 Thank you everybody for joining us, both here in the council chamber and also people who are watching either on Facebook, YouTube, our website or the cable channel. During the meeting there will be a phone number that you can text questions to and also an email that you can email questions to and we will be answering those live during the meeting. We also had people who sent in questions ahead of time so we will be asking and answering those after the presentation. We are recording tonight's meeting so that when we get to the Q&A section we will have staff come over and hold a microphone for you to speak into so that we can be sure and get good sound to go with the recording. Visit the budget website. We have 16 budget meetings so we would love for you to come to another one if you want to get even more information and ask other questions. So we are going to go ahead and get started. City Manager David Cook will do the presentation and then we will have the Q&A. Thank you and good evening everybody. Tonight I will do a similar presentation that I did last week with the mayor and city council and again at the end of this we will have time for questions and answers and if I am not able to answer some of the questions I think we have some of the staff here that will be able to answer those questions so let's jump in. Also talk about the theme that we are using in the budget this year which is so safe, so clean and so green you might get tired of hearing that. By the end of the presentation last year we used safe and clean as the theme of the budget I thought that was received really well and so we are just building on the theme that we used for the last year's budget. Let's jump in. A lot of the budget work starts with the mayor and the council's retreat. They do a strategic planning retreat each year. It's in the month of February and this year the council came up with quality of life is the overall strategic vision and then in the three categories underneath that describe what quality of life is. It's economic development and community investment, community safety which means a lot of things in infrastructure, responsible growth and fiscal responsibility. When we talk about what does that mean from a goal setting standpoint it means to enhance public safety and again when we talk about public safety in the city of Fort Worth it's more than just police and fire. Public safety could be code, it could be pavement markings to make sure roads are safe, it could be street lights that's a function of safety. The second item up there is to support economic development and plan for responsible growth, invest in neighborhoods, maintain and manage infrastructure of a growing city, ensure exceptional service and at the same time reduce the tax rate when the growth and the assessed value is at some of the ranges that we've seen in recent times. And then the final one up there is an emphasis on preserving and enhancing green spaces or open spaces. We also get feedback throughout the year, the staff has heard me say that the budget is not just an annual event, it's a part of a process that's going on all the time. We have numerous commissions and authorities that give feedback. We do a buy any old community survey and we do a number of meetings out in the public whether it's related to bond programs or capital projects or the myriad of community meetings that city council members have. The budget for the recommended budget for the next fiscal year is $2.6 billion. Most of the conversation is around the general fund which is where the property tax money is spent, sales tax money and that's where we talk about police, fire, code, parks direct, libraries and so forth and the general fund is about $1 billion. So when you think about the total spend of the city we're going to talk about an operating budget which is $2.6 billion and as we get into it the general fund is approximately $1 billion. This shows in a table format the current year that we're in, that's the fiscal year 23 adopted budget. You see there the recommended budget, that's an increase again to $2.6 billion. It's about 11.5% increase when you take into account all the different funds. I will touch on many of the funds that the city is responsible for. I won't hit all of them but we have budgets both revenue and expenditures for all the funds in the city. Let's jump to the general fund. This is the revenue side of the general fund. The major revenue of course is the property tax revenue. Second largest revenue stream is the sales tax. We'll talk about, I think that makes up 82% of all the revenues. So property tax, sales tax makes up about 82% of all the revenues in the general fund. Just shown a different way. Now the property tax revenue is, I don't want to say complicated, I don't want to over complicate it, but that's a product of what values are doing in the city of Fort Worth. And so its values as one variable and the tax rate as another variable. So let's talk about what's going on with assessed values and the tax rate with the recommended budget. The current fiscal year, or fiscal year 23, the current values of all property in Fort Worth is $100 billion. So in this fiscal year, all properties that are taxable is about $100 billion. And Fort Worth is in five different counties, they get the right. Tarrant, Parker, Wise, Denton, and Johnson. And so we're taking values from five different appraisal districts. Because that's where Fort Worth currently exists. And so this is not just Tarrant County appraisal district, this would include Denton, Wise, Parker, and Johnson. For all the property that existed in the current budget, all those values are growing by a little bit over 12%. All right, so all the existing values on average are going up a little over 12%. That's the 12.4 you see on that slide. There's also new development, new construction that occurred in the last year that is captured, and we call that the new construction or new growth. That makes up about $3.2 billion, or 3.2% increase over the current year. So when you look at the combined increase of the taxable value in the city of Fort Worth, it's going up a little over 15%. So that total growth is a combination of two things. Growth in existing values and new construction. The combination of that healthy increase in values allows us to recommend a reduction in the property tax rate. And so the budget that has been presented includes a 4 cent reduction in the property tax rate as we shared with the city council last week. That's the largest property tax rate reduction in both real terms and percentages in at least the last 30 years or so. So the values go up, tax rate goes down, the amount of property tax revenue that the city will bring in will still increase a little over 10%. That $735 million that you see there goes to either the general fund, we'll talk about this in a minute, or the city's debt service fund, which pays for capital projects that have been approved by voters through prior bond referenda. This is how we describe the city's property tax rate. This is the current year's tax rate. Overall, it's 71 and a quarter cents. We allocate 56 and a half cents to operations and maintenance. And we allocate 14 and three quarter cents to the debt, what we call the debt service fund, which is where we pay for bonds for capital projects primarily. We further break down the property tax rate on the operations and maintenance side to pure operations. This is paying for police, fire, libraries, parks and recreation code and so forth. And then there's as you see the seven cents in capital, that's what we call pay-as-you-go or the cash portion of our capital program. So we dedicate part of the property tax rate to produce cash every year to maintain the infrastructure that we have and the infrastructure that we're building. So when you look at the changes that we're making in the recommended budget, we're leaving the tax rate dedicated to debt at the same level. And we're recommending that we keep the tax rate for the cash portion of the capital program at the same level. So the reduction in the property tax rate is coming entirely from the operations side of the tax rate. Now jumping over to the expenditure side. This shows the expenditures in the general fund, by department, showing the current year budget, that's the fiscal year 23 budget, what we're recommending for the fiscal year 24 budget and then the difference year over year. That increase in the general fund budget is a little over 10% and it's nearly $100 million increase in the general fund. And when you look at the general fund in a different way, I would tell you that police and fire make up over 50% of the general fund when you just look at those two departments, add in transportation, public works, parks and recreation, economic development. Those five departments make up more than 75% of all spending. And all the other departments combined make up the remaining 25%. Now what I'm gonna do is walk through a little bit of the highlights in the areas where we're increasing budgets and what we're increasing the budget to do and we'll start with safety. We're the so safe part of that theme. And in here we're just gonna talk about the police and we're gonna work through it. Police is also funded out of the crime control and prevention district, we're on that in a minute. But if you look at the combined general fund part for police and the crime control prevention district, police is being recommended for 106 new police positions that includes patrol. It includes crisis intervention. It includes investigators. It includes hope team, school resource officers, dispatchers in the communication center. We can go into this in more detail if you have any questions. But a safe community is a priority for the mayor and the city council. Police will see more resources from the general fund and more resources from the crime control and prevention district. On the fire side, there's 76 new positions. There's more resources for thermal imaging cameras. There was a council ad hoc committee for fire staffing. So a lot of review has gone into the fire staffing, which results in these 76 positions. Moving to parks and libraries. We call this the so clean, so green part. We are opening new facilities in the upcoming year. Some of these projects are part of prior bond programs. So we are opening the new Northwest Community Center, and the staffing that goes along with it. We'll be opening a new library on the, this is near Chapel Creek, I always get this from. What's the other street? Clifford. In the upcoming year. So the resources there to do those two things. We're emphasizing in the upcoming budget and there's more resources to spend on frequency of maintaining green spaces. Green spaces are parks, green spaces are medians, green spaces are the right-of-ways that the city maintains. There's an emphasis on improving both the cleanliness and the maintenance of those green spaces that the city is responsible for. There's also the city will go through a couple, I guess master plans, there's a gateway master plan going on, and aquatics master plan going on as well. On transportation and public works, there's more resources to do, generally more maintenance for the transportation infrastructure of the city, which includes another concrete crew for maintenance of roads. We are going to do our own commercial driver's license program. One of the biggest challenges for the city is to find people that have CDLs. That's in great demand and short supply. We're not the only organization adopting the strategy but a number are. We'll do our own CDL program where we train people and make sure they have their CDLs. What else I want to highlight? Using artificial intelligence to assess pavement conditions and other assets of the transportation system. Focusing on streetlights and striping, that's a safety issue, and there's money and transportation, public works for ADA and accessibility at the new city hall. Neighborhood services, several increases here. The Neighborhood Improvement Program has been very popular. We're increasing the funding so that we can do two neighborhoods each year. Right now, we've done one neighborhood a year and we've done it for the last, is it six, seven years? Seven years and so with the upcoming budget, we'll be able to do two neighborhoods a year. We also added money for the priority home repair. This is for homeowners to make improvements to their home so they can stay in their house. Then we've got additional funds to do programs to help people in homelessness. Economic development, there's additional funds for the Economic Development Incentive Fund. This actually is a product of, we call them tax increment financing districts, and when they go away, we reduce the tax rate as well as increase the Economic Development Incentive Fund. In the current year, we had the Southside Tax Increment Financing District. It didn't go away, but it was extended at a lower amount and that allows us to contribute funds for the Economic Development Incentive Fund. It also adds additional staff. The budget also goes up because this is where we show where our Economic Development Incentives are paid out of. Most of our Economic Development Incentive agreements are performance-based, which means people have to put a product on the ground and they have to hire people. Once they do those things, then we provided incentive from that additional property tax revenue or sales tax revenue. But this is where the expenditures are shown in the city's budget. Code has additional positions to do more homeless camp cleanups, enforce the boarding home ordinance that was put into place in the past fiscal year, and there's more restaurant inspectors. Again, just a growing demand in that area, and there's additional staff for animal shelters for the city. Again, just showing that most of these things that we talk about fit under this umbrella of the council priorities, and all built around improving the quality of life. We also announced with the recommended budget that we're going to create a new Environmental Services Department. So it's a restructuring of different parts of the organization that already exist. Part of that would be the Solid Waste Fund, part of that will be the Environmental Fund that currently exists and then looking at some of the positions that are in code compliance. The goal is to have the department up and operating by October 1. Now I'm going to jump to what we call our Enterprise Fund. So these are the other operations that the city is in, and generally these Enterprise stand on their own. They don't get property tax revenue, they don't get sales tax revenue, but we all pay for them in different ways. The largest is the water and sewer fund. That's paid out of fees that we all, if we're a customer of the water department, then they send us a bill and we do send us a bill. That if we're property owners, we're also paying a stormwater fee each month, so more on each of those. The water and sewer. So I always like to remind everybody that the water utility that the city is responsible for is more than the city of Fort Worth. I always get this wrong Chris, you're going to have to help me again. We have how many municipalities that are also part of the regional utility? 39, right? So we are providing water and wastewater services for much more than just city of Fort Worth residence and businesses. And so when we talk about Chris's customer base, it is larger than the city of Fort Worth. We have not had a water and sewer rate increase in a number of years. We are recommending an increase in water and sewer rates with the upcoming budget. For water, it's a 3.5% increase. And for the sewer side, it's 2.9, just under 3% increase. A lot of that has to do with the size of the capital program that a regional water utility is both maintaining and having to expand. It's also related to some of the increases of our partner agencies. We get our water from the Tarrant Water District. They are increasing their rates of what we pay for the water. So that's on one side. We also have a partnership with the Trinity River Authority which handles some of our wastewater. And they're expanding a wastewater plant in Denton County, right? And so we are their largest customer. So as their costs go up, those get passed on to us as well. On the solid waste side, there is no recommended increase in the residential rates for garbage collection. We are recommending an increase of what we charge at the landfill. So for trucks that come to the landfill to dispose of waste, we are increasing the rates at the landfill. Generally, our goal with the landfill is to make that last as long as we can. And so if part of raising the rates reduces the amount of tonnage, particularly from other jurisdictions that aren't for work, right? That's a good thing because it'll extend the life of the landfill that we're dependent on. The stormwater fund, we are recommending an increase in the stormwater fee of 15%. The last increase in the stormwater fund, I think was in 2019, is that right? The increase that we had back in 2019, that money went to capital projects. And so we wanted to increase the number of projects to, again, address flooding. This is a safety issue. And we have put a lot of those projects in place. This increase of 15%, half of that increase would go to more capital projects, again, to address flooding and safety. And half of that increase will go to maintaining that stormwater infrastructure that we're building and expanding. Now we're gonna jump to another set of funds. These are what we call special revenue funds. The largest is the Crime Control and Prevention District. The second largest is Culture and Tourism, which is essentially a convention center in the Wool Rogers complex. And the third largest is the Environmental Protection Fund. For the Crime Control and Prevention District, again, it goes for that purpose. Crime control, crime prevention. I've mentioned some of these areas already in the police area. CCPD is entirely, almost entirely, 99% sales tax revenue. The Environmental Protection Fund, if you remember the current year's budget or what we were talking about last summer, was increasing the environmental fee. And remember, we went from 50 cents to a buck 50. And I think we're asking people to have you ever seen a street sweeper, right? And so hopefully I can ask you that now and you have seen street sweepers in the city for work. And the idea was we were gonna do a better job cleaning up the city, addressing litter. And again, we think clean and safe go hand in hand and clean, safe and green go hand in hand as well. Getting back to the overall operating budget. Again, all funds, the operating funds of the city are going up to 2.6 billion from a little over 2.3. And now I'm just gonna touch briefly on the capital program. The capital program we look at over a five-year period. And when you think about the projects that the city has taken on in a number of different areas, we have the 2018 bond program that's still in the works. We have 2022 bond projects that are being implemented. And we're starting already to plan for the 2026 bond program. The way we look at it is we're growing at about 19 to 20,000 people a year. Every five years, that's 100,000 people. And we need to be building and maintaining the infrastructure for 100,000 people every five years. And so when you just think about that from an operational standpoint of stormwater and water and roads and parks and libraries, it's a continuation of what's already in motion, but planning for the next five, 10, 15, 20 years as well. This one slide, I'll just make a couple points. You have the water, which we talked about, regional water and sewer utility. Look at that top line, Chris Harder, Chris raise your hand right there. Responsible for that regional water and sewer utility. Think about what he's got to produce for the region every five years. And when you think about capital, that's $1.5 billion over that five-year period. He's got some large projects in there, including the Marys Creek Water Reclamation Facility, which will be a new facility being built in that period of time. Jumping to public events, if you look to fiscal year 2026, that's about the point in time when we'll be talking about financing the phase two of the convention center expansion. So when you think about all the different project that the city is implementing over that period of time, those are some big ones to point out. If you remember, I mentioned the seven cents of the property tax rate for capital, we call it pay as you go, and this is how we allocate that seven cents to maintain infrastructure. And the lion's share of that money goes to transportation and public works. Over 70% of that seven cents goes to maintaining road infrastructure, whether it's asphalt, concrete, just filling potholes, sidewalks, street lights, pavement markings, I'll forget some, but you get the idea. Again, just the budget's shown a different way. The wrap-up of more police officers, more fire, additional code, another neighborhood improvement, another neighborhood for the Neighborhood Improvement Program, Enhanced Park Maintenance, more for economic development, new library, new community center, and a focus on green spaces and open spaces. The process doesn't stop until the end of September. We are scheduled to have the budget hopefully adopted by the city council I think it's September 19th, and between now and then we'll be doing a number of meetings in the community. We have one or two meetings in each council district over the next four weeks or so. And then there's a formal process that we have to follow by state law where there are public hearings in this room with the city council. And again, it's all building toward the adoption on September 19th. We do have the meeting scheduled. So we'll be throughout the city over the next four weeks with some of the same people you'll see here joining me. With that, go with me. So safe. So green, so green. All right, one more time. So safe, so clean, so green. That was the crowd participation part. With that, questions. David, I'd like to do the questions that came in ahead of the meeting on our through email and texting. So we'll get to those and then we'll take questions from the audience. The first of these, the theme for the upcoming budget is so safe, so clean, so green. Does that mean that the city will be taking a more aggressive approach to combat littering? For example, providing more trash cans, putting up no littering signs as well as no illegal dumping. Providing the public with information on how many people have been prosecuted for illegal dumping. I'm curious on what actionable steps are being taken in the new physical year. The quick answer is yes. And suppose, hopefully that started and people have seen some of that this year. If you wanna jump in on this, please do. But we are putting an emphasis on the cleanliness of the city and particularly litter and litter abatement. And we're going to look at all the strategies we can to improve the condition of the city. Could you use the microphone? Yeah, here she's coming. There we go. She's bringing it to you, Brandon. Brandon Bennett, Code Compliance Director. So the answer is yes, as the city manager was just saying, we've added a number of street sweepers that are already cleaning up. We've gone from just a couple of litter crews to 10 crews. We also hire the homeless and at-risk folks, people that have maybe offended once and can't find a job. They're part of our litter crews. They do an awesome job, so we're not only cleaning up the city, but we're giving them a path forward to a better life. We do cameras, we do no dumping signs, we work on no litter signs, all of that. We encourage people to reach out to us if they have residential streets or dumping in their residential areas, commercial areas, and we'll work on getting cameras and signs and additional enforcement up. Do we write citations? Absolutely, and I'll tell you that we have a wonderful relationship with the city attorney's office and the district attorney's office that we file felony cases and at times people actually do time in Huntsville on felony convictions for dumping and Fort Worth. It is something we take serious. Next, I enjoy bicycling on the Trinity Trail, but it's a bit of a drive to get there. Are there any plans to extend the Trinity Trail to the West to or beyond Interstate 820? If not, would the city consider constructing another bicycle trail? Well, I'll do the quick answer again. The quick answer is yes, we are looking to expand the trail system. We are looking to fill in gaps on the trail system. And I know we've had some recent council actions or have a couple coming up that it is all about expanding the overall trail system. I can't answer that one directly on that particular one, but we're getting the answer right there. Thanks, David. Dana Bergdorf, I'm an assistant city manager. So our transportation and public works department and park and recreation department are moving forward on a number of trail initiatives. Most recently, I believe is the Bomber Spur Trail and the west side of Fort Worth. The other thing we did recently is we have an active transportation plan that lays out our future trail network. And we just added the Mary's Creek corridor, which would connect Fort Worth and Benbrook out west all the way through Walsh Ranch. And so that's on our plan. It's not yet funded, but something that we'll be working towards. Many of the homeless in Fort Worth who are living on the street have addiction or... Thank you. Tara Perez with Neighborhood Services. So one of our largest providers in the community of substance abuse services and mental health resources is MHMR, which now stands for My Health, My Resources of Tarrant County. Each year, they receive about 85 million in federal and state funds for both substance use and mental health issues. And last year, they served about 18,000 clients. Will cameras or other types of detection devices be placed in areas where street racing is taking place? Neil Oaks, Fourth Police Chief. Yes, they absolutely will. We have a lot of technology we use, including cameras that are placed strategically in areas where the need is the greatest. And oftentimes those are going to be in areas where we may see a rush of street racing or we also call street takeovers where groups come in and they're not racing, but they take over an entire intersection and do donuts cause a lot of dangerous situations for motors in the area. Many of those cameras are portable and some of those when we have intelligence that there is a street racing or takeover event coming, we can actually deploy the cameras prior to, so we have them there before the event always starts. Unfortunately, because of the stealthy way that they happen to communicate, it's not always possible. But whenever we can, we do place those cameras appropriately to try to battle any of the street racing or street takeovers that happen. Thank you. Will the city be adding money designated for freeway street lighting repairs and underpass repairs? Who's got the freeway street light answer? Thank you. Martin Phillips, Assistant Director of Transportation and Public Works. So we did have some funding in the 22 bond program for some freeway lighting improvements and those projects are starting already. So we have some at I-30 in coordination with text.287, all the way to the city limits from downtown Fort Worth is also underway. So we have a number of projects in freeway lighting and that's been a focus of ours for probably the last two years. And we have something that we call the burn rate, which is simply how much or how many of the lights are actually functioning. And so that burn rate has gone from approximately 63% to about 85% currently. And we're going through a process right now to reevaluate that. So that's definitely a focus for the city, Fort Worth going forward. Has the city, as part of the budget process has the city considered adding smaller vehicles like vans and SUVs to fire stations for non-fire calls and to buy more maneuverable shorter and more maneuverable trucks? Raymond Hill, Assistant Fire Chief. We currently have what we call attack vehicles. So we're already using that concept for assistance on structured fires and EMS calls. Thank you. What is the 2024 budget, proposed budget for the Fort Worth Public Library? Who's got that number on that slide back there? All done. Marilyn Marvin, Interim Library Director. Our budget for 24 requested budgets, 27.8 million. Thank you. What budget considerations are given to improving the Fort Worth animal shelters in regards to euthanization, community education and low cost or free vaccinations, spay and neutering services? Those are awesome questions. So nationally we are facing an adoption crisis at all animal shelters that during the pandemic people did a lot of adoptions. Everybody did very well. But when you adopt a dog, that's an investment you make for 10 to 15 years. And so right after the pandemic, we saw a decrease in the demand for adoptions. And then what we saw was inflation cut into people's discretionary spending that they were having to move to different apartment complexes because the rent went up and the new complexes don't take animals. So all of these things are driving the live release rate. It's very complicated. So one of the things that we are doing is we are promoting responsible pet ownership. And we're doing that in this year's budget by adding some media specialists that will be able to push out better and more timely information on social media, more public education, more working with the media and then more community level outreach to help people with vaccination, spay and neuter and all of those things that will not only approve a healthy outcome, but will also make us a better and more pet friendly city. So I think really in the budget, one of these we'll be able to capitalize on more than anything else is getting more animals out of the shelter alive. We're ahead of the curve right now. We're actually up ticking right now, increased our live release rate. We ran it, we were at 97%. We were the national high for almost two years. We're in the low 80s right now when we wanna get back up to the mid high 80s by the end of next fiscal year. And we think we'll be there. Will there be any budget for East Fort Worth development with I-30 Highway 820 and 121? I believe this area is worth investing without being ignored, while not being ignored like it has been for years. Oh, Robert wants that one. Robert Stern's economic development. Yeah, I fully understand the concerns around what's been going on in East Fort Worth and the lack of private investment that's occurred. And one thing that we're really excited about as part of this budget process, as David mentioned, this additional funding for this Economic Development Initiatives Fund. Really what that allows us to do is to look at some creative ways that we can spur some smaller infill development along areas like East Fort Worth and East Lancaster. And I think that will help us develop a nucleus of development activity within the area. But if you, I kind of was looking around and just kind of understanding what's going on in East Fort Worth, right? That's another $50 million of private investment. They're really excited about trying to attract some aerospace and aviation companies into that area. We've got our Trinity Lakes Development, just a little bit farther north, about $20 million that the city's invested there for infrastructure improvements. And then heading just a little bit south from Lancaster, you've got the entire Stop Six Choice neighborhood development, $100 million just in Hughes and Cow in place alone. So there's development happening in East Fort Worth. It's kind of spread out in a lot of different areas, but I think we're kind of getting to that tipping point where along with this multifamily development, residential development, that you'll start to see that additional commercial follow. And that will allow us to be able to maximize some of the things that we have with the Economic Development Fund. To further address the clean part of the city's FY24 budget, could you provide an update on the street sweeping trucks that were added to the fleet and will there be a regular schedule of sweeping? You're very popular branded. Yes, so right now there is a national supply chain issue, particularly with large vehicles. So we last year, when the budget was finalized, we ordered our street sweepers. We thought we would get them by Christmas. It looks like we'll get them around April, but we didn't wait on that. We actually signed a contract with an outfit that is doing street sweeping throughout the city. They're hitting the main arterials and area where there's high litter. Until we get our trucks on board, one of the things that we are asking people is if you are in need of a one-time or periodic residential street sweep, because you're in an area where there is a lot of buildup in the curb or a lot of litter, if you call the city call center or use the app, there's actually an icon for that, that we will schedule an ad hoc cleaning of your residential street. So it's growing and it's growing more. We get the drivers hired. As soon as the trucks come, you'll see a lot more of them out there. Are there any additional funds for Trinity Metro in the budget? They're pointing at each other over here. I'll give my steps in. Good evening, I'm Lauren Priyer, Transportation and Public Works Director. So part of what we have in the budget this year is roughly 800,000 to support Trinity Metro in their bus pad improvement program. So they're going citywide prioritizing bus pads to upgrade with either shelters or a concrete pad. We're also looking at the sidewalks adjacent to these for more mobility. And the last one of the questions that were submitted ahead of time. Some people did submit very specific questions about intersections or particular lights that need to be replaced. And so we've got all of those. Staff will be getting back to you. And we encourage the cost of vehicle maintenance of an aging fleet, heat stress of the fleet and increased fuel cost. Does the city have a pilot program to test electric light duty vehicles as part of this budget and to improve city operations? Thank you. So Dana Bergdorf against assistant city manager. So our property management department is going to be looking at ways to diversify our fleet with respect to alternative fuels, including electric vehicles. This would help support the city council's policy to have a clean fleet. And so we do not yet have a program to purchase electric vehicles in part because we've got so much of a backlog of other vehicles that we've put in purchase orders for the last couple of years that we need to work through that backlog first and then we'll be able to turn our attention to electric vehicles. That's all of the submitted questions ahead of tonight's meeting. So then we can take any questions from the audience. I've got some questions that depend on the answer to the first one. What is the actual definition of the purpose of green spaces? I'll take the first shot and I'm sure there's other people. So greens, I'm gonna do it a different way. And then you can follow up on that. The way we think about protecting green spaces and green spaces can be a park, it could be a creek bank, a river bank. It is a place that we haven't allowed to be developed yet, right? We are, the way we are developing, we are consuming 50 acres a week, a little less than 50. So we are converting land at about 50 acres a week, a little less from a natural environment to a built environment. So we have said, if we want to protect green space, it is easier to protect it before we allow it to be developed. So there is a focus on protecting green space. And if it's under the city's ownership, then we wanna do a better job of maintaining it than we currently are. I understand you to say that medians are green spaces. Yes. Okay, what I'd like to know is why alleys aren't considered green spaces, because I think that there are far more linear feet, which I believe is the term used for alley maintenance, than there are these, this measurement in medians. We are also responsible for alleyway maintenance in a number of areas. Okay, what department, in the time that I've been interested in this, the responsibility has changed three times. What city department is currently in charge of alley maintenance? Stand up if you're responsible for alleyway maintenance. There we go, parks and recreation. Just real quick, good question. We, in fiscal year 2023, took over the alleyway mowing program that's 1,234 separate alleyways, but we know there's probably double that that actually could be part of the program. So again, you can do on the My For Worth app if there are areas in need that you'd like to see added to the program. And those are things that are all under consideration. Well, why aren't alleys considered green spaces? Well, my personal opinion, I think you're splitting hairs here. It is, right, it's part of the infrastructure of a residential area or other areas. It is a city responsibility, and we're gonna do a better job of maintaining areas that the city is responsible for. So I'm not trying to make a distinction about alleyways versus medians. Well, I think there's a very definite distinction when, since medians are considered green spaces and alleys apparently aren't. You're making a distinction, I'm not. Okay, thank you. I was curious, how much of the budget is going to the arts and where specifically in the budget is that money coming from? Oh, I know we have the answer to this. I'm gonna call on our art expert, Richard Zavala. Richard Zavala, 4th Lab. There's $1.8 million budgeted for 4th Worth Public Art and that funds their management contract which they oversee our public art program. And we also fund the Marine Theater and the Gindi Street with some additional maintenance funding there. The biggest bulk of it, about a million dollars is dedicated towards grants for arts organizations which arts 4th Worth oversees that. Good news is the collections management funding of arts which is the existing inventory is going up by about 57% to $196 million. So making that insurance. $196 million, not million, $196,000. $196,000, what did I say? Million. No, it's not that good. That would be really good news. But we recognize that we need to make sure and take care of those investments so we're increasing that portion of the budget. I meant to say that was a parking lot. Hey, my name's Mike Wish. I have a comment and a question. First, I would like to thank you for preparing me and for the transition plan for phase one and hope to see the city continue putting money in the budget for the transition plan. My question is why isn't the money in the budget for siloed and co-wrapped art block cut there should be money in the budget each year like there is for new streets and street repairs? So I believe the question is about money for sidewalks. Why isn't the money in the budget for siloed and co-wrapped? Sure, so again, this is Lauren Priyer, Director of Public Works. Mike, thank you so much for your question and your engagement with ADA. So this year in our sidewalk budget, we fund sidewalks through many different programs. We have gap filling. We have ADA ramp upgrades through our paving management program. This year specifically in the budget is proposed for a 16% increase in that sidewalk line item. We should add two microphones. Right, yeah. This should be an ongoing, not, not, well, should be an ongoing, throughout the city, not just here and there because I travel a lot and there's a lot of suburbs, especially in my neighborhood, they would still step downtown. So it needs to be considered each year and not wherever y'all think about it. Hi, my name's Erby Foster. I do own a small business in the city of Fort Worth, however, that's not why I'm here. I'm actually a highway safety influencer in the greater Dallas, Fort Worth region. I wanted to speak about highway freeway lighting, particularly I thought I'd give a little background first and I'll get to my question, David and I think you and I and Lauren have all talked in the past. I think that there is a freeway lighting problem in the city of Fort Worth. So for a good example, I-30 from Gumry Street going west almost to Las Vegas trail has been out for probably five years. City of Fort Worth, as y'all know, is responsible to maintain freeway lighting within the city. I don't think we've had enough money in the budget to maintain freeway lighting. I think it's currently about $460,000 specifically for freeway lighting, but clearly that's not been enough. And so that's one of my background comments. I think we need to move to probably add a million dollars to that fund to really catch up because not only are we trying to catch up, they had a 10 year plan to relamp all the high mass towers in the city. They're moving along on that very well, but as we're doing this, other stuff is burning out as they were talking about the burn rate earlier. And another background thing, I think the city probably needs to do, and this may be a city manager or city council thing from a budget perspective. It will affect the budget because at the end of the day, if TechStot does install lighting for us, we still have to maintain it and pay the energy. I think the city needs to ask TechStot to add continuous street lighting to all of I-30. And then there's other freeways as well. 287 is gonna be rebuilt. I don't know if you all know today. TechStot commission approved the $100 billion UTP today, which is also gonna get some monies for some of that stuff. I think I-30 and Fort Worth got approved today as well. So don't shed any tears for them. They have plenty of money when you ask them for money. I'm gonna bring you as a witness. Yeah, it's not only 100 billion this year, folks, it's 100 billion next year too. So we need to be asking them to put in continuous street lighting on all of our freeways. And I think that may be a city manager's request or city council resolution. And then also looking at what's happened in the city historically, David, is maybe the type of lighting they've put in the past has been very difficult for the city to maintain. A car hits the pole. We don't have the staff and the resources to go out and fix the pole. Thieves come along to steal the wire. So one of the solutions has been putting in high mass towers, the big towers. All of those, we need to be asking TechStout to do that, change them to LED, and get rid of these single poles along the freeways. It's really one of the biggest drains, I think, on that freeway maintenance lighting budget. So go to LED. We also, finally, we also need to do the same thing with city underpass lighting. As I've said, there are probably 10,000 underpass lights out in the city of Fort Worth. As you mentioned earlier in several counties, many freeways, 820, I-30, I-20, I-35W, 287, 121, and maybe a better way to get to that problem quicker for you and Lauren is to ask TechStout for some of that $100 billion that they got approved today. We need your help. Because a lot of this is not just bulbs and ballast, it's conduit embedded in concrete pillars, it's bad. So, but my point, my question is, I think I would like to see the city add some more funds to the freeway maintenance budget, which at 460 is just not enough. I don't know if there is thoughts on that, but maybe another million. Thank you, moved over to make it easier on you. Martin Phillips, Assistant Director of Transportation, Paul Worst, Mr. Foster, nice to meet you in person. So in terms of our relationship with TechStout, we had a lot of points there, so I'm gonna try to, I'm not as smart as David, so I'm gonna try to try to catch them. A couple of things, one on the energy side, TechStout does pay the energy, those lights and fixtures and conduit are their assets, which we're responsible for maintaining through some longstanding agreements. And we're in the process, kind of reviewing those agreements right now, and wanna have some further discussion with TechStout related to the types of lighting that's out there, the types of issues we run into, you're exactly right when it comes to the conduit that's embedded in the concrete. And when that's damaged, it's not as easy as just going out and replacing the fixture, as you stated, that becomes a larger capital project. And so we recognize that we are partnering with TechStout a lot more probably than we have in the past. I know we're having monthly meetings, even at lower levels in our organization and TechStouts in terms of the maintenance teams. So we're trying to figure out ways that we can work and partner with them in their maintenance, which locally, their budget is very small when it comes to maintenance of lighting. But what you're talking about, I think is more along the lines of larger projects, larger capital type projects. They have a few of those projects, as you stated, that they have going. And so that it is an opportunity for us to visit with TechStout, to partner with them to make sure that we get lighting on the freeways across the whole city of Fort Worth. I think in terms of requests of TechStout for additional funding in the area, is something that I'll have to discuss with Lauren, with David, probably assistant city managers as well, to make that formal request of them and highlight specific areas that maybe aren't covered yet in terms of our agreements with TechStout and in terms of the coordination that we've done. Did I answer all your question? I think I might have missed something. I got, thank you. But you're on something. So let me follow up on that. People that drive around Fort Worth don't make a distinction of who's responsible. They think the city is responsible, right? And so we've either got to figure out a way that we're gonna get TechStout up the game, or we've gotta assume some responsibility of doing that. The same is true on the maintenance on the highways, right? So if we're gonna do, if we're doubling down in the city to cleaning up litter on all city streets, what does I-30 look like? What does I-35 look like? We could say that's not the city's responsibility, that's TechStout responsibility, but it's still a reflection on the city. And so we're gonna, we have to wrestle with that, both on the lighting and on the maintenance part. One other thing that would be really nice for Fort Worth to consider is the, and maybe it's a capital budget thing and that CIP fund, there's no signs on the interstates when you come into the city of Fort Worth. And the city of Fort Worth goes all over the place, as you all know, you see these signs, welcome to White Salamette, welcome to Duncanville, welcome to whatever, trees, water fountains and everything else. And we don't really have any in Fort Worth. And I would really like to see that done. That's probably a capital budget type thing, but maybe a couple of millions in the capital budget for stuff like that. Really welcoming people and starting that pride when they drive into our city limits, you know. Good idea. Anybody else? My name's Mike Howell. I like to address the bond rating for the city of Fort Worth. City of Louisville has a AAA rating. I think the tax dollars will go a lot further if we meet with the rating agencies to improve the bond rating. And all this money y'all are talking about can go further for the next 30, 40 years. In Europe, they build things to last over 100. In the United States, we've built them last for 15 years. So I think we need to rethink the quality of construction with a lower or a better bond rating. Louisville AAA, why not Fort Worth? I'd be glad to spend an afternoon with you on the bond rating. Correct, I would, because we go to the rating agencies. Where's Reggie? There he is. We go to the rating agencies every year, and we're AA plus. Of course, we think we should be AAA, but there are some very legitimate reasons while that is not gonna happen from the rating agencies. But I would be glad to walk through some of those things. But Reggie, our finance officer right there, and I would be glad to sit down and walk through some of those things. We would love a AAA rating. I don't see it in our near future. We do have a question. Why about funding for the Aquatics Master Plan? Why can't we just put the pools where they used to be? I believe was the way it was. I've got to introduce myself the first time. Dave Lewis, interim director of the Park and Recreation Department. It's a good question and give a little bit of background on where we are with the Aquatic Master Plans. There was one adopted by council in 2008. Then there's a citizen review committee that recommended updating that plan in 2012. So that plan was updated. It defined the types of pools, the number of pools, the locations of pools desired, and that was meant to be a 20-year plan. So about this time, we're ready to do about a 10-year refresh to just retest what the community needs when it comes to pools. And we decided that let's not do a refresh. Let's just go ahead and update the entire plan. So what we'll do is go back out and test what is the community need, what types of aquatic facilities, where do they need to be located, what's the cost of those, benchmark other cities of our size that have aquatic programs, and then also do a lot more robust outreach to understand community need. So the intention is to complete the master plan in 24. So in 25, we can start planning and prioritizing requests for the 26 bond program. We know we have a very passionate aquatic community. So we're looking forward to engaging anybody that has desires and giving input on what types of aquatic facilities the city needs. And the cost for master plan wouldn't go very far in building new pools. So strategically, we wanna make sure that we plan this for another 20 years out. Michelle, any more? I am checking my text and my email. I don't see any more questions coming in. So I think that's it, unless there's anybody in the audience who has a last question. Again, I thank everybody for coming. If you got the handout and you see the QR code, if you could go online and participate in our thought exchange to give us your input on the budget. And again, if you have any additional questions, there's the email on the agenda that you can send questions to and we'll get back to you. Thank you for your time. And you're welcome to attend any of those other public meetings. Thank you.