 All right. Welcome. Welcome everyone to the Neighborhood Improvement Strategy, a comprehensive community initiative workshop. That's a handful or a mouthful I mean. We are, as mentioned in the chat, we just started the live stream, but we're going to give it just a couple of minutes so that we can allow everyone who wants to hop into this session to join. So we will be getting started in probably 1.5 minutes now. So feel free as we're waiting to put your introduce yourself in the chat, put your name, where you're from, things like that, and I'll be giving an official welcome and introduction as well as additional instructions. So again, we'll be getting started in about one, one and a half minutes. Okay. I think that was about two minutes. So we are going to go ahead and kick off this session. Again, thank you so much for joining us today for the Neighborhood Improvement Strategy and Comprehensive Community Initiative Workshop. We're so glad to have you here with us and we're really looking forward to a great day with you here at the 2021 NUSA conference hosted by this by Fort Worth. My name is Laura Delevega and I am from the City of Garland, which is located in Texas, and I work in the Office of Neighborhood Vitality, and I'm going to be your host during this workshop. So before we start, I do want to point out all of the different ways that you can share feedback and ask questions and also network with everyone. Now, you don't have to use any of these tools if you don't want to, but they're all great ways for you to interact with everyone. So first, let's go ahead and look at the right hand of your screen to the inbox. It's at the very top right. When you see a number in green or in red pop up, that means that someone at the conference has sent you a message. And so to read it, you just click on it and then you'll respond the same way. Below that, the next tab down is the chat room. And so this is the perfect place, as I mentioned before, to say hi to everyone, introduce yourself, where you're from, you can make comments here. Now, all of these comments are public for everyone, so don't put any private comments in there. But it's just a great way to be engaged in today's workshop. The next tab is for questions. So during the presentation, if you have a specific question that you'd like asked, go ahead and write it there. And so once the presentation is over, I'm going to go back through that list of questions and then I'll verbally ask the presenter and we'll respond and get those answered for you. I will also keep an eye on it. And if your question is already answered throughout the presentation, like in the presentation later, I'll just go ahead and checkmark that as answered. But we will do our best to respond to all the questions at the end of the presentation. Below that, you will see the poll section. I don't think we have any polls for this particular session, but if we did, that's where you find it. And then below the polls is the people's tab where you can see the list of everyone who is attending this workshop with you. You're also able to click on the names of the participants and see their contact information. And if you'd like, you can click on, there's like a blue thought bubble and you can send them a quick private message. So any messages that you send through that section will go straight to their inbox and that will be private. So that's where you could do the private messages. And then the last tab, this is where you will find additional resources for this workshop. And so that's where all the files are the presentation. I believe the presentations there, there's some videos that we'll be showing. And so I believe those videos are there as well. But you know, even after this conference is over, you will still have access to those files and to this session because this session is being recorded. And you'll have access to it until the end of August, which is amazing. So if you by chance implement any of these ideas or programs that you hear, you can still hop on here, put some comments, let us know how it goes. And so we'd love to hear from you. I think that's all the networking, working resources I needed to cover. So please let me welcome Mr. Victor Turner from the city of Fort Worth. He is here to discuss the neighborhood improvement strategy, a comprehensive community initiative. So let's give it up for Mr. Victor. Thank you, Laura. That was a mouthful. So those of you that have not introduced yourselves, please do so in the chat. Welcome to Fort Worth virtually. Wish you all could be here. It's beautiful weather today. Rain is held off. And I want to talk to you a little bit about some of the things that we've done to enhance our neighborhoods and make them a little bit more aesthetically pleasing and attractive and to stimulate investment in those neighborhoods. And we'll take questions. If you have a question during the presentation, that's fine. I think we said at the end, but if you want to stick something in the chat during the presentation, that is okay. So also before I get started, if you want to put in the chat some major issues that you all are facing in your various neighborhoods, please put that in as well. So we'll kind of have an idea of what are some things that you would like to see improved in your particular parts of the country. So we'll talk a little bit about our neighborhood improvement strategy, how we started it, how long it's been in existence, how we go about selecting neighborhoods, the for and after surveys that we do with the residents of particular neighborhoods so that we can measure if there's been any substantial improvement after we've invested the resources, a little bit about the meetings that we have with the residents of the neighborhoods and our various departments, and how we work. Even though Neighborhood Services is the lead agency, we work with a lot of city departments in implementing the program. Also how we measure the effectiveness, our tracking and reporting. And then we'll look at some successes. A big part of the program is crime prevention. And so we have some videos that we share with you from Fort Worth PD and also look at some of the improvements that have taken place in one of our neighborhoods named Stop Six, Lessons Learn, and then talk about some ways that you may want to implement some programs similar to the one that we have. So wide neighborhood improvement strategy. As you can see, back in 2016, the city of Fort Worth looked at various neighborhoods across the city and what were some of the things that we could address. One being property values, look at the number of building permits that have been issued before and after. Look at unemployment rate in a particular neighborhood. What is the household income in that area? What is the percent of high school graduates crime, code issues like substandard structures, and then infrastructure? What is the street condition in a particular neighborhood? This on the left, you can see some of those measures and the right in the various categories. And some of them now point out what I just mentioned. We look at unemployment rate, household income. What is the education of the residents in a particular neighborhood? The public safety or crime stats, the infrastructure. And also, we looked at things like health and is the area of food desert, just livability factors. This is a several maps that kind of look at some of the items that I talked about. I don't know if y'all can see that, but we basically have graphically displayed those items that I just touched on. I was going to say, if you guys say amen in the chat, we'll get through it real quick. Also, here's some of the short and long-term goals of the program. One, as I mentioned, crime is a big component of the program. We want to improve public safety. We want to utilize our resources to improve the physical characteristics of the neighborhood. And then a big part of it is community engagement, bringing the neighbors together, working on a project to improve their neighborhood. And then long-term, the economic revitalization of the neighborhood and some various supportive services to create self-sufficiency and reduce poverty. The program actually started in 2017. You can see we funded from a half percent of the municipal property tax. Since that time, we've transitioned to funding that's still remaining. From that tax, the program has grown from 2.5 million to now a little over 3 million that's set aside each year for the selection of a different neighborhood and implementation of the program. So you can see stop six in East Fort Worth was our first neighborhood and as present, Northside, Rosemount and Como, which we just selected in January. You can see the mouse budgeted for each one of those neighborhoods. Down below, capital projects, some of the things we do, working with our public works department, infrastructure improvements like sidewalk construction, street lights, repaving with our parks department, some park improvements, tree planting, public safety. We work with police. Then our code enforcement, we do a lot of cleanup, eliminate the light. And then we have some money for admin to do outreach and mailouts and pay for some staff time. Our process, we identify through our neighborhood profile areas, which neighborhoods are distressed and what are some of the characteristics that cause it to be distressed. We analyze that information, look at our objectives, and I'll share with you a spreadsheet a little later how we score those neighborhoods, and then we review that as a team and share that with our city manager's office and of course the council members involved during this process before we release it to the public. Some of the criteria we look for and look at in selecting a neighborhood, you can see those that are highlighted kind of an orange or yellow crimes against people, broadband, internet, access and food desert, they're weighted a little bit more in pavement condition index. I weighted a little more heavily than the other areas, but as I previously mentioned, household income, poverty rate, unemployment rate, percent of the population without a high school diploma, substandard structure violations, so code issues, and then has there been any other type of leveraging or projects in that neighborhood as well as the capacity of the neighborhood association and the leadership. So we work with our community engagement team to see just how active has the leadership been in that neighborhood. What are some of the things that they've been doing? Are they regularly having neighborhood association meetings? So we measure all of that as part of the selection process. This is the spreadsheet that I mentioned to you that we utilize to score the neighborhoods. As you can see across the top is the name of the various neighborhoods that we looked at this past year and some of the factors that I just talked about. I believe at the bottom of the spreadsheet it may be chopped off, but we have a neighborhood conditions score and then a the neighborhood capacity and leveraging scores and then an overall score. So as you can see it's weighted in each one of these categories and then we look at what the total score based on the various metrics to select the neighborhood each year. So this is completely data-driven based on these metrics that we have listed. So it takes out a lot of the guesswork and political pressure to select any particular council members, a neighborhood in their district or ward. So this is the process that we use to analyze information, census data information to select our neighborhood for the neighborhood improvement dollars each year. This is another view after we've gone through and analyzed all the data we've narrowed down to three neighborhoods and share that information. So council won't have to look at a whole list of you know 10, 12, 15 neighborhoods that we're looking at. So we'll take the top three and list them side by side and look at these various areas and how they score. This is another view of the rankings here where we take all the neighborhoods and each one of these categories that you see shaded dark blue shows where that particular neighborhood ranked against the others in the categories that we measure. For example, Como is ranked one here but it had the lowest median household income. So that's why it was first in that category because it had the worst condition as far as income and you can see how the others are ranked across the board in the different areas. So it's just another way of graphically showing how the neighborhoods stacked up against each other when we did our scoring. This is a flow chart that looks at our overall process. As you can see our annual process it starts in December. Council members announced a chosen neighborhood and we worked very closely with our council members asked them for what neighborhoods they would like to see considered as we do our analysis. There may be some that we have not taken into consideration that they feel need to be looked at more closely. So we worked very closely with our council. We started having neighborhood leadership meetings but prior to that after we kind of identified issues and set boundaries you can see there's a survey. We have our neighborhood leadership meeting then we have a kickoff meeting. January is about the time we had a survey that kickoff meeting is around March and then we follow up as you can see the flow with developing priorities budget working with the neighborhood. We've had several meetings with each of our neighborhoods that have been selected with our most recent one being Como and extensive meetings and discussions about budget and priorities and so this is not something that's done within two weeks or three weeks it's several months in the process. As I mentioned we do a survey beforehand so we get an idea from the neighbors how they feel about their particular neighborhood and then we do a survey afterwards. So did we have any measurable impact with that investment of dollars in their neighborhood and how has it improved their neighborhood overall. So budget as I mentioned we've worked with several other departments established a budget for the items that typically neighborhoods select that they want done in their area and so we established that budget and worked closely with those departments to make sure they adhere to that so this is just an example of one of the components of the program. I mentioned collaboration with other departments we couldn't make this work unless we work closely with several departments police department our public works team code enforcement our community engagement staff as well as parks department are the major departments that we collaborate with as part of the program tracking and reporting so we track the program in two ways one based on the budget and also I'll have the objectives been met so to the left you can see the budget so we track to make sure the items that were selected to be part of the program where are we on expenditures that's one of the major emphasis of our city manager's office that we get the resources out there and the projects get done in a timely manner so we keep track of each one of the line items where it is at any particular point if we need to make adjustments in any of these areas and move dollars around so we track that and see where we are at any point in time during the process and then on the right over some of the outcomes later feet of sidewalks constructed tons of vegetation removed a number of security cameras installed so those are some of the things that we keep track of that were selected by the neighborhood and our team for implementation in a particular area one of the things that we have had a lot of questions about you invest all this money in a particular neighborhood are you creating gentrification particularly we a lot of these are low moderate income neighborhoods but you can see here in stop six which was the first neighborhood selected which had gone years with lack of investment now the neighborhood is starting to turn around and a lot of new homes being built just recently we were selected as for a choice neighborhood initiative grant with our working with our housing authority here for with housing solutions so from 2015 to 2019 you can see how property values have increased in the stop six which is encouraging so it's almost keeping pace with how the DFW area is property values are increasing building permits another thing that we look at and measure so our more people starting to pull permits and and whether it's commercial or residential in a particular neighborhood after we've gone in and made some improvements so you can see that's on a steady incline in our stop six neighborhood the fact is nearly doubled from 2015 to 2020 as you can see or has doubled what is the investment value of those permits that's another metric that we look at to see just exactly what is the value of the permits being pulled so you can see that has increased over time also we give regular updates and with with the council of where we are in a particular neighborhood so here's some of the things we've looked at you know our expenditures what percent of the work is being completed has crime gone down as a result of some of the measures we put in place such as the cameras and you'll you'll see an interesting video in a little bit of how that how effective those security cameras are and then the investment we just talked about permits and permit values so all of those things we track successes I believe here is the video before you play the video one of the things I failed to mention before we get to the video just recently we received several million in CARES Act dollars and one of the issues particularly with kids working or going to school virtually at home was having access to Wi-Fi throughout the the community well one of the ways that we went about how we were going to target that and select what areas to put in Wi-Fi was some of the CARES dollars where we looked at our neighborhood improvement areas where we had already looked at a lot of the data and our IT department chose those neighborhoods to start with putting Wi-Fi access in some public area so people could have access to to work from home or do their schoolwork at home so wanted to point that out before we play the video so the video coming up is going to be about stop six which was six stop along the railroad that's how a railroad line that's how it got its name council member Bivens will be narrating the video but it gives you kind of a summary of how this program has impacted that particular neighborhood which was struggling for a long time with crime and just a lack of investment so Laura if you can go ahead and and play that all right also woman Gina Bivens coming to you from stop six the community and where I live so sorry I'm gonna go ahead and mute that there we go today there is nothing that sparks excitement and optimism like the sites of new construction and they're building new homes all over stop six but it didn't happen overnight it started with a spark from city hall stop six Cabell was Fort Worth's first neighborhood improvement strategy project the two and a half million dollar project initiative began in January of 2017 focusing on a small area with higher than average crime and lower than average income just over a year later the changes are striking it is a godsend it is beautiful we have not had this kind of development for our community and for for the people who live in our community the city has installed more than 300 new street lights making the neighborhood safer at night security cameras installed at key locations have helped police make a rest before the city's initiative vacant buildings like this one attracted vagrants are worse the city has demolished 20 dilapidated buildings cleaned up dozens of abandoned structures and hauled away the debris making vacant lots ready for redevelopment and developers like Mark Gentry are taking notice he has half a dozen single family homes under construction and plans to build 10 to 15 more by the end of 2018 I'm from this area and I just want to be able to give back I'm a minority on business and I'm just looking to be a part of the acceleration of this growth of this community that growth includes not just increases in the number of building permits but also the dollar value of investments in stop six more than nine million dollars in 2017 and more than seven million in the first half of 2018 just take a look at some of the other improvements the city has made in stop six 278 tons of brush and trash cleared from right of ways 373 dead and hazardous trees removed more than 180 tons of litter and illegal dump sites cleaned up 7500 linear feet of new sidewalks make it safer for children to walk to school and parks dozens of new curb ramps make it easier for residents of all ages and abilities to get around and rose del plaza park has a brand new playground benches picnic tables and walking trail partly because of the city's initiative us housing and urban development secretary ben carson visited the martin luther king jr community center in stop six announcing that center will become an envisioned center the only one in texas those centers will connect area families with the tools they need to become self-sufficient hud's mission is creating affordable housing this ties in to that mission and goal of creating home ownership opportunities for the american dream the city's neighborhood improvement strategy has helped make stop six a cleaner safer community and we continue working with the residents to keep that momentum going but the beauty of the city's neighborhood improvement strategy is that it can be duplicated building strong communities throughout fort worth for more information visit fort worth texas dot gov slash neighborhoods jenna bivens city of fort worth thank you laura so as you can probably tell from her voice miss bivens used to be a news report in the anchor so a very distinct voice in describing her neighborhood but that gave you an overall view and summary of what went on and what is still going on in stop six neighborhood i think there was a question about rehab and on houses a lot of new construction going on in stop six we do have federal programs like many of the other cities around the country to do on occupied rehab and then we also have neighborhood empowerment zones that have been sent in for folks to make improvements so there are some some tools in place for continued improvement and development of individual homes not just only new construction we also have our second neighborhood that was selected is ash crescent and councilmember kelly allen gray was going to give you a little bit of a summary of what went on in ash crescent the second neighborhood that was uh selected for this program so if you go ahead and play that one laura laura can you hear me if you go ahead and play the next video of ash crescent just work is underway in ash crescent after the city identified this area of south fort worth as needing a lot of help we will spend 2.7 million dollars here to help clean up and revitalize the neighborhood it all started with community meetings and a survey to let residents tell us what they needed and wanted most their top priorities crime prevention and cleanup they put the cameras up they didn't cut down on the dumping i like the part where they they cut the trees they didn't clean up the alleyways they mowed all the vacant lots and cleaned up you know picked up around the area well i've seen more police is uh driving by and i've seen a lot of trash being picked up before overgrown trees and brush made this street nearly impassable before and after city crews cleaned up illegal dump sites before and after demolishing substandard buildings to make way for new homes meanwhile neighborhood services has helped 22 families apply for more than 250 000 dollars in funds for repairs to their homes work is underway at 21 homes including this one on ash crescent where crews have replaced a dangerous gas heater installed air conditioning and will treat lead based paint this summer but the improvements are more than just physical the city is helping build community too neighbors of all ages joined the mayor's recent walking town hall then shared food and fun at the first ever community carnival children played on a pint-sized obstacle course built by volunteers others were fitted for a new bike helmet or many just chilled with free books compliments of our partner trinity basin preparatory free educational activities for children continued this summer provided by area churches service agencies and the city of fault work the city has done their part but it's up to up to keep it up you know we can't expect to send it to do everything that can do spirit has led to a creation of a new neighborhood association they've already held their first cleanup and membership is growing they're coming because they're interested once they hear about it they see it's legit i think it's becoming infectious so it's growing there's more to be done in ash crescent but i'm proud to say this city neighborhood business community partnership is off to a strong start to learn more about the ash crescent revitalization efforts go to fortwood texas dot gov slash ash crescent fantastic so you saw a little bit about stop six and then the adjacent neighborhood and what I think is most interesting is that uh in addition to some of those community development housing related improvements is the is the crime element and reduction of of criminal activity in these neighborhoods as a result of surveillance cameras and fly cameras those of you're not familiar to fly cameras are able to read a license plates and that's been an interesting topic with some of our neighborhoods talking about the the implementing we're installing cameras in the neighborhood uh hoods to see if it's infringing upon some of them's privacy we've seen that it has been a tremendous advantage to have those cameras installed to reduce crime and one of the examples is stop six and there is a short police video there's going to be some uh it's no sound you'll just see some some writing describing the activity but to give you a little preview it's going to show where there's a I believe a stolen vehicle and a person is hiding in some bushes and as a result of the cameras the police are able to apprehend that suspect so if you go ahead Laura and play that next video from Fort Worth police department I guess I have to do a little narrating as you can see it was uh listed as a stolen vehicle that you the silver vehicle uh driving along the road there and a little bit USC example of how the fly camera works is going to zero in on the license plate uh of the vehicle shortly you see on the screen there are over 30 of these type of cameras that have been installed in stop six uh those fly cameras that are are able to resume in and identify the license number have been really helpful in reducing crime and stop six and there'll be a graphic a little later showing just how much uh crime has been reduced uh in that particular neighborhood but I want you to hold on this is the most interesting part that's coming up you can see there's a call resulting in foot chase I mentioned to you earlier the suspect is hiding in the shrubs there next to that that building uh on the screen the kind of red brick building uh police doesn't know where he is right now but they'll later come back and and find him hiding so this is the result of those uh security surveillance cameras in the neighborhood helping police apprehend suspect example here it helped with the car accident so not only we use the cameras for police also our code enforcement department uses cameras to help identify illegal dumping and police are able to get footage from codes and help arrest folks that have done illegal dumping to find them here's a situation where some young folks have gotten into a scuffle and you can see cameras are able to show what's going on there and police were sent to the scene but I think there was a comment about we have a crime control district that has dollars that have funded uh ccpd but we also utilize our neighborhood improvement dollars in neighborhoods that have been selected to be able to even put in additional cameras if the neighborhood uh chooses that as one of the uh the items that they want to to have in that neighborhood okay Laura if you cannot go back to the presentation so some of the overall successes uh reduction in crime in every neighborhood that we implemented the program just overall improvement of how the residents feel about their particular neighborhood not just them but other residents in Fort Worth about particular neighborhoods uh our neighborhood associations have developed a closer relationship with staff and they're able to know individuals to call for certain items whether it's code enforcement or neighborhood services for housing or public works so all of these various departments are working very closely with those neighborhoods that have been selected we work with all neighborhoods but we work even closer with those that have been selected for the neighborhood improvement program as you can see higher compliance with code standards property values go up also more building permits are pooled in particular areas that have been selected uh next slide some lessons learned if with any program uh you go through some bumps and bruises and uh continue to work on improving and so it's no different with this particular program generally once a neighborhood has been selected it's about a three-year process by the time all the different parts that have been chosen to be implemented in the neighborhood have been completed whether it's infrastructure or surveillance cameras or park improvements those type of activities that we utilize the dollars for budgets of course we have to make sure that we stay within the confines of what that budget was for a particular line item so we work closely with those departments to look for cost overruns try to save there also the area that you choose uh earlier in the presentation we talked about we use neighborhood profile areas and the mapping is sort of kind of like a heat map where we look at the most distressed areas so we try to narrow that down so we can have the greatest impact in the neighborhood versus spreading it out in a larger footprint the next bullet where it says not every neighborhood welcomes surveillance cameras yeah we had a very lengthy debate for one of our neighborhoods about whether they were needed or not and privacy we've shown you some examples where we think it is very beneficial to have cameras whether it's to reduce crime or or catch folks that are doing illegal dumping or just even a traffic accident to help police with those items neighborhoods that have strong neighborhood associations whether this this type of program anything it's always helpful when you have neighborhood folks that are advocating for their area and supportive of more investment to to make improvements uh adopt a budget try to stay uh keep from having five years of doing a program so those just a list of things uh we mentioned three million dollars that go very far but it has had a significant impact in several of our neighborhoods serving as a catalyst for even more investment i mentioned stop six now has received a choice neighborhood grant which is 35 million dollars along with some other investment that's going into that neighborhood that the city is committed to and so this program the neighborhood improvement program was kind of a jumpstart to more activity and more things taking place in stop six next slide how can you do it in your own community so we use software called my sidewalk that has the census data and that's how we pull a lot of that information uh regarding uh education and poverty levels so a lot of that socioeconomic information and then we work with our other departments on the conditions of the the parks and the streets the infrastructure type things and come up with a matrix to measure those as i mentioned everything is data driven is based on uh numbers versus uh influence so we strongly suggest that you you look at that uh also um make a big deal out of it so we have big neighborhood meetings we do presentations at council so everyone is anticipating what is the next neighborhood that will be selected so we we've been able to really uh elevate the program and and and make it something that neighborhoods really look forward to as well as our council members as mentioned the city is not driving it we use data but we share that with the neighborhood representatives that also play a major role in what they would like to see accomplished in the neighborhood uh with that investment and as we mentioned here we've mentioned it before we involve the council member to represent that area uh we track data uh we keep everyone informed we do before and after surveys so we're constantly measuring uh what we're investing if it's been effective next slide so we're now uh year five it's been our fifth neighborhood that's been selected and so yeah if you infuse some cash what do you want to do to try to keep the momentum so that's what we're looking at now what are some ways that we can go back and refresh some of those neighborhoods while we continue to select new neighborhoods whether it's utilizing some of our federal funding in those neighborhoods whether it's looking for other uh resources that we can invest to keep the momentum going so that's one of the challenges uh that we're facing as we continue the program and and and continue to support those neighborhoods that have been selected some uh as far back as 2017 so that is it in a nutshell and I left some time for you all to ask questions I know there's several questions in the chat and we'll do our best to try to get those answers to you today or you will have your information and we'll be able to share that before the conference is over with Laura back to you awesome yes no there are tons of great questions um I mean one I just want to say thank you so much for sharing Victor I mean I'm just blown away blown away by all that you've done in those five neighborhoods so thank you so much for sharing I know I have a lot of questions that I might follow up with with you after the conference but um let's get to some of these uh questions I'm scrolling up a bit um I know Daniel Haas asked are the improvements all completed within the year of designation or does it take no they're not in and completed within the year of designation as I mentioned uh it's anywhere from uh three five years we're trying to cut that down uh where it's more no more than like two to three years but as you all know that some of the infrastructure projects takes a little time um so yeah we're that's what we're working on now is reducing the amount of time that we spend in that neighborhood on this program and move to the next one awesome thank you thank you um the next question um was regarding infrastructure and I believe the wi-fi hubs oh goodness I lost it infrastructure what is the distance between the wi-fi hubs what are the security features uh to prevent illicit and illegal use of the public wi-fi yeah I can't answer exactly what the distance that uh that is between those but we can get that answer to you um uh before the conference oh with our IT people are are uh installing those wi-fi hubs so I can uh certainly get that and share with with the rule was another part to that question and the next question is are there any efforts being made in these neighborhoods to make sure that longtime residents are protected from rising taxes that they may not be able to afford yeah that's a challenge we're all facing in this is that uh property values are constantly going up uh and long-term residents have a fear not being able to continue to live in that neighborhood because of that particular issue um so yeah that's that's something that we're we're battling we continue to try to invest in neighborhoods I told you about some incentive programs we have uh to basically freeze taxes on some development for a period of time with our neighborhood empowerment program but yeah that that definitely is a challenge but we're trying to put more affordable housing in these thriving neighborhoods and and provide resources to existing residents to improve the value of their homes but the taxes is something that is a battle for for high growth areas so I really don't have a better answer for you but that is something that we've been diligently trying to figure out how we can best address that issue absolutely okay and the next question um is from uh basheel and there's actually two questions so I'll go ahead and read both of them um I know you had mentioned that oftentimes it takes longer than the designated year uh for these programs but what happens if these programs need to be longer than a year um and then also where does the funding come from for these programs yeah as I mentioned it's our general fund dollars but this is the source is from our municipal property tax uh revenue percentage of that and so uh we try to get the programs the work done uh within a reasonable time we continue to work in those neighborhoods even after we selected the next next neighborhood so for example uh our list is stop six at the end that was our very first one in 2017 and so pretty much done with it there may be just a small bit of money left then the next one is ash crescent we have a park project there that still remains to be completed but we continue to work until that budget is exhausted and we've completed all the activities that were selected by the neighborhood and staff the challenge now is to try to reduce the amount of time that it takes to complete those activities but we continue to work on until it's done awesome um the next question from anaheim is if the improvement projects take a lengthy amount of time to complete um do you resurvey the neighborhood in case there are new residents or some have left um also do you have a high turnover of residents in your neighborhoods we do survey the neighborhood uh after the program has been completed as i mentioned we do a survey before and after uh we have not seen a high turnover of residents we've had several residents moving in those areas uh after we made that investment as i mentioned with stop six being our very first i mean now building permits are just off the charts in that particular area so folks are wanting to come back they used to live in the area that it moved away in fact the value of the homes that are being built uh has increased so uh it it's more people wanting to come back to that neighborhood if they grew up there or is even making more attractive to people that are moving to Fort Worth they want to be in one of these areas that says made an investment absolutely um we also have a question from a linda um she asked are there neighborhood improvement resources that you're aware of for rural i can't say that word rural communities in texas uh this is something that were started in and doing here with our dollars but it's not to say that a city couldn't apply for state community development block grant resources to do some uh type of improvements in their particular neighborhoods and rural parts of texas so you would just need to make sure that it's eligible for that particular type of funding and see if there's a way that you can incorporate some of the things that i mentioned uh that would fit into those eligibility criteria one you know with codes we're trying to eliminate slum and blight so that's something that you definitely could implement in a rural community uh also some of the infrastructure improvements whether it's the paving or the the sidewalks you don't see a whole lot of sidewalks in rural areas but i would definitely say that you could you could utilize some of those federal funds from the state and and incorporate some of these strategies awesome thank you um and then i have a question from miss yolanda wilson from miski hello yolanda um and she asks what have been that uh the impact on um illegal dumping well we've utilized a lot of money with our co-staff in removing a lot of that illegal dumping and as i mentioned we have strategically placed cameras in areas that we have a history of dumping so i think it has had a positive effect on reducing the amount of legal dumping just because folks realize that they are under surveillance if they're going and doing stuff illegal like illegal dumping so our co-stain does a massive suite as part of that we budget several thousand dollars for them to go in and clean up a neighborhood and then install those cameras so we can monitor any illegal activity that takes place awesome and and kind of following up videos gareth morgan asked how long are the videos retained for i'm not sure i have to get get an answer for you on on that how long they i know i've heard the answer but it doesn't come to me off the top of my head no worries and and again we'll have access to this until the end of august so um we'll definitely get some answers to you to all you attendees um some other questions include uh the let's see daniel asked did you say the count city council members are the ones who suggest which neighborhoods should be in the pool to choose from or is that something that your department determines repeat that out you can oh i'm so sorry uh daniel he asked um if you said the city council members are the ones who suggest which neighborhoods should be in the pool to choose from yeah it's a combination so staff looks at neighborhoods based on data ones that we know that probably are strong candidates for the program and then we work with our council members and say okay council member is there a neighborhood in your ward or district that we're missing that we need to take a look at keep in mind all of it is data driven so even if a council member suggests a neighborhood we run it through that whole analysis process to see if it scores uh well enough based on the metrics uh to warrant being strongly considered or comes out on top based on those metrics so it's it's data driven however we we most definitely consult with the council member to make sure there's not an area that we have overlooked that they think should be considered awesome um miss dot asked uh when you say move money around in the budget does that mean unspent funds on a line item could be used to another line item yes yeah that's what we're saying so there may be uh some items that we've completed all the work uh we came in less than what the uh estimated uh cost in there may be something else that we can do more of so yeah we can move dollars around that's what I what I meant about that perfect um speaking of money uh Lisa asked um is the money for each neighborhood placed in your department budget each year yeah so each year uh we have a dollar amount that we're working with so we know that um budget time and so that's how we go about uh sharing with other departments how much we have to work with and then there's uh some negotiating and working with those departments and the neighborhood on what areas are priority what do you want to see done and how much would it cost to get those particular items done awesome um uh Kenno Wong asked what the total cost on the camera systems were if you know we have that total and get that I don't have that readily available uh I believe the flock cameras are are the most expensive but uh it gets you a total of what we just did for the um the the last neighborhood that was completed we can get that for you I believe maybe in one of the slides it may have the budget for police and that's pretty much all camera awesome awesome um it looks like miss uh Zina Johnson was just giving a shout out about how she looks forward to viewing the video again and um she says this sounds like a great program when you consider the initial three million investment this is little considering the overall gain in so many ways she says to keep up the good work um let's see uh Theo asks if you are part of the city or a non-profit yeah I'm part of the city my department is neighborhood services department so yeah we're one of 22 departments and we work closely with our community engagement team and neighborhood associations and various other departments I guess I didn't mention early on but we have a unique department we administer all the HUD federal programs and then we're one of I don't know of any other city in Texas we also do the community action partner so we have the community service block grant and we do uh CAF and LIHEAP so we serve Fort Worth and the county for those social service type activities whether it's uh weatherization or utility assistance and then we have the federal programs from HUD uh that we administer uh Hopua and ESG and home and CDBG so it's kind of a combination plus we have our neighborhood empowerment zone program the NEC program as well and we're unique because we have a big part of our department does recreation related activities so we have community centers that we do some after school and summer day camp activities as well as our parks department so we kind of share in that function as well awesome um and that also answers uh John E. Baker's question a little bit he asked you know does the program only address physical improvements and if there were any social service programs and so I think you you mentioned a few but are there any other social service programs that are included in in that uh not particularly uh anything with the program is the the crime element trying to reduce crime trying to improve increase property values the overall appearance of the neighborhood but as a result of that investment we certainly utilize our other resources because keep in mind one of the the things we look at is the unemployment rate in a particular neighborhood uh the educational attainment of residents in that neighborhood so we can direct them to uh some of the other resources that we have through our as you mentioned uh we saw earlier Ben Carson talking about Ambition Center so we run a lot of social service related programs through that program that we can target uh to those neighborhoods so a lot of it is educating those residents about what we have available and particularly when we spend a lot of time in a neighborhood that's been selected those residents get chance to take advantage of some of those programs that they may not have known about previously that's great um a couple more questions I see one is from a Miss Brenda and she asks if the homes are privately owned and then Miss Zina asked if there is a fine related to code violations um and if so has violations uh I guess the number of code violations have they greatly decreased in these yeah violations have been decreased but a big part of the program is educating the residents about what our code violation so we kind of take a step back and don't uh swing the hammer on the residents when we're implementing this program is more about educating them about the violations uh of course over time as with any city you know your issue notices and then of course citations for repeated violations but for a long period of time when we're implementing the neighborhood improvement program it's about educating those residents about the violation so we're not we're not we're enforcing code but we're not penalizing the residents for lack of knowledge of what is a violation so it's a strong educational component during that time I think there was another part B to the question maybe yes um are the homes privately owned yeah the the homes are privately owned um mention is that when we've invested in these neighborhoods there has been an increase in the number of permits so just because of that small investment uh it has made the neighborhood more appealing more attractive so more individuals are wanting to return to those neighborhoods we do use some of our federal funds to assist non-profit organizations and private organizations private entities and in developing housing in various neighborhoods so uh but it's still end up being privately owned with just a funding resource to help make that happen awesome um let's see I see a question will his video be put in the file box um Theo uh I can I can go ahead and answer that for you the first two videos are in the file box the third police video the surveillance camera for some reason we were having some trouble uploading that into the file box but we'll definitely try to upload that third video so that way you could access that um Miss Vashil asked if we could get a template of that and um I might need to to connect with you privately to see what template you're what template you're looking for because there were a lot of really great um workflows and um charts and tables um that that were used so Vashil I mean might need to circle back with you on that one um Selena asked um privately owned and owners live in uh let's see do private let's see privately owned and owners live in the new neighborhoods or are these oh I guess Selena is asking if these are rental properties um or are they homeowner occupied properties that you work with yeah the examples that I mentioned those are are home ownership that where there's been that increase in number permits pulled and people moving back to their their old neighborhoods and people moving in neighborhoods they wouldn't have considered uh previously so yeah mostly home ownership but we do invest a lot in multifamily but it's not directly tied to this program perfect um oh the neighborhood grading matrix is what she was asking about okay um yeah we can we can connect with you um on that no that was a really great um a great matrix uh any other questions I think we may have cleared the queue um so if you have any additional questions feel free you can put them in the chat you can put them in the questions portion um we only have a couple more minutes uh in for this session I do want to remind everyone that this entire session has been recorded and you'll have access to the recording as well as I think even all the chat conversation and the files until the end of August so you can come back watch the video again or re-download the files and still have access to everything so um let's see uh Laura I don't know if you can put my information in the chat so if anyone want to contact me or remember our staff to delve a little bit more deeply I know we went through this fast and probably didn't do it complete justice as all this involved but uh we're very proud of the program we think has made a significant difference in Fort Worth and so yeah anybody want to reach out to us during the conference or afterwards we'd be glad to talk to them about how to get started. Yes Victor I will put your contact information in the chat let me just pull this up um before we oh Ruth you're so good Victor's email address is right here in the chat um Miss Dot says love this Fort Worth program it's so uplifting um just tons of kudos and thank yous here thank you all for joining us today let's see yes thank yous um yes Lisa asked if we have an additional additional questions can we email the presenters um yeah I'm gonna say yes Victor they have okay if y'all have additional questions please feel free to uh to email Victor um Ruth put his email in the chat so you can reach out to him thank you so much Lisa um you're getting some great great views here thank you all too kind absolutely uh well if there's no more questions we'll go ahead and release you to your next breakout session Victor thank you so much for sharing it was fantastic and we'll be seeing you around yeah yeah I have a great rest of the conference awesome um now attendees just a reminder you can use the back to lobby to go back to the lobby so we'll see you all around