 Thank you all for joining us tonight. Really means a lot to me that you'd show up, that you care that much about, not just Fort Worth, but specifically District Four. We have a lot of amazing staff out here. Thank you. A big shout out to Fossil Ridge. We have one of the associate principals in the back who graciously opened the doors for us to come out here tonight, so I'll give them a round of applause too, please. So the goal of tonight is really kind of introduced you to a few of our key staff and kind of let you know what's not, or what's going on in specifically North Fort Worth. A lot of folks, as I'm sure you can imagine, forget that there's part of Fort Worth north of the loop, and it's my job and Allen's job to really work and make sure we fight for you for what we need up here. We're gonna talk a little bit more about that later. Again, we got some amazing staff members out here. We have our chiefs of police. We have our fire chief out here. We have code. A lot of our city staff and city employees, and they're all out here to one, just give us all the information they have because they want you to be well-informed citizens too. So keep in mind that they are following the city's policies, the city's rules. And so if you ever have an issue with the city policies, by all means, please come directly to me, email me, call me, we could set something up. If you ever have an issue with any of our city staff, I assure you they're simply just following the rules and following the policies and city sets. Now it's our job to examine those policies and see if we need to change some of those and improve them. For those of you who I have not met, I'm Charlie Lowersdorf. I'm your councilman district four, or I'm your councilman four district four. Been in this office now for 177 days and we're gonna talk a little bit about what's happened in the last six months and what we're gonna do over the next six months and what we have planned or what I have planned and some of my priorities, which come from you all. So I assure you, I get emails, the phone calls, the texts and city staff, you'll hear from them. I relay everything that I hear from you all to them. And sometimes we're able to make efficient change quickly. Other times, it's government, you know how that works. It's not as quick. So with that, I'm just gonna go jump right into it. So the last six months, I can't tell you how many meetings we've had. Ton, I mean, with meetings from the chiefs of police to code of compliance, to citizens meeting, you know, at Cafe Republic, which I think is district four's headquarters. I mean, you name it, tons of meetings, tons of phone calls. So what happens in the council meetings, those are over relatively quick, but it's what happens behind the scenes. That's where everything happened. So I invite all of you to come out to work sessions on Tuesdays. That's where we really discuss everything that goes before a vote that night. So you're all welcome to come out there and anything you see or you hear by all means, let us know. One of the biggest things that we did over the last six months was we passed the latest budget, the FY24 budget. It was, we didn't see the lowest property tax rate cut down from 71, or 0.7125 cents down 0.6725. It was great. My belief is I think we could do more. And Allen and I, we are working to do more. Our issue this year, my issue, wasn't so much with the budget itself as it was with the process. So we've had a talk with our city manager, David Cook, and we've let him know that we really wanna make sure we're part of the process throughout the year, not just in the end. And that's how we can see more meaningful change on property tax reform. So with that said, we also increased the over 65 and disabled property tax exemption. So that was a big one because that is a power we did have at the city level. Now, you gotta keep in mind when we do that, that means there's lower tax revenue overall. So that means for everyone else, we weren't able to lower the rate as much because, again, that money has to come from somewhere. But we felt it was important since it hadn't been done in over 20 or 30 years. So for those over 65 and disabled, you'll notice a reduction in your tax bill. With that budget came a lot of things that we always wanna see. We talked about litter abatement, increased mowing. Those are things that we're gonna see a lot more of. Well, not just District 4, but all of Fort Worth. And that's big, because it's part of keeping our city clean, right? So it's one of the things we hear about all the time is like, hey, when are we gonna mow this meeting? And when are we gonna mow that? Well, now, thankfully, hopefully, we'll start seeing an increase because that was one of the things that we did fun. Increase in place of fire, that's a huge one. I mean, we can have zero taxes, we can have the cleanest city, but none of it matters if we're not safe. And I think we can all agree on that. We all agree that whenever we call 911, we want either the fire department to show up quickly, we want the ambulance services to show up quickly, or we want our police to show up quickly. And we can't do that unless they're adequately funded and adequately staffed, and they have the resources they need. And so it's very important for us on council to make sure they had the budget that they needed to get the job done. Does that mean I'm gonna stop asking for more? Absolutely not, because I think we all agree we wanna see more patrol in the North. You can ask Chief, I ask for it all the time. And trust me, whenever I say, they want to provide it. If you look at other cities and where they're at on police staffing, they're in a really bad shape, thankfully, because Fort Worth is such a great place to live and work, especially for our police and fire. We don't have as many problems as other cities. Now, that doesn't mean we're content with where we're at, and you'll hear from police later, but I assure you they're doing a lot to fill those shortages and make sure we stay the safe city that we really are. We also had increased allocation for code for our homeless camp cleanups. We know that's a very important one to you all. It's an important one to me as well. And so while we may not like the process and how timely or untimely it can be, moving forward to how it's actually the process is done, hopefully we see more resources out there getting those camps cleaned up once they get the okay. Because I assure you, they're not just sitting on their thumbs, just not wanting to clean up. There's a process that they have to go through before they can do so. All that said, really, if you compare the no new revenue rate versus what we have now, for what we see in North Fort Worth on our average, is about $12 a month increase in the property taxes. Any increase is still an increase. I can agree with you there. But for what we're getting for those services and stretching those dollars out, I think it's pretty fair to be honest. So that said, going into this next budget year, I'm going to keep pushing and Alan and I are gonna keep pushing for that no new revenue rate to see if we can't get there. I was assigned to the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Committee as a co-chair. I think that's important because that's how we affect our property taxes. You bring in the right businesses and we can flip it to where those corporations are paying more of the tax base than the residential homeowner. That's how you get meaningful property tax reform. Bring in the right businesses. Sometimes they need those incentives. Those incentives are actually, they're working out, we get the better into that deal. Our development services, whenever they structure these deals, we end up on the winning side of that every single time I assure you. And that's the only way we're getting those big businesses and those meaningful jobs that pay a lot for those, because we require them, they have to pay a certain amount, they have to have a certain amount of jobs, they have to invest a certain amount of capital, and if they don't, they do not get those incentives that they're promised. So that's a big one. Another big one that I was just assigned to is the Ad Hoc Committee on Emergency Medical Response. We all agree that if you're in a life-threatening situation you want an ambulance or paramedic to show up as quickly as possible. And just the city of Fort Worth being the fastest growing large city in the nation, we're going to have problems keeping up with that growth. We want to make sure that we're able to provide those quality services in a timely manner. What will that look like? Right now we're not sure. It could end up being a fire-based EMS service. It could be a hybrid, or it could be what we currently have just staffed up. We're not sure, but at the end of the day we want to make sure that the quality of service that we're providing is in line with what our citizens require and what they need, and that ultimately we can all afford. Because let's face it, we'd all like to have a policeman stationed outside of our front door and a paramedic. What are the costs of that? Everything has its costs associated. So what can we do to be the best doer to the tax dollars while ensuring that you all are getting the services that you expect and I expect? So that said, the next six months we have a lot going on. Like I said, I plan on being part of that budget process at every single point that I can. I think city staff, they recognize that and they're trying to figure out a way to really incorporate those of us on council that want to be a part of that. With that, again, attracting the right businesses, we already went over that, so I won't beat that one. We will continue to do whatever we need to do to ensure that our police have the resources they need to keep us safe. I'm gonna continue to push for increased presence and patrol and traffic here in the north, as well as hope team and all the amazing things they do. I'm sure at some point, whether it's chief or our north division commander, Conjura, they're gonna say, man, like listen, like you're just bothering us a little too much. But it's my job to relay what you guys want and I assure you they're trying to get us as much as they can. Another big thing I'm pushing right now is for the regulating donation bins that we see all the time. That's a big one for me because it's a big money maker if you don't know it. So somebody will show up, they'll drop off a donation bin and they'll end up coming out, they'll take all the clothes, they'll sell them for pennies on the dollar by the pound, they'll make a ton of money, but they're leaving a huge mess in our shopping centers and our businesses and quite frankly, none of us really want that there. So there's things that we can do. In fact, I did not know that it's actually protected under your first amendment right to have a donation bin. I thought we could just completely outright ban them, but our legal department's like, nope, you can't, it's protected, Arlington got sued for trying to completely ban them. We're learning lessons from them. So again, anything with government it's not gonna be the fastest, but even panhandlers it's protected first amendment right. So we're trying to figure out creative ways without violating anybody's rights while ensuring that we are still getting in the city that we deserve. One thing, a couple of things I wanted to go over is how I do things where I work. A lot of times, I'd hope that a lot would agree on how I do things, but I think it's important for you to understand how I work. That way, you know, like my thought process on how I make the decisions going forward. So I base my decisions based on the next generation of Fort Worth, not necessarily the next election. There's some things that I may do that I think it's very important for Fort Worth, our residents believe is important for Fort Worth, but there may be a subset that they may not agree with it. But I have to keep in mind the next generation of Fort Worth because I think we should all be thinking about that next generation, not just what we're looking at right now. Focusing on the mission, the vision and the values is a benchmark for my decisions, not necessarily a subgroup or a particular group's agenda. I mean, I will get along with just about everybody, but if their particular thing is not what's good for our district or not good for the city, then we can agree to disagree and we can do it civilly and we do it with respect. I make decisions based on fact-based evidence. That was evidenced by a recent zoning case that we had come before us for a car wash. Of course, a car wash, they wanted to go in. I went out to that location on site. It wasn't terrible, but whenever you start hearing the concerns like noise, I went to another car wash I was in the area. I stood 300 feet from where that was going to be. I could hear the car washes kick on and I thought, would I want to hear that if I was in the backyard? No, because it's going to directly impact my quality of life. Developer, I appreciate you trying to bring business to Fort Worth. This location, it's not the right one. So that was one of those fact-based decisions. It wasn't based off emotion or opinion or preconceived notion, it was facts. So that's how I make decisions there. Next, it takes a smart person to know when they're stupid. I certainly do not know everything, nor will I ever pretend to know anything. I cannot be there. I consider myself a jack of all trades, master of none, but what I do have at my disposal is an amazing city staff that they do have the answers. They do those certain particular issues that you're concerned about. I can get those answers for you. And my district director, Booker, he is the master of knowing exactly who we need to talk to and he's doing a great job. So yes, by all means, go to me and I'm gonna turn around to him and say, hey, can you reach out to somebody at Code and get this issue resolved? Because they're gonna know exactly who to go to. The way I see my job and the rest of councils were at the stern, we're directing the ship, focusing on the vision downstream. You don't want me down in the engine room tinkering anything, I guarantee it. So I will make sure that our staff, who's again amazing at what they do, get the answers that you're needing so we can get the results that you're wanting. So all that to be said, together, I genuinely believe that we can make a difference. There will absolutely be things that we disagree on and I think that's what makes this a great country is the fact that we can disagree, but yet we can still work together. So on that note, I do wanna introduce our Chief of Police, Neil Noakes. Thank you, Council Member. I've gotta say I've been really impressed with one of our newer council members. He's actually been working this like he's been doing it for a long time. He came to one of our Academy graduations recently and he gave a presentation on behalf of city leadership and it was one of the most motivational and inspiring speeches I've heard from anyone at City Hall that came to speak to our recruits. Thank you so much, Rhianna. We know everybody standing over here, the city staff. You see where most of the cops are. I mean, they're close to the food, but for all the people that are out here sitting with the rest of the audience, if you're a city of Fort Worth employee, please raise your hand so everyone else can see who you are. When I talked to Commander Conjura yesterday about this event and he told me all the people he was bringing from his team, I thought, man, we are going to outnumber the residents like three to one. But then I remember this is North Fort Worth and I knew we would have a great turnout and we're kinda equal city staff to residents but the residents have us beat tonight and you have no idea how good that feels to us. To see you come out, to see you're engaged, to see you care about your community. From 2017 to 2019, I had the privilege of being the first commander in North Division. We first built the brand new facility. I completely fell in love with this area. I've fallen in love with every area of Fort Worth for different reasons, for different assignments that I've had over the last 23 years. I have to say there's something special here in North, something special about the residents, the way you stay engaged, the way you let us know when you're having problems and you do let us know. But I was just talking with Lance Griggs about a problem I didn't know. I had no idea. Had he not said anything to me that problem would have gone unchecked. I can't guarantee you we can fix every single problem that you have, but I can guarantee you if we don't know about it. If you haven't told us or told Council Member Lowersdorf who does contact us frequently, we thank you for doing that. There's nothing we could have done. I can't remember if it was Michael Jordan or if it was Wayne Gretzky, but it said you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Take a shot, let us know. Give us a call. So at Fort Worth PD, we're really focused on three things. My first responsibility is to make sure I've got a safe, healthy, resilient department. Got the best people you can imagine hired and trained to come out and serve you so they can make sure we have safe, healthy, and resilient communities. The only way we get that done is if we do that together. And that's something I've seen a lot of here in North Division. As far as staffing, I have to thank, once again, our city leaders, like Council Member Lowersdorf, who unanimously passed our most recent budget and it's the largest one we've ever asked for. For the second year in a row, they gave us one of the largest single year staffing packages we've ever had. We had over 70 sworn positions. Yeah, go ahead and clap for that one. We had over 70 officer positions that were created of various ranks for various positions. This year we got 63 more, plus 43 of our professional civilian staff that were added as well. Now, what that's done when you look at the attrition and everything else is going on, we're 211 positions down as of today, 211. Now, when you look at the recruiting challenge we're seeing across the country in policing, we're doing really well. There's some agencies, we looked at one, I won't even mention the agency, they're down 44%. We're in the low teens as far as that rate goes. Last time we had a posting, the last three or four times, over 1,000 people applied to become forward police officers. I talked to someone today who retired from Seattle PD. He said they were at 1,500 officers prior to the defund the police movement and I didn't check his numbers, but he said they're at 500 now. He said they usually had thousands, around 4,000 people come out to take the test to become police officers in Seattle. And again, I didn't check his numbers, but he said this last time they had six people show up. Six. I can't guarantee you those numbers are accurate, but it's indicative of what happens in cities where we don't have leaders and community members that support their police department. That's not a problem here for Texas. That's why we have in our most recent lateral academies we've had and what lateral academies are. We open it up to people who are already police officers here in Texas and in other states who have a certain size, who have had a certain number of years of experience, who have incredible track records. We've had people from Seattle, Portland, New York, California, all over the state of Texas. They're coming from across the country because they want to work here in Fort Worth, Texas. That says a lot about the city that we have. I can't say enough about the staff that we have. I can't say enough about the officers, our professional civilian staff. We've got both here today. If you see anything good going on in your communities and if you look, you will. It's because of them right there. They're the ones that are making it happen. If you see any issues, look right here because it is my responsibility to make sure they have the staffing and the resources they need to get the job done. And I can't tell you how thankful I am to have a council and mayor and city manager's office that actually support us in that effort. I know we're gonna have a lot of questions and council member, would you like us to take questions now? Are we just doing introductions and going into questions later? No, we do introductions because it may... Okay, well, I just took up all the time for the introductions, so. I'm gonna step away, thank you. So there's two gentlemen I wanna introduce you to real quick, and that's our newly promoted commander, Commander Conjura. With his background and what he's done, I sure you were in great hands. He had big shoes to fill whenever Mahaffey was promoted out of the position and I guarantee he's gonna do a great job. We also have Sergeant Snead, and I wanted to ask Sergeant Snead just because he's the one that's out there in the community, he's the one out there talking to folks. I just wanted to ask him to take a few seconds to talk about what he's seeing, the trends he's seeing, and the role that we can play in, I guess, community safety. So Sergeant, do you mind just taking a couple minutes? I have no idea they were calling me up here, so I have nothing prepared. I can tell you that North Division is doing really well. If you guys live here, you know the issues we're having, we're having issues with the homelessness. We've addressed that. We continue to address it. It's not gonna go away tomorrow. Gonna take an effort from everybody here, all the community, all the leaders from City Council, all the down to the civilians working with us. Panhandling is also a big issue. We're still working with that. We're kinda, it's kind of a major problem because it's a twofold problem. People up here are very fortunate and they're very giving them their money so people will come from all over the city to come here to get money. We have city services for people who need help. The best thing you could do is forward these people to city services where they can get the help they need. All they're doing with your money is stacking up our intersections, causing issues, causing fights, assaults, or other, in the intersections. Stop giving your money. I know that seems sad because everybody wants to help you. Those people who want to help are not helping, making the problem worse. Also property grounds. Walk your vehicles. Hide your stuff that's in your car. Don't leave it in different, where people can see it. We have kids who are walking the streets of North Division just lifting car handles. They're not breaking into the car, they're just lifting car handles. Your car's on the left, they open it, they reach in, they grab your stuff, they're gone. That's an issue. That's an issue we can all fix. Very simple. So we are very fortunate in North Division. You do not have a problem with violent crime. We have an occasional felony murder. It's usually family related or it's somebody that they know and it's usually solved within a day to two days max. That's not an issue we have here. So feel blessed that you live in Northwood or I've worked all over the city. This is the best place to work. Next we're gonna have Rosalinda from Fourth, well, Crime Prevention. Would you like to say a few words as well? Good evening, my name is Rosalinda. It's a pleasure seeing so many people here. So what do we do with Crime Prevention? We work very, very closely with these individuals here in uniform. As part of my job, they can't do it all. They cannot do it by themselves. This is where we bring in the business owners. This is where we bring in the neighborhoods and we organize and we help to educate individuals on how to just do things differently within your neighborhood. If you can take your neighborhood walk and if you can control it, if you can lock your doors, if you can make sure that the lights are, or the streets are well lit, if you can make sure that your businesses are well tended, are well kept, are the homelessness are kept at bay, right? Then we're doing our part from within in order to help them do their job. If we do what we can do in Crime Prevention, we will make such a difference, but we can only do it when we organize. Neighborhood Crime Launch works like this. We have a caller that will call me up or notifies one of our MPOs and says, hey, I'm interested in doing some type of volunteer work and we have two very good programs. We've got the Neighborhood Crime Launch and then we have the Citizens on Patrol. Depending on what their interest is in, it's either gonna go to our COP coordinator or it's either gonna go to myself. Now, I'm speaking for Neighborhood Crime Launch. Neighborhood Crime Launch, I will meet with that individual. We will vet them to a certain level and then we will start having Neighborhood Crime Launch meetings inside the neighborhood. If it's a business, we have those Business Crime Launch meetings on site in that business area so that we can work directly. We bring resources. We study the programs that the tools that we use. We go over the crime mapping. We go over one address. We use all the tools that we use in order to review the types of incident calls that are coming from within and then we approach it in that sense. With Neighborhood Crime Launch, you have three meetings. Our first one is the introduction for the Neighborhood Crime Launch. We take a census of the group because in order for it to be successful, it has got to be provided. It's got to be supported by the group. Once that is agreed upon, then we move forward with the meet and greet. This is where we invite the assigned MPO into the neighborhood so that the residents or the business owners are meeting with their assigned MPO. And once that second meeting is over, then we have a third meeting where we invite Code Blue. We've had a lot of individuals in code. Our last Business Crime Launch meeting, we had individuals from AutoFep. They bring the city into the neighborhood and that's what we want, right? Once you have those three meetings completed, then we work together and we help assign those Neighborhood Crime Launch signs that you see everywhere, right? If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's a Neighborhood Crime Launch sign, it's got the I, and it gives a non-emergency number. That's how we work. We work as a group. We organize all for keeping what we're safe. That's my spill. Thank you. If you live in a neighborhood where there's not an active census on patrol or Crime Launch, please get with her. Get your neighborhood registered. It starts with one. From there, others see it. They see the difference. Starts hearing about less break, car break-ins, less issues in the neighborhood. And then from there, people just end up, our criminals, let's face it, they go for the low-hanging fruit. If they know there's areas that aren't really being watched or there's not like a big concern, that's where they're gonna go. So with that, we have, there's two people have a really special place in my heart and that's our police and fire. And that's because there are two professions that we ask on a daily basis to put on a uniform and run towards the sound of chaos. We expect them to put themselves in dangerous situations and we expect them to do it for not a lot of money. Finding me a police officer or a firefighter who's rich and I guarantee it's from some side hustle like roofing or hanging Christmas lights, it's not from being a firefighter or police officer. So these are two professions that are near and dear to me. And again, that's why it's important. I wanna make sure they have all the funding and resources they need, especially on the resiliency part, because if their head's not in the right spot, then they can't be in the right spot. So it's very important. So with that, I wanna bring up our chief, our fire chief, Chief Davis. Council member, I can't thank you enough. And I wanna reiterate something that Chief Nook said about the other city departments. We constantly are working collectively to try to make sure that services are delivered and that there's cooperation amongst agencies. So these folks have all been working all day long and they're here with us tonight. So I wanna say thank you to them. Secondly, I'd ask and Council member, Saturday's Veterans Day, and you being a veteran yourself. And I'd like to ask anybody that's a veteran to please raise your hand in the community. I wanna thank you. I'm fortunate enough, I've been the fire chief here for five years, but I also share this neighborhood with you. I live down off of Basswood myself. And so I echo everything that you're saying about what a great community this is. I wanna thank the guys in the back of the room from fire station 31, that's a little bit south of here. And I just wanna say that there's a ton of good stuff going on. The council member mentioned the budget. The fire department has recently, within the last few weeks started a class of 60 folks that is going to try to get them started. So we can start another class of 60 in February to try to make sure that our staffing is where we need to be to be responsible with your money as taxpayers, reduce the overtime that we can reduce and so forth. So there's that stuff going on that is really keeping our both chief notes and we share buildings down there. And man, there's a lot activity going on and it's all good and it's all in support of this community is the community continues to grow. So I appreciate all that and appreciate the support with the budget. Fire station 37, which is just on the north end up here off of Ray White budget bond money, I'm sorry, was put forward to actually replace that station where there's a piece of property that's been purchased in the next six to nine months. I expect that you'll see a shovel ready project that is hit the ground. And so there's some good stuff going on up here with redevelopment of fire stations. The council member mentioned the MedStar staff or MedStar response study that kicked off Monday. I spent all day today with the consultant group and they have hit the ground running. They've got a tight turnaround. The council has asked that these folks hit it hard so they can get it turned around by spring so there can be good conversations about what it looks like from a budgetary standpoint. So again, from a public safety standpoint, council member, I thank you for your support on all that. We, you know, the conversation was going on here about not giving it a traffic light and all that. I wanna echo that a little bit by telling you there's other ways you can be involved. The Fort Worth fire department through the holiday season will be accepting canned goods and non-perishable foods at fire stations in order to try to work to get that to the Terran Area Food Bank and Julie Butler and her team that so work so hard on behalf of the community to make sure that food insecurity is dealt with and dealt with in a way that additional resources could be put forward. So to the officer's point, if you're looking for ways to donate, feel free to, you know, take us up on that and any fire station should be able to accept that and we'll be getting that to them. So pretty much I'm just gonna let it go with that and so you can move through your agenda and if there's any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. But again, thank you for the invitation to be here. Thank you on behalf of the Fort Worth fire department for all the community support. And we just, we're problem solvers. We're problem solvers at heart. And so you can call us anything you want, but just make sure that you understand that our mission is to solve problems. And we do that and we take that to heart. So thank you. Before we bring up our next speaker, I really wanna make sure we realize that how lucky we are to have had our fire chief and our chief of police and our executive assistant chief of police out here, the 13th largest city in America. And they have a million other places they could have been, whether it's at home or somewhere else, out with their guys, but yet they chose to spend their time here. So I think it's really important that we give them some appreciation for showing up for this. Next, I just wanna ask the code to come forward. Just talk a little bit about what they're seeing here in North Fort Worth and the things that they're trying to do to help us stay safe and stay clean. I'm Chris McAllister, assistant director for code compliance. First, I wanna start out by saying, thank you to the community. Thank you to the council member. And I also wanna call him out specifically for being such a champion for veterans. He's not only one of my council members. He's also my brother as a Marine. So we share that. So code compliance recently, we've been in a very large department over the years. And over the years we've grown before it was just regular code compliance, which is a lot of your property stuff you deal with, junk vehicles, fences, mowing. And over the years we've grown, we've added animal control, we've added solid waste and environmental. In this budget cycle we took a split and we split into the code compliance department as well as the environmental services. We did that, it was a strategic move so we can better focus on those services as a department, if that makes sense. So I'm the assistant director for animal control. I've been over there for about a year now, a little over a year. And it's an adventure. I will tell you it's an adventure. And I'm gonna use an opportunity before this is over to pander some animals to you and some opportunities. Within code compliance now is animal control and your code enforcement, which is again all your property crumbs. It's the abatement. We work closely with the Hope team, with PD, work with fire. Chief was correct. We all work really well together, very collaboratively. And so we're just gonna build on those relationships. I'm not gonna keep talking. What I will tell you is Tony Hillers in the back. He's a superintendent for code enforcement. I was actually in code enforcement for 12, 13 years before going to animal control. So here I can answer any questions you have on code enforcement. Animal control and here comes the plug. As we go into the holidays, we have animals that need fosters. If you wanna come volunteer in the shelter, we have information over here, how you can do that. Go to the website, sign up. Our shelters are overcrowded as we speak. It's a nationwide crisis. Everyone is dealing with it. And me and my people are working night and day. They're working harder than I am to get as many animals adopted, fosters. Just anything we can do to try to raise that live release rate number. So anything you can do to help us will be appreciated. Again, we have the information on the table and we'll be around after the meeting. Thank you. Okay, so next we're gonna talk a little bit about transportation and public works. One of our biggest advocates for North Fort Worth and he doesn't get paid a single dime is Rusty Fuller. And he is the president, thank you, please. He's the president of the North Fort Worth Alliance and I have to say he is more in tune with what's going on in Fort Worth than most people in Fort Worth. So if you really wanna have a pulse and know what's going on, this is always a guy to ask. He's at every meeting, he understands what's going on, but most importantly, he's pragmatic and he has a common sense approach to a lot of the issues that we have in North Fort Worth. So Rusty, I understand you're gonna be doing the introduction. And happy birthday to all you Marines. Tomorrow is the Marine Corps birthday. Thanks. 248 years, right? 248 years in 1775 in Tons Tavern. The United States Marine Corps was created and the United States was been safe ever since. We got good PR people. I have the privilege of working with all of these staffs across the city and I will tell you that for a city the size of ours, we have great access that you can't get other places and we have a super competent bunch of people at the top and in the middles and at the execution level. It's, the solutions are coming. We can't deny that, but they're coming and they're working on it. And when we find out what the problems are and identify them, as the chief said, they get on it and they work on it and they produce. From Beach Street to the crossing, the separated grade crossings at Bond's Ranch, these things are things that couldn't happen and all of a sudden some staff members said, wait a minute, let's do that. And now they're happening so that we can get more mobility and we get safer cities and these are fantastic people. Folks I get to introduce today are the folks from Transportation and Public Works. We have, where's Patricia? There she is. Patricia Watzak just joined us. She came from another, she came from another city and then she's going to talk about, she's going to introduce some of the other folks. Here is Chad, still here. There he is, Chad Allen. And project manager of the project managers, Raul Lopez. Raul and I have been working together for, well, what, for a long time on making sure that projects are out there and people are getting informed as to how they're coming. We have Raj Gupta, right? Yeah. Thank you. Raj is also involved in capital delivery and we have with us Jennifer Dyke. Jennifer is stormwater and she has one of the biggest jobs that any person could have with the city of Fort Worth. She has to figure out how to get the rainwater out of your basement. Or out of your, I don't have basement. But. I don't. I don't think so. She takes a look at these projects around the area. She has been fabulous in working with the community, finding places like her, through her initiative. We now have a map that people can go to and see where high water happens. So when they want to buy a house, they're forewarning. So that was a lot of her work, selling that to the builders, the developers, the realtors. We didn't want to have that necessarily want that information out there because it makes their jobs harder. But guess what? She got it done. So Patricia, why don't you come up and talk about some of the great projects that are going on out here in the North? Well, the good news is the city plans a total of 130 and a half million dollars, which is in 24.4 lane miles in this council district. So. In our 2022 bond, fully one third is going to North Fort Worth. So we have this map available for handout to you. We have lists of all the projects. There are two projects, North Riverside from Golden Triangle to Keller Hicks, which just completed last month. And North Riverside from Shriver to North Terrant Parkway that completes this month. And then we have another list of other projects that are up and coming, that are in design. So we're working hard for you. And we have flyers, information about what's going on with the projects, lists, and maps for you to come by. So I invite you to come in and talk to us. I also wanted to introduce Monique. She's from our planning group in Transportation and Public Works. And so she can talk a little bit about what's in the long range, what we're thinking about in the future if you come down and chat with her afterwards. So again, I echo everyone's comments tonight. Thank you all for being so here, for being here tonight. I have been to many public meetings, like the chief mentioned, where the number of city staff outweigh, outnumber the number of citizens. And so it's a pleasure to see your interest in what we do. With that, before we start taking some questions, one of the other things I wanna talk about that's gonna, it's certainly one of my top three priorities. That's a community center. While I'm super, super thankful for Fossil Ridge for opening their doors, I think we can all agree that what we need here in Norfolk Worth is somewhere to call our own. So whether it's for our retired community who wants somewhere to go during the day, or it's for our teenagers who wanna go somewhere and have a safe place to play basketball at night, or it's for our families that wanna safe place to have a summer camp, et cetera. I assure you that every single week whenever I have my one-on-one with David Cook, our city manager, I reiterate that's the priority, that's the priority. So because of the amount of money, thank you. We're trying to do that two different ways. One is to possibly expand the why that we have in North Park. The other, we need something a lot bigger than that. And quite frankly, I wanna be something that all the other districts look to as an example for that's how it's done. So that's where I do ask for your support because it's really hard for me to go in there and justify something when I don't have anything to back it up. And so those constant emails to myself that I throw over into a special folder for a community center, I can use that and say over the last year and a half or two years or three years, because whenever we go into the bond season because of the amount of money it's gonna take, it's gotta rise to the top to make it to the bond. So if I can say, hey, over this amount of time, we've had this many requests for a community center and that we don't have anything that fulfills the needs of our district, I don't really have a leg to stand on. So that's really where I need you to come in. I was hoping David Cook would be here tonight. Unfortunately, he had a commitment because I wanted him to walk down the super long hallway so he could say like, oh man, North Fort Worth really needs something. So another thing that we're working on is that there's a developer who's working on something called North City, just north of here and trying to bring not just more retail but more destination places for our families and for us to go to actually go out and have fun and do. So we're really trying to bring that to North Fort Worth as well. So at this time, I think we can go ahead and open it up for questions. I think we still have time, I think we have about another 30 minutes where we'll start breaking down and cleaning up. So we'll take questions and again, I will not pretend to know everything. So I will rely on staff to answer something that it may be following their wheelhouse and then hopefully we can get to as many questions as we can. I agree with your prior worries about community revenue and community center, but how do you do that in terms of your growth? So growth pays for growth. So as we grow, as those developers come in with those impact fees, their park dedication fees, that's where we get those money from. When we bring in those large businesses who then increase, like MasterCars coming to North Fort Worth, they got a really nice incentive package. But again, we're making out like a bandit on that one because for example, they're like the Amazon of industrial parts and how it works with sales tax is wherever those items are shipped from, that's who gets the sales tax for that percentage. And so they're like I said, they're the Amazon. So we're about to get a ton of money long into Fort Worth from that and that's how we pay for that growth. So growth will pay for growth. And I agree, like there's city services, we want, you flush your toilet, you want it to go somewhere. So you want police to show up, you want fire to show up, you want code to show up, you want all these folks to show up, it's gonna cost money. And so that's the fine balance. And so where is that money is gonna come from? Right now, like I said, 60% of the tax revenues coming from our residential property owners before that used to be 40% and 60% was from our commercial base. So once we flip that and get it back to 60% from the commercial base, that's how we fund that. So, yes. Okay, instead of taking the transmission, I think the lady, I'm gonna make sure I get it right. You said how much is coming to the North Fort Worth area? Come on. About a third of the 2022 bond. Okay, so why don't we take the third of that money, we don't need public transportation. Even. Amen. We do not have anything that people from Staten Island bring it around this community too much to see empty buses. Yes. Take that third, take that third, build us that community center. Woo, we can build one of the nicest ones around here with that budget she's talking about. So on public transportation, because I hear it, I see it, I know exactly what you're talking about. And again, quite frankly, you got folks taking the bus to come up here to Panhandle. They're making $100 an hour. That said, if you see me out there at Panhandle and you think this position doesn't pay very much, so just mind your own business, all right? So I will do it with respect. But no, that said, I completely agree. And so one of the things, so all the ridership studies that Trinity Metro provides. The way to try it, we have asked for the public transportation department to give us the facts of the number of people that ride those buses. We have not seen that information. I'll get you that information. So 100%, I will get you that information because whenever we talk about transportation and saying, hey, let's get rid of all the public transportation, that is like one of those opening a city up to a lawsuit for taking away public transportation. But what I plan on doing is asking Trinity Metro, hey, how can we take saving some of the money from some of those lines you have, putting that money into their Uber service that we have here in Fort Worth and saying, hey, if we have folks that legitimate, because we do have a lot of jobs coming to Fort Worth. And there are a lot of areas where they do rely on public transportation. So if they do have that need, hey, for this zip zone, let's put more money into that in Fort Worth. I don't know if you've ever looked into zip zone, but it's kind of like the Uber or Fort Worth. It's super complicated. Now granted, I'm a Marine, so a lot of things are complicated, but it's one of those, it's super complicated. So if they can fix that issue and make it less complicated, make it easier to use, then I do think there's a way where you can see some of those economies of scale and taking money from this, from the bus lines to zip zone and affording people who need that, actually need the public transportation, the opportunity. Okay, so have them park and drive, park your car right there, or park yourself right there. The bus would be there to pick you up, take you to your job, or you'd be back, and there you go. So we don't need them driving around. Just go to one spot. But then you're talking about land and parking lots in district four. So one of the things in district four that I firmly believe is we don't have a lot of land left. And so the development that I wanna see in Fort Worth that we all wanna see is responsible development. So it's not just anybody coming in there and buying up a piece of land and building something that we don't necessarily want or need. That said, one of the things we do have to make sure we're aware of is zoning by right and not always being quick to say no and working with those developers saying, hey, I don't quite like that vision, but let's work together and come up with something that we all like, but not to go off on a tangent. But I'm gonna work with Trinity Metro not just the ridership numbers, but the actual cold hard facts. And that way whenever we go into our committees and the mobility, we can say, hey, this is what we're seeing. So we got it. We're on it. So wherever Booker's at, I'm sure he's taking notes right now. So. No, I don't need to write about it. No, I'm just saying. We all need to write what we don't see because there's nobody on it. Yeah, there's nobody on it. That's why we need to write about it. I'm out in my neighborhood a lot, Summerfields area, and I can guarantee you from 820 up here in Parkway, every time I see a bus come out, but there's two people on it. It's amazing. And yet when we ask them and they bring these federal people up here to these meetings, they say, oh, we've had our people write on them and they say they're crowded. Well, that doesn't pass the eye test. I mean, I've seen it all the time. And I know they've built that big parking right. I think I don't go to the triangle out there. And when that first opened up, I think that law was full of people who utilize it. But because of the homeless on that bus, you go by that parking lot now and it's almost vacant out here. So, I mean, we've got to stop it. The Panhandlers tie into that. And the other thing that's concerning me in Summerfield, let me switch the Panhandlers. People need to realize when you're donating to these people on the intersection, you're not feeding their stomach. You're feeding their addictions, not the hands out of the teeth, okay? It got so bad in Summerfields that our Albertson Center, our Western Center in North Beach, that they had to hire off-duty officers to come get the drug dealers and the users out of their parking lot. They were, one business owner actually reported someone would have banded around their arm shooting heroin into their veins at the front door of their store, okay? And that's what's happening. And the problem is if you don't address those kind of issues, those businesses aren't gonna stay there. And that balance that you have to see between community and the business and residential is going to just go out the window and you're gonna have another slum on your hands. Yep, so on that note, one of the things I'm doing is, well, not just working with code, not just working with Ford Police, but also working with our legal department because we have vacant businesses that unfortunately are being used by homeless. There's camps set up behind them. And so you have these out-of-state owners who own these buildings. Obviously they don't care because they don't live here. You can report it all day long and our code can go out there. They do an amazing job. They get it cleaned up and somebody shows up. So what I'm doing is actually, so some of these businesses, like the 7-Eleven at North Beach and H-20, actually having them added to this list, if you will, of nuisance abatement and having legal basically go out there and talk to them, saying, hey, listen, if you don't clean up your act, eventually the city can sue and really shut them down. These businesses, what I'm having city legal look into right now is whether or not we can essentially put a lien on a building, like especially the vacant buildings, saying, hey, before we really, like if we report a camp or trash or illegal dumping or whatever the case is, it's reported and you do not fix it in a timely manner and we keep slapping meaningful fines, fine after fine after fine, then putting a lien on the building and the lien on the certificate of occupancy that way before a new tenant can move in, that has to be paid. And so I think whenever you start hitting these out-of-state business owners in the pocket, I think that's where you start seeing a meaningful change too, because we can call code, we can call police, they can work, they can keep doing the same thing, but if we keep repeating and not fixing the actual root of the problem, then you're right, I think that's where we're gonna have those issues. We have to look down as a ridership that Metro says are gonna give us enough. I've been to meetings and we've brought these same subjects up and they say, oh, we've put some of our people on the bus and they rode that route and they told us it's just full. Yeah, so that doesn't pass the idea. No, so I agree. And so I talked to a few people in here already and they know a couple of things I plan on doing because again, going back to my fact-based thing, right? And so I actually had Booker look into, because Trinity Metro, of course, let's be honest, if you, Councilman goes and talked to anybody that brought the red carpet like, oh, let me tell you what you want to hear. It's like, hey, that's great. And you know, they offered, hey, here's a free pass, we'll go out there with you, we can ride with you. No, thanks, I'm good. I'm just gonna throw them in a ball cap and I'm gonna go ride it myself and whether it's on the weekend, thankfully, December, whenever we're not having any meetings, it's gonna be all more research mode. And I'm inviting anybody else to go out there and ride with me, because I plan on being out there just riding the bus and saying, all right, let's, that way I can go back and say, I saw it myself. Because I went down to that same 7-Eleven, I took the same pictures and I went back and I said, look, this is what's happening. There's no reason why a lady is in the back, like, bunch in this little corner, so I see it. And so we need to do something about it. And so, again, that's, thankfully, whenever things like that do pop up, our police department, they're great on doing special details and having an increased presence. We see it, we see a decline. And then, of course, with all things else, we see them start coming back. So... Some sort of objective measurement for that ride. We don't need an employee of a three-metro, who's got a vested interest in expanding the route. They should have some sort of way to track the amount of revenue and vouchers for each bus on a basis. They should be able to give us that data. And if they can't, then they don't need to be more buses until they can get that data for they can get it, okay? Absolutely. You don't need more buses. Teresa. Hi. They are planning new routes out here, by the way. I just heard. Hi, I'm Teresa. I'm a volunteer with Fort Worth PD and they've heard crime watching. We've just come in in our neighborhood. I've learned many people have purchased my home in 2015. But I would like to get with you with a faith-based organization that has nine acres in summer fields that's willing to talk to us and tell us what we want to do with it. Like, as far as like, turning the marker or anything. The community center. Oh, awesome. The senior center. Nine acres. Nine acres. Yeah. Pick a ball. Yes. So, one of the other things we're looking at for the community center too is everyone know that really big lot off 35 and Basswood? So, there's a lot going, I assure you there's so much going on behind the scenes on trying to acquire that. Because we can make that like the bright star of Fort Worth. And there's been a lot of negotiations that have failed in the past. And it's like, all right, well, I'll go talk to. Not that I'm gonna be able to myself negotiate this deal. But it's like, hey, here's the vision I have. It aligns with what you want to do and what you want to see happen with this land. But quite frankly, when you're talking to somebody that doesn't need any money, it's not about money. So, it's like, hey, here's what we want to do. And either do it or get off the pot. That's right. Are you talking about the force complex that we found somewhere in the area? No, no, there was talks of that at one time. I don't think the math worked out on that one. Did they create a committee for it? What's that? Did they create a committee with Fort Worth? No. Did they create a committee? No. No. No, I didn't hear what you said. So, what was that? So, we could go forward with, we've already had two meetings. So, we could probably go forward with the nine acres. Yeah. Because we don't have to pay money on it. Yeah, that's all right. No tax money would go on it. So, I'll give back to you. Yeah. Sir. Question for the police chief over there. You mentioned that if this was the second year that you have large increases to your budget, and I understand you're down on recruitment, but if you've got all the additional officers, 200 land, I believe you mentioned, would your budget be sufficient to cover those new officers and bring them on? First of all, we're not earning the recruitment. Like I said earlier, we're having a thousand plus applied every single time. Recruiting is not hurting you forward. Something I've been able to mention earlier that I should have really said, we have ramped up things in our police academy. We've just had a class graduate. We had a class start in Monday. We have a ladder of classes right now. We have other classes scheduled to come along. So, would the budget I currently have cover all the officers that we need? No. No. Run with it. I had to send a lot of the policemen, so I'm sorry, it wouldn't be on it. Why do you think it wouldn't? Well, why? I'm saying it would not, because I don't want, I'm sorry, gentlemen and ladies. I don't want you working a two-double job. I want you to focus on your one job, so when you go to work that day, your focus is in on, oh gosh, if you can be hired the guys to hang the lights. No, I want you focused on your job. That's all right. I want to be able to pay you people what you need to live on, to own a home. Well, we need people to discuss that part. Obviously, I want the purpose to work too. Many of them choose to work extra jobs because they choose to, and that is their right. The pay is set in the contract that's negotiated between our police officers association and the city of Fort Worth. The contract negotiations are starting up again, will begin in January of 2024. And it's that discussion, that meeting, that collaboration where the pay is set. So it's not like the city just goes out all the time and picks a number and says, we want to pay officers this. They come down, it's called a meet and defer contract. They meet and they talk with the POA, the police officers association, to determine what that pay should be. Right now, starting out at an academy, the officers are making about 65,000 a year. That's not bad. We're actually doing well compared to most agencies. Now, there's some of the area that are paying ridiculous amounts to not paying it. But we're fighting as a lot of the officers who are looking at those still want to come to Fort Worth because they like the way things are done here. So what I can tell you in regards to your question, the city has told us whatever positions we can fill, they're going to fund it. They are going to pay for it. A lot of people say, well, you're already down, why don't they give you 63 more positions? I want that moving target. I want to shoot big. I don't want to say we think we can probably fill this many positions. They give us a certain number and then we're able to go beyond that. I want them to keep moving that. Give me a hard target to shoot for. Don't give me something easy because the officer are going out there every single day showing up to roll calls and they don't see enough people at roll calls. And I remember as an officer, when I started back in 2000, I remember the same thing happening back then. I remember showing up to roll call working in East Division, the station over off Nashville in Pauley. I was the only person who showed up to roll call that day. I was the only one and that is not a good feeling. That made me feel good now either. That was 20 years ago. That was 20 years ago. But what we have are officers stepping up and doing extra to make sure you're safe, to make sure their partners have somebody there to assist them when they go on calls. Yes, the city has told us I've had the mayor, that councilman would allow a store. I've had several council members come to me and say, just tell me what you need. We have people like Lance Green, and Trustee Fuller, people all over, they go with what we're worth. They consistently email, call, text, show up, and say, whatever they need, make sure they have it. So we've got a supportive city council and mayor and city managers office, and they're hard giving us, if you look at the numbers, more than I can even fill immediately. It's gonna take time to get to those numbers, but we're gonna keep doing everything we can. We have promise to fund whatever positions we're gonna be able to. Well, it's here. You can come. I'm sorry. I don't have any code, but we have my forward app. It's wonderful. You have the panhandlers. Does it make sense to always, I mean, could I do it four times a day? Does it make sense to use the app to send the information or should we just let them do what they're gonna do because we can't do anything about the panhandlers? I say send the information, send the information. Like I said earlier, I know there's a lot of times that I've been guilty of it myself. Someone sees something, I think man, please fire department, somebody needs to know about it, but they think that's somebody probably already called. There's somebody probably already called and did it. I would rather get the same notifications from a hundred different people than have those same hundred people things. One of the other 99 has done it. So absolutely use the app. Obviously you can call as well. If you don't think you're getting the response you need from that, the app's been great. It's a time saver for you. It's a way to notify us instantly, but if you ever need to call, call us as well. Or can you do that? Sorry, go for it, for sure. And I like the app because you can take a picture of the panhandler and you can get that same panhandler 20 times like, okay, this guy has a problem. Let's go, come on. That's a great form of documentation and also something that we can see so when we show up we know exactly where we're at. Okay, thank you. You just got twice, called the one to three phone number. Stop by and catch it to the right person. Yeah, and I know as I've heard this before that you put it on the app, take 10, 15 minutes to get there. Time to get there? They're gone. They've already left, they're somewhere else. They know that you're coming because they know the time and they come back after certain amount of time. So it is very important. But what they have though, and I understand what she said, report it, but where's Beverly? Beverly, where are you at? I think she's like the winner right now for four. She has over a thousand reports on my phone. So if we know about that, it's the numbers. Because let's say we only get one report about a paying order at beach day 20, and that's it. Well, we can't allocate resources to that area. Police certainly can't say, oh, that's a hotspot area. Code can't say it's hotspot. But if we have all those numbers back up, I can email every single day from Beverly with pictures and everything that she reports. And she goes right to my folder because why it's important is that we can use those numbers. What works about the app is if something's left open too long then directors are getting involved and those numbers are tracked and the analytics are there and then we can identify hotspots that need attention from either code or police or whatnot. Then it gives us that power to say, hey, we need more than just seven officers. We need 10 or we need more code compliance. They need more money in their budget and they're able to justify their needs by saying we had over 25,000 calls for homeless camp cleaners. Well, if there's no calls, there's no reports, there's nothing else, then how can anyone justify their needs? So whenever I say squeaky low gets the grease, I'm here to help folks out of the trash. There's even some, like the Albertsons up North exposed outside my district but I've been helping out with it. Crap, Mac, it's not my district but I've kind of taken it under my wing. The owner's trying to get them to clean up their app, unintended. And so, but we do that with all the reports, we do that with the data and then we can outdo resources. So that's a good plug. So if you don't know about the Michael Award app, please download it. It's super simple. Then you can report a myriad of issues. You can include a picture, you can remain anonymous as well but that'll also give you an update on what's happened. And yes, many times the command handlers, they may be gone by that point by the time the police officer shows up and they'll close the case but then at least we can identify some of the suspects. Now one thing I am going to start working on with TPW is finding out what we can do to deter some of those. And so for example, and I didn't, it may be against the constitutional right or what not, I'm going to talk for legal, but the medians where you don't actually have to stay into cross, is there's something we can put there, make it more uncomfortable to stay in, for example. So it's out of the box, like, hey, can we do this? And it's within the rights, it's looking at the park benches. They put all those little knobs, they put in the dividers so you can't sleep on it. But what we do to our medians to make them less, I guess, less desired to be staying there. So like I said, obviously we just turn on the sprinkler every, every minutes in that period that, you know, all the, they go to get some water. So, yeah, you got your point, you're right up there. Yeah, so I have a question about police, specifically in North Division. Do we even have enough officers? Like, we have so much growth, and it just seems like we, I honestly could not remember the last time I saw an officer in my neighborhood. I would guess probably a couple of years. And so I'm just curious if we even have enough police officers in ratio to how many people we have that live up here. We need more officers in every division than this A-Gore. Every single area in the town are beautiful city needs more officers. Pay a lot of overtime. We're trying to get creative with scheduling. MPOs are picking up a lot of the slack. We have some more specialized units assisting. But no, we don't have enough right now. And that's why we've increased. So how do we, I mean, I realize that you, you have to prioritize based upon where there is more crime. So I would have presumed, don't know, was up here 11 years that there is less crime up here than perhaps other areas of Fort Worth. So I presume that means other areas of Fort Worth can get more officers or have a higher level of priority than we do. But I know having had my house robbed with me home in it, crime is increasing up here, partly because of the increase of homelessness up here. But I don't think that's the only reason. And so what is it gonna take for us to get closer to the priority before the crime is out of control? First, I hope you understand every side of town is definitely priority. Every side of town is unique in the particular types of the crime that you've seen. Yeah. So as you said earlier, property crime is an issue here because let's say in North Fort Worth, there's more to steal than some of those parts of town. Let's be honest. Sure. I just to be very blunt about that. One thing that we're not seeing as much of and I understand that a lot of people contact me saying it's increasing, one thing we don't see as much in North Fort Worth is a violent crime. As I sort of said, a lot of what we do see is family or domestic violence related to people who know one another, one another, not so much random violence, which referred to as sickly, retaliatory gun violence that we see in other parts of the city. A lot of our focus is gonna be where the violent crime is. People are dying. People are dying on my watch. We saw in 2019, across the country, according to the FBI, the largest single year increase in violent crime in recorded history. And they've been recording crime again in the FBI for a long time. Not just Fort Worth, it's everywhere. What we saw around that time is for the first time since the very early 90s, over 100 homicides in the city were working. And one thing I wanna point out, people say, well, it's as bad as it was in the 90s. The population was half what it is now. So the crime rate has actually decreased significantly. The rate, meaning the number of crimes per 100,000 resident, 1000 individual. So we had to do something about the violent crime, obviously. One of the first things I do in the morning is pull my email to check in this evening when I die. That's no way I have to start your morning. But that's the way I do it. We saw more than 100 for two years straight, 118 and 121. Last year, we saw 100. We almost got to that triple digit number. This year, we're tracking about 20% lower in war. Last year, we doubt 14.4% for tracking around 20% lower than last year. So a lot of our resources aren't going towards violent crime. Here's the thing, whatever's going on in your neighborhood may not be the biggest thing going on in the entire world. But it is the biggest thing going on in your world. It matters to you, so it matters to us. What I don't want you to think is, oh, we gotta have more murders in order before we get more police officers. That's not the case. Until you're right now, this man right here has been one of the biggest proponents along with Council Member Blaylock, Council Member Hill. We want more officers in the North. We want more officers in the North and you're echoing what you are telling them. So please don't think we've forgotten about you. Please don't think that we don't care what happens in North because, oh, you got it great. That's not the case at all. One of the best ways to deal with crime, including violent crime, is to stop them before everybody gets out of hand. So our goal up here is to make sure we do that. We will get more officers up here. It takes a year plus to get an officer recruited, hire, train, and actually get out working on their own. So it takes time to get there, but we have got a good pop line going. Just like every other side of town, as those officers are coming out, first place they go is going to be in our neighborhoods. Wow, that's a huge chance. Went to a seminar last night that was put on by Keller ISD and it was a special agent in charge from DEA. I was talking about fentanyl. I had a discussion with a 4P chaplain earlier in the evening and we told that we've had three overdoses in high schools in North Fort Worth up here. In the last two weeks, we've had two students that would go to our high schools that committed suicide, or had committed suicide. The North Division is the number one suicide division in the entire city. So I know you're talking about homicide, but we're talking about kids, people that are killing themselves. Those are debts. Every debt is significant. I went to a budget meeting where the city manager and everybody was talking about the new budget and Chief Aldridge was there, was talking about new SROs, community policing, crisis intervention team. We've got a new state law now. We have to have armed officers in our schools. I work with kids every day. I'm a school crossing guard right up here on North Beach in Longstraw. And I've got a little five to 11 year olds and some of the conversations I've had with these children, they talked to me about what's going on in their family and their homes. And I'm just wondering what are we doing as a community to try to address this? Is that for me? Who ever wants to talk? I'll talk to you. All right, Chief. Let me add to that statistic. There are a lot of things. I want you all to hear this. All right, listen up. Listen up. I need you to hear this, please. I'm gonna add to that statistic. Since I've been with the former police department, I've done multiple officers commit suicide. Yep, right. One of the things we're doing, before I even get into that, it's a tragedy because every lot counts. Every lot counts. One of the people I've worked with in an organization, Deck Press, got started. It supports law enforcement, it supports cancer research because he lost a positive cancer. And it supports people who have been victims of suicide because he's a brother committed suicide. And one thing that I've learned talking to his group and a lot of other groups out there is folks, we can't fix that. No. I'm just gonna be straight upon us with you. But it tends to be another one of those issues because we're talking about depression, anxiety, mental health issues. That people say, well, we don't know who else should fix this. Let's give it to the police. We're not gonna give you more training, we're not gonna give you any more money to go fix it. I'm not saying that to complain. What I'm saying is we accepted that. And we're doing what we can, but this is gonna take all of us to fix. This is gonna take every single one of us to step up and say, I'm gonna do something about this. You see somebody hurting and say something. Oh, it's a difficult conversation. I don't want to talk to, I'm afraid about that, I don't mind their feelings. Would you rather hurt their feelings potentially or just sit by when they commit suicide? Do something about it. Say something about it. Be willing to step up and help. One of the things that we're doing with our crisis intervention team is not just responding to people who may be in a mental health crisis. They make house calls. They go out and are proactive to try to make sure people have the medication they need, the counseling they need, make sure they're getting the support they need to make sure they never get to the point where they do want to take their own life or commit suicide by cop, which is something else unfortunately dealt with. Internally what we're doing is more than we've ever done in law enforcement. Used to always be suck it up, going to the call level here that you decide they need. There's calls home to get out there. That is so wrong. That is BS. We have gotten several grants to help with mental health training and awareness and resources. We have our peer support group. We have our chaplain. We just started a mental wellness team. Actually correction, a wellness team. It's overall wellness. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social, complete wellness for our officers and that's gonna be their only job. It's not a secondary job. That's all they're gonna do. We partner with organizations like the American Warrior Association. They give counseling and offers retreats in these beautiful areas like in Colorado for military and for first responders. We had multiple officers go there and it has changed their lives. We're even taking some of our cadets and some of the people who aren't even officers yet to these programs to make sure we're instilling that right kind of mindset. One thing we're saying a lot with the younger generation coming through right now, a lot of people complain about them. I don't. I like them. A lot of things figured out that my generation doesn't have a lot of balance, for instance. And they're also more willing to step up and say, I'm not okay. We're guys my age, old farts like me, we don't always do that. So I thank you for the question. Thank you for your obvious passion for it. There's kids out there that are facing things they should never see, never hear. And I deal with it and we're dealing with it at home a lot of the time. Something else we did, we started a program called Handle and Care. So say me, I'm an eight-year-old. I go home from school. My father abuses my mother right now. Police officers show up. They take the report. They arrest the dad. Mom is the victim. And then little Neil is a witness. Because he saw it happen. That's not true either. He's the victim too. He's a victim too. Any child that sees something like that is a victim. But we expect little Neil to have a good dinner, good night's sleep, wake up, have a nutritious breakfast and go to school ready to learn. That's not fair. So little Neil may go to school the next day. He didn't sleep all night. He didn't have breakfast. He falls asleep at his desk. Maybe he tries to act out on someone else when he just saw a dad do to mom. Maybe he's just not in self that day. And what usually happens, little Neil gets disciplined. Nobody addresses that trauma. It gets repressed. And one day it manifests itself in some negative way. You agree with the ones that are going to respond to that and it doesn't turn out well. Handle of Care is a program that automatically officers can notify that school. You just get the child's name or they go to school. They notify the school. And no details about what happened. It's not through business. But the school, though, is noted Neil acts a little different today than the actual release. But I'm really handling the care. And make sure resources are provided like school counselors, psychologists, psychologists, whatever make me need it. Because when we stop that one to that age, I pray to God they don't get to the point that they want to expert killings. And I've done a lot. Chief and Chief Knight, yeah. So, Ditto, everything you said is fantastic. I'm going to go to your comment on that all. And Council Member, this is a conversation that I'd love to have with you online, too. I've been here five years. My last four years on my previous employment where I was an Assistant Chief over emergency medical services for the city of Columbus, Ohio, I dealt with, every day when I went to work, I dealt with the impact of the Obian addiction in the Midwestern QT, which was being devastated by it. I'm going to tell you something, and that is, you don't want those problems here. And you cannot, unless you're way out of that problem. So, what do I mean by that? Is accidental overdoses. Overdoses that actually occur because kids or even adults wouldn't even realize that marijuana is being laced by fentanyl iPhones. And it's all with a purposeful intent to get addiction into this population and get them addicted to medicine or to this. That fentanyl has a legitimate medical purpose. So, when you hear the name of it, you very well may go break your leg or the hospital and they give you fentanyl for pain, right? The problem is, is it reduces your ventilation to the point that you stop breathing and then your heart stops because you're not getting oxygen. The best thing that we can do as a community right now is recognize that it's not one of these things that that's somebody else's kid or somebody else's brother or sister. The folks in the Midwest, in West Virginia, in Ohio, in Pennsylvania, there's not one family. Who has not been devastated by it because they're the devil of a loved one or a friend. So, the first thing I gotta say to you, this shit's real and it's a bad. And it devastates communities. So, the police definitely have a part in trying to reduce the trafficking of death. But we have to own the fact that it's legitimate, that we have to recognize that addiction is a relapsing brain disease that these guys cannot arrest their way out of it. We also, I'm not an addiction specialist. I don't pretend to be one. I'm just somebody that's a realist that lived through it. You have to know, CPR, you have to know the reversal drug for an opiate addiction is a drug called naloxone. And it has to be readily available. And it has to be. I'm in our souls. I, you know what, that's a policy conversation that I don't wanna get, I think to schools. I think that's a cycle of conversation we need to have. And I think community needs to have it, because you don't. There I said we have it, we have it. Yes, all right, and then you have to make sure that an addiction community is available to take care of people when they're ready for help. It has to be a network. It's the only way it's gonna get solved. But putting our heads in the sand and going as somebody else's issue, as somebody else's kid, it's not gonna impact me or my family. We are setting this community up for failure. Council member, I don't wanna be dark about it, but I think it's a legitimate conversation that you bring up, sir. And I think it's time you have a serious conversation about it here. Man, can we get back on that? Can we get back on that? So I've been dealing with, to say, a Texas CID for over 12 months. We have at the corner of North Carolina and Park Vista, we have a vape shop that sells marijuana and vapes to children of 15 years old. I've gone there and videoed them and they start to call the police because I don't know how we as a city can put up with that. Like if the state's not gonna help us, my son is a 17 year old at Central High School who does not have a one yard to school because he calls me to pull him out of school to the bathroom because of all the drugs on campus. He said I can't go in there, I can't go in there. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Like I'm calling your client work to pull you out to go to the bathroom? It's 17 years old? Yeah. And I think as a city we have got to stop these businesses. If Texas is not gonna help us, then Fort Worth has to help it. Okay, why don't you get back on that? I'm a trustee on the Keller Board and one of our biggest problems right now and all the way down into like fifth grade are the kids vaping. They are taking over the bathrooms. They are, you know, not only are they destroying the bathrooms because they're throwing their bait into the bullet before they get caught, but we have kids that are using THC. I know one of the events that we had at Fossil, just last week, was definitely led from THC and the vaping. We have an epidemic right now and we have got to get the help from the police and the community to get these vape shops under control to where they are not providing it to our children because it is just, it is the biggest problem that we have on every one of our kids. I'll take that one real quick and then we'll have time for one more question and Beverly, I'll get you because I know you're probably the one who got most of the people here. So on that, honestly reporting those vape shops, the city, whenever I was talking about the nuisance abatement policies that we have and if they are and then there's special details and then there's investigations and it's like, hey, this is happening, that's where the city can come in and actually take legal action against them and get them shut down. So let us know about where those are, which ones they are. And I will do everything. The 7-Eleven, I had added to this list and so they could start talking to them. Once you start threatening a business with whenever you actually have the city attorney threatening to shut that business down, has a lot more weight, right? So 100%, let our, I guess you can email us, let us know, I will go to that legal department and say, hey, can we add this business to this list, here's what's going on and they'll do what they can. So with that, we only have time for one more because we do have a hard stop at eight because that's whenever we have to give the building back. But Beverly? Some of our drug problems up here are emanating from 820 and North Beach. I go down there every day. I know who the drug dealers are. I've reported the drug dealers. I am seeing those same drug dealers, same cars. I know their license plate. They're out at Western Center and North Beach. They're in our commute. They don't stay down there. They're coming up here. So that's one thing with the fentanyl and everything that you're talking about. Those drug dealers, when you have a homeless population and it's huge down there, that brings the drug dealers to your community because they have the majority of the homeless have drug addiction problems. So that is bringing a lot of the drugs. I have a question about 820 and North Beach with the signs now that say no panhandling, no watering and no trespassing. Well, we were really excited to get those and it doesn't mean anything because the police officers are coming and they're clearing them out. The police officer leaves and they go, people go right back in. And I was hoping that when those signs went up, there would be some enforcement with it and maybe some people would get arrested and it would send a message, we're really not going to have this here. So, and I haven't seen that. So what does the, do the signs do if there's no enforcement with it? So Kermana Kajura actually went down there, texted him saying, what can we do about this? He went out there and gosh, it was within 24 hours. I don't think that one was cleaned out. But like you said, they will come back and they will continue to come back. Having those signs will at least give our police some sort of leverage that they need because it's just like the camping. If someone's camping, they got to go through the process of finding out of the property underneath permission. And we've talked about this before, it's a very long process. So at least then they have the ability. But we all know what will happen. They go down there and your trespassing next time, they get arrested. You take that officer off the street for three hours so they can take care of all the booking and the report writing and everything else. They go down to the courthouse, they're indigent, they have no money, they go right out the back door and they come right back. And so what you end up with is this visual cycle of taking our police officers out of the streets where we need them, putting them in this report writing. So you're right, we need to find a better solution and we were working to try to figure out what that solution is and how we can actually, my goal is to try to make it less desirable for them to be there, right? And two, those that are there that are, I mean, they're out there panhandling, they're setting up a camp. Stopping them from the offer, those that want the services services and those who don't, we have to figure out what we can do because again, at the end of the day, they have rights to, they have, I mean, panhandling, somebody can be in Albertsons and it's a protected First Amendment right, they can do that. I think what we should be focusing on is those who are aggressive and those who are really that the nuisance take care of them and then figure out the long-term solution for Fort Worth and fastest growing. It's, the problem's not going to go away anytime soon. Thankfully, we're not like a city like Seattle where they're providing tents on the street and saying, hey, you can come live here. So I want to make sure we don't get to that point. I think with our city leadership, we will never get to that point. Will we see an increase? Yes. So, can George, would you like to say something? So I can tell you, when I came up here, I promised that we would get after that and we would work on it. So today at 12.30, when I went through there, there were seven people sleeping. They had one that looked like a palin on wheels with building supplies to rebuild their camp. We cleaned up in the last week. We went through there three times. We're not going to quit doing that. So my credit is 12. We're not going to quit doing it. But what you haven't seen is, like EK has met with corporate from 7-Eleven. So now they already have their outside outlets covered. We're working with them to clean up their landscaping. We're hoping they'll start playing some of the offer music, some of the things that will distract them. We've all seen that video. It works, it works. It works. So while we know there are the problem areas, and believe me, I'm with you, I would like to do special details on that hotel complex that I've been busting people in for the last 15 years every day, which you can't. But what we can do is keep working on the problems. Up here going that way, and down there coming this way. And I think I have enough innovative people that we will come up with a long-term solution. But until then, we're not going to stop with the short-term stuff. We're still going to arrest people. As soon as the leaves fall off the trees, I'm hoping to map every possible homeless campsite. So we can do checks and follow up with it because everybody in the public can track the homeless rights. And I want y'all to know, I love Meesa Beverly. Because what they were saying earlier is about rewarding these crimes. Well, when your call load is low, you don't get the same recognition. So please call. Call as much as you want. Hopefully that affects the people I get. But we're still not going to stop. We still consider those problems the huge problems of the division. Now, we do have a Kia. If you got a Kia, sell it. Get it out of North Kiesel. Y'all want to see a Kia. We got the Kia still selling it. It's still in the Kiesel and the Hyundai's. We've had a lot of the midnight walking about pulling door handles. That takes all of us. But the two things that I think Houston, their outgoing mayor, is super vocal to their community about, please do not give money to panhandlers. You're making it difficult for our city services to do their job. They went pretty full steam with that and had a great measure of success. So I'm hoping that all of us will start spreading the message. You are a victim of a kindness crime. You know, I want to feel good. I mean, roll down the window. My kid's in the back saying, hey, look, girl, there's price of a dollar. You know, that makes you feel good. It gives you that instant gratification. But it really doesn't. It really, really doesn't. That intersection traffic, all those people, like you said, finding places to go to the restroom on the side of people's house, all that, we know. We don't want that for our neighborhood because North Fort Worth is our neighborhood. Even if you don't live here, you do 40 hours a week. It's our neighborhood and we take pride in it. So I'm going to quit talking, but please keep reporting. So we do, it really is our hard time. I know there's more questions. The co-ins can tell you, Rusty can tell you, the Greeks can tell you, Beverly can tell you, email me, call me, text me. I will respond if we can talk. So let's get the other staff and I'm going to show it up one more time.