 Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody. The first order of business is to talk about next week's schedule. Monday is Labor Day, so Labor Day holiday. City offices will be closed, but business will go on as usual in the garbage area and in the public safety area. There is no council meeting on Tuesday, but there is a budget workshop on Thursday scheduled for 10 o'clock, that's September 7th to 10. And we also have one scheduled for Friday, September 8th, if needed. And Council, I think on that one, we'll do like we did this last week. We'll try to give you plenty of warning if we think we're going to need Friday. We'll try to get through it Thursday and allow you to have your Friday back to work on your other jobs. That's a good motivator, too, Mayor. All right, and next, I'm going to call on William Rumley to recognize the Goodwill Summer Earn and Learn program, William. Thank you, David. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council colleagues. As I have some folks come up here, we want to talk today just real quick recognition about the Summer Earn and Learn program. The Summer Earn and Learn program is a program funded by the State of Texas Workforce Commission and administered locally by Goodwill North Central Texas to create pathways to employment for students with disabilities. This year, we were able to place 23 SEAL interns this year. This is our fifth year to be a part of that program, and we've placed over 100 individuals throughout those five years. It's a 10-week program this last summer, June 5th, August 13th placements this year we're with, Parks and Recreation, Property Management, Transportation Public Works Department. As part of the program, Disability Awareness Training was offered city-wide to staff for Texas Workforce Solution. As part of this, learn how to work with individuals, have disabilities, the value of them, and just, you know, what we can do, those things to bring folks into the workforce and the considerations we need to make. So that training was provided just to my right by Deborah Jones, who's with the Texas Workforce Commission. I also have Daniel Clark, the Deputy Regional Director of Texas Workforce Commission. So they work to make sure this program's out throughout the area, and then we also work with Goodwill North Texas. So if y'all will raise your hand, Courtney Careways, Rehabilitation Program Manager, and Natalie Wynne was the work experience trainer. So they were sending out information. And there's staff here from other departments. So as I said, Parks and Rec, Property Management, Transportation Public Works Department. So the bulk of our students were at recreation centers and convention, other centers. So have Sherri Inslee here, District Superintendent Eric Lopez, Max Pierre, Victoria Leach, Brittany Sanders, Rosy Perez, two individuals not able to be here today, Francis E. Fong, Marcus Hatcher, and then Kelly Picard is also here. We also had, as I said, TPW, and specifically in the fleet area, I'm sorry, PMD, the fleet area, and then also TPW. So we've had them all throughout the city in different areas. And so we just wanna recognize today the great work that the team you see up here in working with these students. Unfortunately, because of school, they're not able to be here today. But in the future, we hope that there will be two individuals. We're looking for potential stories and we'll pass those on. Success stories that were one was Kevin Hudson at the James Avenue, and the other is Sydney Little at Thomas Place with Rebecca and Victoria. So we're looking for that. We will pass that on. But again, just wanna thank the city's support from the city manager's office. I know the mayor last year, I think we had pictures with you and some of the team as well as our council members. So it's a great program, great opportunity for individuals to get real world experience. And I was speaking with Victoria earlier today and we have somebody that we believe in the future could be one of our employees. Did an outstanding job, really came out of her shell. So we just wanna applaud the individuals, both the participants, as well as these team members helped make this happen. Yeah, thank you, William. Thank you. And to city staff for taking this on, thank you very much. I know that you all have very busy jobs and you didn't have to volunteer to make this work, but I hope that you got something out of it as well. I know I certainly can say the same when you got to interact with these awesome, hopefully future employees and to the workforce commission and goodwill. Thank you for the opportunity for the city of Fort Worth and we look forward to continued partnership. So thank you all. Thank you, William. Next, we'll turn to our informal reports. The first informal report is on the fiscal year 24, Fort Worth Dallas International Airport budget. And Chris points at FWDs, Chief Financial Officer is available, if there are any questions. Chris, if you don't mind just come up to the microphone. I don't have questions. I just wanna brag on Chris as a DFW board member. It's always a joy to get to interact with the amazing team that Sean Donahue has put together and Chris is a piece of that. If you have questions, council on our budget, please ask them now or Chris can provide that. And in addition, I'm gonna have Sean come back in the next few months to just give an overview of DFW airport. There's a lot of great successes right now for us to celebrate and I wanna ensure that this council understands those and can celebrate those in community as well. And Chris, you wanna have any overview? You wanna provide our council any questions? I have nothing in particular to say but happy to answer a question and thank you for the comments. Great, easiest meeting you've had, right Chris? I do enjoy it. Thank you so much. Thanks Chris. The next two informal reports are on recruitment processes, ones for the Chief Transformation Officer and ones for library director and Deanna Giordano is available if there are any questions. I have a question. This may be hard for you to answer Deanna, but I'm just curious in a CTO position, do you hope to have an interesting cross-section of applicants that may be private sector as well as public sector to make sure we have the role filled with the right person? Yes, their search is not gonna be limited to public sector. Certainly that does lend itself to some familiarity with the organization, but yeah, it will not be limited whatsoever. In fact, these positions you tend to see more in private sector so any candidate that has expertise in these areas would be a viable candidate for consideration. And I guess same would be true for the lab director as well. For the library? For the full lab director. Oh, yes. Okay, great. Well, we look forward to it. This is a big deal. I know David's worked really hard with Marcus here or not. We really thank him for getting the lab set up and getting us to this place. So we just wanna make sure that hard work continues. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. The next informal report is on the medical director reporting structure in EMS and FIRE and Valerie Washington is available. I'm anticipating you all have questions. So go ahead and have her come up. Yeah, okay. Michael, you can go ahead. Yeah, I don't have a question really. I just wanna say thanks for putting this together. I'd ask for it. Just in relation to, I know there are some issues happening. So I'm glad this is on paper and you see some numbers. So the people that are part of the ad hoc committee can take this information and it's already there. We don't have to wait for a study to show the information. So that was really the point of asking for this. Any other questions from council? No, I'll just go on the record is making sure this council knows we are lucky right now. We have an excellent medical director and Dr. Jarvis who serves with MedStar. And I know he and his entire team will be paying close attention to the ad hoc discussions. But if you wanna meet him or know him, I'll pass along contact information and make sure you have a chance to do that. But we're in good hands right now and we know you can add anything that you want to. But I just wanted to make sure that was clear. I know that was not your intention when we asked for this. It's just, it's really helpful actually to see it in this context of how the reporting structure looks in other cities. It's perfect timing of the sirens in the background. I would just say that he's the MedStar system medical director, which means he's the medical director if we have issues here in the city of Fort Worth and have specific items where we need medical direction. The prior MedStar medical director, Dr. Veer Bithialani gave us a lot of guidance in council during COVID. So there are opportunities for mayor and council to engage with the medical director as needed. And he works closely with the fire department and the fire chief. Thank you, Val. Jared. Hey, thanks, Val. I just wanna ask, this information is really helpful. Ken, you also provide this at our next committee meeting as well for the ad hoc committee. Yes. It's gonna be really helpful. And thanks, Council Member Crane for this. I think we're anticipating having even a session where we talk about medical direction and the role and how that impacts the MedStar member cities. At a prior MedStar board meeting, Jared, we also discussed this information and the requests made and Dr. Jarvis is where, and I think he's once made himself available if there are any questions. Thank you, Val. Thank you. The next informal report is on the nuisance abatement litigation process in Benjamin-Sanpreck with our attorney's office is available. If there are any questions. Of course, we need to hear a presentation. There he is. I called him the street fighter. I'm sorry, what was that Mayor Pro Tem? Oh, you know what I call you, street fighter. I was trying to act like I didn't hear it. No, I'm proud that the city has a street fighter in its legal department. Is that an official name change or position change? If the Mayor Pro Tem likes it, it's okay with me. So I wanna give you some accolades before you start. A lot of you may not know, but there have been years and years and years of problem properties that make life hell for people who are just trying to be at home in peace. And so we started taking a more aggressive look at what can we do? And I wanna commend Leanne and Benjamin for coming together with this idea that I'm fully supportive of. And I think if you just give us the high points, it would be helpful. Certainly. So first of all, Benjamin-Sanpreck with the city attorney's office. While I'm here, I should point out, I'm not the only person here. I've got Darina Pia, she's the code prosecutor. And then I've got the city's nuisance abatement officer from the police department, Gentry Cotton. So these are two very integral people in this whole nuisance abatement process. We have others that are part of the team as well, but these are two people that are quite critical. You all can go ahead and have a seat. In terms of the nuisance abatement litigation process, it is a very, very important and effective tool to combat the properties, just like Mayor Pro Tem just said. Think about apartment complexes, think about convenience stores, think about places, apartment complexes, convenience stores, hotels, but think about places where you know seedy activities taking place, drugs, prostitution, oh, it's quite seedy, but drugs, prostitution, you've got gun violence, you have people hanging outside of buildings, but they're doing a lot of illegal and bad stuff, right? So you've got citizens in the community who are troubled by it, who are affected by it, and they want something to be done. Well, under certain circumstances, the something that can be done is we can file lawsuits to try to get those properties closed down. Specifically, the statute says if it's a place, and I'll try to be very high level, but if it's a place where people habitually go to commit certain kinds of crimes, and these are the crimes that I mentioned, prostitution, drugs, murders, if they're committing those crimes at these places, we can file the suit, and if people are going there consistently, and you all know, you've got them in your districts, it's places that it's been a history of criminal activity. Well, we can file the suits and try to get them shut down. Thankfully for us, and I say thankfully in quotes, because we don't often have to use the actual lawsuit process, we can meet with property owners, and we often do, it's called in a court meeting, and most of the time, fingers crossed, most of the time, you know, the issues on the property is a bait without us having to pull the trigger of a lawsuit, but it's good to know we have it if we need it, and then one other thing I'll mention, in addition to chapter 125, which is a nuisance abatement tool, we have chapter 54 as well. So if you have folks who have, you know, code violations on their properties, accumulations of trash, substandard structures, those kinds of things that you all are very familiar with, but if you have those on properties, we do have a tool for that as well. We can file lawsuits to get injunctions in civil penalties. Every property is not made for this, but the properties that are the worst of those, that this is a process that we can use for those. Any particular questions or specific questions from you all? Charlie. So I'm super excited about this program. I mean, I've reached out before with a couple of locations that earned district four that we've had issues with, but is it true that if they make any level of change to bait the issue, but obviously not enough to actually make change, that it kind of puts you back at step one, or can you talk a little bit more about what meaningful change looks like and what you guys can do? Absolutely. So case law is clear when it comes to abating a property. Oftentimes people think, oh, you know, they haven't stopped every violation that's occurring on the property. And specifically I'm talking about chapter 125 here, but the case law tells us though, to a beta nuisance isn't to eliminate it in its entirety. To a beta nuisance is to lessen it. The case law has told us. And in abating a nuisance or lessening it, right, it's contemplated that everything that they could possibly do may not work. That's why the standard does not make it so that there's no crime, it's to lessen the crime. So if property owners are hiring security, if they're doing certain things, and I won't get into all of it here from a strategic standpoint, but if there are certain things that are happening on the property that shows that they're not reasonably tolerating it and they're taking reasonable steps, then that is something that the courts consider in terms of whether an injunction is gonna be issued and the property gets shut down. But in terms of starting from square one, we look at the case by case to make a determination, while sure they're doing some stuff, but maybe they're not doing things that they could do. We've got a property now that's very similar. I won't get into the details, but no, we don't have to start back from the square one. We don't have to, no. Benjamin, question for you, especially related to the second category addressed in the IR specific to chapter 54, which is really public health and safety. If a resident has a concern for a neighbor, say, and they know that maybe they can't keep up their property for whatever reason, how does a city typically respond to those? Because there are times when someone is not intending to not abide by city code, but we still have to take action, kind of walk us through what that process looks like. So that's a very good question because there are different factors that affect the decision whether or not we go for it with a suit. So I'll give you an example, and this may be something that you all might consider, but let's say you have a property where there are mass amounts of accumulations on the property. You've got trash and rubbish everywhere, but let's say the person who lives at the property is maybe an 85 or 90 year old person, right? So, and maybe someone else's putting the stuff on the property, right? That's something that we might look twice at before we just haul off and file a suit and try to go after civil penalties, right? Because of the specifics of that property in that case. So that's something we might look at, but generally speaking, if somebody is in violation and you're saying that they may not be trying to do that, they can work with code enforcement, and code enforcement is very helpful with working with people to try to resolve issues on the property. In fact, there is a Building Standards Commission process that properties go through where they have an administrative civil penalty process where code can get in order to go out there to clean the property. Municipal court has a process. So there are processes in place before it gets to a lawsuit where code can work with the property owner to try to abate it. Thank you. Any other questions? Council for Benjamin? Thank you very much. What'd you call him again? Street Fighter. Street Fighter. And the final and former report is on Water Utilities Shutoff Practices. And Chris Harder is available if there are any questions. Chris? Chris, I wanna hear from you from a utility standpoint when it comes to safety of people. With some utilities, you have to get to a certain temperature before you're cut off. That kind of standpoint, if you could include that in your remarks. Yeah, thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. This IR is to kind of describe our delinquency process, delinquency timeframe. It also provides information related to the different financial assistance available for our customers. But it also does talk a little bit about shutoffs when we don't do shutoffs and then the special provisions that we have for critical customers. So you may remember after the February 2021 storm, and I seem like I go back to that all the time, there was a, I think it was Senate Bill 3 that had some language related to resiliency and risk associated with utilities. And one of the provisions of that was a moratorium on shutoffs due to cold weather. And I put the conditions of that. It says for cold weather, the previous day's high temperature does not exceed 28 degrees and the temperature is predicted to remain at or below that level for the next 24 hours. So that's a public utility commission requirement. And so that's part of our practice now. We also, as a practice, this is not something that required by statute, we have not shut off water during excessive heat conditions. So really what you have is you have excessive cold or excessive heat. And what is the practical implication of that? Well, with this summer, we've had temperatures over 105 degrees almost every day, going back to June. So we've actually had a moratorium on shutoffs since June 20th. So this is obviously very highly unusual. This summer has been unusual. But that's, I guess, our moratoriums related to temperature. And then Mayor Pro Tem, you'd ask specifically about people that have health conditions. We do have an application that customers can send to us that would give their conditions, especially related to life support type issues, but it also needs to be signed by their doctor. And that would remain on file with our customer service agents. How did they get that file, Chris? That application. Is it on our website, Jerry? Yeah, it is on our website. Well, you know, I'm not real good at that website. Can you have somebody send it to me? Sure. Okay, thank you. And if I may, I'll just also take this opportunity to talk about the Low Income Household Water Assistance Program. This is a federal program that allows funds, customer assistance. If you're, if you have an income that's less than 150% of the poverty income, you qualify for potential customer assistance. That money is there until the end of the calendar year. We're hoping that this program gets extended to compare it with the electric program. The electric program has been in place since the 1980s. So the water program got stood up in 2022 as one of the federal aid packages that have came out. And we're hoping that it gets extended, but we want customers to know that it's there for a finite time unless it gets extended. So we're gonna be doing a lot of communication over the next couple of months. Talk to customers that are in any type of delinquency and trying to get them to take advantage of this program. Okay, Chris, I have a question. I was one individual who's asked for this IR in conjunction with I think Mayor Pro Tem. And one of my issue was, it was delinquent utilities of water, but it was also, there was an incident, I guess with a church in my district and they had shut off the water on a Friday and the church wasn't notified. So they was gonna have to cancel service for Sunday until they called my office and we was able to get the water back on. So I do appreciate your office helping us get it back on. But I'm looking on the first page and it says to shut off process. It says, this is for delinquent rent, I mean delinquent payment. 230 money through Friday and then on noon by Friday. And I had an issue with that only because most people work during the day. And so once they get off five or six and they come home and the water is off, it's too late to call to get it shut, turn back on by after you pay. And so I looked on the last page because I did read the IR prior to coming to the meeting. And I saw that you guys changed that. So I wanted to make sure that for now on we will not be shutting off water on Friday. Yeah, and you know, this is, there's been an evolution on this, right? I mean, so when you talk about the practice of suspending shutoffs till noon on Friday, that's something that we put in place in January that also involved extending the times that our customer service agents were in their office till beyond seven o'clock. Our meter services group is working late Fridays. And then we also set up a 24 seven contact with our dispatch that would then route calls to our meter services. So that was put in place because of this exact situation is that we didn't want people to get a notice late and then not have any recourse and be without water on the weekend. So this was put in place, I think you saw the statistics related to some of the, you know, to the good numbers that we saw in this, what our recommendation is and what we're planning on putting in practice is to go one step beyond that and suspend shutoffs on Friday. So we would be doing shutoffs on Monday through Thursday and that would allow a customer a full day to make payment provisions where they wouldn't necessarily have only like seven hours if we suspended it Friday at noon. So it gives the customer more time to make arrangements and it also gives our staff more time to actually receive payment and get the water turned back on without going into the weekend. So we're wanting to, you know, put this into practice. There is some work on our end that we have to do, but this is our intent. Okay, and that's starting next, starting October one or when? We're planning on starting it next week. Sounds good, thank you. Thank you, Chris. Mayor, that concludes my report. Okay, thank you, David, appreciate it, Chris. First up is any questions regarding membership and boards and commissions coming up for next council? I just have a comment. Okay. Mine are missing, but I'm sure city secretary staff will be flexible to include Charles Edmonds and I forget the other, but all is good on me except for two, but we'll have them turned in. Thank you, Gina. And any questions on significant zoning cases coming up on September 12th, MNC log. Okay, we'll move on to update on our CDFI friendly Fort Worth. I think Christina Brooks, the diversity inclusion director is gonna kick things off and I know that Glenn Forbes is also here. Good afternoon, mayor and council, Christina Brooks. Just wanna go on the record that Notre Dame is undefeated at this point in the football season. It is with great pleasure that I bring this report regarding CDFI friendly Fort Worth to you. The journey has been over two years now and the impetus was a combination of really hard work with our economic development department, Robert Stearns and Victor Turner from our neighborhood services department and our diversity and inclusion team that really wanted to use $3 million in ARPA funds to address a number of issues beginning with affordable housing, also small business and business equity firm development and another of other issues that the city was facing. And thus we brought in CDFI friendly America to help us solve that problem. At the time that we started, we had one physically located CDFI here in the Fort Worth area and we had about $10,000 of capital for almost a million residents annually to lend. And through some really hard work economic development, diversity inclusion, neighborhood services support and the man standing to my left, Glen Forbes were happy to announce a much larger number in capital circulating in the Fort Worth market. So without further ado, I'm gonna turn this over to Mr. Glen Forbes, the new executive director of CDFI friendly Fort Worth. Thanks Christina and to Mayor and Council. It's been a while since I've stood in this room. I think I had that much air in my head back then. Of course, that's all gone now. To say the least, bear with me on the slide show. I usually turn to my 15 year old when I gotta do this kind of stuff. He pushes me out the way and says, I'll fix it, just move, he delaying things. So as Christina mentioned, here and I won't try to be labor and go through each slide in depth but for those of the new members of council, CDFI friendly model, if you will, is one that I tell folks as we're growing out and presenting, we're kind of the cupid or date matcher for the rest of the CDFI ecosystem where there's about and anybody's guess is anywhere from 1500 to 2500 CDFIs across the country. The value for us here in Fort Worth is the model was built such that through collaboration and coalitions with that ecosystem, if CDFIs have an interest and knowledge of the great things that are going on in Fort Worth, they can now come in and do business here. So without the model being built in that capacity, we'd still be struggling to some degree on some of the issues that Christina just mentioned. I will comment that, as we mentioned, while one time only having one CDC, CDFI and the marketplace, which was William Ann CDC, they faced the challenges that consistently we're herring throughout the ecosystem. It's capitalization oftentimes, it's structure oftentimes, and then it's just an awareness and continued education. So moving forward, CDFI is one-on-one. I probably use this as much for myself as I do for others and kind of give you its private financial institutions, many of our constituents and clients out there when we're talking and realize, these CDFIs came to be as a result of redlining in the financial sector many years ago. Through the Treasury Department, they started organizing these institutions to try and tackle closing some of the gaps in financing and underserved communities and individuals. At the same time, many of the major financial institutions, even the regionals, are key investors in many of the CDFIs. So they do it for community reinvestment purposes, but to say that, even though I came out of 32 years with one of those organizations who was probably one of the top three investors nationally in CDFIs, I try to be careful not to beat them up too bad on the things that I know in which we could have done here in Fort Worth and didn't get done, but we know there's a passion somewhere in the traditional sector to help. You see the commitments to underserved communities, financing technologists, et cetera, et cetera, and we save 1,500 CDFIs throughout 50 states. So here's what we believe, and I think everyone in the room can attest to this, particularly in the council districts that you serve. We've had development that's extremely exciting and putting Fort Worth on the map. And then we have other sectors where we're not seeing the same riches and benefits that we should be seeing. Won't go into detail, you know what those are, you know where they are, but in addition, the model that we have here is primarily directed to serve and support communities of colors, ethnic minorities who are in business or personal consumers, but also we're serving in the city of Fort Worth and its entirety. However, we're very cognizant and we've had a number of situations where folks will call us and you know there's always a way that folks try to figure out how do you game the system? They believe CDFIs will always give you lower rates, more traditional financing, non-traditional financing, et cetera, et cetera. Rates are not always necessarily the case. CDFIs don't lead in rates. We try certainly to be street lending or hard money landing, pawn shops, et cetera, et cetera. If we're ever beyond that point, they might as well close the doors. But that said, we often find times where folks are calling us and saying, hey, can we get financing? We'd like to purchase some investment property in certain segments of the community whereas there's no development. We don't turn them away. We would forward them to a CDFI who may be in the business of financing entities in the real estate realm, but we're not aggressively trying to support those businesses. Because the one thing we don't wanna do is have someone come in, buy investment property in communities that are not being developed only to sit there and hold the properties for some longevity, some turnaround that doesn't benefit the constituency that we're trying to support. How CDFIs benefit communities, kind of the motto there, you have it in front of you. You see, it's a system. We call it an ecosystem, it's just moving money from entities to communities and individuals that are deserving where there hasn't been the success in the past. The goals, this has been and put in place since 22, or when it's first kicked off, you can see it's educate, organize, attract CDFIs, which we successfully done to some degree today, technical system providers, and to facilitate. That's an aggressive number there without question. Much of that was built off of some of the planning that's in documents here in the city of Fort Worth in the local area and the growth and development that's were seen to happen in the city of Fort Worth as we move forward. We know there's an opportunity there. That number though large is not unattainable but it's gonna take more than just CDFI friendly Fort Worth to make that happen but we believe it's real. We're funded as Christina mentioned through our funding. You can see the breakdown there and all this happened prior to April the 30th when there was a contract to CFA America. The goals again for locally engaged, attract and technical assistance. The technical assistance piece I wanna mention more specifically, we're finding as we're doing assessments with clients in the marketplace, one key we're seeing over and over again, it's not any different for the CDFI space. It's the same that I saw in the business world in the banking world, technical assistance for those who wanna be in business but don't have all the components and pieces to allow them to sustain their business is still highly necessary and critical in the space that we're trying to do business. So there are many entities out there. Tarran County has a small business development center. Many of the financial institutions are started to develop programs where they can provide certain financial and business assistance to those who are desirous and that has to continue for us to be successful moving forward. So what have we done today? Since 2022, pictures that's seen up here, these are all CDFIs who have at least expressed an interest in some way of doing business in the city of Fort Worth either through communication or direct funding. So at one time, as we mentioned, there were a few. There was William Ann locally and then there were most that were based either out of Dallas or possibly Austin that were doing business here but in a small scale. Today, we've been in contact at times with the organization that you see on the screen before you. So starting in May, so I kinda take it forward from CFA's handoff to Fort Worth. You know, we're building a business. We were given a model, we were given good components and critical components to moving forward, but we now have to take that and build it out to be able to continue to do the things that we know is desirous in the city of Fort Worth and what we are capable of doing. Texas A&M, their legal clinic was very supportive in helping with the 501C3 application which we finally get submitted on August 16th of this year. That will allow us a many respects to go after additional capital. As I've been meeting and talking with financial institutions who traditionally will help finance either on operational side or from an equity side, the one thing they wanna know is have you attained your 501C3 status as a vet. In the interim though, I'd like to commend Leah King and Tarrant County United Way. They provided their assistance of being a fiscal sponsor for us. So we're able to continue in new business as we're waiting for IRS designation and confirming that we are officially a 501C3. I was hired in May of 2023 and then over the course of a couple of months and trying to find the right persons to come in to fit the model. We initially said we'd have a staff of three. Pretty much that's where we're gonna be for at least the near term. And so I was fortunate to be able to identify a Fort Worth resident who's joined the team Stephanie Delgado who's got both business background, financing background and is a marketing guru. So it's she and I are the tandem and team for CDFI Friendly Fort Worth moving forward. Capitalization wise, it's the operational capital. There's 680,000 that came into us that was brought down from CFA through their contract with the city of Fort Worth. And then there's a million dollars that's been called in the original plan as an enhancement fund. We tend not to use that. It's kind of a quirky name, but truly in the truest sense, it will be the lending capital that we envision will be put in place beginning in 2024. That was by design. We figured by that point, we'd be up structured and have the coalitions and collaborations with other CDFI to be able to participate in funding in a way that we're capable of doing. When we utilize that million dollars of funding, we will only participate 50-50 on any particular deal. That's partially due to being able to utilize that million dollars in the best in efficient way that it's possible as well as to utilize the resources and strengths of other CDFIs who are financing in the community using their back office, using their resources, HR and otherwise to get things done. Financing, so to date, this is without any true structure. We've closed 193 loans with more than $23.2 million close. Now that's a, when we say that within the marketplace, even some of the small independent banks kind of give us a hand clap because that's not easy to achieve. The one thing in there as you see small business which we still need considerable work on. We know in the city of Fort Worth that there are many more small businesses that can utilize financing that they're not getting from traditional financial institutions. And that would allow us to be able to interject and inject CDFI capital as we're moving forward. Mortgages were extremely successful during the initial months, initial organization of the operation. That was part and parcel due to rates at that time. That slowed considerably as you might expect with the changes at the Fed level. But we're also having success on the consumer side. There are CDFIs that we do business with that do small business and consumer loans. And for those of you who may or may not know, they'll do everything from a personal loan. And I say this and folks look at me for real, they actually will finance tombstones. They'll do everything from tombstones to automobiles to personal consumer on admin, as well as the higher end of doing large scale development projects where they're participating on a real estate investment in financing side. So from soup to nuts, there's a CDFI somewhere that is supportive of the marketplace that we're trying to serve. The key is trying to get the marketplace to connect with us to be able to show them what all is available to them to take advantage of. Some of the CDFIs operate on a online basis. So you can go online on your computers and you get 24 to 48 hour response. Other ones are more like traditional financial institutions where you're providing documentation and there's the underwriting process that one must go through. But on average, it's about a 30 day period if you're going through a traditional financing deal with most CDFIs. In some respects, they are similar and dissimilar with financial institutions. The key for them is that we should be more patient, should be more flexible in terms of terms and should have more sensitivity and empathy for the types of businesses and individuals we're trying to serve. Again, we talked about technical assistance and the mortgage side as well. So what's next for us? The 501C3 application, getting that approved and finalized will allow us to go out and attract additional capital from financial institutions and foundations, et cetera. And then implementing a CRM, a Climb Relationship Management Tube. That we're working on, we're hopefully pretty close to closing that. That will allow us to take a two-person operation and make it look like we're a 10-person operation in connecting with the ecosystem. We're finding out and through our assessment, as I may have mentioned earlier, CDFIs have even said to us, I hope you all are gonna do things in a more automated and efficient fashion than many of the others who have started over in past years. The Climb Relationship Tool that we're talking about allows us to have a little more sophistication where we can bring the applicant together with ourselves and the CDFIs and we can track where they are on any given timeframe to know where the hurdles are or challenges and also where support is continually necessary for both the client and the CDFI space included. That is very key for the ongoing success for our operation. And then we're continuing ongoing operational lending investment capital, building a coalition. Again, while we're headed to Washington, D.C., there's a national organization that is all the CDFIs. If you're a CDFI anywhere and everywhere from one person to 25, they'll be at that conference. That's where we'll spend a significant amount of time trying to build networks and coalitions with CDFIs, telling them about the great things that are going on for work, the opportunities that are here and hoping that we can at least attract them to come in and desire to wanna do business moving forward. And then again, the technical assistance piece is key and must continue to happen as we go forward. That's all I've got for today. Questions and answers from anyone. I apologize if that was longer than you anticipated, but I'm more than happy to answer what I can if anyone has any questions. Great update, Glenn. Carlos, first. Thanks, Maddie. Glenn, mission, I'm looking at, I don't know what number slide it is, where you, how CDFIs benefit communities and people. Mission and impact motivated investors. Is that ESG type of investments? Is that what we're talking about? It can be equity, can for, so that's the advent where we're trying to attract investors from either the development space, from equity capital or wherever they may be that have a true sense of the same goal and mission that we're trying to serve and that's closing the gap on them to serve communities and individuals. Okay. And just generally, so I know how it works. When you look at you'll motivated investors, right? Obviously you want as much yield if you're an investor as possible. But within the context of CDFI, are you talking about generally lower yields or what? That's where we get into the, all the CDFIs, good question. All the CDFIs have their own underwriting criteria. So there's not one model that fits all. And the key goal for many of them is to try and keep rates for the client base within reasonable market for them to do business or to have day-to-day personal operations in a manner where they're not being gouged and being stretched beyond the limitation. Many of the investors are also investors in CDFIs. So it gets tricky there. Some CDFIs stay clear of the equity capital market or individual investors because as you've mentioned, they're looking for a specific return. And oftentimes they get that. It's gotta come from somewhere ultimately lands in the laps of the client. So for the most part, many of the CDFIs, there's a treasury fund that they tap into on a regular basis was often funded out of Washington. And then there's also where many of them collaborate together to try and figure out ways on how do we reduce the cost of capital to the client base, which is something we see ourselves doing here. So with the million dollar, for example, we won't have a true need for a certain return coming back to our entity. So we could play a role in helping with financing where we can bring rates down for the clients given whatever the market conditions may be. And then we can have more patient turnaround for ourselves or repayment for CDFI forward that we may get less over the longterm but we're helping clients get what they need on the front end. Got it, thank you. Gina. Good to see you, old friend. I emphasize old. We've been around together for a long time. I think your 30, 40 years of banking has made this more credible when they told me you had the job, I felt at ease. Can you talk about how will 76105, 76104, 119, how will those communities change if you have a CDFI that is making a positive impact? Good, good question. If the goal of, again, CDFIs were created to serve those communities that we know traditionally have been left out of the financing avenue that many others have had opportunities to take part in. Having the CDFI, not just ourselves but the ecosystem in those communities should enable not only for them to develop and grow in a manner that was long overdue but also to allow consumers and individuals that be it single family residential and maintaining their properties or buying properties, et cetera, et cetera. Anything that they need to do to change the look and feel of what those communities look like going forward is what CDFIs are designed to be able to do. If we're out doing lending and thriving and in the fluid areas of the city we're not doing our job. If you look at just Google across places like Detroit where I once lived and so I'd go from a very large scale city to now a third of its size but it's turned around in terms of development in terms of ethnic minority ownership of businesses, et cetera, et cetera, much to do with the support of the CDFI ecosystem. So we're hoping that over time we should be able to do the same thing here. We've got a good and bad story here in Fort Worth and I even heard it when I was with JP Morgan back in the day. The world sees the successes that are going on in Fort Worth and that's great internally but for the markets that are being left out of the mainstream of embracing and being a part of those successes, the rest of the marketplace doesn't understand that there's a problem here at any rate. They see Fort Worth as 13th largest city, it's blowing and going, everything's great so they don't step back to understand and look at but there's gotta be someone that needs assistance and help as well. And so the CDFI place in this community, hopefully over time we'll change the look and feel of what certain zip codes once look like and what they can be so that we can all kind of participate and allow the growth and success as we become the 12th and 11th and 10th largest. Taken on not necessarily all of just the successes but the challenges that come with that success as well. And I've got one more question for you and for folk who don't know you, he never gets emotional and so for him to be excited about this is good because he's usually a poker player. Absolutely, absolutely, you got me pegged real well and when I was asked if I would participate in this coming out of, he can only watch so much stuff on TV every day. I was semi-retired but I tell folks this is exciting from the standpoint of having seen deals that oftentimes many of us in the banking arena and there are good bankers out there that have a sensitivity to communities that often class with the organizational structure, it happens but this gives a chance to go out and look at those deals that we couldn't do for whatever reason and try to figure out a way through a channel like CDFIs to make those things happen. And that's the exciting part and yes, she's right. If you see me at a basketball game where my son's playing at somebody else, you see a different emotion out of me, otherwise you have a poker player because oftentimes it's trying to understand where we are and where we're going and figure out what's the role I can play in trying to make things happen. So it's not just me again, Stephanie is great. I think for those who have already met her out in the community, she's got a background that lends itself to being able to listen and navigate in circles that even I might not be able to be from my banking background but we've got to bridge gaps with the community within the CDFI industry and I certainly feel confident that if we do what we're capable of doing and build those coalitions, the story's about forward won't just be about north forward, it'll be about central city as well. So. Other questions for Glen, Jeanette? The loans close to date, what's that time frame of 190? Pretty much since, so it kicked off in 2022, so January, so that's without any particular structure. That was from the excitement of CDFIs saying, hey, let's take a look at Fort Worth and they just started doing business. So that's without, again, without any structure, without any strong prodding or hand holding, we're hoping that we're not only keep them at the table but we'll also begin to build out a broadened CDFI interest in the marketplace to grow that number as we're moving forward. And what's your outreach look like? That's, yeah, so outreach for us and this is where that relationship model will come into play. We try to, you know, we're a two-person entity that's trying to do financing. So unlike many other organizations where you probably can get to every workshop, every community event, so on and so forth, that would be extremely difficult for us to do and be successful in terms of building our infrastructure out in the manner that we need to. So what we've attempted, we've been invited to many events that are business-focused, either by traditional financial institutions or CDFIs. There's one national, one out of Boston that came in recently, did a workshop in conjunction with us here locally and then invited myself to come over to Dallas, you know, as much as I say, okay, I'll come to Dallas but that's not my preference for work purposes. But to say the least, there was some forward businesses in the room as well. And we brought together both traditional bankers and CDFI lenders and a platform to talk about what we can do to build out and help communities that we're trying to serve. So we're taking different angles at it. Council Member Martinez in trying to figure out how do we tap into the right markets using resources that are out there and being in the right place at the right time without stretching ourselves and becoming ineffective. But that model we're talking about building will allow us to automate and be in communities and offer educational tools, et cetera, et cetera on times and spaces where a business can be at a 12 o'clock to two o'clock forum. But if they get on in the evening and is a webinar that they can look at because they get a particular focus on financial statements, et cetera, et cetera, or how to build their business further, we can provide those rooms within the model that we're trying to build to allow them to do it on their own place and time. And that will be much in collaboration with the other organizations that are supporting these efforts. Jared. No question, just to comment. I just want to say thank you, Glenn, for the amazing work that you do. You're the right man for the job and CDFI friendly is so critical to the vibrant and growing city that we're all working to steward and develop over time. So thank you for what you're doing. I appreciate it. And again, I like to, I think after my youngest is 15, after a blended family of six, my ego gets stroked many times and beaten down often times. And I have to candidly say the success of what we do is truly going to be based upon the coalitions that we build with the other CDFIs who have much more capital than we have but also have proven results of doing things and more difficult economies and cities than what we have in forward. So without that partnership, it wouldn't be about Glenn Ford, but I don't mind standing up here smiling and telling the good stories and hopefully we can continue to do that. Any other questions for Glenn? Great update. Thank you, Glenn, for being here. Council, our next presentation is a briefing on our annual audit plan with David Medrano, our city auditor. Christina, thanks for putting that together, too. Appreciate it. Mayor Parker, members of council, David Medrano, city auditor. I'm here to provide a brief overview of the proposed annual audit plan. The Department of Internal Audit has put together for your consideration. By way of background, it is required per city ordinance 24.030. We all require to provide a annual audit plan to city council no more than 30 days prior to the beginning of the fiscal year. This is a working document and it may change during the year depending on the priorities and risks that the city is confronted with. The schedule of activities that we have in your booklet comprises 30 separate engagements resourced by an excess of 16,000 auditor hours and we've got a smattering of engagement types from performance, IT, compliance, financial and management action plan follow-ups. This is a high-level timeline of some of the activities leading up to this presentation. We, in June, in May and June, we provided a risk assessment questionnaire to executive management and their staff and asked a series of questions to formulate certain aspects that might, we wanna take a look at as far as the audit plan. We are here presenting what has come out of that process and on September 12th, provided you incur, we plan to submit the annual audit plan for approval as a consent agenda item. Input sources include suggestions from leadership and management, required engagements, internal audit staff suggestions and for engagements, any relevant topics as audit worthy. We looked at cities Austin, Dallas and San Antonio, see what some of the issues they were confronting to see whether they were equally applicable here and certain topics from media sources that make headline risk that we all need to be aware of. Risk factors that we looked at, budget impact, larger departments tend to have a little bit more of our interest, as you'll notice in the audit plan that we're proposing, potential for negative publicity, organization or operational and technical changes, relevant laws and regulations and the time since last audit or prior audit results. The objectives of this year's audit plan are to acknowledge effective performance in the administration of the city's system of internal control. We wanna acknowledge where people are doing good things on behalf of taxpayers and the citizens. We wanna identify opportunities for improvement in the design and operating effectiveness of the city's system of internal control and also recommend practical solutions to strengthen the city's system of internal control. And because we spent so much time on this concept of a system of internal control, we believed it was important to provide a working definition to provide context for what it is that we as auditors do. So we provided a working definition, and this is taken from the committee of sponsoring organizations of the Treadway Commission, which is a international consortium of organizations that try to provide thought leadership and governance and controls. The objectives of any organization's system of internal control should be the efficiency and the effectiveness of operations, the reliability of financial and operational reporting, compliance with laws and obligations and safe guarding of assets. So these are the things that we look at when we look at a lot of the activities to make sure that the activities are lining to some of the objectives of what a system of internal control should produce. And we've also for further context provided a framework of components and working principles that really drive a lot of what it is that we look at. In our work, what we find is that when we find observations and recommendations, it is usually because we're a little bit misaligned to the principles that a system of internal control should provide as evidence of the activities and the people that are working for the organization. Obviously there's things that support a system. It includes the elements, which are people, process and technology, and the attributes associated with each of those elements. Those are critical. So we look at a lot of those attributes and the elements associated with those in the scope of our audit or product. And here's how the mission and the objectives really are critically dependent on the system and the enablers in order to achieve successful outcomes. And then if you can refer to your package, what we have provided to you is just a little bit of background. Again, it is required by our professional auditing standards to provide a risk-based audit plan to the governing body. We also want to abide by the ordinance that requires that we deliver the audit plan. Our hope is that we can cover the enterprise across multiple departments. We've provided a standard engagement process from the risk assessment through the presentation to the city council and also the findings that come up from the engagements that are completed as part of the audit plan. On page 14, we begin with the schedule of engagements. It is everything from city hall, we're looking at city hall renovation or relocation to city-owned vehicles. We're looking at neighborhood services and affordable housing. We're looking at library programs and services, development services, IT, talent management. So we do cover many departments across the city and we have allocated what we believe are reasonable hours to complete those audit engagements. On page six and seven, we do have several engagements that are carryover. These are engagements that in name the city council's prior approval in another audit plan year but because we are using 2024 resources to complete a prior year's work product, we are formally requesting and seek approval for hours to complete those projects. And we've also provided appendix of how we got to the resource hours, the budget, some of the audit cycles that we've done, the five-year look back for departments that we've worked at, looked at and then what the calendar looks like for the audit plan by engagement. And then ultimately, some of the resource priorities that we're looking at as far as fiscal year 2024. And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may. Any questions? I do have. Thank you, mayor. I don't have a question. I just wanna state this is the best audit presentation I've seen in many years. We had a great auditor before, but this, I just salute the team. It's clear, transparent, and it's gonna help us maintain transparency. So hats off to your department. Thank you, Gina. Thank you very much. Charlie and then to Jared. So just one question on the page six of 14, the 2024-23, TAC 11, to determine whether assumptions in the revenue estimate for budgeted revenue are reasonable. We've done that one in the past. I don't know why that was carried over. Is there a recent one that we can review at all? So we have experienced an exceptional amount of vacancies. So this is a carryover from this current audit plan year, fiscal year 2023, that we are in the process of completing. We also have one that we are proposing for fiscal year 2024. We wanna make sure that the assumptions and the way that people are formulating revenue estimates that go into the budget are reasonable. So we tend to look at that every year in different departments, because it's again, it gets back to the objectives of what a system of internal control are really intended to achieve, which is the reliability of financial and operational reporting. And revenue is certainly one of those components. Thank you, sir. Thank you, mayor. Thank you so much, David, for all the work that you all have done. I know I said this in our one-on-one and I wanted to say it on public record that being a member of the audit committee and seeing the work that's been done, especially on the schedule activities, has been really a joy to see. It's very transparent and it helps us understand the level of activities that the department is doing as well as I also appreciate the special request because I know the audit committee sometimes, given circumstances, may need to add additional audit or your team may see an additional audit needed. And so I think this is an awesome path forward and just really excited about the plan for the year. So thank you for what you're doing. One last thing, thank you also for working with so many departments. I know there's a couple of items here that we haven't audited in some time. And so putting those things on regular schedules was definitely helpful. So thank you for that. I really appreciate it. Thank you for your feedback. You have questions, council. Thank you, David. Okay, thank you so much. Okay, next up is TJ Patterson, Governor Affairs and I think Matt Murray is also joining him to give a presentation on our legislative wrap up. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. TJ Patterson, Government Relations Division here. Come to give a brief presentation on where we are. We think we are probably three-fourths done. As September happens this Friday, we prepare for returning back to Austin for some finished business with the state. And we look forward to that opportunity to be able to serve. We share with the team and always share in Austin that we believe that if you're not at the table, then you're on the menu. And I always tell the state team that we always have to make sure that we're at the table to engage the process. So we thank the team for doing that. The firms of McGraw Woods and Greenberg-Trag are currently our firm, state firms, we actually utilize in the legislative process. This past session was found the highest number of bills filed in the history of Texas. Approximately 8,400 bills were filed and only about 1,259 were passed. That's about 15% actual passage rate. So we had the highest number of bills filed and then the lowest number of bills that actually passed in the history of Texas. 2021, they filed 6,900 and passed 1,000. And then in 2017, they filed 6,800 and then actually passed 1,200. So it was a busy session and we tried to make sure we were there at the table to engage. We intended to do a full presentation of this presentation before the legislative committee at the end of the month at the newest next meeting. There's a lot of information to particularly share. We always work in probably three to four different buckets. We work in appropriations, we work in seek legislation or then also support legislation. And then I guess the fourth bucket is probably defense. Most of the items I'll talk about here today are gonna be talking about the first three buckets. This talks about some of the state appropriations. These items are listed because these are mostly ones that affect us as a local government. When you look at local park grants that were passed by this legislature. So in 2022, they're only 29.3 million. This year, they passed 29.6, up of $10 million. UNT Health Science Center and City of Fort Worth. That particularly is a joint project with the City of Fort Worth and the UNT Health Science Center. It's with the actually the back assistance center and then also with the Health Science Center and the incubator system there at UNT. This particular funding that we comes directly to the City of Fort Worth has been coming since about 2006. And I think we're built into the budget and we'll continue to watch that as we move forward. The next one important item to the City of Fort Worth is moving image industry. In the past, it was 45 million. Again, this year, it was up about $200 million. And thanks to the help of Chairman Craig Goldman in his work on dealing with the moving industry issue. So it was up about 155 million. That is excellent. And that keeps a lot of the competition down. A lot of the film industry folks were going to Florida, going to Oklahoma, going to Arizona and Louisiana to shoot films about Texas. And so we were glad we were able to get that appropriation in and support that. School safety, the $1.1 billion. That money goes toward the issue. Remember the legislature passed law that every school has to have an armed guard or an armed marshal on their property. So this goes toward supplementing some of those individuals. Mixed beverage tax, why is that important? That's $635 million plus up of $151 million. That money comes directly to local government. That money is used for, and why it's important, the City of Fort Worth is used to enforce DWIs throughout the City of Fort Worth. Not only comes to the Fort Worth, but pro-rata share comes to the City of Fort Worth, which what makes that very important. DAG funding, and that basically stands for Defense Economic Adjustment Assistance Grant. In the past we've got 30 million, now we've got another 30 million. That grant is used to actually help us support the JRB, the joint-based JRB here in Fort Worth. It's given to a lot of the cities who have military bases through the Texas Military Preparedness Commission, through the Governor's Office. And typically those grants can run from anywhere from $50,000 to $5 million per request. And the last couple cycles Fort Worth has received an appropriation and award under that particular grant. Next item is broadband connectivity, $1.5 billion. That's important because that helps us with our broadband connectivity as we move forward through the BDO, through the Broadband Development Office, and working with the Comptroller's Office to make sure that we have connectivity in our communities. That's very important locally. Nextly is the National Juneteenth Museum. This is a project that was brought to us and we wanted to work with the National Juneteenth Museum Foundation, working with Mr. Jared Howard, and we were able to get an appropriation this time. We're hoping to go back and kind of be giving some signals that there may be a possibility going forward in the next session, Mayor, to even try to get additional funds. So we're working on that now with the Texas Historical Commission now to work on that. OPR settlement funds, $26 million never before ever been given, but yet this money is given for overdose and also for fentanyl issues in and around Texas. Next item I wanna share with you briefly is talk about seek legislation. Seek legislation or bills that we actually file or heavily support during the legislative process. This session we had two bills, we were actually supporting. One dealt with adding three events to the major events fund and that bill was carried by Chairman Garen during the legislative session. We worked with the Visit for Worth folks and were able to actually add these three items to the actual major events trust fund, which is a major win for us. The next legislation deals with the trying to request a two year extension for the project finance zone, the PFCs for Dickies Arena. It helps to fund the Dickies Arena issue. And we were also trying to change the bracket. Unfortunately, the bill passed out of the house but did not pass in the Senate. They want us to take a look and Chairman of the committee, Brian Bergwell wants us to take a look over the next two years to see how COVID affects us and then probably come back and visit it. However, the other issue dealing with the population bracket, we were able to get that amended in the emblemous bill of HB 4559 so that the, that does not affect us so we're able to function using this PFC zone. The next items deal with items we supported during the legislative process and Matt will talk about some of them in more depth here, actual bill numbers, but I wanted to highlight them because some of these are very important. This council has talked about these over the last couple of years. The issue of regulating temporary motor vehicle tax, we were able to get some regulations put in place and bills filed even by, again, Chairman Goldman had a great effort in moving forward and trying to help us in that effort was very successful. Catalytic converter thefts are big in our community so there was legislation filed to actually prosecute individuals who are actually caught with catalytic converters and even multiple catalytic converters so it allows us to be able to prevent that going forward. Street car racing and street takeovers. Major legislation was passed this past session and Matt will highlight those actual numbers but I wanted to make sure these are all items that were part of our legislative program that we supported and wanted to make sure to let you know that what we did where we were able to get accomplished by supporting with our other partners in the other big five cities. Drug overdose crisis. This issue of fentanyl and drug overdose issues, bills were passed and there was a bill passed by, again Chairman Greg Goldman, HB6 very important bill about trying to address enforcing folks who died accidentally from fentanyl poisoning. And actually the individuals who had done that even though it was accidentally, the bill states that person can actually be charged with murder for accidentally providing it in an individual actually passing away. So I think that's gonna go a long way. Legislation for state appropriations, for school safety issues, which are major topic this past session and we supported those bills as they moved forward. Economic development, again we talked about earlier about film incentives. These are the actual bills that were actually passed by Chairman Greg Goldman. Legislation creating media production zones in and around Texas and Fort Worth will benefit from that as well. And also then the grants that will be created based upon the legislation and appropriations that were submitted by Representative Coleman. Next, community health and wellness programs. One of the major issues I think Mayor was a big part of and a great push with Mayor. You remember HB12, which was by Tony Rose out of Dallas and you had asked us to engage that issue and basically dealt with postpartum Medicaid coverage from two months to 12 months for individuals in Texas. That was a major win and we were able to support that legislation and move forward. That major win for communities all throughout Texas because this is gonna mitigate the extreme maternal morbidity and mortality rate in Texas and in Fort Worth. Then legislation dealing with mental health and behavioral science, behavioral health issues was a major issue for us this past session. We were able to support to try to make sure that there was a considerable legislation and assistance and also financing done. There was a bill passed by Representative Klick that's called HB400. It actually puts in place grants for to allow for more psychiatric training and programs throughout the state of Texas and that's another Tarrant County state representative that had a major impact on legislation. Then also legislation dealing with mental health and early intervention grant programs throughout the state. Also legislation to increase the number of mental health behavioral professionals which is why I'm referring to earlier HB400 by Representative Klick and as we see our delegation we definitely wanna make sure we share our appreciation for them and their efforts because they had a major impact on moving forward this past session. Infrastructure needs in the state of Texas, broadband connectivity, whether it be the SJR that's gonna be on the agenda for the general election as a constitutional amendment. And then also the unmanned aircraft activity around military bases and public airfields. That was a bill filed by Senator Kelly Hancock and actually was able to get through the process. You remember, if you remember counsel, those who on counsel last session that the bill did pass last session but it was also ultimately overturned as being unconstitutional. Now this particular bill by Senator Hancock was a benefit what allows to protect our JRB which sometimes has issues with unmanned aircraft flying around them. Lastly, state parks is another big issue. This item will be as a constitutional amendment as well on the number seven general election and we wanna encourage to make sure that folks get out to vote for it. This JRR actually allows for legislation support investing $1 billion to create new state parks in Texas. So individuals and citizens can vote on this in November and we definitely wanna encourage our citizens to get out and support this particular item as it will be very important. And then finally the second special session, a call session had I guess two, three major wins and it was very beneficial. The first call session you remember that no legislation passed. Therefore the governor after the end of the 30 days called them back for a second special session and you will remember that in that particular session in the second call session, you remember that a bill passed basically allowing for reducing by using $12 billion of that surplus that we had to spend on reducing school property tax rate for homeowners and businesses from the state level. Now this is not on the local, this is actually from me from the state government. The state government will be using the $12 billion to buy down the cost that also will allow for homeowners who have homesteads which is approximately about 5.7 million people in Texas allows them to go that homestead to go from $40,000 up to $100,000 from the state that is not from locally but actually the state actually paying that cost. And then the other item that passed during that session was actually the non homestead properties valued at $5 million and under including residential commercial. They have this thing called a circuit breaker that triggers and gives them a break on their taxes by 20%. Now again, I will tell you this is only for a three year trial period. It does not go on after the three year period of time but nonetheless it is a big item. And then finally I wanna share within the special session, there was a bill passed that included a savings or franchise tax for small businesses and creates a newly elected positions on our local appraisal boards. So those are some of the items that are kind of key items I wanted to share with you briefly here on today and ask any questions you might have about it. I know there are many questions. There's many bills or about 8,000 bills filed. We were tracking about 2,000 but we are definitely wanna try to cover most of them when we do the full presentation before the committee. Be happy to ask any questions before I turn over to Matt for his presentation. Carlos. On DAG, TJ, do you, I know most of it, well maybe that is the question. About 30 million I think you said. Does all of it go to NASJRB? No, it doesn't all go to NASJRB, part of it. What you have to do is actually under the Texas Military Preparedness Commission we have to apply for the funding. It's about $15 million per biennium. So over the biennium there's $15 million for the first year and that we can apply for we compete again with Austin, with Houston, with San Antonio, the folks. And like I said, over the last couple of cycles we've received funding for what we'd asked for. The money is used for fixing infrastructure needs either entering onto the base or there may be certain projects on the base that we wanna partner with the JRB with. We can actually, and we've done it before and Ms. Dana Berkdorf has led that effort in the past and we submitted applications in and we granted the funding we asked for. There is a small match in some of the funding but it's benefited for the last two cycles and it's a great benefit for military communities because what the federal government looks at they look at local involvement. They want to know is the local community really supported? Otherwise that bad word that we always talk about which is called BRAC, they look at that and say well maybe that base doesn't need to be there. So we in Texas along with the Texas mayors of military communities in which the mayor is a portion of and I think Council Member Beck is your pointee. We try to make sure that we tell the story of how important the economic impact of bases in the state of Texas so that federal government, people in DC will stay away from that bad four letter word that we don't wanna talk about. Sure, no, and it is, no question about it. Yes, sir. In relation to Lockheed. Yes, sir. The other thing that you mentioned, I forget what slide that was, you called it media development areas. You said, I'm sorry. I think that's what you refer to it as movies, promotion of the film industry. Yes, sir, yes, sir. Was that what it was? Yeah. Movie incentives and film project. Yes, sir. Okay, those development zones, I don't know if this is a question for Robert or somebody, I'm curious to see where those development zones are in Fort Worth and in Texas too. I don't know where they are in Fort Worth. Robert is coming up to share with us. That could be future agenda item. I don't mean to slow you down. Yes, sir. If you don't know that's fine. I'll just ask it to Robert later. Here comes Robert. Yes, there's actually only one motion picture development zone in Fort Worth. So when we created the zone, it really is encompassing the entire boundaries of the near South Side District. So that's where the first zone was created. We do have the opportunity and the ability to do some additional zones, but that was created for a specific project that we were working on at the time. As far as the state, I believe Austin is the only other community that has utilized the motion picture media production development zone and they created the zone around the entire city if I'm not mistaken. So it's really just us and Austin at this point. Got it. Thanks, Robert. Robert, will you say more about the zone? I don't have any context of that. What project was it created for? So that was for Backlot Studios. Red Perfections. Red Perfections. Yes, yes. I think Charlie had a question. Just when I read, can we use those DAG funds to acquire land right outside the base as well? Is that correct too? I think we'll have to, I think we'll have to look at what we're actually talking about doing with it. I think it's infrastructure, as long as it's infrastructure, and I think it's gotta be in the data, maybe we'll speak to it more directly connected to the actual JRP or going into the property or immediately on the outside. I don't think that there can be a separation between the actual land and the actual base, but we can definitely look into that and as the idea and concept comes forward, because actually they're getting ready to release the next round. This $15 million is actually gonna be released this coming Friday, September 1st. The new applications were gonna be released for the new era of time period to mid-end for the $15 million. So if we wanna look at that, we probably wanna start looking now before the applications are released this Friday. Okay, gotcha, thanks. Yes, sir. Any other questions for TJ? No, thanks, TJ, appreciate you. Okay, thanks, TJ. Mayor and council, I'm Matt Murray, I said the attorney's office. I will not be going through a thousand bills today, but I do have a couple I'd like to highlight for you. And we'll begin with HB 1750. This is part of a broader effort that we've seen this session for right to farm. You could probably call this the right to farm in the city bill. This will restrict our ability to regulate agricultural activity. We will recommend an update to our high grass and weeds ordinance to ensure is continued enforceability against agricultural vegetation. I should also note that on the upcoming November 7th election, there will be a proposition to enshrine the right to farm and ranch in the Texas constitution. I expect that it will pass. And the next we have HB 3699. This regulates the city's subdivision plot application and approval process. It allows the delegation of authority to city staff or plot approval, but perhaps most importantly, it allows disapprovals to be appealed to city council. So development services is working to align their current procedures with the new law and to develop a process to receive those appeals to city council. Another development related bill is HB 14. This allows for third party review of a wide range of development submittals. If the city does not meet the deadline, disapprovals or conditional approvals can also be appealed to city council. Development services is working to ensure that they do not miss any deadlines. And again, aligning their procedures with the new law and developing a process to receive any appeals to council. Up next is SB 2038. This allows for the release of certain portions of the city's extraterritorial jurisdiction by petition or election. Currently, there is not a process and state law for the release of the city's ETJ. This would be similar to the procedures for annexation. And we are preparing to receive an interview petition seeking release or requests for an election. And then we have HB 1526. This is related to non-residential parkland dedications. This is not a seismic change, but park and recreation is revising the neighborhood and community park dedication policy to comply with the new law. And here we have HB 1819, which prohibits the city from adopting or enforcing a juvenile curfew. And then a couple of bills that TJ touched on earlier, SB 222 and HB 1442, which should help the police department with catalytic converter theft and street takeovers. On a similar note, HB 2195 increases penalties for attaching or displaying wrong fictitious altered or obscured license plates. And HB 914 creates a criminal offense for tampering with a temporary vehicle registration tag. SB 29 prohibits the city from imposing mandates requiring masks or vaccines or closing businesses or schools to prevent the spread of COVID. And HB 1893 requires the city to adopt a policy prohibiting the installation and use of TikTok on all city-owned devices. IT is updating their administrative regulation to prohibit TikTok on all city-owned devices, but I understand that it's already been blacklisted. And then last, but certainly not least, we have HB 2127, the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act, dubbed the Death Star Bill by its opponents. I know you've heard a lot about this bill, but in short, it restricts local ordinances from exceeding state law. The bill also provides that someone injured by a conflicting regulation can bring an action against the city. But fortunately, they have to provide notice of claim three months before filing the action. We expect minimal impact to our existing ordinances because virtually all of them are authorized by state law. But we are prepared to respond to any notices of claim. And we will, of course, evaluate all future ordinances in light of the new law. And we're going to closely monitor the city of Houston's lawsuit against the state, and which they argue that the statute is unconstitutional. And that's all I have. So with that, I'll turn it back over to TJ. Any further questions for TJ or Matt? Council, Carlos, and then down the line. And, oh, Jean, go ahead. I, you know, maybe I'm just kind of overreacting, but it looks like once again, we're having to deal with local control and folk in Austin just wanting us to look like eye candy. I'd like to have some more information on that first one in terms of ag agriculture, that first one. And for those of you who are new, we've been fighting Austin since I've been here and the war continues to escalate. So I just need to know who our friends are. And if you guys could talk, TJ, in terms of what's effective immediately, where do we have friends who feel as incensed as I do? I saw Allen's head turn red. So somebody around this table, but I mean, this is ridiculous. I don't know what we can do, but it just pisses me off every time I see them chipping away. So talk about agriculture. That's very important to us in Fort Worth. This bill does erode the city's ability to regulate agricultural operations. That is a defined term. Unfortunately, it's defined very broadly. We can regulate them, but it does require that certain findings and a resolution be made through council. Are there any other cities who don't like this? Yes, many. So what do we do? We'll continue to enforce what we can enforce and where we have issues we may bring forward those findings and resolutions for council to consider. Well, it's hypocrisy in my mind because we talk about Texas being a property rights state. Well, but it turns out we can have that oversight at the local level. And just for the record, I would ask you to please keep us up to date on any developments that would help erode. Yes, we will. Thanks, Mayor. About HB1750, that kind of hits close to home for me. Years back, I've dealt with this before, but not at the legislative level, but I'm curious. I mean, I see what the impact is for cities, right? You know, tall grass and weeds. But when you look at extraterritorial areas, ETJs, what happens there? Because many times, if you have an ag operation out there, you might decide you see the big, you know, municipality creeping up on you and you want to do something about it to preserve your use and you approach them and say, hey, I want a development agreement so that I can continue doing what I'm doing. So in ETJs, is there any impact there because of that bill? Yes, we're also losing the ability to regulate those areas as well. As far as agricultural operations are concerned, again, that's defined broadly. Okay, so then does that mean the city can no longer entertain or extend development agreements? No, we can. But if something is considered an agricultural operation, for example, having chickens, then we cannot regulate it unless we go through council and make these findings. And the findings are that there is a health or safety risk and that it cannot be addressed through a less restrictive means. Okay, I'll probably have more later for you offline, but yeah, that's it for now. Thank you. Jared. Thanks, Mayor. Same slide. Can you explain in layman terms what the impact this law has on the high grass ordinance? Sure, so under this law, someone could argue that their high grass is actually an agricultural operation. And if so, under our existing ordinance, we would be unable to regulate it. However, we can establish a maximum height for even agricultural operations, but we'll need to go back and amend our ordinance to do that. And does it property have to be zone agriculture or it can be in any zoning district? Any zoning. Okay. One more question. I don't like front yards anyway, so maybe you're gonna do it. This is exact, I had no influence on this, but this is all my dissertation. So it might be a good thing. We got prairie grasses all across the state now. One more question on SB 29 with masks, is it specific to COVID-19 or in the event that there's some future global pandemic again with that restrictor ability to make decisions based on emergencies? I think it would also restrict you with future pandemics. So in that, that would be left up to the governor or the state legislature if there was masks needed. They would have to change this law, yes. Got it. So thank you for the presentation. The, my questions were about 1750 as well. And you mentioned you brought up the word chickens, but we went through some significant exercise. I think it was a couple of years ago before I was on council anyway, to regulate that kind of thing within the city and also to extend the ability for HOAs to regulate it further. Does this impact an HOAs ability as well or just us? And you mentioned chickens, I think the even worse case is a rooster. And is that, where is that with this? So raising of chickens would be considered an agricultural operation that we would not be able to regulate under this new law, unless of course we come through council and make the findings through a resolution. I do believe that HOAs would continue to be able to enforce other restrictions through restrictive covenants, for example. Can you look back to the, about the ETJ and the election as part of the ETJ? Just wanna understand what that means. Is it an election of the property owners saying they wanna be pulled out of our ETJ? Yes, that's correct. They can request an election and if a certain percentage vote for it, then they're removed from the ETJ. But if it's one property owner on ETJ, that's the, 100% vote. I don't believe we're moving to the threshold now. Yeah, say that again. I don't believe one landowner would meet the threshold. Okay, I'd like to, I mean... And to have Rich McCracken here, he can provide more detail on this bill. Yeah, so this is kind of an interesting bill. There's two ways that the city can receive a petition under this new law. It can be 51% of the people whose property wants to be released from the ETJ, or you can have the majority and value of the property owners of that area. Under that scenario, if you have the 51%, they submit a petition and we verify the petition requirements. It's automatically released all that land from the ETJ. So if you think about it, you can affect a bunch of other property owners in your subdivision out in the ETJ. They may not even want to sign a petition, may not understand what the ETJ is or what it does, but their property would be deemed automatically removed from the city's ETJ. There's no appeal to council. There's no council action. It's at the staff level. They verify the petition and it's automatic. The second way in which you can get property released is to have 5% of the registered voters from the last uniform election submit a petition calling for an election and then have an election on that. Any other questions, council? As a final, as we close, I think Mayor Protilme asked a question. I think engaging our elected officials is gonna be really important. This past session, we had quite a few ETJ bills. Some of them we were able to stop. Some of them we were able to amend. Some of them we amended Fort Worth Out of by working with the law department. Ms. Guzman and her team of this spill got through on us, and but there were many, there were like maybe 15 or 20 ETJ bills. They were, it was a tough session on ETJ. So engaging, Mayor Protilme, I would say engaging your elected officials and know they're part of your district. Please talk to them about this thing called local control. It's really important as we look at that particular issue moving forward. So I'll leave it at that and share that with you, but we'll continue to fight. Looking forward, going on our next issues next week, the impeachment trial schedule to begin on the fifth. Ask you to stay tuned to what may come of that. And then also the third special call session where the governor expected to call the third special session and you're wondering what can they cover? Well, the thing that the governor will probably wanna talk about will be school vouchers or school choice and they possibly school funding and then teacher pay raises and then our bonuses. And then also you remember there's 76 bills he vetoed. Some of those bills dealt with local government. And one big one that was vetoed by the, we're really gonna be watching as there was a bill by Senator Benton court out of Houston deal with certificate of obligations. Whenever you file a bill, two things can happen and one of them's not good. And if you file it and it comes to the floor then people start to add amendments to them going forward. So that's why we'll be watching that particular issue. And that's why it'll be important for us to watch. Elections coming up November 7th, there'll be 14 proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot. And we talked about proposition four, which deals with lowering property taxes have to be approved by the voters. We talked about proposition six, which deals with projects that deal with water, a water plan in Texas going forward. Proposition eight also deals with broadband. It makes you wanna make sure that we support that issue. And also proposition 14, which deals with funding for state parks and new state parks in the state of Texas. And then also in 2024 of March 4th of 2024, the primary elections will be conducted and then the general election will be in November. And then that January, we're going back in for another regular session starting in January, second Tuesday in January. That concludes our presentation at this time. Mr. Questions. I just have one more admonishment. The next time your state rep invites you to play golf, have dinner, go for drinks, remind them that you see what they're doing to us. I'm emailing Ramon on a different topic right now, but these are the people who are there making those votes, taking away our control. Friendship is one thing I have many friends in Austin, but when it comes to our control, they need to know that we're willing to speak up and stand loud. Because if not, you're not gonna need a council for your citizens at the end of the day. So I encourage you, please be aggressive and letting them know that you do not like the erosion of local control. It's happening nationwide. Any other questions, council? Thank you both very much. Council, that's the conclusion of our presentations. Do we have any requests for future dinner items? Anybody? Okay. It's your list out. I even wrote mine down to be organized. We have had two or three presentations in citizen comments called Lancaster Updates. Those are taking on the appearance of official updates. So here's the action I need from council so that the citizens who look to us for guidance will know what really is happening. So I'm asking for a presentation that I call the East Lancaster Update Project, whatever you wanna have it called, but we need input from Trinity Metro, from the Council of Governments and TPW. And that way this can be a balanced report so that the citizens know what's happening on Lancaster. I also need an update on what I call the geographic aspect of a speaker sign-in sheet for zoning. I see DJ in the back, DJ don't leave the room because that's, I'm waiting for my update. And those are my two. Gina, anyone else? Yeah, I have one. Since we have new council on, I would like to get a report back from the race and culture task force on what their recommendations were to update the new staff that we have and the new city council we have. Jeanette and Jared, sorry, front Jeanette, go ahead. I'd like to see numbers on HVAC assistance that we've done so far this year and what other services and resources are out there to help keep our residents cool. I know MHMR, I'm sorry. Nevermind, so there's another group. Meals on Wheels gives window units to folks but what else are we doing as a city? And what are we doing as a city to stay ahead of another potential COVID outbreak as far as, at least for our city staff, do we still have COVID testing kits in the city? Just wondering where we are on that. Just one, I wanna work with development services on IR about requirements for development requirements for parking with schools, both all types of schools. Anyone else? Great, that's all, adjourned. Thank you all.