 as a timer located to the speaker's right, which will indicate how much time is remaining. The bell will sound when you have 30 seconds left. When your time has ended, the bell will sound again and you should complete your comments. Before beginning your comments, please state your name. Good evening and welcome to your Forest City Council meeting. This is September 20th, 2022. I'll call us to order and turn it back over to our city secretary. Tonight's invocation will be by Pastor Cody Bailey from the Alliance Community Fellowship. Please stand for the invocation or remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiances. Thank you all for having me here today. It's a great honor to do this for you. Please join me in a moment of prayer. And dear Heavenly Father, through your word, you encourage us to enter into your throne and to approach it with confidence. That way we have grace and we find mercy and that help that is needed in our time of need. So Lord, as we approach your throne this hour, we ask for wisdom and discernment, acknowledging that both begin and end with you. Tonight, Lord, I ask that you gift our city leaders with that wisdom and discernment to solve problems, to distinguish between right and wrong and to give us order, stability and prosperity to this community. Lord, I pray for the citizens of this great city that you would just give them a spirit of peace and of unity, to give them a posture of humility, a clear understanding and a desire for harmony tonight. Lastly, Lord, I just ask that you continue to give your benevolent hand to the city, to this county, to the state and to this nation. And we pray this in your holy and precious name, amen. Here are the first item of business is the approval of the minutes from September 6th and 9th. Any other discussion council, please vote. Motion carries. The next item, Mayor, is public comments. Our first speaker is Bob Willoughby. Is Bob here? He's in the hall. Can you get Bob for me if he's out there? Bob Willoughby will be followed by George Chiles. I'll wean this here and let's start off with first. Chris, can you do me a favor? What you said last time, can you get that in print for me? I'm gonna hang it on the wall. I really appreciate it. I've gotten so many calls and response. Some said it couldn't quiet cause the sound went up and down but I got a lot of way to go, Chris. I've been coming to council meetings for over 10 years, over 100 meetings and not once. And this is something that should have happened years ago but not one of you people would take a break from the others. You stand together as a block and you work together only as a block, not as individuals and Chris finally broke it. I was just glad y'all didn't take him out back and beat him up or something. Okay, so anyway, Chris, I hope this is not just a fly by. I hope you got your armor on. I hope you woke up and I hope you stay with us on this side of the fence because now I might be able to film your good side, okay? Now, Maddie, we're gonna do a full page ad on you next. Okay, you're the poster child. I cannot have a decent neighborhood association until we get this one off the bank and you recognize one. I had a meeting with Mr. Cook for an hour. What a waste of taxpayer money. No response, it's nothing from that meeting. I gave him all the evidence and I got him cornered at a budget meeting. He couldn't run and he turns this back to me. So that's wrong, okay? But you're number one. You're the one we vote on. You're the one we put there and you're the one we can take out. And it's your job too. Now we got a crooked neighborhood association on the city data bank. Our data bank should have only organizations that are above and right, okay? They have secret elections. They ban people. All we simply ask for is to recognize a legitimate neighborhood association. Now I sent a list of Mr. Cook with names on there from my neighbors and we all want this. Not waiting any longer. Three years, I've had enough of this crap. It's unbelievably bad. And you're the first person to go after you and you alone. And you can do it. All you gotta do, tell him or Michelle Duke, get the neighborhood, the crooked neighborhood association off the agenda. We'll have an open election. They're even welcome to run, okay? Let's have an open one. And let's get a real neighborhood. Because when you bring that poison in my backyard like you have, it's not gonna stand. We're gonna do something. If I had to find your address, come into your house and drop down the street with your sign on there. We're gonna do something about this. You're number one. I mean it. We're not gonna stop. This is not right, Maddie. That's wrong. It's real simple. Take care of it. Nothing is, I hate hearing the attorney when y'all judge things and sit there and say, well, San Antonio and Austin, all of them do it. We don't live in those cities. It's okay to look at comparison, but you're making us live by those cities. Ask us. You can tell us what they're doing, but ask us. I hate hearing that. And they separate say that, you know? And Mr. Cook, you were wrong at the last budget meeting. There was $186,000 did go to the women's minority. I got the paperwork and sent my car. My car's broken down, but I'll bring it. You were wrong about that when you said it wasn't one. Thank you. Our next speaker is George Charles, followed by Dave Fulson. Vernon Charles, my residence address is in Fort Worth. You can blow out a candle, but you can't blow out a fire. Once the flames begin to catch, the wind will blow it higher. Our next speaker is Dave Fulson, followed by Calvin Scott. Ready? Good evening, Mayor Parker, city manager Cook and members of the Fort Worth City Council. I'm Dave Fulson and I proudly reside in District Five. I'd like to share my thoughts on the proposed new rules for public comments on consent agenda items at council meetings. First and importantly, I believe our council meetings provide meaningful opportunities for citizens to make their feelings and or concerns known to city leadership on a wide variety of issues. I fully support citizens right to do so and I deeply appreciate the fact that this council supports and encourages citizen participation via these opportunities. City leadership has a responsibility to listen to and weigh citizen input, but citizens also have a responsibility to present relative, cohesive and factual input during their allotted time at this speaker's podium. Yet this critical two-way partnership is often too often hijacked by individuals who use their allotted podium time to grandstand on seemingly every consent agenda item or worse, verbally bludgeon this council and actually everyone attending this council session with the same grievances, repetitive claims and often baseless allegations week after week after week. Fort Worth has clearly researched citizen input from similar sized cities and that research has shown that Fort Worth is actually quite generous as it relates to opportunities for meaningful citizen engagement when compared to other cities of similar size. Despite this finding, we continue to hear weekly the ridiculous accusation that Fort Worth and this council have taken away our first amendment right to speak and of course this person is speaking to the council as he's actually chastising the mayor and this council for stealing his right to speak. It would be laughable if it was not such a waste of everyone's valuable time. The newly proposed rules allow the public to be heard at the beginning of the meetings and provide a more timely flow of the council meeting. I commend our council members, especially Councilman Nettles, for his remarks last week, for they show an obvious and deserve concern for your constituents views. But I believe that this streamlined process in no way hinders citizens' ability to make their points if they can prepare to actually address issues in front of this council in place of belligerent grandstanding, claiming first amendment violations and eating the night away three minutes at a time on multiple topics. People attending this council deserve to hear about and have the opportunity to speak about real issues affecting themselves and the city we call home and the proposed changes for this public comment considered gender items will be a welcome change for those residents who want an efficient and timely flow to future council sessions. Therefore, I'm asking the council to adopt this new streamlined process as we move into the future. And on another deal, Mr. Willoughby, this is speaking directly to you and I can face you if you can hear me, but we'll be back in October and we will present a program I hope none of you miss, especially Mr. Willoughby back there. And when it's over, Bob, and the truth takes its fashion, he's not here at Figures, well, I will hope he goes to the men room and will treat my boot out of his backside. Thank you, Dave. We're gonna give it to him. Our next speaker is Calvin Scott, followed by Adrienne Smith. And thanks, David James, for your leadership with John T. White. My name is Calvin Scott. I'm here representing the International Kids Academy School in District Eight over off of Sheffield Drive in South Fort Worth. Currently, we're having some issues with our neighbors and currently the zoning and the permitting department seems to continually not recognize our childcare facility as educational facility. And so they've zoned a smoke shop directly next door to us as well as convenience store that has been permitted for five amusement machines that should be 1,000 feet away from us and they get smoke shops should be 300 feet away from us. But we seem to get no help and no response from anybody in the city department. So we need some help doing something. I mean, it's clearly stated. And even on one of the permits, it stated that the closest school is 1,600 feet away from the property when we're clearly next door. Coal compliance has been out there to site of businesses several times and they still continue to operate. They wait till officers and everybody in coal compliance go home after six, open up at night. Sometimes they have people sleeping in the parking lots. They have people land out, transient people just land out in front of our door doing normal business hour. We even have one guy that comes in and takes a shower in our garden hose in front of our door. So when we have people come in and we got homeless people walking around, we got people sleeping in their cars from the game room and it's disturbing our business. And we've been doing this for the past two and a half years and we've gotten no help. So. Thank you, Calvin. I'm gonna make sure obviously Sally's here from council member Nettles office to connect with you directly. And also our assistant city managers are stand ready to talk with you as well. We really appreciate you coming. They know who you are now. So they'll make sure and reach you before you leave the building. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Thank you. Our next speaker is Adrian Smith. Adrian Smith, district three. Okay. So their brief moment of silence that I just took upon myself was in remembrance of the late Thomas Torracasi, someone who stood at this podium week after week as much as his breath would allow him to address this council, to speak to the issues and concerns of the citizens of this city when it comes to Fort Worth to the gentleman that just spoke regarding our right to speak our first amendment right, this that or the other. I just wanted to remind him that asks itself the question of why the changes, why the rule changes all of a sudden because there's never been an issue up until this council has felt, I guess a sense of personal threat to their sense of power. So why not ask the council why the change all of a sudden to the rules that had been in place for years? But I digress from that. I just want to let people know that we are going to continue forward in doing what it is we know to do. Come down here week after week, as much as we're allowed to address this council. And I always say it's not personal, it's nothing personal, quit making things personal. We know you're sitting there seats, sitting those seats, it's going to be uncomfortable. But you all chose to sit in those seats. So with their choice comes a obligation and a responsibility. I think what I really want to say is not there, but I'm here and I needed to be here. Just wanted to let you all know that it's time is totally cost. We had a great celebration of life for him on his past week. A lot of people turned out it was acknowledged. Some said felt they should have been acknowledged in these chambers, but I do commend one council member for his acknowledgement during a Facebook post. And that is Mr. Nettles. So thank you for that. But we will continue coming down here. So just stay ready for us. And as far as Bob said, Bob said you all operate as a block, but let me remind you all, next year you all will be standing on your own when it comes to election time. So the voter wave is coming to 2023 voter wave is coming. Get ready. Thank you, Adrienne. Council, that's the last of our speakers meeting adjourned.