turnaround times for commercial reviews and residential reviews. We haven't run those numbers yet to know exactly.

[2:56:09] I think last year I told you we had reduced the commercial plan reviews from, I think it was a 45 days down to about 25 days for the turnaround. So soon I want to bring those numbers to you, but I think we're still on par with where we want to be and moving in the right direction. Okay. Any other questions, Council? Keep on keeping them on, John. I think we want to see. Mayor, Council members, we'll move on to the next item. If you'll, this handout that I gave you, this right here, if you'll look at the last few pages, This addresses any new strategic priorities or has to say you can also take a look at. And of course we already looked at the top five which are listed there on item one. Of course water supply, street, rehab, re-con, maintenance, police station, competitive salaries and development process improvements. These are the five that were just presented by the different directors. Do you see any area that you feel perhaps needs to come off of there? Do all five need to stay on there still as a strategic priority for the city? Mind you, these have been the top five for the last three years. And I did list underneath that and item number two, you'll find a list of the city departments divisions for your priority city consideration. I don't know if you have any other area that you've built that the city may want to prioritize. Again, we do have those talk by and we just need your direction. Should we continue with those top five? Should we tweak it a little bit? Should we add one and remove one or add an additional one? I just want to make sure we have your satisfied with the top five and we can move forward with that. I'm satisfied with the top five. Well, I would say one thing doing just the development process improvements, we're going to be almost to the complete of what John thinks will help the citizens

[2:58:10] before the end of this particular fiscal year. So, you know, if we really are looking at these as priorities, I'd like to start moving sewer lines up on those in that particular area. Not that I want to quit any improvements in the development department, But the progress that has been made is tremendous. And as long as we have the way of it, the citizen has the way of cracking this with this new new software, I'm not sure that we should spend a lot of more time on that one. Let's move to another item. I'd suggest you wait until you set your new council members and then look at this again and see what y'all want to do. That would be my suggestion. Just to confirm you're when you're referring to the police station on here you're talking about rehabbing just to suit what we have now not keeping that in until we come to a conclusion. Yeah, I'm good with it. Okay, Lizzie, I'm good. How do you feel about Charlotte? I'm good. Marty, I'm good. Okay. All right, we'll move on to the next item and I'll I'll hand this one over to you, Tina, Michael. We had a move forward with some expense reduction strategies within the city, and we do have a presentation on that, and I'll let you know, or Michael, I'm sorry, I can show you. No, okay. Okay. You know what I need to start with. Well, we've run to start with what we've already done. We have implemented a reduced per diem rate for our city employees, a reduced mileage rate for city employees. We've updated our food policy to kind of tighten the bill and strengthen some controls in that area, pardon me. And then we've also introduced a cell phone stipend, which allows the employee to have their own cell phone for use for personal and business use, which saves the city some money as well.

[3:00:11] The cost of the stipend is less than the cost of the cell phone would be to the city. With all those reductions though, those are items that don't yield a whole lot of money. Total, for those four things, is about $50,000 projected from here to the end of the year. We are also very closely, Daniel's monitoring hiring and any new hires will go through him. So your date is for our salary savings, we've seen about $100,000 of savings there. And then moving forward, I think we could safely say that we'd expect to see another 100,000 him carefully reviewing every position that we hire and making sure that we're very careful to the end of the year. I want to reiterate that those are not permanent changes and so they will not carry forward to next year unless we permanently reduce per diem mileage, hold all new hiring, things like that. So that's where we are right now as far as what we have done. forward I think that we talked about in the process for either decreasing service areas or you know the only other option really would be to increase property tax or to see some other dramatic increase in revenue. That would be a sustainable source. And I don't. Thank you Tina for that. Sure. Is that of course I reported at the very beginning they were 416,000 short on our sales tax revenue. So even the monies that we're talking on a temporary basis, we can trim about at this point, at this point we haven't stopped yet. But at this point, we've figured the Biden this year will have trimmed at least an additional quarter of a million dollars off of what's already budged. It will still be short of the 416 out of that number continues to grow with the sales tax numbers coming in. Then we'll be closer to a million dollars. So only taking a quarter million out of a quarter million dollar bite out of the one million dollars if we continue in this with this movement, the current movement and the sales tax revenues.

[3:02:13] So again, on our part, we are still looking and we want to reduce as much as we possibly can. Again, we'll have a trimmed about a quarter of a million dollars, but we're looking at other areas. Some of the thoughts and ideas in meeting with staff, and we've had numerous meetings with directors to develop some of these ideas, which we're still looking into, but some of the ideas that can't come up involved service reductions, certain things that the city covers at this point that we may want to take a look at and say is this something that we want to tram in order to balance out the budget by the end of this year, is this something that's permanent? Right now the city staff has focused in on their core services as far as it goes that they're putting together. One thing that I want to take a look at in And those departments are service levels that are provided that don't fall along the course services. And the course services basically, those services were created, those departments were created specifically to provide those course services. If we're doing anything outside of that, we need to take a look at that and see if in fact we can reduce those services as well. So that's a process that we're looking at. But again, at this point, just what we've implemented, we're looking at maybe at about a quarter million dollar savings by the end of the year. We just want to talk to council members and see if you would be open to a reduction of services in different areas that we can present to you on at a letter point. And if you're interested in that, we can definitely explore that and bring that to you and say this is what we think. We can tackle. It will affect certain citizens, but we want to make sure that if that's what you want, we can spell it out for you and you let us know if you think something you want to do. But again, we feel there needs to be addressed. If in fact, we do move forward with increases in service certain areas as far as pay increases. This is something that will have to be addressed no matter what I mean. We do have to find a way to reduce our expenditures even more.

[3:04:14] Carl ounces. Where are we on Carl ounces for the blowways? I know we've spoken in the past about going to fill out and report each month and pay according to miles dream instead of just a flat Carl. Let me ask Ms. Marley if she has that information with her. One while she's together on the, on the, on the per diem and the mileage that went back, not to be able to allow the blue part of that. At this point, it's city staff that's, that's the part of that. As far as me making changes to policy with a fixed staff, I can do that. I want, I'd have to talk to you first before I can make any and positive if they see council members, I do answer to the director of the city council, so that is not something that they face the council at a certain point. I think it, I'm getting old, but I think it should. And I don't have a problem, and I read all of the per diem. I don't have a problem with living, but whatever. I don't have an answer. And that's what I've written to you, according to the neighborhood. I agree with you, we need to be the same as everybody else. Very good. Is that, I guess that's what I'm hearing. I don't have a problem with it at all. I think we need to do the same things with our staff. We can definitely implement that as well for everyone that possible. You asked about Carl ounces for this report. Lisa just handed me that we have 17. Carl ounces still being paid, and for a total of an annual payment of $77,580. Could we reduce that by just filling each month, filling in a mileage, where they've gone, and then paying them the, what is it, 50, 52, 54 cents a mile? Well, we're currently at a reduced mileage rate of $0.40. Oh, it is $0.40 now? OK. Temporarily. Let's just set a year. $77,580 total for all carl ounces.

[3:06:14] And how many did I say there were? Pounding that every year since I've been on council, and it used to be over a million dollars, so it has been cut. That's heard. 17, 17, is it the records to where? We've got about you. And it has been Cat Daniels done an excellent job of holding the mark. Morgan just pointed out that we should clarify that that is all funds, not just general funds. Okay, that's coming the right direction. Any other questions? Are you open to you then, a presentation of certain service areas that we would bring to you through consideration? I could ask. that we need to realize and remember that our citizens do pay taxes, property taxes and with those property taxes and with the fees that they pay, there's a certain level of services that are expected. I wouldn't mind looking at maybe some differences but if it all comes where we charge for everything and we don't don't provide any services then what are our people getting for their taxes that that they paid here. And I realize that the police and fire take pay more than what they pay, but still there's that perception when they're riding that check out each year that they're paying for some city services in their city taxes. And I think we would shoot ourselves in the foot if we start taking away some of the services we provide and then start charging a bone cop for it. So I would be very careful with that. And I agree with that, Mayor. I would just like to point out that the property tax revenue that we do bring in is not even enough to cover the cost of public opinion. But not only. I know that, but that. I just want to point that out for the public, though, so that's the point. But that guy that rides that check each year for $2,000 or $3,000 to the city, he's thinking maybe he's going to get something back for the money he's spending. Yes, sir. So I think the challenge we face now is that there, I take it there's an understanding that this point we do want to make sure that we do want to take a look at the first responders as far as adjustments and pay. What that's going to mean, again, evaluating those expenditures

[3:08:14] to see how much we can actually trim that back in order to cover that adjustment. May I ask a good question about that? Now, tell me, if we went with half year on police, we're looking at $360,000, $37,000? $37, $17, $3, $17. Now, what would we be doing if we made an adjustment with the fire? Maybe a half year adjustment. At what pay rate increase? For the rest six, we would have to know the percentage. I would I would say probably in four or five percent so five percent that would cost us about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars And how about about five hundred and seventy thousand dollars for public safety how much I'm sorry five hundred seventy thousand Total for our safety for this year. Okay, five seventy and how about if we added if we added a three or four percent for our employees Could we do all of it for a million one point five three percent for employees would be about $290,000? $290 would be 3%, so we're looking at 7, and we're looking at 15, we're looking at $850,000. Is there a way that we can $550,000 not make it part of their payroll, but make it a bonus, where we do not have to come in next October and meet everything we have given, realizing that our sales taxes are down, is there any way we could come up with a figure and $857,000, even if we had to pull it out of maybe our surplus or our data, our budget, our monthly? We could certainly look into that and I think it would be a possibility if we were directed to do that by council. And if people did, if they didn't want to accept it, then you know they can do whatever they wanted to do but it would be a good faith ever on our part we know that we owe we know we would like to help you but this is we don't

[3:10:16] have the money this is simply all we can do and make a bonus out of it something to think about and I talked to Marty about it and he seemed to think it made some sense does it still make sense to you Mayor, can we go back through that, please? You're talking about, I understood for the non-public safety employees that that'd be a one-time stipend kind of a thing. Would it be a permanent increase for police and fire? No. It would be a bonus. It would be a bonus. It would not become part of their salary because I don't want to saddle the next council with having to come up with all this extra money. It would be a bonus for iron plowways. It's say we've had a terrible, terrible year. We're all suffering. We're all hurting. But here is this amount of money that we can put toward a bonus system. It gives you something. It's not what they want, but it's certainly better than nothing. Well, I'll tell you, the powerful part of that one is, I'm sorry. I just didn't think municipalities can give bonuses. Something I read somewhere the powerful part of that idea is not creating that future year liability We can't we can't settle our next council with a lot one that Charlotte had a good question though Go ahead. It is a stipend It would be a stipend in lieu of a pay increase that is allowed to be done I know in 2010 when we could not meet our obligations and her meeting confer We did do a one-time stipend for all police officers It was a graduating scale based on seniority now again. That was a different regime at the time with the police department representatives that but it would be something we they would have to agree to to satisfy them and they may not take it they may say no we don't want money at which time then they'd have to make a decision and we would do. Mayor we could definitely take a look at that if that's an option that the

[3:12:19] council would like for us to take a look at. Can you revisit for us the the percentages would you like I'm saying 317 for police that gives them half of what they ask for well that gives them that gives them the sick and I'm asking for 250 for fire that would take them up and then 290 for the rest of the employees which is 3% which is going to be all I've got eight hundred and fifty seven thousand dollars that sure gives us something to shoot for that may not take it. They may say no. Now if it does does that mean we would shoot for that and have meat and confer go away or negotiate that as the meat and confer benefit? I wouldn't let meat and confer go away. I wouldn't let it go away. I think it's been a good thing. I think it's good for our officers and we're optimistic that things are going to get better. I wouldn't let it go away but this is just kind of a good faith offer to give them something along that line you know obviously we would need to meet with them this month to reach an agreement they would have to take it to a vote to their membership to see if they would accept something like that to satisfy the requirements of the April 1st deadline then we're at a point where we would need to come back to council to get a ruling from you on whether or not we should enter into negotiations for a new contract for starting 10-1. So we could put that on the second agenda in March and get your permission with that. That's logistics. Right. That's logistics. The other part about that is you talked about dipping into fund balance if necessary. I just threw that out there. I think we'd like to hear more on that too. You know, our directors have done a good job of submitting ideas and we've still got to work a lot of those ideas. But some combination of service levels.

[3:14:19] The team does not through with their reduction. No, we're not. And I am a little burst, very burst to actually taking from the fund balance, you know. So we'll have to look at other areas, you know. But at this point, I do understand what you're saying, Mayor. That kind of released my concern for the future of permanent expenditure that would be created for future budgets. So that is definitely an option that we can take a look at. But again, I would say that I'd be a person at looking at her fund balance at this point. I want to leave that alone. But regardless, we'd have to look at other areas to come up with that money. We've got two and a half weeks until the March 31st meeting. What did I say, 21st, 21st meeting? Sorry, help me with the calendar, Lisa, whatever your name is over there. We would have to get a meeting scheduled for the meeting confer regarding some stipend, whatever that winds up being. Then they would need to take it to their membership. That membership has to occur over 24 hour period. So we would do that and then have to have another meeting to go over the results and then come to council on the 21st. So theoretically it's possible to have something for the 21st on the meeting on the first side? Yes. Okay. The other track we've got to consider is developing cost savings which total that amount in a similar time frame. We'll be working overtime. time. We'll have to find a way to hopefully make that happen, but we can we can dig and dig and then if anything and I mentioned service levels it may be something that we come back to council to say this is an area that we need you to take a look at but again just give us that opportunity to to keep digging through there and see what else we can come up with. Let me ask another question then.

[3:16:20] We have been centering the conversation around the general fund. I would assume a similar benefit Did we say 3% one-time payment, one-time stipend for non-public safety general fund employees? I assume we would be talking about a similar 3% one-time payment for non-general fund employees? For example, the water and wastewater funds? Well, I was looking at about 300,000, 3% is what she said, that's $2.90. That would be for those people. But as we work out those details, if we're looking at an organization, it appears you are adopting this organization-wide philosophy. We'll need to develop solutions for those other funds also. And I assume that comes with this direction. That's her problem. That's her problem. It had to be everybody in the organization. It just can't be just general fund employees. The actual issue, and they have some ideas on how to fund as well, so we can implement organization one. not knowing how, if we've got to find the cost savings measure, I not knowing anything about meeting confer, can meeting confer agree to move back 15 days? I mean, can that day be pushed? Yes, I mean, they'll need to agree to do that, but certainly we can push it. We could add that to the same agenda and tackle both things in that first meeting. I don't know if it's all going to work. I think there's a majority of the council to find that money. Kind of like kissing your sister, but it's better wood than you. The other part of this, because you don't create that future obligation, you don't have to

[3:18:21] create savings which are permanent. It can be one time since. I think you may have struck on something which is very dual. And it doesn't hold obligation to a future council, which was one of the things that you think. That's the biggest problem. That's my problem. That's why I'm all for meeting our agreement with meeting comparator, I think we should, and as well as all of our employees, but just saying we're gonna have to probably raise taxes, taxes, three or four cents or more, I just don't know what happens. Marty, what that does as well is we can actually monitor sales tax revenues, you see in fact the R starting goal back up, and we suspect that perhaps that will happen. But it might as well as a monitor that has to make a better fiscal decision, especially if it's something that's going to be a permanent expenditure in the coming year. So I think the more and more we talk about it, I'll like this idea better. What kind of goal would you set for the timing of the payment? That's, that's Dana's problem. Well, April 1st is going to be a challenge, but I don't think we want to wait till the end of the fiscal year, do we? No, no, no, no. We need to be done then. April 1st. Our insurance payments have gone up on our employees and they've got no raises. So, I think it needs to be done as soon as possible. Yes. As soon as possible. It's my first. Yeah. You know, it depends on where you find your cost, I'm his manager. Okay. Is that, do we have direction then? Yes. Yes. Yes. What do you think about the short? It's good to me. Lane. Go for it. Yes, sir. Harriet. I'm good. Morty. I'd say go. See what you can take your app. Can I ask a question? It gives you direction. I just want to make sure I got everything right. You're saying that the 317-18,000 for PD that we give that We give that entire amount in stipends as fast as we can make it all work.

[3:20:24] So that would be the equivalent of what our obligation is in this contract. Okay. I just wanted to make sure I understand that. I again want to thank you for the workshop. This is very this is a very informative session for staff to get a directive from the city council. We do appreciate your time. I know you're all very busy but again we thank you for that. We will come forward on the medium of 10 first and bring some possible solutions. So again, we thank you and that's all we have at this table. Sorry. You spoke on sales tax and I'd like to add one thing to end. Sales tax is going to always be a problem, especially in the days of cyber purchasing. Black Friday is not Black Friday anymore, so our sales tax revenues that we see in January being down, it's not off Cyber Monday. by local and look at bringing back our cell stacks into the city of St. Angelo through the audience that we have been talking about. Because that is going to help us and benefit us for years to come. Because it's not just going down to the store and buying whatever you like anymore. It's sitting on your couch and purchasing online. And FedEx shipping it to you right to your front door. Very good message, absolutely. Oh, I'm waiting for a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. All in favor say aye. Aye. This strategic planning meeting

Transcribed 2026-07-27 with faster-whisper (base.en) · source: youtube.com/watch?v=jTcqPO0QGkE