 Lord, we thank you for this chance and opportunity to come in for your presence, to invoke your presence in this meeting tonight. We pray for our mayor, Maddie Parker, that she can turn the lead this thriving city. Pray for our city manager, Mr. David Cook, him and all the council members that worked together to hold her hands up to carry out their vision for Fort Worth. God, do not we pray for our department of public safety, post department, fire department and EMS that they keep us safe and secure in this area. And pray for all our men and women uniform. It's your spirit that put us tonight and give us your spirit of love and peace. This we pray and ask in your name, amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Mayor, the first item for consideration is approval of the minutes items 22-1993 and 22-1994, the minutes from the June 7th council meetings. Thank you, Jeanette. I've got a motion. Second, any other discussion council, please vote. Can you vote? It's okay. And motion carries. Mayor, that concludes the action items for tonight. Thank you, Jeanette. We're gonna move right into public comment period. What's that? You haven't gotten any yet? Okay, no worries. I'll start with this first list then. Council members, if you're following along, we're gonna move to our in-person speakers. Our callers aren't answering at the moment. We'll go back if we need to. We do have quite a few public presentations this evening. So I'll do my best to help cue people. I'll call a name and then a second name so you kind of know who's coming up to the microphone next. Our first speaker will be Kristen Walker, followed by Angela McKinney. How are you guys doing? Great, thank you. I just wanna, first of all, thank you guys for taking the time to meet tonight and speak with me. And I also wanted to call out a couple of people before I get into it. Michael Crain's office, I've been able to speak with him quite a few times. And Michael Graham in the city code compliance office as well, I've been speaking with him and they've worked wonderfully with me. But I feel that I need to bring this to the attention of all of you, just so you do know what's going on within the city. And I apologize, I'm shaking a little bit. I'm a little bit nervous. So I apologize. My name is Kristen Walker. I've lived in my home for approximately 24 years. The issue that's going on right now, I know there's a lot of talk about short-term rentals, so on and so forth. But the issue that I have right now is a home that's gone in next door to me. They have gutted the home and they have put seven bedrooms in the home. One kitchen that they share, two bathrooms that they share, along with a washer and dryer that they share. They have seven renters in there at this time. A citation has been issued. But I've been following the issue since November, talking with Code Compliance, trying to get return phone calls, trying to take action on it. I know that Code Compliance issued on January 25th. They had 30 days to comply to get permits. They had no permits for anything that they did. They had 30 days to comply. And I know on January 6th, the owner, he lives in Georgia, but he does have people that represent for him. He applied for the permits, but nothing to this day has been uploaded and nothing's been completed. So permits are still not there. I can tell you what they've done with the home is bringing down the value of my home because things that were done were not permitted. They have a window in the side of the house when they took out the garage that is totally crooked. The cars that they have in front of the house are not only seven, but they could have two people in each bedroom. So there could be up to 14 cars for this one person. They have, of course, little things blocked by mailbox. I can't get my mail. Speaking on that, I know that I have spoken to the mail lady and the carriers will not deliver mail there because it is not considered a true residence. So they will not deliver mail there. They advertise on padsplit.com and they advertise on realtor.com. But what they advertise for is only four bedrooms total because they know that that's all they're allowed. I can speak for myself when the home was being built and other neighbors, we have been through the home and seen that there is seven rooms with seven numbers on it that they are renting out. They have the choice of renting by the week or they have the choice of renting by the month. So my concern is the value to the neighborhood. I do have paperwork for each one of you with all of the documentation from November, along with the sign petition for the other neighbors within the neighborhood. Most of us have been there 17 years or longer. So I would like to be able to pass that to you. And so you would have it for record as well. That's all I have unless you have any questions for me. We don't, Kristen. Thank you so much. I wanna make sure you know Val Washington whoever sees the code department making sure you have her information as well. Thank you for coming tonight. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Angela McKinney followed by Beverly Sims. Angela McKinney, Fort Worth District Three. I am present to speak about loud music, noise, ordinance in the Lake Como neighborhood. The main culprits are excessive loud Tihono and mariachi music, be it live bands and are blaring through a speaker system. The decibel is positioned high that it disturbs the elderly, the physically disabled, the proletarians or employed persons, black, white, Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals who are low abiding and respectful. We the residents are held as captive audiences in our homes because the sound permeates into the interior of our homes. In addition, this causes the windows and structures to vibrate. The noise violations occurs weekly. One gathering began at 6 p.m. and ended at 4 a.m. the next early morning or it can start as early as 7 30 on a Sunday morning, for example. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. This is enough to wake the deceased, I'm sorry. The noise can be heard five blocks away. I am cultured and I listen to Italian opera and classical music but I don't blare it outside of my dwelling. I did send an email to a councilman, Michael Crane, regarding this issue as a result met with the community engagement office in the Asian. It was stated to call 911 and not the non-emergency number. This way the calls can be tracked. Now, fourth police department, I'm gonna have to call you out. I would like to inform the West Division that these gatherings produced inebriated are drunken individuals. When after dispersing they drive away drunk which eventually results in a fatality to other residents of the general public. All is heard is popping and clanging of Corona bottles. The complaint against the West Division is police not enforcing the noise ordinance and the noise continues. The residents wants relief. Start issuing citations and the monetary fines will solve the problem. Officers, would you allow this music to disturb your neighborhood? Stop not doing anything about it when you answer the call. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. McKinney. Our next speaker is Beverly Sims followed by James Sims. Good evening, mayor, council members. My name is Beverly Sims. I live at 6935 Craig Street for 50 years as of July the 4th this year. For all these years, we have enjoyed peace and quiet of an established neighborhood until this past year. The house across the street was being remodeled and I was told it was for a family member which was good since it had been vacant for a while but then no one moved in. In December I asked a person to stand there if he was our new neighbor. Oh no, ma'am, it's an Airbnb. Stunned, we started researching short-term rentals and found out more and more about the ugliness that STRs bring into neighborhoods and that they are legal in single-family neighborhoods in Fort Worth. Crime, noise, strangers, traffic, night and day. We contacted code and the STR across the street was issued a, can't read my writing, a letter of notice that they were out of compliance. Then we had a letter in our mailbox about two days later from the owner stating no more STRs. Only 30-day rentals going forward. She's missed three weekends since that letter. Renters are not vetted and they are told by the owner to say they are relatives or friends should code compliance show up. What other business tells their customers to lie about their product? Regarding hotel tax, the city hopes to receive, well, that's not only pie in the sky but a sum zero gang. Typical STR owners, excuse me, jump from platform to platform to avoid being detected by cities. In addition, websites on the internet give them advice on avoiding paying fines and detections as well as not paying hotel tax. While city staffing and enforcement capabilities are issues, a simple solution consisting of finding and shutting down some STRs, thus sending a message that the city would enforce the current STR ordinance could be used. Why would you possibly give Greenlight a business model that you already know the majority of the citizens don't want in their neighborhoods? When someone looks at homes for sale and foot-worth, the presence of nearby STRs are not present in an enticement to the purchase of advertised three-bedroom, two-bath fence, single-family residence. Please do not give these people a blank check to wreck our neighborhoods. You know, crime, traffic, noise, take homes off the markets for family. Families hoping to live in a neighborhood. It's a shame that we citizens have to come and ask the city council to leave neighborhoods as neighborhoods and not less STR operators, turn them into sleazy business districts. This is what it's all about. Here we go. Here's our, that's my visual. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Sims. Our next speaker is James Sims, followed by Bob Willoughby. Good evening, Madam Mayor and Honorable City Councilmembers. I come before you tonight to speak in opposition to any change in the current city ordinance prohibiting short-term rentals. 125, Fort Worth, 6-21 to 6 p.m. We'll pause your time just second, sorry. Chris, can you mute your mic? We can have feedback. Angela, was this the music you were talking about and she already leave? Oh, she's out talking. Okay, this is what it was. Okay, we're gonna start Mr. Sims' time over if you don't mind. Okay. Thank you very much. All right, as I was saying, I come to you this evening to speak in opposition to any change in the current city ordinance prohibiting short-term rentals in single family residential areas. My wife and I are both native Texans, have grown up on the east side of Fort Worth and have lived in Hanley in Fort Worth at 6935 Craig Street for 50 years as of this coming 4th of July. We currently have three active STRs within 200 feet of our home and we are not particularly pleased with them. We have filed two online zoning violation complaints. The STRs are still in operation. We are aware that the city staff has selected Deckard Technologies Incorporated to complete a quote, initial short-term rental identification project in order to assist in a phased approach of enforcement. This study directed toward possible policy changes concerning STRs in the near future. I am not in favor of allowing STRs in any single family residential area. This because short-term rentals are both undesirable and unnecessary. Undesirable insofar as they are not compatible with the very nature of single family residential neighborhood which is not designed to be a commercial type enterprise. Unnecessary insofar as they're primary and in fact only purpose is to make money for the STR owner. STRs add absolutely nothing to the fabric of the neighborhood and in fact attract from its sense of community. Any money possibly received by the city from occupancy taxes will in the end be a zero sum game. On the other hand, I am in favor of keeping and enforcing the current ordinance prohibiting STRs in single family residential areas. No STRs should be permitted unless a zoning change is approved for that property. The zoning change procedures will allow direct neighborhood input into consideration of any STR application. In any case, and under no circumstances, should a personal entity be allowed to owner operate more than one STR unit, please keep and enforce the current short-term rental ordinance. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Sims. Our next speaker is Bob Willoughby followed by Phillip Nedford. Not yet with the video. It's a short video. So we've got part video and part talking here. First thing I'm gonna start off this video is about how people are disengaged to come down here to council, okay? That's what I wanna tell you. I was just pleased how Mr. Firestone treated this person. So go ahead and play the video. Bob, we'll bring you back up after this next speaker. They're gonna fix your video first. You'll get to start your time over, okay? Okay. Sorry about that. I'll start my time as well. Okay. Phillip Nedford. And then we'll bring Bob back up and then it'll be Marcia Wright after Bob. Hello, I'm Phillip Nedford with the district of 26 of Texas. I am here because I hear that Fort Worth wants to do a gun buyback. And I feel like that would turn that Texas is slowly turning blue. That we are turning into California and California has problems. Just like Texas does. I think everybody knows that every state has problems. But I don't wanna see my state Texas turn into California where criminals can run and commit crime and then get arrested and be out within 24 hours. Like what's going on over there? I think everybody shouldn't ignore that. That's, come on. That's not smart. We need to stick to what the founding father said about the second amendment. There is a quote from George Washington that said, let's punish your criminal, not the citizen, working hard for his, shit, that's not a quote. It is, the very atmosphere of firearms everywhere and anywhere restrains evil interference. They deserve a place for good of all that's honored. Let's punish the criminal, not the citizen, working hard for his family. Making us like Florida. Let's punish the bad person, not the bad person. So I'm just here speaking against the gun by back. It's not gonna do anything. I'm gonna tell you this right now. Cause they had that in California and California, we had shootings in California this year. I'm against violence and we had shootings in New York and these Democrat run cities. It's not gonna help cause you're gonna leave the good person defenseless and you're gonna, the bad person's still gonna illegally obtain the firearm. Like, come on, this should be common sense. A criminal doesn't follow laws when you pass them. That's why they're a criminal. Come on. But I wanna thank you for your time and... Thank you, Mr. Nedford. Bob, we're gonna bring you back up here and Bob will be followed by Marsha Wright. I don't want to say like about Mr. Firestone or council members, I believe the last time they do this stuff. Give us just a second Bob, I'm sorry. We're gonna start times over here. Marsha's trying to do too many things at once, bless her heart. Okay, we're ready? Okay, yeah. Okay, I believe council members do this only for their self-benefit to get re-elected. Go ahead and play this, okay? Ready to play it. In renaming Fort Worth Alliance Airport within the city of Fort Worth as Perot Field, Fort Worth... Against the change for the Perot Airport. Citizens take the time without pay to come here to do their part as citizens should. But they are treated with no respect by the people that took an oath to serve the citizens. The man who signed up to speak did not count to the mayor or city council members. I thought council member Firestone was rude in his behavior to this person. Who took the time to sign up? Council member Firestone calling people to speak that did not sign up to speak was in bad taste. So, of course, I'm gonna put this forward with great enthusiasm to approve, but I do see a couple of people in the back there, Mike Berry, Roger Van Bilsen. Mike, would you like an opportunity to comment at all or say anything? So as Mike's walking down, Mike is CEO of Hillwood, which is the Perot's company that has largely built the Alliance area. Anyway, I just wanted to get that point out of the way. The second thing I wanna talk about here is that I had a meeting with Mr. David Cook, the city manager about our neighborhood association, John T. White, is a very corrupt neighborhood association. And one thing I've asked Mr. Cook is to recognize a new neighborhood social election, but I'm having a hard time getting answers. It's taking a month. I feel like I'm getting smoke blowing up my shorts. I'm not kidding, this is ridiculous. All we're asking is to recognize a new neighborhood association and John T. White. Even the crooked ones can run for it, okay? If John T. White, neighborhood association, is legit, then they should open this. They have secret elections for the last three years. I've come down here and mentioned it. Does the council, remember Gina Bibbins, say anything about that? Does anybody approach me saying, no, they shouldn't have secret elections. They should have open, no, no one approached me. So I finally got fed up for three years. Mr. Cook, we need an answer. Either you're gonna recognize a new neighborhood association. John T. White, that's voted by the neighbors there. Are you gonna protect the one on the data bank that's on there now? It does not recognize the neighbors, but recognizes Gina Bibbins more than anybody. That's our problem. Council members are owning neighborhood associations. We want ours back so the neighbors run it, not the council member. Will you give us an answer, sir? Thank you. Our next speaker is Marcia Wright, followed by Tony Perez. Good evening. My name is Marcia Wright. I am from Fort Worth. My district is District Seven. I'd like to talk to you tonight about our current ordinance, which really is a very fair ordinance. It protects our residential housing stock. It protects the sanctity of residential neighborhoods and the property rights of residents who bought their homes in reliance on its staying residential. City ordinance states that you can rent your home in a residential neighborhood for a period of not less than 30 days. You can rent your home in a residential neighborhood. It just must be for a 30-day period. They just can't operate commercial lodging business in a residential neighborhood. And don't forget that STRs can operate in other parts of the city where commercial lodging businesses are appropriate land use. Short-term rentals are allowed in all of the mixed-use areas that we have in the city. If you have an overlay, they are probably allowed there. In farm-based zoning, they are allowed. And of course, they are allowed in all commercial areas. So number one, I'm asking you to keep the ordinance we have. Number two, rather than rewarding STR operators who have been going against the current law, let's use that data to improve enforcement of our current ordinance. Going forward, enforcement of the ordinance must be the most important thing we focus on. No more using no harm, no foul rule. The ordinance cannot withstand looking the other way. And with a new company possibly coming in here to help court code enforcement, it should begin to work. So let's leave the current ordinance in place. Have code enforcement work to eliminate those using their rental property for short-term rentals and violation of the ordinance. Then step back and look at the rest of the many questions that are still out there to solve. If you allow short-term rentals in residential areas, you will have let the genie out of the bottle and you will not be able to put it back in. Let's not rush into anything and make an irreversible mistake. Have the other cities that have left STRs, let STRs come into their residential neighborhood almost to the city they are now trying to redo their ordinance. We have an edge, let's not give up the edge. What's the hurry? It's a very complicated issue. Listen to your constituents who live in Fort Worth, not those who don't live in Fort Worth. I don't understand why our city would want to damage neighborhoods that are the heart and soul of our city with STRs so that someone who lives in California, or AISL, or Dubai can make an extra buck. Please take it slow and do it right. Thank you, Ms. Wright. Our next speaker is Tony Perez. And then Jeanette, I'm gonna try it. You can try Susan Kinney who I think's on the phone. Is Tony here? No? Jeanette, you wanna try Miss Kinney? Miss Kinney? Hello? Please go ahead, you have three minutes. Oh, thank you. Good evening, Mayor Parker and City Council. My name is Susan Kinney and I'm the president of the Park Glen Neighborhood Association. We're in District 4 in Fort Worth. Our board is strongly against short-term rentals in single-family units. Mayor Parker and City Council, please protect residential areas and continue to prohibit short-term rentals. Please consider what Dallas is contemplating, which is defining short-term rentals as lodging and allowing short-term rentals only where hotels and lodging are permitted. Thank you so much. Thank you, Miss Kinney. Do you wanna try for Jessica Ranch? Is she available? Maybe not. Layla Talley? You handed me this list, Jeanette. Is this the only ones that are available? Okay, I'm sorry. Layla Talley, then. Good evening, I'm Layla Talley and I live in District 6, Wichwood. I'm here to discuss the Census smart water meters. I'm with a group of right-payers who did not give permission to these mandated services of data harvesting and their added exposure to electric small from these Census smart meters. We had availed a certified notice of liability to Chris Harder in April of 2021, which clearly stated that we do not consent. Last month, the Census smart water meter was forcibly installed with police presence after a calm no. In 2018, the World Health Organization completed new testing and found that radio frequency radiation, in fact, is a class one carcinogen. Smart meters should never be forced onto customers. The technicians shared that people don't want this. These right-payers were expressing their God-given freedom of choice. According to our corner electric small meter, the Census smart water meter radiation emits through the wall and into our two front rooms. A retired physicist from the federal government chart illustrates reproductive harm, general cancer, and brain cancer from this level of radiation. At several spikes a minute, this also causes sleep disturbances. Encryption is not protecting our water usage data. According to a professional hacker, wireless smart meters are the easiest to hack into even with encryption. The Texas law says that smart meter data belongs to the customer and the customer decides who to share it with. I believe when a utility refuses to stop this data harvesting, it is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. I call these smart meters behavior modification technology, all right-payer water usage data is now on the wireless cloud. Data harvesting is creating a warming effect on our planet. Access to wireless cloud services will have the same carbon footprint as adding 4.9 million cars to the road. This is not just a meter. We want this data harvesting, cancer, and miscarriage causing expensive product immediately uninstalled from the water meter box. A simple purchase order for a brand new analog meter can be executed and installed instead. This is our only source of running water from the Fort Worth Water Department. Thank you. Our next speaker is Paul Millender. Paul. Mayor and council. Yeah, I'm ready. Okay. Mayor and council. My name is Paul Millender. I live at 3121 Liskum and I'm the president of South Thames Hill Heights Neighborhood Association. Having been taught, I'm going to give you some plain, try and offer suggestions. And this I would gladly do just not while I'm being tied. First, my thanks to council back in Catholic for their invaluable assistance in this matter. Let me provide setting for the activity. My neighbors will cover more specifically. Shaw Street serves as a boundary between Shaw Clark and South Thames Hill Heights neighborhoods. So we work together. 1011 and 1,003 West Shaw are located on the south side near Hempel and Berry within 200 feet of our Lady of Victory. 1011 West Shaw is less than 500 feet from George Clark Elementary, which received funding for sidewalk installation improvement in the safe routes to the school program. In addition, 1011 sits 600 feet from Katz Park where the city has recently invested about 150 to 200,000 HUD bottle block dollars attracting ever greater numbers of park regulars. Need I say more? A lot of our young children walk this street rather than used to. About a year ago, I was contacted about escalating issues and concerns regarding 1011 West Shaw and was informed these problems had already been going on for a couple of years. And that calls, emails, complaints have been were regularly being made to not emergency, toad, NPOPV, all costing the city money. What is this? No electricity and no water, but people were living there. These neighbors here tonight asked for help. And some to this day, we're still afraid to do anything. This is how our neighborhoods fall apart. Over December, 2021 buildings and standards hearing on 1011 West Shaw. I listened to testimony from the owner's daughter saying that her mother, the actual owner, had been in long-term care some years back and that her housing property will be taken as repayment for the dedicated state recovery program. The owner passed away in February and now we wait for the state to take possession of this property hoping to bring this nightmare to an end. As background, I learned the owner's grandson and moved into the house over three years ago sensibly to arrange for an estate sale. And yes, that was the start of what has brought me and some neighbors here tonight. Now my neighbors will tell what they have witnessed for then till now. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Leslie Shields. Ms. Shields. Hi, Leslie Shields and I hope you guys can hear me. I'm not really sure. But I'm a resident of West Meadowbrook where I'm involved in the neighborhood board. I have to make that clear. I am speaking on behalf of myself and not them. When our board discussed this issue, we found that it was a short-term rentals with a very generationally divided issue. Many of the younger families in our group use Airbnb and short-term rentals when they travel throughout the US and the world, making it a better setup for families, having bedrooms for babies and having it be more affordable. So I wanted to be sure that someone from that lives in a neighborhood supported STRs. I think it's a really good opportunity for small businesses by zoning them only to commercial or mixed-use zones. It could become a larger barrier to entry whereas a residential mortgage can provide an opportunity. And I know two in particular single moms who run short-term rentals to provide income to their families. So because we are regular users of them and I believe that it will continue to bring more events to the Fort Worth area, there just aren't enough hotels. And this is a need with the setup, with two bedrooms, a kitchen for travelers and without allowing small businesses or families to have these in affordable residential areas, corporations are gonna take those, they're gonna fill the need. And so again, I support short-term rentals. I have talked to the Fort Worth hosts or organization and know that they are offering education and totally support permitting and regulations and maybe it's one permit per one owner. So we keep it to small business owners and not corporations but I'm interested to see the results on the data and hope that the city will have an open mind to continue some short-term rentals within Fort Worth neighborhoods. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Ramiro Lopez. Mr. Lopez? My name is Ramiro Lopez. Yes, I'm here. Can you hear me? Yes, yes, go ahead. So I live at 1704 Oakland Boulevard and I am in support of allowing short-term rentals. I have a family of five with two small children and have used short-term rentals numerous times both domestically and internationally. So if you have ever traveled with any children under two that is a tough feat by itself but allowing to have a whole home for where the kids can walk around and not be a nuisance to your neighbor in a hotel is great. And some of the other residents had spoke about neighborhoods being destroyed by short-term rentals. I would argue that if you look at West 7th, commercial properties are gonna destroy neighborhoods anyway because of the need to put more people in places. You could say that short-term rentals offer a safe haven for lodging in single-family homes. But like Michelle had said, I do believe it's a generational thing with most older folks not using short-term rentals. They use more traditional lodging and haven't had the benefit of staying in one. So that is my, thank you. Thank you. Our next, our last caller is Jessica Reinch on the phone. And follow, go ahead, Jessica. Yes, I'm here. May I start? Yes, please. Hi, my name is Jessica Reinch. I live at 1729 South Adams Street in Fort Worth. I was born and raised in Arlington and TCU graduate and a resident of Fort Worth. I am here to speak to you about my experience with short-term rentals. And I am not here to make generalizations, use scary hyperbolees, or to try to speak for others. I wanna share my story with you. I always wanted to live in one of those beautiful homes of Fairmount. I was lucky enough to purchase one in 2020. And I quickly rented out the garage apartment to a young girl who had just had a baby and needed to be able to walk to work. Now I could afford the mortgage without a roommate. This house has mother-in-law suites. And I thought, what if my guest bedroom could pay my electric bill? That would be so helpful. So I researched and decided to Airbnb one of the mother-in-law suites. To my surprise, it took off. I would use my lunch breaks to clean the suites and set out fresh cupcakes from stir crazy baked goods on Magnolia and a copy of Fort Worth weekly for my guests. I fell in love with hosting and sharing my home. So I kept going. I rented out another room and I started paying my tenant to clean the suites. Then my boyfriend and I purchased the suites behind us. This property was broken and boarded up windows and a horrible yard. It is now restored to its history glory. We Airbnb'd our garage and one side of the duplex. And we hired our tenant on full time as our cleaning lady and moved her into the duplex with a significant rent reduction. She monitors that property to ensure our respectful and follow the rules. As do I, my property. My neighbors know I have STRs and thank you for how well I keep the yards. How I pick up trash up and down the streets because I want our streets to be beautiful for my guests but because I'm proud of my neighborhood. I've heard the negative comments about STRs and in any area of business or life would be people that do things well and people that don't. I believe in hosting responsibly caring for my community and recommending my favorite small businesses. I am big on safety and I've never once felt unsafe due to my guests. If anything, when my boyfriend travels I feel safer knowing there are people I've spoken with many times that same day close by from parents of TCU students that stay with me because I'm an alumni to medical staff to stay with me because they can walk to JPS. We're just people helping people. They stay with me because they want to feel like they belong in Fort Worth. I will say this, I have implemented game changing software to build warehouses and created jobs with my 15 years of corporate work. But what I am most proud of today is the 650 plus glowing reviews I have received for providing people a wonderful place to stay in one of the best neighborhoods in Fort Worth. I look forward to paying local taxes and appropriate fees necessary to continue to be an ally and supporter of Fort Worth. Thank you, Jessica. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jim Vreeland. Jim will be followed by Carolyn Meyer. My name is Jim Vreeland. I live on Carleton Avenue in Arlington Heights. My wife and I have been there for 35 years. The city has purchased 11 homes on Carleton and Western because of a flooding problem. And this has been an ongoing issue for years. They've worked hard on it. The stormwater people have worked hard on it. And they've been responding to neighbors based on how to dispose of these properties that the disposition is coming up soon. And it's boiled down to putting this out to bid and selling nine of the 11 lots houses that the city owns to one developer. And their options are to elevate these houses or tear them down and build new ones. The new information that's come out on this recently is that these new finished floor elevations are way up there. And there's a photograph there of one of the city-owned homes with the new finished floor elevation marked with pink tape with an adjacent home that's gonna not be affected by this finished floor change. So you can imagine a dramatically different that's gonna make this neighborhood. So I'm here to say, please, can based on this new information, can the property owners that are directly impacted by this project have a say in how it's disposed of because the other option is it being green space and stormwater retention, which helps alleviate the problem or has new houses or just picking the houses up does nothing for it. So that's what my request is, is to please reconsider based on this new information that the property owners who are gonna be affected, their property values be affected by this have more say in whether it goes to a developer or not. Thank you, Jim. You may already know Sammy Root really well and council member Firestone's office, but if you don't, she's your girl. Okay. And I got myself out of order. Here we go. Carolyn Meyer, followed by Russell Fuller. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, council members, my name is Carolyn Meyer. I reside in council district number five. I'm here to speak about the short-term rental issue and I'm here to speak in support of all the other speakers who are urging the city council to preserve the current protections for neighborhoods found in the ordinances that ban short-term rentals and residential neighborhoods. Short-term rentals destroy the very fabric of residential communities by replacing long-term residents whom neighbors know and trust with a parade of total strangers. And unlike hotels, STRs have no staff on site to control bad behavior. One of the myths that short-term rental front groups propagate is that short-term rentals are primarily mom and pop businesses. With homeowners renting out spare rooms to add a few dollars of income. That may have been how short-term rentals started, but that's not the nature of the short-term rental business now. First, Airbnb and like businesses are multi-million dollar enterprises. Second, the owners of homes listed on those two platforms alone are typically commercial enterprises, not local residents. The neighborhood associations worked with two expert data sources that focus on the STR industry, and they tell us that only 33% of hosts of short-term rentals in Fort Worth have self-identified as living in Fort Worth. Further, 56.2% of those hosts have multiple listings within Fort Worth. In short, it is out-of-town commercial enterprises which mostly reap the profits from short-term listings in Fort Worth, while it's the citizens of Fort Worth who suffer all the headaches and the heartaches. So we are asking, please, please do not take any action that would undercut our current protections, excuse me, so that they, that are currently found in our ordinances that protect neighborhoods and bans rentals of less than 30 days in residential neighborhoods. And I appreciate the opportunity to speak. Thank you very much. Thank you, Carolyn. Our next speaker is Russell Fuller, followed by Michael Moore. Hi, Mayor and Council. Rusty Fuller, President of the North Fort Worth Alliance. Thanks for the opportunity to bring these issues before you in this public meeting. The members of the North Fort Worth Alliance have voted unanimously to oppose the presence of short-term rentals in residential areas. You're hearing from individuals tonight on that point. You should have received correspondence from our vice president supporting this position and the issue on which I'm about to speak. Tonight, we wanna address the lack of personnel, training and funding to enforce the current rules regarding illegal short-term rentals, no less rules that may increase the number of such lodging establishments. We want you to remedy that situation in the next and future budget cycles. This includes both code compliance and the Fort Worth Police Department. In various discussions with staff, we have information that indicates that code compliance lacks the resources to pursue every report of a short-term rental and must concentrate its efforts only on, quote, nuisance, unquote, properties. This is unsatisfactory, as we point out in the vice president's letter. This is unsatisfactory and must be remedied, not by shuffling priorities within that very important department, but by an increase of funding for personnel and training and support. In the case of the police department, the city is more than 100 officers short of the staffing goal. For calls for neighborhood disturbances, as we have heard, are of lower priority to other crimes being committed. So when conditions of higher priority crimes occur, the neighborhoods have little hope of obtaining assistance and remediating the situation in a timely manner. We want to emphasize that when you adopt a program or ordinances, you have to support all aspects of that program. We are proud to be part of a city that continues to make progress from better to best. Thank you, Rusty. Our next speaker is Michael Moore, followed by Thomas Troll and Cassie. Good evening, Mayor Parker, and all of our elected officials and citizen support work. I am Michael Moore and I reside at 1412 Lindsey Street. Fort Worth, Texas in the historical stop six neighborhood district five, led by Ms. Gina Biddens. I'm here in opposition to short-term rentals for the simple reason that in our neighborhood, there's not a day that goes by that I don't get a call from an investor wanting to buy my property. And these are not people who live in my area. They live out of state. They want to purchase property in typically historic black communities where they feel that they can get the best value for their bucks. But they're going to turn those homes into rental properties, permanent rental properties. Well, the city has finally shown a little love toward historic stop six and we're no longer treated like a stepchild. Our community is rebuilding. I live there because I choose to live there in the home that my mother built by choice because I wanted to be a part of the community that I grew up in. Hope that this, I hope that this community will offer first-time home buyers of people who want to own properties to live in my neighborhood. Typically no relative ever shows stop six to people who move into the city. Some of you have never visited my part of town, but it's home to me. These properties pose a threat because they are gonna be turned into party houses. There are two properties on my street that many home buyers have attempted to purchase. Those properties have fallen into the hands of a grandson of deceased parents and now they're wanting to put those properties up for short-term rentals. These properties are gonna turn into party houses. We already have a problem with guns shots being fired at night, putting our families at risk. We already are under policed in terms of getting a proper response. So these properties pose a great threat to the quality of life that we're trying to reestablish in historic stop six. So if the city is going to allow, then please consider putting restrictions in place that will discourage corporate dollars from purchasing these properties. Thank you very much. Thank you, Pastor Moore. Our next speaker is Thomas Tarlan-Cosse followed by Shannon Ross. Mayor Parker and council members, but most importantly, taxpayers, citizens and neighbors behind me. Originally, it's interesting because none of the people behind me are afraid of me. None of you are, but notably several members of the council are afraid of me and speakers that come here regularly. You think about that. I wanted to do a year in review, which is the first year for most of the council members. They were elected for a variety of reasons, but the most important one was to follow the rule of law, to follow the law. There are a lot of examples in the last week, just what happened at last week's city council, but a microcosm of the problem with the current city council, including its new members, is what happened just yesterday. For those of you that didn't notice have on a First Amendment shirt, we all have the same rights under the First Amendment. There are five elements. All of you or most of you are practicing a couple of them tonight, free speech and freedom of assembly and freedom to redress your government. But yesterday, a citizen journalist, one that has been arrested repeatedly on the street for interfering with the police, was arrested again and assaulted by a Fort Worth police officer. He was also charged with resisting arrest because of course that makes it a higher class offense. But picture, if you will, the man in the back of the room that works for the Fort Worth Starved Telegram. If he was driving down the road and he saw a Fort Worth police officer harassing a homeless person and he stopped to film that and potentially get a lead or do a story and the officer violated his First Amendment rights, which specifically in the Fifth Circuit Court opinion says that the people have a right to film public officials and law enforcement in the course of their duties. Do you know where that language came from? Specifically, the Fifth Circuit opinion against the city of Fort Worth and their police department and Phillip Turner specifically, what happened yesterday to Manuel Mota when you find out the specific facts is much worse. He's currently facing five charges of interference by five different Fort Worth police officers. One officer who didn't like him filming, Sergeant Hoffman, followed him on his bicycle. That means Manuel was on his bicycle and that officer hit him with his police car. When Manuel filed a complaint, Officer Hoffman a couple months later is seen on his body camera planning cocaine on Manuel. Now, Manuel has a serious arm injury. And if you think that Phillip Turner winning a $1 million case against the city of Fort Worth, this is gonna be small potatoes. We keep talking about police accountability. We keep talking about the fact that the police are not accountable in our city. Three of the city council members were elected specifically to work on police accountability. Thank you, Thomas. And here we are. Our next speaker is Shannon Ross followed by Pam Hudson. My dad and I moved to Hanley over a decade ago and I own several short-term rentals, most of which were ice stores or drug houses when we purchased them. We didn't intend to become landlords. We simply wanted to clean up the neighborhood. We tried renting long-term and it was a disaster. Tenants didn't pay, they destroyed things and then they refused to leave. The eviction process was expensive and very stressful. I haven't had one problem since I switched to short-term rentals. I now have the upper hand legally. They don't pay and if they don't pay or if they won't leave. Hotels aren't a good fit for everyone. Our short-term rentals of house cancer patient families, people with compromised immune systems, families who are flooded from their houses and they all need different, we also had stock show exhibitors and multi-generational families. I could go on and on with the people that have rented our homes and I'm proud of it. I've been able to employ neighbors as cleaning crews, landscape and maintenance workers and they can even walk to work. These are people who are now in fear of losing their livelihoods. I did some research and in this three square blocks around my home that I live in, there were 14 owner-occupied homes, 12, I mean 16 long-term rentals and six short-term rentals and two vacant houses. In the past three years, there's not been one call related to any of the six STRs on the block but there've been multiple calls on the others. Gunshots, four drug raids, over a dozen code violations for grass, trash, et cetera and 37 calls for noise violation or just one house in one year alone, not any of the STRs. You can see that's not the problem in my neighborhood. If the city eliminates these, those currently operating will be turned into long-term rentals, not owner-occupied homes like people want. I'm bombarded daily with calls as well for investors asking about my properties, never families, only investors. I personally know three groups of investors from California who are buying up as many houses as they can in DFW and they have no interest in short-term rentals at all. They wanna remodel them quickly and flip them. They eliminating STRs and hoping for a Mayberry type neighborhood of the past is unrealistic. We'll have more absentee long-term landlords and owner-financed houses at astronomical interest rates. I don't see how that's a benefit to any of our cities. Their proponents and opponents all want the same thing for our neighborhoods. We want clean, safe, quiet places to live and an increase in our investments, our homes. We want rules governing how STRs operate to weed out the few bad apples there are. Registering and taxing is a good start. Airbnb horror stories are a recurring theme and you can look up high school horror stories or shopping mall horror stories. The reason these are horror stories is because they're isolated incidents. They're not the norm. I've stayed in numerous STRs and have never experienced anything remotely horrendous. I've referred to everything that's been a fact, a statistic or my personal experience, not something I've seen or heard on the internet that might possibly happen. Thank you, Ms. Ross. Our next speaker is Pam Hudson, followed by David Mendes. My name is Pam Hudson. I live in Fort Worth in District 3. I moved to Fort Worth in 1990. I'm straight out of college. I later moved to Burleson for 20 years. In 2017, my daughter deliberately asked us to move to Fort Worth so she could attend a particular Fort Worth ISD school. Our older son had not attended a Fort Worth ISD school but we moved and she excelled. She had a very good experience. She's gone off to college and we thought we would always move back to Johnson County to the wide open spaces but we've come to love the neighborhood of Fort Worth that we live in in Foster Park and we have no intention of leaving. I'm here tonight not because I support the current ordinance nor do I support the situations that some of the speakers have described where people came in and remodeled and put in seven bedrooms and made it be basically a rent a pad kind of night. I didn't realize that was even a factor but what I'm here to talk about is the support of controlled, desirable short-term rentals and why is that? If I did not support that, I would be a hypocrite. I travel all over this country with my family and everywhere I go, we stay in a short-term rental. My family is in Alabama. My husband's family is in Iowa. We had two very active children that we raised. Our son played golf all over the Texas in the Midwest. Everywhere we went, we rented a short-term rental. Why is that? We had the ability to spread out. We had our own space. We could have grandparents join us. We weren't relegated to a hotel room where we had to go our separate ways and only saw each other in the next morning for breakfast. Like I said, we've stayed in short-term rentals in many states across the country and we always enjoyed the ability to be part of the community, to get to know the neighborhoods and I've had other family members to do the same. People choose vacation destinations and work destinations based on the opportunity for options. People are more mobile than they used to be. People are able to work remotely. They're able to take their children on school and academic trips and still work remotely. That wasn't impossible in the past. And what accommodates family's best in many cases is short-term rentals. I know a number of people that come to this community from my family or friends or network are coming to the stock show. They're gonna go to a show at Dickie's Arena. They're coming to go to a TCU football game. We have family from Iowa State that come in to watch their team play their horned frogs, bless their heart. But they choose to stay at short-term rentals because then they can congregate together, enjoy the back patio, have a barbecue. It's not just visitors that choose short-term rentals. There's also residents. If you're on any of the social media sites, not named Tanglewood Moms, you might have seen the frantic plea. My house has been flooded. I've got four kids and two dogs. Does anyone have a back cottage where I can stay for two or three weeks? Or you've got the case of they bought a home and they have two or three week time span before they can move into their new home and they need a place to stay. Ford needs to provide options and opportunities for both their residents and guests. Let's come up with a plan that makes sense for everyone. Thank you, Pam. Our next speaker is David Mendez, followed by Cindy Bowling. Mayor and council, David Mendez, Fort Worth, Texas. Speaking on behalf of Northwest Neighborhood Alliance, according to the last census, the Northwest area has 170,000 residents. That is a lot of residents. That's a lot of voters. And that's a really good important statistic to remember. Something I wanted to bring up, Mayor, because I'm not out the last meeting I was at, 30%, sorry, a third, 33% of all homes sold last year were sold to corporations. Those are homes that are no longer in the pool to be used by Fort Worth families. The majority of those are going to be rental properties. Some of them will probably be short-term rentals. And what I'm here today to speak about is not expanding or changing the short-term rental policy that Fort Worth currently has. Keep it as it is, crack down on illegal short-term rentals and focus on families. A third of all those homes sold last year will no longer be occupied by families. They can't be owned. They can be rented. And that's great when you want to rent something. What you want to put down roots and live in Fort Worth. And Fort Worth has always been for families, for people who want to be part of this community. Neighborhood cohesion is so important in Fort Worth that a large number of short-term rentals can break that apart of any neighborhood, even the strongest, like the Marine Creek Ranch where I'm from. I'm fortunate enough to live in an HOA that has a policy against short-term rentals, but there are so many neighborhoods out there, long-term established neighborhoods that are the heart of Fort Worth, that were built by Fort Worth families, and they want to keep living and enjoying those neighborhoods. And keeping that neighborhood cohesion together means families need to be in homes, not renters, not short-term renters. We need families. You pull out that many homes from a pool and then claim that there's a housing shortage in Texas. Well, there is a housing shortage because they're all being brought up by corporations and being used for other purposes, other than families. The other thing we have to think about is safety. Police and code are taxed. They are too far stretched to enforce the policies that you want them to enforce. They need to do their current job well before they start expanding on managing short-term rentals. Code compliance is stretched so thin they need immediate help to do their current job, not short-term rental monitoring. The police are having to expand, having to double up on areas, fires having to go to mandatory overtime. These are problems that need to be fixed before you think about any short-term rentals in neighborhoods. Thank you. Thank you, David. Our next speaker is Cindy Bowling, followed by Lauren Brady. Cindy here, I thought, sorry, maybe not. No, we'll come back if she walks in. Next speaker, Lauren Brady, followed by Christine Torres. Good evening, council. My name is Lauren Brady. I'm a resident of Arlington and I'm the president of the Fort Worth short-term rental alliance. I've also been an STR host in Fort Worth since 2017. I'm taking my time tonight to introduce you to a few of my guests. The attention here is to give a face, name and story to the types of people who choose STR homes in Fort Worth. This is the Knighton family. Their family went to Dallas for a children's cranio-facial association retreat for their 18-month-old son hunter who has a treacher Collins syndrome. A rare syndrome that is hardly known amongst doctors around the world. It is so rare that they're traveling halfway across the country from South Carolina to meet other families with TCS. Visiting an STR not only provides an affordable place to stay but also a place where they can control hunter's food by cooking their own meals. This is the Peterson family. Their longtime Arlington Heights homeowners, they chose my STR for a few weeks during a home remodel on their 1920s bungalow. It was important to them to stay close to their community and home while displaced. During the birth of their son recently, they were thankful to have STR options in their Arlington Heights neighborhood as out-of-state family came to help out and celebrate the new addition to the family. This is Dr. Rita Cosnick. She holds a PhD in organizational behavior and strategy for Northwestern University. She lives in San Antonio and travels to Fort Worth monthly to work as an adjunct professor in TCU's Neely School of Business. She chooses STR homes when she travels because she feels like they are safer, quieter and more like her own home while she's away from her family. This is the Pleasant family. They came to Fort Worth from Inglewood, New Jersey in 2019 after the death of a family member revealed an unknown, long lost family member and living in Fort Worth. They needed a safe home base for their time in the city while having a space to meet, spend time with and learn about this newly found branch of their family tree. They come back annually now to visit and stay in my home. This is the Verdeer family. Chelsea and Chris Verdeer chose my STR home in 2018 as they began to travel to Fort Worth monthly for fertility treatment. I began to know them personally and cheered them on each month with small gifts and gestures. They tragically lost their twin girls Hazel in Eleanor in 2019 at 26 weeks. I began hosting them again as they worked hard to have their son Oliver and I look forward to being part of their next journey to give Oliver a sibling as their now like family to me. And speaking of family, this is Nancy Johnson or as I call her Nana. Nana is a dear family member of mine. She has been in my life since I was 12. She's a Fort Worth native who grew up on the Southwest side. She was permanently disabled in a near fatal car accident. In 2012 and 2014, I purchased a small 1930s home for her in Arlington Heights where she lives today. I STR the guest home on this property to keep her rent low and manageable and to invest money into adapting the home to her changing physical needs. Nana has lived with an STR in her backyard for literally five years and has never had a single issue with the guest. In fact, they often bring up her trash cans and water her plants for her. When STR's are banned, so is my family's ability to keep her in a home that is safe. When STR's are banned, so is the option for families and guests like these to stay in Fort Worth. Thank you. Thank you, Lauren. Our next speaker is Christine Torres followed by Margaret Colivaz. Good evening, everyone. I'm Christine Torres and I live at 3229 College Avenue. I'm so thankful for Elizabeth Beck's help this morning in taking care of our issues that co-compliance and NPO could not do for more than two years. Our struggle with 1003 and 1011 West Shaw has been very hard for the neighborhood. Our up-and-coming neighborhood was pushed back due to these two houses that were allowed to break all the rules. Now, maybe we can get back to where we were as a great neighborhood, but we will continue to need code compliance on our NPO to stay on any issues that should arise. Again, at the 1003 and 1011 West Shaw. We still fear the 1011 Shaw resident will lay low like once before and then start up again. Going forward, I would suggest code compliance, step up their codes and enforce them sooner than later. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Torres. Our next speaker is Margaret Colivaz. Margaret, you have to tell me how to pronounce it, so I know I messed it up. Margaret's followed by Emily Braun. It's Clevis, but I answered anything. Okay. I've heard them all. Go ahead, Margaret. Mayor Parker and City Council, I just wanna start off by saying that we really appreciate all that you guys do to serve our city and our communities. It really doesn't go unnoticed. My husband is a Texan, raised in Fort Worth, and now we live in Carter Riverside, and we've been here for four years and love every second of it. We absolutely love Cowtown. I work in downtown for a large public accounting firm, and my husband works for Lockheed Martin, and we're all in Fort Worth fans. We live, we work, we patron local shops in Fort Worth. We love attending Ray Street events. Our favorite coffee shop is from, or our favorite coffee is Vecaro, and we hit our local home improvements store all the time. So we're here in support of STRs as residents of Carter Riverside. While we love our neighborhood, we also recognize the need for some investment in our homes and in our neighborhood, and that's where I come in support of STRs. I've attended various meetings with the Fort Worth short-term rental alliance and have listened to stories from folks who live and breathe Fort Worth, folks like those in the north side area that have put hundreds of thousands of dollars into their homes on their street to STR. What I've learned from these people is that they're locals and that they love Fort Worth and they love the culture and the history, and even more than that, they love their neighbors. They're taking the opportunity to invest in their own financial futures by having passive income that's more lucrative than long-term renting while beautifying their neighborhoods. By taking the opportunity to look at the education provided by the Fort Worth short-term rental alliance, I've come to understand that the businesses of short-term rentals is all in the first impression. Hosts and owners of STRs can only run a successful business by providing a wonderful first impression to guests. What does this mean for the neighborhood that they operate in? Their lawns are meticulous, the trash around their homes and on the street is cleaned up. You walk to the front door and are often welcomed with patio furniture and welcome signs, and you open the door to a beautifully maintained home. As I learned this about STR hosts and the additional effort that they go through to set up and equip their homes to be maintained and safe, I realized how well-prepared they are to diagnose an issue with a guest before it even happens. This doesn't even mention the fact that STR platforms are very stringent in vetting their guests. All this to say, I'm a neighbor, I'm a resident of Fort Worth and of Carter Riverside. My husband and I love our home and we love our community. We talk about how it's a perfect city to raise kids and how we want them to understand what it really means to have a community that's willing to go out of their way to show their Texas pride. Owners of STRs have a stake in the community and they have a stake in their property values, even more so than our long-term renter neighbors who don't have that same stake in the homes that they live in. We would fully support an STR home in the house right next door to us and I actually would welcome it because it means that we can show the visitors of our great state and our amazing city all that Fort Worth has to offer and the owners who host these guests are first in line to help beautify the neighborhood and solve problems that face our communities because honestly their livelihoods depend on it. Thank you Margaret. Emily Braun followed by Casey Hansen. Thank you Madam Mayor and Councilmen and Councilwomen for allowing me to speak today and especially thank you to Councilwomen back for taking care of our neighborhood situation. I'll keep this update brief. I'll share about my background at the experiences with House 1003 and 1011 West Shaw and possible suggestions. I'm the acting vice president of the Shaw-Clark Neighborhood Association, a director at a local Chick-fil-A. I'm pursuing my master's in counseling but most importantly I'm a wife and a mom to two kids who are eight and four and I share this because I wanna demonstrate my commitment to Fort Worth and I really care about this community. We live at 1001 West Shaw Street which is right next to the lovely house of 1003 West Shaw. As my colleagues have already shared the urgent need to stop the undignified and unsafe living conditions with these two houses, I will share my experience living next to 1003 West Shaw Street. This house is rented to families but the most recent family did not care for the house and they did not care for their dogs and would let them roam the streets. The dogs looked uncared for particularly with their fur and they were not responsible for taking care of those dogs. For this past month we have not been able to live at our house because of a flea infestation. While this is embarrassing to admit I was outraged when I discovered it was because of my neighbors. The professional exterminator said that this was one of the worst that he had ever seen. It took three professional exterminations and two personal foggings to finally clear those fleas. This meant that my family has not been able to live at home due to the unkept nature of my neighbor's house. All I ask that is that we put a stop to these undignified living situations and consistently follow through on these reports. I appreciate your support in keeping our Fort Worth safe. Thank you, Emily. Next speaker is Casey Hansen followed by Carol Peters. Hello council, hello mayor. That's a little loud. All right, my name is Casey Hansen and I am a resident of Fort Worth and a small business owner. I own short-term rentals myself and I am a short-term rental property management business. I work with multiple local property owners that use their rentals as supplemental income for their lifestyle. In addition to a retirement plan because we all know social security is not gonna do the thing. One owner in North Fort Worth has an airplane hanger that is rented out to a flight school students to store their planes in. He runs his accounting business out of it and he rents it out on Airbnb. Yes, it's an investment property but it will ultimately serve as his retirement plan when he is ready to sell his accounting business. Another local owner in here, Dickie Zarina, likes to travel. She uses one side of her duplex to rent out on Airbnb and that way she can travel at her leisure and come back home to the backside of her duplex. So not only does the consumer side of short-term rentals feed our local economy and fellow small businesses, it is also feeding its residents to support their present and their future livelihood. When making the consideration of short-term rentals in our neighborhood, most people are concerned with the liability portion as well as their property value, which rightfully so. As a licensed insurance agent, I get this question more often than any other question. I would consider though, what is the damage of a 12-month-long tenant versus a damage of a weekend-long tenant? So what's the worst-case example? Parties, which is what most people's concerns are. Fair enough. Short-term rental platforms like Airbnb have a strict no-party policy. It is in the property's owner's best interest to not allow parties either but we know that they could possibly happen. However, consider that the moment a noise complaint occurs, the weekend guest is escorted off the property and the home is put together in a for-sale-type condition to be listed to other renters. However, in my own neighborhood, the renter two doors down for me has no less than six half broken down cars in the driveway, multiple gatherings in the front yard during the week and accumulates trash and junk literally as we speak. So what can be done? They're a long-term renter, they're allowed to be there. So consider also that we're speaking of the extreme and not the norm. My normal guess consists of couples coming into town for a wedding, working professionals coming in for a conference, or families being displaced due to home renovations. These are not crime-ridden strangers. They're everyday folks just like you and me. If we plan policy around the extremes then we are hurting our local economy and our fellow neighbors. So I ask that you consider all-forth residents when deciding what short-term rental is made for our city. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker is Carol Peters, followed by George Charles. Thank you, Mayor Parker and members of the city council for allowing me to speak tonight. I'm Carol Peters from Fort Worth, Texas representing United neighborhoods of Fort Worth. I live in District 8. I stand in support of the city's current ordinance regulating short-term rentals. I commend our city leaders vision in crafting a policy that offers a path to new types of lodging while protecting single-family neighborhoods. Because of our ordinance, Fort Worth has not experienced the explosion of short-term rentals that has plagued other cities. In Fort Worth, short-term rentals may flourish in multi-use, commercial, like commercial, and many other zoning schemes for not allowed in single-family neighborhoods. Fort Worth's approach has been validated by Dallas which is moving towards a similar ordinance after a backlash from citizens fed up short-term rentals disrupting neighborhoods. According to Inside Airbnb and other data-mining sources, Fort Worth has between 1600 and 1700 short-term rentals. In comparison, Dallas has 6,000. Short-term rentals are operating throughout Fort Worth legally and illegally. Enforcement of the current ordinance has been hampered by a lack of resources and a registration plan allowing operators to fly under the radar. Contrary to what is portrayed by the industry, short-term rental operators are not usually local owners. And you have heard the statistics in a previous presentation. 56% of Airbnb hosts in Fort Worth have more than one listing. One Dallas-based host has 43 of its 230 Airbnb listings in Fort Worth. Also 76% of the properties are entire homes or apartments, non-homeowners renting out of room now and then to earn extra income. Neighborhood preservation is your number one priority. Our citizens have just begun to realize that city could open the door to many hotels next door. Understanding and acceptance of an unfamiliar industry will take time, education, and conversation. Community engagement should be extended held after the summer vacation season when most key parties are absent and executed with transparency and patience. Otherwise, the council will appear to be just checking a box. My recommendation is to allow short-term rentals to grow in the zones where they are now allowed, which are expanding every day, then revisit any change in a few years. What Fort Worth is missing is robust enforcement and a solid registration scheme. Good policymaking is a both an art and a science. Beware of the unintended consequences of poorly crafted and rushed policy. And I would like to speak for the older folks who are referenced not liking STRs. I don't mind STRs at all, just not in my neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you, Carol. Our next speaker is George Charles, followed by Joyce Torres. My name is George, I'm in charge of the resident's address, number 7429-0-1-274, Fort Worth. There can be no true rule of law unless equality under the law is preserved. With that, without that, the rule of law is perverted into the law being whatever the ruler says it is. This condition is both the primary weapon and reliable armor of a tyrant. I maintain that the mayor has demonstrated a contempt for equality under the law so blatant that his members of a certain ethnic group used to say Ray Charles can see it. Her usual razor sharp adherence to limits on public comment is suddenly exiled to Pluto when a public comment concerns financial gain for the mayor. I'm gonna say that again, financial gain for the mayor. On February 8th, a person commenting in a zoning case switched topic to speak in favor of increased compensation for city council. This was met with a warm, welcoming smile, not a warning to stay on topic followed by a threat of physical action by city employee armed with a deadly weapon. If this is not a textbook example of corruption, what is? Last week I witnessed the sickening spectacle of the mayor looking on approvingly as two ambassadors, ambassadors from the grand duchy of Hillwood were invited, invited to speak on a resolution. One did, no speaker card, no clock ticking, stating direct rebuttal to what someone who had followed the rules had said. It was like watching a Warner Brothers cartoon scripted by George Orwell. Very good for showing us grubby little peasants how the sausage is really made. A letter from legal told Bob Willoughby that he was acquired to quote, follow the duly adopted city council rules of procedure, unquote, if legal truly believes in equality under the law, it has a duty to the public to tell the mayor the same thing in writing. Since she is clearly in need of being reminded that that also applies to her. Our next speaker is Joyce Torres, followed by Donald Crosby. Good evening, mayor, city council members. My name's Joyce Torres. I live in Hempel Heights District 9. I'm here to talk about 1011 West Shaw Street. But first of all, I wanna thank Elizabeth Beck and all those involved in the cleanup of Shaw Street this morning. Y'all did a great job. Unfortunately, the problem still exists, main problem. And that is the person that resides at 1011 West Shaw Street. He has wreaked havoc on our neighborhood. And as long as he is able to conduct business, he will continue to wreak havoc on our neighborhood. So I'm asking for help to resolve that problem. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Torres. Our next speaker is Donald Crosby, followed by Bill Tatum. Good evening, council. Thanks so much for giving us the opportunity to come and speak with you tonight. I wanna congratulate councilman Blalock on new appointment and appreciate, I'm also in the North Fort Worth area there in the Fossil Creek area and glad to have you representing our area. I operate short-term rentals. I'm proud of that. I'm glad to do it. I provide a good service for folks that come in and stay in our wonderful city. I am a veteran. I am a former teacher for 10 years in the Fort Worth School District. I'm an orchestra director. Most people look at me and say, no, you can't be that. But I'm a professional cellist and I am a father of five. I provide for my family by giving a wonderful place for people to stay. I've had great reviews. I've had lots of people that have come and stayed in my home from Norway, from Germany, from the Philippines, from all over the United States and they all seem to enjoy it and they give me good reviews. And I would imagine that many of you have stayed in short-term rentals. As most of the folks here have stayed in short-term rentals before. They're a great opportunity for you to stay as a family and to spend time together rather than having to stay in a hotel. Which is sometimes not really fitting for a family gathering. I am obviously in support of us changing the ordinance so that it really meets the needs of our city. I'm not one of these guys. It feels like it's, you know, just do whatever we want to and run Hog Wild and Wild Wild West and do whatever ordinance that, you know, everybody uses their property for whatever they want. No, I don't believe that. I think that we need to find some kind of compromise between those that operate short-term rentals and those that don't want them in the area. You, Council, have a very difficult job. You have to make that decision and I know it's a thankless job and I wanna thank you all for working hard for our citizens of Fort Worth. We're grateful for you all to spend this time to come here and you could be with your families. Thank you so much and we hope that we'll come up with a good conclusion for all of us. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Crosby. Our next speaker is Bill Tatum, followed by Corrine Schutler. Thank you, Mayor and thank you, Council. I've heard a lot of interesting things about short-term rental. I presently have a house at 9526 Watercrest right adjacent to Lake Worth and several of my neighbors are here with me but I've heard a lot of interesting points of views about short-term rental and I really didn't know a lot about but I can tell you, if you have a short-term rental on the lake, you got a party house and you got all types of problems. Partyin' all night long obviously goes with a beer. The individuals, they'll take their ski dues, they park them in front of our boat house, we have private property, do not come on, didn't make any difference, they're still there. More interesting, my son who hadn't been out at my lake house he drove out there the other day and he called me up and he said, what's going on at the lake house? I said, what do you mean? He said, well there was about 20 turkey buzzards out there. I said, turkey buzzards. He said, yeah, they were all eating trash so what happened was the people that had stayed there usually Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, whatever that combination will be, they leave on Saturday or Sunday or Monday, they take all their trash out, they put it in front of the house on the wrong side, then the trash is not picked up till Tuesday, the turkey buzzards, the varmints, everything else comes in, you wouldn't believe how much trash that the neighbors had to pick up that was dispersed all over the neighborhood, it's environmental health hazard. So I realize everything's unique to its own place, Watercress is a really neat area and we just need the protection of keeping people from coming out and making a mess of our neighborhood and thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Tatum. Next speaker is Kareen Schutler. Shul, future, I'm sorry. Corey Schleeder, thank you. It's okay. Well, and Cassie Warren is next, go ahead. Hi, good afternoon, good evening, my name is Corey, District Five. I have lived in East Fort Worth since I was two years old and I am here representing myself and my friends and my generation that are in support of short-term rentals. Those of us with small houses or apartments don't have the room to host family or friends when they come in from out of town. So we started booking short-term rentals for them and it has been a huge blessing, especially if you have young kids or having grandparents come in from out of town, a lot of the time it's just a much better fit. We're able to get together as a family, we can put the kids down for a nap and not have to worry about dividing up in a hotel. I did, there were some chuckles when somebody mentioned that there weren't enough hotels and we might just be thinking of downtown. Like I said, I live on the east side of Fort Worth and there is only one hotel on the east side from Oakland to Arlington, there's one hotel. So when my husband and I went through IVF and we had his family come to visit, short-term rental was the only option for us. I have personally not stayed in a hotel for years, especially since having toddlers and my family and friends from out of state have been able to live like locals. They've discovered new places to eat and shop off the beaten paths by staying in short-term rentals and closing, I would like to say that the way that we travel now might not be like it was, we need options now for places to stay that are as diverse as the people staying in them. Thank you. Thank you. Cassie Warren followed by Patrick Gervel. Hi y'all, my name is Cassie Warren and I first wanted to say thank you all. Like Dawn said, I know this is a thankless job and maybe one day we can get y'all raised like you deserve. And I'm here in support of STRs, there's some people who couldn't sign up to speak, so could everyone who's in support please stand up? Thank you. I have two requests for you today. My first one is to make sure all the decisions that you make are not based on fear. I know you're gonna have a lot of people calling you, they're gonna say that STRs will mess up the fabric of their community and they're gonna ask you if you'd be okay having an STR next to you in your house. If your knee-jerk reaction is to say no, I would ask you to think, am I making this decision and having this feeling based on fear or is it based on facts? And I would warn you as a leader, don't ever make a decision based on fear because it's always the wrong decision. I have some examples. For example, when emails first came out, everybody thought the snail mail would be eliminated, but it wasn't. It just changed the way we used snail mail. The internet, everybody thought it's gonna eliminate books, it's gonna eliminate teachers, it'll change and eliminate the education system, but it didn't. It just changed the way we used it. It's the same way with STRs. It's not gonna eliminate our neighborhoods, it's not gonna ruin our neighborhoods, it would just give us the potential to change the use of our houses. My second request is that you trust that capitalism works. Right now it's illegal to have a short-term rental at Fort Worth, but they are needed and this has created a black market, as you all know, for STRs. If we would legalize them, however, and have regulations for them, at first my impulse was to think, oh my gosh, all of Fort Worth is gonna be a hotel. We'll have millions pop up, but then I started thinking about it more and praying about it, and I was like, no, because there's checks and balances. It's supply and demand and capitalism does work. In closing, I know you guys work really hard to represent your districts and that's why you guys are awesome. Trust your instincts and we trust you all and we trust your reasoning, so ask yourself, do you want the right to be able to short-term rental your own property? If the answer is yes, the answer is also yes for those non-squeaky wheels. Thank you. Thank you, Cassie. Our next speaker is Patrick Gervel, followed by Rick Herring. Good evening. My name is Patrick Gervel, I'm not Gervel, but I live in District 7. I've been listening to everything every all tonight and it makes us, we already have an ordinance against the short-term rentals. It's 23110-02-02-18. I'm one of the unfortunate ones that have a short-term rental next to me, okay? It's not all of what everybody says it is. We get a constant turnover of people that invade my privacy, my family's privacy, my grandkids' privacy, my daughter's privacy. It's a constant struggle to get the trash taken out. People running down the street, dogs, the people when they rent the home that dogs run all over the place, they don't pick up after themselves. The last rental they had to have the garbage, the next rental came in through the garbage in the back of their house. When my house sits above it and I got the smell of that lovely fragrance of trash decaying, I have to take it out and put it in front. When I do call the owner, I get no reply. When I do see him, when he stops by in maybe 10 minutes, he'll say, hey, I'm here to help you, but he's never there. He didn't phase my privacy. You talk about it, you would like it and invade your privacy. I have a dock on the lake. I can't go on it in the weekends, why? Because there's people drinking beer, smoking dope, foul language, you name it, you wouldn't want it in your home, during your neighbors. I understand the great stories I've heard tonight, but I'm telling you my story. And I think it's dead wrong. We already have it on the ordinance. I don't want some third party coming in speaking for me if you want to let the people vote on it. But I don't believe a third party is the way to go on this deal. And I really do think and I respect you for being here tonight and I appreciate it, but I think something needs to be done because my privacy is being invaded. I pay enough taxes in Tarran County alone. Okay, it's one of the highest paid counties in the state. And I just feel like I'm being violated, my family is being violated, my neighbors are being violated because we don't know who these people are. It's a constant turnover. It's a hit or miss. You don't know who it is. I've heard all these beautiful stories about people, but the 30 day rule and them turning it over every weekend and weekend and weekend with a different group of people needs to stop. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker is Rick Herring followed by Roy Barker. I'll see Rick anywhere. Rick's not here. Roy Barker is Roy here. No, Dave Schwart followed by Jared Roker. Good evening, Mayor Parker and city council. My name is Dave Schwarty. I reside in Arlington, Texas, but I'm a co-founder of the Texas Neighborhood Coalition. I practiced law for over 40 years. I was in house council for two major months and I'm a Texas corporation before I finally retired. Our primary mission at Texas Neighborhood Coalition is in helping neighborhoods avoid and then address the problems that inevitably arise whenever short-term rentals creep into residential neighborhoods. I've listened to the tales of whoa here tonight and I have to tell you, we hear exactly the same thing in every other community where city officials open the door to short-term rentals. And I'll sort of sum up the reactions I've heard. The people who make money off of them, love them. Everybody else hates them because they have to deal with the consequences. I want to leave you with four key points tonight from the neighborhood perspective. First, you have short-term rental regulations that many cities across the state wish they had because you have very specifically allowed them to operate in some areas and you are very specifically prohibited from operating them in others. Second, the issues that you may be experiencing in Fort Worth with the growth of illegal short-term rentals is not because there's something wrong with the rules. It's because the rules have not been aggressively enforced. And I come here as a resident of Arlington to say please do not make the mistake in thinking that short-term rental rules cannot be enforced. In Arlington, we've had rules in place for over three years. They banned short-term rentals in most residential neighborhoods. They allowed them in most of the city. That was not residential. We allowed them in some residential areas near Cowboy Stadium that wanted them. And they wanted them because they were a transitional area that needed some help. This compromise has worked. And I will tell you that our enforcement mechanisms at Arlington have worked. We have shut down a number of illegal operations with short-term rentals. We have citizens who work with code enforcement to assure that those regulations in fact work and I'm one of those folks. I would recommend that the city officials here reach out to their counterparts in Arlington because I think what you're going to hear from them is that there are tools that will work efficiently without driving up a lot of expense. And I will add that of course, no system of detection is perfect but you don't abandon rules against speeding because some people get away with it. The last thing I want to say because I think I'm about out of time, coming close, is short-term rentals are not a valuable source of hotel taxes. In fact, because so many operators evade the necessity to paid hotel taxes and I think your data here in another city show that, short-term rentals also actually siphon away from cities revenues that would otherwise be paid by larger hotels. So thank you for your time. Our next speaker is Jared Roker. Good evening, council. Jared Roker here. I'm the vice president of the Fort Worth short-term rental alliance. Just want to say thank you so much for your time. Until you sit out here a few times, you really don't get an understanding what you guys have to get bombarded with from every angle and so we really do appreciate your service. I just wanted to give you an update that our organization sent out over 300 emails to registered neighborhood associations and alliances today, inviting or requesting that we can attend their neighborhood meetings and work with their various alliances to see if we can work together on a short-term rental ordinance. I'm happy to say we've gotten some positive feedback and some requests to come and speak. You know, pointing out to what David had to say about the compromise working in Arlington. So my question is if it worked in Arlington, why can't it work here? Why can't we compromise? Why can't we work together and make something work here in Fort Worth? So that's a good point that he brought up. I will say that our goal is to build an ordinance where we work together and build support for an ordinance that supports as many people in Fort Worth as possible. And if we work together, we'll build the best ordinance that we possibly can. And what, as a former president of a neighborhood association here in Fort Worth, it was very important that whenever we had an issue of contention or anything, we brought it before our members. My concern is some of what you're hearing because bad news always travels faster than positive news, right? That's what you might be hearing might be mostly opinions of boards and not of the residents themselves. That would be my concern. So if there's any boards here that have made this decision on behalf of their neighbors and they haven't brought it before their neighbors, I highly encourage you to do that. At the very least, let them take a vote, whatever you need to do, but don't just assume because there's five of you on a board that represent 2,000 homes that what you five have to say is what the neighborhoods really want. So I just wanna offer that up. We're doing everything we can to support the cause and come to an agreement on an ordinance that works for everybody. We've extended the olive branch. We're doing things in the community. And I think if we work together that we can really forge an ordinance that's great for Fort Worth. So thank you for your time. Thank you, Jared. I believe that's a lot of our speakers, but I just wanna make sure no one had checked call and maybe they're here in person just in case. Yes, ma'am. What's your name? Yes, come on down. Thank you. Judy Taylor, let me see Judy. We'll check that just a second. I didn't see your name on here. Go ahead, Lori. Hi, good evening. My name is Lori Dugdale and I reside in Mylum Street in Fort Worth. I'm a Fort Worth native property owner, both my home and investment real estate. I have spent the past 30 years as a licensed real estate agent here and a property manager in Fort Worth. I'm currently still a member of the Fort Worth Board of Relators. And in my years of property management, I have experienced many changes implemented surrounding rental properties, both long-term and short-term. And two things I wanted to point out of things that did work were some of the examples of other cities here in Tarrant County that they implemented, that really worked with regards to rental properties. And registrations. The city of Hurston-Wataga, if you're renting a property, your in-state, out-of-state management company, that property has to be registered, you can register it online. Once a year, you have to input who the owner is, who the tenant is, who the management company is and any contact information. Also, if a tenant is moving in, moving out, that property needs to be inspected. That property needs to adhere to the city requirements. And this example would be smoke fire detectors, it's habitable, secured locks, so forth. And it really helped clean up rental properties as I sometimes refer to, slum loading. We have rental properties. We have homeowners. Our city is growing so fast and in my experience, I just cannot get over the amount of people moving into the area. And they're not just from California buying, they're visitors, our tourists. I mean, even with just some of the rental properties that we managed, not even just the short-term coming from Airbnb, traveling nurses, COVID. We had doctors, we had nurses, they needed places to stay. Our freeze, whether it was three months, five months, a lot of rental properties that were able to, you know, to help with that. And so my opinion was that rental registration really works, short-term, long-term, holding property owners accountable for the health and safety of that property. My second was also to be reminded of one of the things that I've listened to in here, and that's fair housing. We have people visiting here. Let's remember our Fair Housing Act. You know, we cannot prohibit on who we rent to, who we sell to based on our act. So anyway, thank you for your time. Thank you for what you do. Thank you, Lori. That's a loss of our speakers. Judy, I don't have you on my list, but I'm gonna come find you, okay? Okay, meeting adjourned. Thank you very much.