 Good afternoon, Veronica Villegas, Municipal Equity Manager with Diversity and Inclusion Department. In 1990, Congress passed President George H.W. Bush signed into law a joint resolution designating the month of November as the first National American Indian Heritage Month. This now annual observance honors the history, heritage, and culture of Native Americans and Alaskan Natives and celebrates the vast achievements of America's original indigenous people. This year, the City of Fort Worth's Diversity and Inclusion Employee Committee is acknowledging Native American Heritage Month with two events. The first takes place today from 4 to 5.30 PM right after this meeting and before the City Council public comment meeting just outside the Council Chamber and serves to create awareness about the annual observance. It also will serve as an opportunity to promote the second event the committee has planned, which takes place on Thursday, November the 10th, from noon to 1 PM also here at City Hall. At today's kickoff, employees and community members are invited to stop by for traditional Indian fry bread and learn more about the November 10th program, Native Tribes in Texas, acknowledging the land in its first peoples. The program includes a historical presentation by Dr. Luss writing in, Assistant Dean and Director of Graduate Programs for the College of Liberal Arts at UT Arlington, and the primary advisor for the UTA Native American Student Association. It will also feature traditional Indian dancers from the Indigenous Cultures Institute located in San Marcos. If you can't make it to City Hall for the event, the program will be broadcast live on Fort Worth TV and on the city's YouTube channel. Reminders about the program will be sent via the Roundup and City News. Thank you. Thank you, Veronica. The next item is I'm going to call on William Remly to give an update on Court Week. William? All right. Thank you, Mr. Cook, Mayor, City Council, and City Management staff. I'm excited that we are here to announce. Next week is Court Week. It's that annual time again. We are very excited to come today and talk about the great things that we have next week. This is a community event. It's not just about in this court that we celebrate the great things our 143 employees do every day. And it is seven days a week. We are a 24-7 operation. Court clerks, judicial, marshals, administration, partners in the prosecution office as well. So legal is also one of our partners in this. Opening ceremony is Monday 7th-8th. So at each of your stations, you have a folder with information for next week. There's an invitation as well as a schedule. We do promote small businesses. So we do have food trucks here throughout the week. We are connecting with other departments who are coming in, Fire, PD, HR, all type of different departments are coming in to give information, whether it's safety or education or whatever that may be, eating healthy, those types of things all week. So this is about, if you will, thanking our staff. But also, we want to invite the community to come in. We'll have information about safety and all types of information related to the community and water safety, all those types of things. We do a lot of things. You can learn about what we do, everything from our marshals patrolling Lake Worth to our judges who, again, work 24-7, are aiding at the jail, to the clerks, and then also our court in the community, which is one of the things that we like to talk about. We have one coming up in Council Member Blalox District on November 12th. It's our last one of the year. So I want to thank each of the council members for your help this year and a scheduling one in each district throughout the year. We saw over 500 persons in the community were able to help with almost 2,400 cases throughout the year, so then we have one more left. So we need to go out in the community and we work with each council member and we thank you all for your support in that. And I just want to turn it over to Judge Rogers real quickly. After I do say Ruben Carrillo, who's kind of hiding here behind me, he has led this year's court week. So we do it with a staff member who steps up and leaves that and he has done an awesome job this year him and his five team members. So it is a group effort. So I do want to acknowledge his effort and then we also have Shelly Hollers who is our administrative service manager and Juan Paredes who's clerk of court. Judge Rogers real quick. Did you know that municipal courts see more people than all the other courts in Texas combined? Did you know that? You didn't know that. Now you do. So come see us next week. We're gonna have sessions with judges to answer questions. So that burning question that you've had next week, come talk to us. We would love to see you guys across the street, come visit with us, come see us. We can take care of your tickets. If you have any, that is. We'll be happy to see you. So hope you guys will have an opportunity to come visit us next week in Municipal Court Week. Thank you all very much. Mayor, if I can say something, Judge Rogers, thank you and your staff, you know, William as well for setting up, you know, community of the court over at the Northside Community Center of the week past. Really appreciate it. It got some really good feedback. Good, glad to hear that. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Next up are informal reports. The first informal report is on the August 2022 sales tax and Richard Zabala is available if there are any questions. Okay, Richard, you're off the hook. Next informal report is on drug testing policy and CBD oil advisory and Deanna Giordano is available if there are any questions. I got a couple. Deanna. Deanna, thank you for putting this together. I appreciate it. Two questions. First is what is the policy, what is the goal we're looking for for our random drug testing program? For the random, it's regulated by the Department of Transportation and it's mainly for our CDL drivers, those that are driving the commercial vehicles, we're required to ensure that we have random sampling testing of those individuals. And so it's only the DOT positions that we random, is that correct? And I'm looking to my staff. Okay. The random includes both the safety sensitive and the Department of Transportation and so the safety sensitive positions are those that perform individual duties that could have a higher risk of injury to self or others. And Margo, just confirmation, is that include the safety sensitive positions for the random testing as well? The population of testing is much smaller for DOT, it's a lot higher. Sure. So outside of the DOT, because that's a federal mandate for the safety sensitive positions, again, my question is, what's our end goal in performing the random testing? I see why we do pre-employment. I absolutely see why we do post-accident and I certainly see why we do reasonable cause. But I'd like to know what the end goal is in the random. It's to ensure that our employees are performing their jobs and their duties at a high level of safety standards. And so it is an OSHA best practice, particularly for safety sensitive positions because while they might not be operating commercial vehicles, they're still operating large pieces of equipment. They might be working in and around jobs where there's a high sensitive nature to the performance of those duties and we just want them to be in their best state of mind and free of any alcohol or drugs. Sure, I appreciate that. If you could get me a list of those safety sensitive positions and then if you could work with CMO, I'd like to know how much we're spending annually on that particular effort. And I will leave you with urging your department to work with legal on really making sure that we are getting out in front of the ever changing laws. I understand it's complicated. We have federal level, we have state level, but 37 states out of 50 have determined that the use of marijuana specifically, I know we're talking about CBD here, has a useful medical reason to be for people to use. And we know that a lot of that is in and around pain management. We know that it is a safer, less addictive alternative to opioids and CBD can also be a really valuable tool in that particular endeavor. And so I'd urge you to really look at what other cities and what other states are doing within the bounds of what Texas law requires currently to make sure that we're providing our employees every safe option they have as part of their medical care, whatever that should be. So we can certainly bring that back. We'll look at the spend and then we'll work with legal. I will share just kind of coming from a state where medical marijuana as well as recreational marijuana was legal, the laws and the policies were still very similar to what we practice here in the city of Fort Worth, where they were illegal to be under the influence of those substances, but we'll certainly like it exploring that further and making sure that our practices are best practices for the city of Fort Worth. I just want to clarify too. No, I'm not advocating for active use during medical, right, while they're on the job. But if someone's physician thinks that CBD is an available option for their care and treatment, we want to make sure that we're giving them that and that we're doing so in a way that still complies with state law. No one's, we don't want any employees showing up under the influence of anything. And we'll bring forward the list of positions that are considered safety sensitive. I appreciate that, thank you. Okay, our next informal report is on Forest Park Rides, Inc. or Miniature Trains, Dave Lewis. Dave Lewis is available if there are any questions. Did you want to show a hands in the audience of who's been on the train? Okay, Dave. Hey Dave, I appreciate this and I also really appreciate your work and all of Pard's staff's effort to get this particular beloved amenity in the city back up and running. The question that I have for you today is we have exercised the 60 day notice. If they don't remedy within that 60 day expiration, what is our next step? Sure, after the 60 days, if they are still in default, haven't provided all the documentation they need to and have the train up and operational, the city would have a decision at that time. We have the right to terminate the agreement, but we would obviously have discussions on if that's the avenue we wanted to proceed with. If we did terminate that agreement, what would that look like moving forward? Yeah, moving forward, I think it would be prudent to really explore all opportunities and in the spirit of being innovative, is there a better hire use that would service the community better for the site? I think those were all prudent questions to ask at that time. Thank you, Dave. Sorry, Dave, are there any other complications specific to the train, such as the tracks, any other bridges? In other words, how do you get the train operational if this operator isn't going to operate the train? Sure, at this point, we don't know how big of a deal it is to get it running in 60 days, but we have no indication that it won't be running, so we're not aware of any major things that'll keep it from running in 60 days. But of course, if the contract was terminated, we would want to do a full study to understand the bridges and all the structural things that are necessary for it. Do we own the bridge and the tracks? We don't own any of that. Right, right. No, okay, perfect. Thank you very much, Dave. All right, next informer, informer reporters on communications and public engagement, my Fort Worth app, and Michelle Goode is available if there are any questions. All right, and then the final informer report is on municipal regulation of an open container or public consumption of alcohol in the West 7th area. Melinda Ramos and assistant chief Aldridge is available if there are any questions. They're already moving to the podium. They already know. Thank you, thank you for all of your hard work and your staff's hard work, chief and Melinda to get us to this point of hopefully a vote next week. This is for my colleagues, this is an initiative that I have brought forward as a way to try to get a handle on some of the chaos that we are experiencing in and around the West 7th area. Chief, I'm gonna ask you to speak to why we think this is a good tool for crime reduction, but before you do that, I just wanna call everybody's attention to the map that is provided on this IR. You'll notice that the boundary for this particular open container ban expands outside of what we historically think of the bar district in West 7th. And the reason we did that was so that for a change, we can be proactive in the West 7th quarter as opposed to being reactive. And the land use mechanisms that allowed for the creation of a high concentration of bars in large part exists on the other side of West 7th as well going all the way up to 5th and bordering Carroll that you can see in the map. And so that's why we have chose that boundary so that we can be proactive as that particular area starts to grow and redevelop as well. And Chief, I'll let you kind of fill in the need for this particular item. Absolutely, Mayor Counsel, thanks for having me today. So talking with some of the patrol officers and the business owners in that area, the bar owners, they've seen an increase in individuals which we're gonna call underage 18 to 21 that aren't quite 21, but 18 to 20 years of age. They're just lording around the area. Some of them are drinking, some of them are not. They kind of stand around and they meander along with all the crowds that are going on. Normally that's not an issue, but what usually happens is as the bars are letting out, confrontations occur. And if you guys can remember back in the summer we had a shooting in West 7th. Well, the shooting suspects were individuals that were under 21 years of age that were just lording around the area. So right now, it's hard to determine sometimes somebody that's 18, 19 or 20 years old. And if we approach them unless we have a definitive clue that they're under 21 years of age, we can't really ask them for their ID because they don't have to provide it. Unless we can prove they're violating the law, it's really difficult. So our goal with this is really to discourage the lording in that area. If people are having a good time, most of those bars, there's no reason for somebody under 21 years of age to be in that area during that time. And we've had quite a few issues on street corners with confrontations. So for us, having this tool, having an ordinance on place, we can talk to everybody that has an open container, confront them and say, hey, this isn't what we need to do. This is a new ordinance that's in a place. And so our goal is really just to educate first. We're not gonna go out there, write a ton of tickets. We want everybody to start complying with the law. That's what we want with every law is just compliance. So we're just, we want to reduce the number of incidents, really the violent incidents involving these underage individuals. Thanks, Chief. And just so we're clear, if I buy a drink at one of the bars down there, am I allowed to take that out onto the street? So you're allowed to have an open container as it reads right now out on the street, yes. But can I take it from inside of a bar if I purchase it inside of a bar? Am I allowed to take it? That's why I have Melinda here. Yes. Yes, when Michael. So if the ordinance is adopted, they wouldn't be able to take it out onto a public street, sidewalk, or alleyway. Under TABC laws, are you allowed to take alcohol, purchased in a bar, in an open container, outside of that property? You can, yeah. And so that would be a change, correct? Right, that's what this open container law would do. Okay, and so just to be clear here, for my colleagues and those listening, this is not intended to have any impact on the bars that are currently operating in and around the West 7th area. They'll still be able to serve their patrons. They'll be able to enjoy their alcoholic beverages while on their premises. But no longer can you walk from bar to bar with a drink. And really the intent here is not to target those folks that are going into the bars that are being served by those bartenders that have TABC training, that understand, you know, they're held liable, should they over serve within those establishments. It's really to cut down on the folks that are coming down. They're not visiting any of the establishments, but they are adding to the chaos to the area. And so I just wanna make sure that that's clear to anyone. And I would also make myself available if any of my colleagues have questions as to how we got to this. Thank you both, I appreciate you. Thank you. Mayor, that concludes my report. I'm flipping over, I'll give kudos to Elizabeth and how hard you've worked in the West Seventh Corridor. I think this is a really reasonable solution, especially in partnership with Ford Police Department and bar owners and business owners, those that live in West Seventh. So I look forward to passing that ordinance. Thank you, Elizabeth. Our next item is questions regarding significant zoning cases for November 8th City Council meeting. Any questions? Just for Mayor and Councils and the public's notifications. So we don't have to wait till next Tuesday. I do plan on continuing the site plan for the Montgomery Plaza area at Tuesday's meeting so that we can make sure we finalize and tie up some loosens and some community engagement as part of that process. 145, I don't know if that's gonna go or not. I'm trying to reach the applicant. Okay, thank you, Gina. Any other zoning cases next week? Jared, do you have one? Yes, I just wanted to flag SP-22-020. It's a medical clinic in partnership with JPS and Commissioner Roy Brooks Office as a part of their bond. So we're really excited to be able to continue moving that forward. But you're not continuing the case. You're continuing to move forward. I'm gonna approve it. Got it, okay. Very well. Any questions for Daniel? Go ahead, Carlos. Not a question for Daniel, but on ZZ-22165, I'm still waiting to get confirmation of the correspondence on that case on North Freeway. So that's TBD for me. You know, when it gets sufficient, I may decide to continue it until we get some good. ZZ-165, as I just said. Yes, ma'am. Okay, I think that's it. Thank you, Daniel. Moving on, any questions regarding the current MNC log for November 8th, 2022? Go ahead, Gina. I guess my concern and question is about the first one. And I just want staff to be ready to respond to any questions. I have this one involves a half-million-dollar grant for conducting environmental site assessments and development cleanup. I wanna know how the properties are being identified. We've had a historical problem in parts of District 5, where what I will call pop-up parking lots for 18-wheelers just show up. Who's been very helpful in getting rid of that is our NPO officer, Daugherty, along with the very engaged neighborhood president, Michael Moore. And so I wanna know how the sites are identified. We also have echo heights. There are also areas near Lake Arlington around Dowdale Street, which used to be a paper street, but people would dump on the other side. So I'll be looking very, very critically with where we're going and how we got there. Thank you, Gina. Any other questions, counsel? Okay, then we'll move into our presentations. The first one is an update on near Southside TIF where Robert Stearns is gonna kick it off with Mike Brennan from near Southside, Inc. Thank you, Mayor, members of council, where Robert Stearns, economic development. As you said, I'm gonna just tee this up. This is really Mike Brennan's presentation, but I just wanted to kind of refresh the council's memory and provide a little history of how we got to this point. So if you'll recall, earlier this year as part of the adoption of the updated economic development strategic plan, there was a recommendation to establish what's called an Economic Development Incentives Fund. And that was in really looking at the surrounding competitive landscape that Ford is dealing with. So a lot of our smaller communities have 4A, 4B sales tax dollars that they set aside for economic development. City of Dallas issued bonds for economic development. Arlington's got an economic development committee that they funded with about $17 million. And so as we were looking at how to be more competitive from the economic development standpoint, the proposal that we brought forward was that we had a number of TIFFs that were expiring over the next few years, specifically near Southside TIFF 4, which would be at the end of this year, 2022. The Lancaster TIFF 8, which expires in 2024, and the Downtown TIFF, which expires in 2025. And so the proposal really said is as these TIFFs come offline, the city is going to be receiving all of that increment that it's been investing in the TIFF funds. And instead of dedicating all of that towards property tax reduction, the proposal was that a portion of that new increment would be dedicated towards economic development purposes. So obviously TIFF 4 being the TIFF that was going to expire at the end of this year was the immediate concern as we had to go through the process of trying to wind down that TIFF. And as we were talking to Mike, you know, we really began to look at some of the longer-term public infrastructure needs within TIFF 4 and realized that, you know, this was a little bit of a different beast than some of our other TIFFs. Our current TIFF policy really only allows extension for major infrastructure projects. But again, TIFF 4 had some specific needs on the public infrastructure side outside of some additional development projects that we thought would really warrant some continued discussions. And so where we've ended is really a little bit creative compromise on the concept of the TIFF extension, the TIFF's expiring and then creating this EDIF fund. And so what Mike is going to be presenting today is a proposal to extend the TIFF for another 10 years, but we would in turn reduce the city's allocation, which would still allow us to fund property tax reduction and potentially apply some funding towards the economic development fund. So that's just a brief recap of how we kind of got to this point, but I will turn it over to Mike now to go through the proposal. Thank you, Robert. Thank you, Mayor and Council. It's a pleasure to be here reporting on what Robert has just summarized, the path to get to this point and also on action already taken a couple of weeks ago by the TIFF 4 Board of Directors. So I wanna thank Councilwoman Elizabeth Beck for her leadership and that role as Chair of TIFF 4's board and thank Councilman Chris Nettles for his leadership role on that TIFF board. Also thank city manager David Cook and senior leadership team for all of the collaborative policy discussion that led to this point. In my presentation today, I'll start off with some background on our district, the TIFF. I'll introduce the framework for the proposal for the extension and that multiple goal approach. And then I will give a financial update where the TIFF stands today and as part of that we'll go through projects that are in the pipeline, those that could be funded based on our projected funds without an extension as well as that sort of wait list of projects that we could get to if the TIFF is extended. And then at the end, we'll dive into the details of the proposal. All right, so this is the map of the near Southside. And so this map shows the different areas within the larger boundary of I-30 to the North, go east of I-35 a couple blocks to Kentucky and Evans Avenue on the east side. Southern boundary is Allen Avenue which is the Southern boundary of JPS cuts through Fairmounts. And then on the west side, roughly the Fort Worth and Western Railroad is that Western boundary. Now, what this map also shows and as we all know that near Southside is known for its top tier medical innovation district and geographically it's actually two medical districts. So on the west side, you have the concentration of private hospitals. So THR Harris, Cook Children's, Medical City, Fort Worth, Baylor, Scott and White, All Saints. And then on the east, you have the public institutions. You have JPS Medical Center and UT Southwestern's two facilities. Then what makes, what really separates the near Southside's medical district from really any that we've seen across the country is how these urban village areas are integrated seamlessly with that medical community. And there's a complementary relationship between the medical sector and those urban village environments. So Magnolia, South Main, Vickery Village, Park Place, Evans and Rosedale. Those are the areas where our work focuses on creating places that attract investments, places where businesses want to locate, people want to live. And we've seen some success with that. Most notably the 2020 designation by the Texas Commission on the Arts of the near Southside as a state designated cultural district. So as a compliment to the museum district now Fort Worth has two state designated cultural districts. So the most essential tool and what we're here to talk about today, the most essential tool in really promoting that progress has been TIF-4. And so the boundary of TIF-4 largely matches what I just showed you on the previous slide. You can see that Fairmount is carved out here that there's a state law that prevents you from having too much of the low density residential in the areas. These are basically tax exempt properties that were carved out when the TIF was created in 1997. So just as a reminder of basic TIF mechanism that was the base year, the total taxable value of all of this area was calculated in 1997 at $231 million. So the tax revenue from that base year's valuation continues to go to the general fund through the life of the TIF. In our case, 25 years. And then as the property value increases, any revenue from that incremental or additional value is set aside in a separate account that can only be used on public improvements within that boundary. And so what we've seen is that the TIF consistent with its original project and finance plan has effectively served two primary purposes. So first and foremost, it has been the tool to fund and implement key infrastructure projects. So virtually all significant private investments that you've seen in the near Southside can somehow be correlated with a TIF investment, whether it's a full reconstruction of a street project along which that property is located, or it might be that the neighbor down the road had a partnership with the TIF that allowed them to do some storm drain infrastructure upgrades, and that benefited their property, kept their property from flooding. So that's the first purpose, is the execution of those infrastructure projects. And then the second is to help support a team working on your behalf as an extension of the city. And that's our team. Megan Henderson is here in the audience today. We've got a small but lean team that's working with these key departments and partners. So obviously at the top of the list, we've got Robert and his team with economic development where we're supporting small businesses, we're leading innovation initiatives and so forth. On the infrastructure side, we're partnering closely with TPW and Parks and Rec. Development services, we're helping DJ and his team facilitate development review on projects that are facing the challenges of sometimes difficult urban infill situation. We're helping Amy Connolly and her team at Neighborhood Services in promoting housing diversity. And then although these folks aren't directly city departments, visit Fort Worth and Arts Fort Worth, and specifically the Fort Worth Public Art Program. And through that cultural district designation, we are working as an extension of those teams. Now, for this conversation, the TIF extension is really focused on infrastructure because that's the need that Robert pointed out that we saw we would not be able to meet unless we were to extend the TIF but at a reduced rate. So let me just give you the framework of that extension and then we'll get into the financial details. So multiple goals that has been the approach. So what we're suggesting is that the current allocation that the city makes, and the city is the only participating entity in TIF four now all of the other entities hit their maximum contribution caps. So what we're proposing is a reduction from the current contribution of 90% of the city's increment to TIF four down to 30%. And that would allow us to continue to meet those two needs that I described before, infrastructure and the partnership with our team. But key part of this, just as important is that this proposal also seeds the EDIF and allows for those economic development initiatives citywide to be supported and for us to be more competitive in the overall economic development game. And then finally continue your goal of reducing the city's tax rate. And so that allocation to the general fund will allow you to make those choices annually. So that's the general framework. Just to keep in mind and we'll get into the financials in a bit roughly 2.7 million per bucket is what we would be looking at for the next tax year but we'll get into those details a little bit later. So a little bit on the why and what else could we do in lieu of the TIF. It's helpful to remember that of our city's economic engines and we really have the three primary ones of downtown near Southside and Alliance that each of those have been supported by specially tailored public-private partnerships with the programs tailored for the needs of that particular district. And in our case, it's undeniable that TIF four has been the best tool for that work. So in weighing the alternatives on the infrastructure side, we could be looking at the periodic bond programs as the funding source for infrastructure. We could be looking at the annual PAYGO maintenance program. We could look at a public improvement district although that's not really well suited for those types of capital improvement projects. And we could look at the EDIF but that's clearly not designed for that type of infrastructure investment. So there were shortcomings to each of those alternatives in comparison to the TIF extension. Now this graph shows the life of the TIF from the beginning in 1997 to where we are today, 2022. And you can see started out slow, steady and growth has accelerated. So that's why that growth, we need to recognize that growth and that's the real driving force for reducing that contribution if the TIF is extended. This gives you the annual growth through the life of the TIF is just under 8% and then 15% over the last five years. So you can see as this graph shows that growth has accelerated. Now, if we talk about how much money is in the account and how much money is already allocated, that's what these next few slides will cover. So this was the balance in September. We've got an adjustment for an overpayment by the hospital district and then we've got projected revenue from this tax year that won't hit the account until next spring. So for, it's helpful to think of 28.8 million as being in the bank, although it's not all in the bank just yet but it will be in the spring. Then we wanna deduct those projects that have already been approved, both public projects and public private partnership projects. So this first slide shows all of the purely public efforts. So you're talking about street repair, fire station park, the wayfinding program, all of these things, they don't have a direct private partner although all are intended to support additional private investment. Then we have the bigger ticket items which are the private projects and here you have a selection of projects that are in the works in the design phase and making good progress. Evans and Rosedale at the top of the list, the recently approved Vickery project by Trademark. Then we have 701 Magnolia which is completed. We had the ribbon cutting there and so they've submitted their packet for reimbursement and then we have several including the Nobleman Hotel which should kick off within the next couple of months. So that gets us down to the $12 million. So that's the amount of money that we would have to allocate, the TIF Board would have to allocate if the TIF expired in December. So now we're looking at the projects that are in the pipeline for TIF Board review. So on the public side, we wanna complete the work that we're currently designing to improve the gateways at Rosedale and 35 and South Main between near Southside and downtown. I'll tell you about a new street connection that's actually the planning for it's not new at all. It actually goes back to the late 90s and then each year we get some funding for miscellaneous streetscape and public spaces improvements. So these are just some slides to illustrate those projects. This is the underpass at I-35 and clearly the gateway to Evans and Rosedale. It's right there. But obviously everybody that goes through this underpass understands that we can do a lot better transforming that into a suitable gateway. And we can do the same at South Main between the near Southside and downtown. So these projects are under design. We've had public meetings and the goal would be to get to the TIF Board for the funding for final engineering and construction. This is the new street connection that has a long history. So where we are here, the vantage point of this photo is looking due east. I've just exited I-30 and we are looking across Henderson. So Harris Hospital is to our right. Downtown is to our left. This is city-owned property that is, you can see it here. This is Henderson on the left, Adams on the right. And just that one block is what is left of a project that thankfully did not move forward but this was a big S-curve realignment of Vickery planned in the late nineties that would have taken out several historic buildings. The city actually acquired property but canceled this project. That property went back in private hands and there's some great projects that have happened in that former right of way. But this is the segment that is still in city control and the commitment was made to those business owners and property owners that this won't happen, but the commitment to improve access to that Vickery Village area is still there and we are proposing just to add that to our current street repair program with a proposal to the TIF board. Then on the private side, these are some big projects that should be moving forward. This is a conceptual plan for the site, the TMP station parking lot on the Vickery side. So here's South Main, here's Vickery. Trinity Metro owns this property. They're in negotiations with developers. They put out an RFP. This was one of the proposals. Major multifamily with ground floor commercial, great public spaces with this plaza, a pocket park here and a Class A office building. Now, this conceptual rendering shows you the level of quality and the type of environment that this project would create. The TIF would assure that all of these public amenities are delivered as well as a component of affordable housing within that project. And the project would deliver a major private investment to the tune of probably around $100 million. So you can see here just a massing model, but you can see the scale of that development at that key TMP station transit oriented development site. The historic laundry block, great opportunity here to redevelop this site if we are able to preserve the great historic buildings on the site. So you've got the two-story laundry building here and you've got the great sanctuary church there. So, yes. If we, if we're able to preserve it. Well, I'm gonna tell you how we can, but it does require some help from the TIF. Yes, so this, it's a key point because they are facing infrastructure challenges all related to this being one of the oldest blocks in the city with a street that used to cut through and the utilities are still under that street. So there's a major storm drain here and what this map shows in pink, it shows the historic section that would be preserved and the church as well. And then how around those historic buildings, a multifamily project would be developed and the garage located along Peter Smith across the street from an encore substation. So not putting units against that substation and delivering probably over 300 units to the site. And this shows you how that historic asset and the old laundry building plus the church would be integrated into that program. But the support for that storm infrastructure from the TIF is a key piece of making this project happen. Evans and Rosedale area, I've outlined areas that have already been approved for TIF support. So the Hoke Evroad development and some funding associated with that that would expand the plaza at Evans Avenue, that's already been funded. I mentioned that we would be seeking additional funding for the construction of the gateway improvements. And then these private projects, you're very familiar with the Juneteenth Museum. There could be an opportunity for the TIF to support some infrastructure investments associated also with the Cumberland properties, which are these two historic buildings on Evans Avenue. They were platted east west, I mean, north-south the properties oriented east-west. They share services, water and sewer. It's kind of a mess from a development standpoint. If we want those buildings to be restored. And so extending a sewer line down Evans for service to this old house is a key part of that. That sewer extension could also be helpful to the Juneteenth Museum project. Juneteenth Museum, we show here in this rendering, the TIF boundary is right along here. So maybe the TIF isn't supporting expenses directly associated with the footprint of the museum, but the plaza and the associated development and some utility work could be supported by the TIF. All of those projects that I've just shown, we expect there to be sufficient funding without extending the TIF. That's the pipeline that we've been working towards. This is the heart of the conversation is this list. Because this is just a preliminary list of those projects that would stay on the wait list without extension of the TIF. So I'll run through some of these. Street repair, we have a street repair program. If you've been in the South Main Village area, you've seen virtually all of those streets reconstructed and the water lines below those streets have been repaired reconstructed as well. But we haven't done them all and this collection of streets at the south end of South Main Village, the south of Pennsylvania, this is around properties owned by JPS. Those will be in transition as they work on projects on their main medical center. These also have antiquated water lines. So really a need there that has not yet been met yet by the TIF. And Magnolia Village also has some streets that we have not been able to address yet, including Lake Street here. This is just north of Magnolia. We're looking south on Lake. This is Maggie's R&R, chat room, and so forth. Then public spaces. We have thousands of folks that will be moving in or have already moved in, many of them, in that Vickery Village area. That historic laundry block is just caddy corner from this, where I've taken this photograph. We need parks that will support those clusters of urban residential. We've been successful working with the Parks Department in delivering parks to South Main Village and we've got Fire Station Park under construction now. Vickery Village is an opportunity that we really need to seize to deliver some public space. It could be this site here, it would be great. It could be another site within Vickery Village. And then the text rail transit oriented development opportunity may be at the top of the list as far as real opportunities where the TIF would make the difference between a plan that really is a utilitarian plan that services the station. And this is Trinity Metro's plan that they have to submit to the Feds during review. This is not necessarily their vision of how it should be long-term, but certainly we don't want this to be the long-term condition. We want development that is going to maximize the success of the station here. So to get everybody oriented, this is Mistletoe Boulevard. North is actually to your right. So Mistletoe Heights is over here. Eighth Avenue is down at the bottom of the screen. And what this shows is Leslie Street, which is an existing street coming in and all of the circulation sort of coming off of Mistletoe Boulevard, which is really a neighborhood street just west of the tracks here. The opportunity, though, with public-private partnership with Baylor, Scott, and White, All Saints, who owns this property, is to have a circulation network of streets that connect to Rosedale, that connect to Park Place, and they connect to Eighth Avenue, that don't waste a lot of space on turning buses around and create major development sites in the process. So that's an opportunity that probably would not happen without significant public partnership. We have a consultant team drawing up plans. They'll do a much better job than the diagram that I just showed you. So stay tuned for news to come out of that planning project. Then we have stormwater upgrades. The TIF doesn't have the resources to do a major upgrade of the entire system, which is undersized because it's so old. But through targeted stormwater upgrades and partnerships with private development, the TIF can make a difference on that front as well. Those are the big efforts, and then we still have the small ones where the TIF is a very reactive, responsive tool to doing things like reconstructing sidewalks. And so this key stretch of sidewalk, which didn't used to be that significant, but now it really is because so many folks are parking on Broadway and going to destinations on South Main, that's an opportunity. All right, so that's a lot on the need. Now we'll shift to how we might do it. So I'm going back to this slide just to remind you of those growth rates, because as we put together a proposal for the extension, we have to make some projections as to how much revenue might be generated if we were to reduce from 90% contribution to 30% rate. So where we are today at 90% for tax year 2022, hitting the TIF account in the spring, roughly 7.9 million. So close to $8 million a year of city revenue going to TIF four. So the proposal is to reduce that by at least two thirds to cut it down to 30%, but we still don't know exactly how much 30% would be. And so we've gone through the exercise of running through different scenarios to figure out what might be the best path forward. So different assumptions here. This is a scenario that I'm calling the constrained scenario because it's really super conservative. So it has a growth rate of just 5% annual, which you'll recall we were at almost 8% for the life of the TIF, 15% over the last five years. So that's a severely constrained growth rate and still anticipates that the council remains aggressive on reducing the tax rate. So dropping it down a cent a year over the next nine years. So in year nine, you would get to 62 and a quarter. That would forecast a total increment over the next 10 years of 29, just over 29 million. The next bump up would be a conservative scenario. This would have that annual life of the TIF growth rate of just under 8% and then a less aggressive rate reduction of half a cent a year. And that would get us to around 35 million. And then what I'm calling a moderate scenario, 10% annual growth and just a flat rate of 66 cents for the city's tax rate. And that gets us, that's 37.2 million right there. So what we are recommending is close to that constrained, 31.5 million scenario with fixed contribution amounts that are then capped in years where there might be a downturn capped at 30% so that we have these fixed amounts and they just increased by $200,000 each year starting at 2.7 million, getting up to 4.3 million. If we had a year where that 2.9 million in the second year of the extension actually exceeded 30% then it would be less. The contribution to TIF4 would be less because it would be capped at 30%. We expect that the total contribution of 31.5 million will actually come in maybe significantly less than 30% of the total. What you see here is a nine year schedule. We're asking for a 10 year extension. That 10th year would not be revenue collecting. That would be an administrative type of cleanup year because what we've seen is that that mad rush to get projects approved and then the TIF board goes away if we had extra time for just the administrative work associated with the TIF allocations then that would be very helpful. All right, so that's a lot of information and I appreciate the attention to all of this detail and I will gladly answer questions but let me close just by emphasizing Robert's point about the EDIF being a key component of this proposal and that the allocation of funds that had been going to TIF4 to the EDIF will allow efforts to advance in areas that maybe have not seen as much economic development and could also make us more competitive. So that's a key piece. And then on the timeline, I mentioned that the TIF board had already taken action on the 19th with the briefing today. This sets up action by the council next week and that would have multiple approvals. So extending the term, updating the project and finance plan, the participation agreement with us for administration and the participation agreement, reducing the allocation from 9% to 30% or that fixed schedule. And then the TIF board would meet on December 7th as they typically do each December and approving the budget for the following year and would have a pretty typical TIF board meeting and then the extension would take effect in January. So I know that's a lot and I appreciate your attention and patience. Robert, you wanna add something? Yes, just a few closing comments. So again, Mike, I appreciate all the hard work that you've been doing over the past several weeks and trying to put this proposal together. I will outline just a couple of things. So in Mike's proposal, I talked about that split of 30% to the TIF and then the remaining 70% going to the general fund and outlined some projections on tax rate reduction. At the end of the day, that tax rate reduction is going to be decided by you. So staff is not dictating how much that council reduction should be, how much goes to the EDIF and how much goes to tax rate reduction will purely be the council's decision. So we're not binding you by any decisions that are being made from extending the TIF to allocating a specific amount towards tax rate reduction or the EDIF. And then along with Mike's schedule that he's laid out here, staff is probably gonna have to come back to you next month with a policy update to the TIF policy again. So we have to have an exception to policy to allow this particular extension. So we would have a policy update to the TIF and then a policy for the utilization of the economic development incentive fund. Questions, Elizabeth? I don't have any questions. I just really wanna thank Mike and all of your staff at NSI. Parents aren't supposed to have favorite children. And I think that same rule probably applies to those of us on council, but I could not ask for a better partner in District 9 than near Southside. The work that y'all have done over the past several decades has been truly instrumental to not just changing that particular area of Fort Worth, but the city as a whole. I grew up on Magnolia. My grandmother owned a restaurant there until 1994 and closed that restaurant because the neighborhood had changed so significantly and she no longer felt safe opening up at 4.30 in the morning. And to see what has happened in that area truly has been amazing. And that is in no short part because of the work that y'all have done. And I wanted everyone to know what a true asset Mike is to the city of Fort Worth. When we had discussions about extending this TIF, he could have said, well, I want it all. Let's just keep it going. But he didn't. I really appreciate the fact that you took a look at what work we had left to do in the near Southside and came up with a dollar amount based on that work instead of just taking a grab for as much as you can. And so thank you for me on council and thank you from everybody at the, all of our residents for being such a good steward of our tax dollars. So thank you. Thank you, councilwoman Beck. I have to make sure that everybody knows that there, I mean, certainly Megan is a key partner within our building. There are so many folks outside of our building, hundreds and hundreds of partners that have been responsible for all of the progress. They all very much appreciate your words, councilwoman Beck, and your consideration of keeping the work going. Thank you. Gina and then Michael. I am just wowed over with the plan. I even sent a text to Elizabeth, just making sure everything was on track, but being the elder here, I think it's my role to share some information with you all back in, I guess it was 2000 or 2001, I was put on a board that had this odd name, you know, of Fort Worth South. And Fort Worth South was really energized by a guy named Don Scott. Don had the crazy idea, crazy for me being a utility person, he had the crazy idea of putting those electric utility wires underground. And my response was not gonna happen, we're not gonna pay for it. And we being to you electric long star gas, a long story short, he got a great big tin can and inspired people to put money in that tin can by the way of partnerships. And it's just amazing for me to see what we have now. We always knew that the draw would be those employees in the medical district. What was missing then, and I know we're working on it now, was how stronger and more effective we can be if we being the city of Fort Worth, Trinity Metro and all other entities work together with a fast track. Because, you know, we were able to get the TNP loss there when it comes to the train station, but just imagine how things could move if we all had a focus on working together on a fast track. It also reminds me that we are in these seats for a temporary point of time. And but for people like Joe Burns and those who followed him, you know, here we are today. And so I'm inspired and motivated. I think about what's happening in stop six and I go back to my predecessors all the time when it comes to where we are today. But this is fascinating. It's amazing. But whenever I'm anywhere where I can see this project, I always have to think about Don and how we started out with small dreams that turned into crazy dreams, but here we are today. And so that's just my input. It's just fabulous. Thank you, Councilwoman Evans. Michael. Mike, can you flip back to the one slide about I-30 Henderson, that little piece of property? Yes. Sorry, I was at the very beginning. My point is I don't know exactly what's planned for there, but I know probably three years ago, I have a connection with the owner and they were looking at that property because it's a pediatric eye right there to the right. So I don't know what's planned for that, but I know they may be willing to be partners with you on whatever happens there. So if you're having some conversations with the owner's adjacent to the property. That's good to know. So they actually designed this building as if it were a street-facing facade. Storefront, yeah. And we're dialing in the cross-section here. I think it's going to utilize that full right-of-way that you see behind the eye care place. I think there's an opportunity for some additional development there. Great. I just want to make sure you knew that. Thank you. Mike, one question. This is potentially a big transformative plan for that area. It's very ambitious and the area needs it. As far as infrastructure, you brought up a good point doing your presentation unless I missed it in a slide. Could you, are you able to give a breakdown of maybe like the total infrastructure needs in terms of dollar amounts, maybe by category versus stormwater infrastructure, for example, roads, parks, et cetera? All right, so in your packet for next week, you'll have the amended project and finance plan. And it has those categories of streets and streetscape. Then it has some public-private partnership programs, residential business development, parks. So there is a dollar amount assigned to each of those categories. Now, it does take into account the wait list that we have today. So at the end of the day, it's an extension that will total, we know 31.5 million max. I think that of the wait list projects that we've shown, let me get to that wait list here. I think we have, we don't have 31.5 million on this list. What this does is it sets us up for other opportunities. I think that at this point in time, we don't see private developers coming to the TIF saying our project just won't work unless the TIF pays for my sidewalk and my street trees. Now it's the major partnerships like the transit-oriented development sites or like the historic laundry block. So I do feel that there's gonna be a need over nine years or 10 years for 31 million dollars worth of infrastructure. What we hope though is that that takes a lot of pressure off of bond programs, and it also takes a lot of pressure off of the PAYGO programs because we're able to fix streets before they're in, it need a full reconstruction. Got it, thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Great presentation, Mike. Thank you very much. Great update. Council will now move to a review of the council calendar, Jeanette Goodall, our city secretary. I should have bought my foot stool. Okay, so on a lighter note, you have before you three options for 23. And as I learned, you can slice and dice this calendar a hundred different ways. So as a couple of reminders, you are required to have 44 regular meetings. A regular meeting is a quorum that includes your work session, your council meetings and your public comment meetings. Zoning hearings are supposed to be scheduled for the first Tuesday night of each council meeting or each month. And so we have taken that to be the first meeting in which you have a meeting where you're taking action. So the public comment meeting, if it falls on the first, doesn't really count in this aspect. To give you a kind of a window of what you did this year, you had 63 meetings. You had 21 work sessions, 21 public comment meetings, 11, 6 p.m. council zoning meetings and 10, 10 a.m. council meetings. So I'm giving you three options with meetings ranging from 54 to 63. Your first option is about as close to your current schedule as I could get it. And it takes into account the fifth Tuesday of a month. We have no meeting, no meetings during spring break, July Thanksgiving and Christmas week. That means there are three months where there are no 10 a.m. meetings just because of the way the weeks fall and because of holidays and other things in those. And that is March, November and December. That gets you 63 meetings, 22 work session, 22 public comment, 8, 10 a.m. council meetings and 11, 6 p.m. council zoning meetings. And that's what your council, your schedule would look like. Very close to what you have this year. Option two, takes into account not having meetings the Tuesday after a Monday holiday when the city is closed, no meetings during spring break, no meeting during the week that you have National League of Cities in March, July break, no meeting on national night out, no meetings during Thanksgiving and Christmas or the week after Thanksgiving, November 14th, that is a 6 p.m. council zoning meeting and that is the day before National League of Cities in Atlanta. There are no 10 a.m. meetings in March, June, November or December. That gets you 56 meetings, 19 work session, 19 public comment, seven 10 a.m. meetings and 11 6 p.m. meetings and that keeps zoning on the second Tuesday or of the month, which is your first action council meeting of the month. Option three is very similar to option two. The only difference is I fit in a couple extra 10 a.m. meetings. And so it takes into account the same holidays, but it reduces no 10 a.m. meetings to only March or December. So we put in a 10 a.m. meeting in June and November, but that will mean that your work session for that month will cover two meetings, which could make for a long work session. That gets you 54 meetings, 17 work sessions, 17 public comment, nine 10 a.m. meetings and 11 6 p.m. council zoning meetings. And that's what the calendar would look like. We can slice and dice this however you would like. It really depends on what your preferences are and how many exceptions you want to make for not having a meeting. So we will come back with a resolution for you to adopt your official calendar. This is just for you to give me feedback on what you would like. I have a question, the mayor. So the charter says how many meetings per year? 40. 44. Yes. And option three has at least 10 more than that, not including when we do budget sessions or other work sessions, which would also count as meetings, right? Yes. And budget work sessions are not included on this because we're still finalizing those. And so we'll come back with an amendment to include those. But we normally do at least two or four of those budgets. So we're still... You're still way above the 44. Yeah, that's the point I wanted to make. To get you to 44, that's a pretty drastic change. Can you help me understand? You said the public comment, is that not considered as a meeting? It is. Even if it's the first Tuesday of the month? Yes. Okay, because you said something bad. Well, it's not one where we take action other than approving the minutes. And so when we're looking at scheduling the zoning, we don't consider that, we consider the second Tuesday of the month to be appropriate for a zoning meeting. So we sit through those and they don't really count? Well, they count towards your 44. So they do count. Okay. And you get to engage with your residents. So they do count. Thank you. So yeah, for right now, are we okay just taking this all in? So you can take it in and then let me know what you would prefer. And then we will draft something up to bring back to you at a future council meeting to adopt. Ideally, as long as we get this done in December, obviously. Yes, no later than December. Okay, perfect. Okay. We'll do that. Thank you, Jeanette. Appreciate it. Okay, council. Our next item is Carlo Capua final report on Bitcoin mining pilot program. Thank you, mayor council, invited guests. My name is Carlo Capua chief of strategy and innovation here for the city of Fort Worth. And I know this is a new position for our city. So hopefully this presentation will give you a little insight into the charge of this role and my vision, my enthusiasm, my excitement for what's on the table for us as a city. So it is my pleasure to give you our final report for the six month pilot program for Bitcoin mining here in Fort Worth. So here's the flow. We'll start with the data and the results. We'll talk about next steps and why it matters and then impact and why it matters. And then we'll finish with next steps and recommendations. So six months ago, our city of Fort Worth became the very first city in the country and one of the few in the world to mine Bitcoin as a city government. You may remember, this is our hero picture. That's mayor Parker, our hero with our three Bitcoin machines, also our heroes to her left. Bitcoin mining machine's about the size of a toaster. So we got three of them and this was a big deal. We, when we talk about Bitcoin mining, I'd like to give you just a quick refresher because I know I see many blank stairs in the room. So I've been asked this so many times that I've gotten this down to a 60 second explainer, a Bitcoin mining in a minute. So we'll put up the clock. Here we go in three, two, one. Have you ever thought of why we assign gold such value? Well, think about it. Gold is really scarce and gold is really hard to get. If you want to mine gold, you need three things. You need expensive equipment. You need people who know how to use it and you need a lot of energy. So think of Bitcoin like a digital version. I need everybody's watching that time or not listening. I know that. Bitcoin mining, imagine Bitcoin is digital gold. You need expensive equipment, those little Bitcoin mining machines. You need people who know how to use it. I need a lot of electricity. Now think of every Bitcoin machine in the world, essentially they're all competing to solve a really complex mathematical equation and the very first machine to solve that, to get the answer right, wins a little block of Bitcoin. Then the next block comes up and all those computers are competing to be the first block of Bitcoin, a first computer to solve the answer and they win the next block of Bitcoin and over and over and over again. And that my friends is Bitcoin mining in 57 seconds. So you might remember this day in the data center. Those are the three Bitcoin mining machines. This is Mayor Parker with Lee Bratcher, the president of the Texas Blockchain Council and here's just a little footage. Mayor's doing the dramatic buildup because this was being covered live on Twitter and she goes and she plugs it in and that's a big moment. We are now officially mining Bitcoin and we'll cue the applause to everyone. Some of you were actually in this room watching this and I predict that one day we will look back on this day and know this was our zero to one moment. This was our pivotal moment for Fort Worth to be known globally as a city for innovation and technology and this was in our data center down in the basement. So continuing on, let's talk about the program scope, what this was and what this wasn't. Remember, this was not an investment into Bitcoin. I wanna make that very clear. We were not day trading Bitcoin and the goal was to do this and hear me well when I say this at no cost to our taxpayers. We wanted to do this program totally for free. What this was was a way for us to study crypto, the implications, opportunities and show that Fort Worth really is a world leader in innovation and technology. So let's look at my favorite part. This is the data and we'll start with the cool stuff. We realized the day after we launched we were a lead story in USA Today. This is big. USA Today has over 20 million monthly unique viewers. And then we realized we were wanting to be on CNBC. So Mackenzie Siegelos called the mayor, did an interview, more exposure. Then we saw we were a lead story on Nahuha News and then Fox Business called and wanted to do a live interview with Mayor Parker with Stuart Varney, which had a huge reach. And then we realized we'd gone international when we were on Bitcoin Mexico. And what I love about this is somebody from Bitcoin Mexico made this graphic and put it on their website. So you could say we were Cowboys and Culture and Crypto. It's got a nice ring to it, doesn't it? But we knew we had truly gone global when we were featured on the front page of everyone's favorite publication. That's right, you know it as the Malaysian Sun Magazine. And just think about it. I mean, how often would the city of Fort Worth have a chance to potentially reach 32 million people on the other side of the world in Malaysia? But this is exactly how we build the basic foundation for foreign direct investment. Maybe it's somebody in Malaysia who never heard of Fort Worth and is now considering moving or relocating their headquarters here. So this was important. Now let's look at something even more impressive. This is the global exposure because this totally blew us away. So we knew we'd get covered by the crypto blogs and Bitcoin magazines and maybe okay, maybe we could get maybe a million impressions. If we got a million global media impressions, it'd be a home run. But we didn't get just a million media impressions. And we didn't get just a hundred million media impressions. As a result of this story, we got over 752 million global media impressions. That is a big deal. That's 236 unique placements and counting because many of them are wanting to hear this report that I'm giving today. So we'll get more exposure from today's report. And even our PR firm Quinn said, they never could have anticipated that this would have this kind of reach. But I learned and Mayor Pro Tem Bivens will note as well in the media, there's something very powerful about being the first. We were the first in the country to do this. And that's why it essentially went viral. They ran all these numbers and they said that the fair market value of that number, that $752 million number is worth well over a million dollars in PR. It's pretty awesome. And actually we had a little competition in our city management meeting to figure out the last time we had any kind of exposure at that level. It was back in 2005. If you remember, we really promoted the herd and we took the herd to New York and ran the herd through Times Square. But that was the last time we got that level of exposure. And besides business exposure, folks, we've gotten more business leads. This is just a small list of the businesses who've contacted us looking to maybe relocate here just because they saw that small little Bitcoin pilot program somewhere in the news. And it makes sense that a high tech company would want to do business in a tech-friendly city. So what I'm saying is we're starting to build our brand that Fort Worth is not afraid to be an innovative city. Fort Worth is not afraid to adapt and embrace and explore unique partnerships. Now let's address the elephant in the room, if you will. The question I always got is, Carlo, how much is this costing the taxpayers of the city of Fort Worth? We'll think about it. The Bitcoin mining machines were donated by the Texas Blockchain Council, so there's no cost there. They were housed in our data center, which there was already ventilation airflow, so no cost there. The machines essentially ran themselves, so barring a little bit of staff time per setup, essentially marginal cost. So really we're talking about electricity costs. So we ran the numbers, and remember the machine we used used about as much electricity as a household vacuum cleaner, so marginal electricity used. So we ran the numbers, and here's what I am most proud of, because we predicted we just wanted to at least break even, and the first month we did just that, barely, a little six dollars, so that'll help pay for the new city hall. The second month we got a little better. If you remember during month two, we traded those three inefficient Bitcoin machines for a brand new one, and you can see the number went up. Month three it kept going up, a little better in month four, and then month five and six the price of Bitcoin came down a little bit, and it's reflected in the numbers. But here's the question. In what world can a city do an innovative pilot program that no other city has done, get 700 million views, learn about the future of digital assets, and do it at no cost to the city? So I wanna just pause and thank some key people that helped us pull this off. Financial Management Services, I see Mr. Regisino here, and John Sanford, Property Management, Roger Vendables, and Steve Cook, I see them here. Our city attorney, Leanne Guzman, J.B. Strong, and the mayor's office. Folks, I understand why no city had ever done this before. This was really hard. This was really hard, and your city staff bonded together to make it happen. It was like building an airplane while we flew it with a blindfold on and one arm behind our back. Because there are laws that have not been written yet to govern crypto, and guess how the lawmakers are learning? How did they're asking the city of Fort Worth? Because we figured it out, and we did it. And props to Mayor Parker, this was your vision. Thank you to the council for blessing it. Thank you to our city manager and our city staff for all jumping in and pulling the wagon in the same direction. We should be very proud of this. A couple other, oh, here was what we netted. We netted a little over $1,000 total in the six months of the program. We also learned a couple cool things happening right here in Fort Worth. For example, did you know the largest Bitcoin ATM in North America? Their company is right here in Fort Worth. It's called CoinSource. And if you are interested in donating to a nonprofit, you can donate Bitcoin to the United Way to our county, TCU, the Fort Worth Zoo. And there are probably others by now who are accepting Bitcoin. We found out you can even pay for your meal at a food truck with Bitcoin and some food trucks, mainly the millennials, but that's how it goes. So it's interesting when you are the first in the country to do something, everybody wants to know exactly how you did it. And so I've been getting so many emails from people asking how Fort Worth pulled this off. This is just a short list of the places. I'm not talking about just in Texas, but around the country, from the North Texas Commission, all the way to Harvard University that have heard what we've done and have reached out. So that's pretty exciting. So we have to understand that this is the power of one small project. Because of this Bitcoin mining, this silly little project that we started, our city is now branded as a global leader in innovative forward thinking when it comes to technology. And the goal for this program, right, we got the Bitcoin get some to the front porch of the city and then we can pull them through the front door and show them all the other cool innovative things that were happening that are already happening like innovation in parks and rec. Richard Zavala told me that if you have a human worker manually mark off the lines of a soccer field, takes eight hours. If you use the robotic turf tank, doesn't take eight hours, it takes 30 minutes. And you save $40,000 a year. We're already doing this. Once we have people on the front porch, we can talk to them about the National Juneteenth Museum that we should be so proud of and our local legend at ICON, Ms. Opal Lee. Once we have people on our front porch, we can talk about how Fort Worth is being branded as a hub for innovation and technology. Look at the Texas A&M footprint that will transform not just our downtown, but also our city. And so here's the punchline here. When people hear all these things that are happening, they see Fort Worth differently. They understand why more than 20,000 people a year are moving here net when many other cities are just struggling to stay flat with their population. So all of these steps are leading us toward becoming a smart city, essentially a city that uses data and technology to be cleaner, to be safer, to be better managed, to be more equitable. And in fact, next month, a small group of us are going to this smart city expo. This is like the big conference in the world, in Barcelona every year. Fort Worth's up for an award. We're up for an award for our free Wi-Fi program, our neighborhood Wi-Fi program. So 30,000 more people will hear what Fort Worth is doing when it comes to innovation and technology. So I'll finish with two recommendations. I know I've talked a lot. The first is that we continue mining Bitcoin, even if it's just with our one small little Bitcoin mining machine. It's already set up, it makes money. It keeps us relevant because we're continuing to do it versus if we had done it and brought the program to a close. And it keeps our environmental footprint really small. And the second thing, and this is what I ask everyone in the room, elected officials, city staff, guests, to share with the world that Fort Worth is open for business when it comes to innovation and technology. And we attend, I know you all attend NLC and TML. I think that's important that we attend, but I want Fort Worth to be presenting at National League of Cities, to be presenting at US Conference of Mayors at TML, Rotary and Sister Cities, to share exactly what we are doing and to build our brand for innovation. So in closing, I hope you can sense the great opportunity that we have here in the city. Hope you can feel my enthusiasm and optimism for where we're headed. And my ultimate vision, I'm from Fort Worth. And so I was born here and I'll probably die here, but my ultimate vision is for Fort Worth to become known around the world as the place where innovation begins. Thank you for your time. I'm happy to entertain any questions or comments you might have. I just want to tell you one thing, Carlo, you should be proud to know Fort Worth has presented at the National League of Cities and TML. And I think David should get you guys at ICMA, but Fort Worth has held its own on the national platform talking about several projects. Now what I need to ask you is, you didn't mention Kevin Gunn. Now did Kevin Gunn participate in any kind of way on this? He was key. Yes, I forgot him in my list of thank yous, but I saw his picture. That's why I knew he was there. Yes, thank you, Kevin Gunn. Any other questions or comments, counsel? Nope. Thank you, Carlo, for the presentation. Very well done. It's been an interesting exercise and I'm pretty much done doing CNBC interviews, I would think at this point. Duly noted, yes. The jokes aside, even people that were naysayers, I would say, are kind of concerned about it. They did acknowledge that the opportunity for Fort Worth to be mentioned in some of these publications and in a positive way has been really exciting. I've learned a lot in the process, so we appreciate you spearheading things and to city staff for stepping up to make it possible. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next item is Amy Connolly on our 2023 Housing Tax Credit Policy. Hi, Amy. So I just wanna make an amendment to Carlo's recommendations of slogans. I think our slogan should be Cowboys, Culture, Crypto, and Housing Tax Credits. I like it. We need more of those. Okay, so I wanna go through this really quick today. A lot of you have already seen this at a work session we had last week. You're excited to hear more about it? All right. All right, I won't be quick. So just a reminder, low income housing tax credits, which we often call with the acronym LITECH, comes from the IRS, where they decide how much tax credits are gonna be issued each year to the states. TDHCA receives the tax credits on behalf of the state of Texas. And once they issue their qualified action plan, developers use that and apply for tax credits. During that process, Fort Worth has the opportunity in every city in Texas has the opportunity to pass a policy to say, how do you want our tax credit policy to work in the city? And so what we're doing today is reviewing that. After tax credit developers come in and make application to us and we issue resolutions, then their applications go on to TDHCA for review and in July of every year they issue tax credits. The developer then syndicates those, they sell those to a bank or an insurance company that needs the tax right off and that becomes cash as development in the project. So every year we're bringing millions and millions and millions of dollars into Fort Worth through our tax credit program and that goes to offset the cost of housing for a lot of our residents. So our recommended policy and program changes this year include removing city set-asides for one year, just this year, except for the 9% housing tax credit has a zero to 30% AMI set-aside. We're usually asking for 10% of all the units to be extremely affordable at zero to 30% AMI and we wanna keep that in the policy this year. All the other set-asides we're gonna ask to waive. We would like to require developments requesting property taxes to provide a fiscal impact to us and we're working out how that might look. We'll waive certain development fees for housing tax credit developments regardless of their location, inside or outside of an NEZ and that was at the request of the development community. We wanna streamline our notification and application deadlines and improve neighborhood communications with a new system established this year. To go through this in a little bit more detail. At the last time we presented this policy document, we got several questions about what does the state of Texas require for affordability for light tech developments? And you might remember there's two different types of tax credits. There's a 9% competitive tax credit and there's a 4% which is non-competitive and they're tied in with bonds. So on the 9% the requirement is 20% at zero to 50% area median income or 40% of the units at zero to 60% AMI area median income averaging is allowed for 9% development. So that means they can put in a few more 80% AMI or a little bit above 80% AMI units which are market rate in order to bring up, get more income coming into that development as long as they meet certain targets. For 4% they're actually prioritized on the basis of how much affordability they have. So a 4% priority 1A, which is like our Tobias Place development is going to have 50% of the units capped at 50% AMI or 50% and 50% capped at 60% AMI. So it's gonna be deep affordability and they're gonna get the first pick of bond lottery balls when we have their lotto ball pulling next week. So priority 1A is the deepest affordability on down to priority three, which is any other qualified residential rental project and most of the time the deeper affordabilities get the tax credit bond awards for 4%. So that kind of gives you an idea what the state's affordability requirements are. So layer on top of that, there's a lot of different requirements but on top of affordability requirements, the city of Fort Worth has policy requirements and in the past in 2022 and 2021, we have required a minimum set aside of 10% zero to 30 AMI units for a 9% light tech development and a minimum set aside of 10% that are greater than 70% AMI. So we're having a truly mixed income development of very affordable and also market rate development. In our conversations with the development community, they asked us to waive the higher end, the 10% at greater than 70% AMI this year, mostly because the more affordable developments, the more tax credits they can qualify for and that helps buy down some and bring more equity to the project. So for 9% we're requiring this year change to waiving the 10% set aside for greater than 70% AMI. All the other requirements are the same except for adding the new fiscal tax impact. For 4% developments, last year we went ahead and waived that 80% AMI requirement for set asides and so there was only a 10% set aside for zero to 30% AMI and based on interest rates and what that's been doing to 4% deals, development community asked us if we would consider waiving that particular requirement for one year and given what the market looks like, we recommend that to you as well as also requiring 4%. So if they ask for a tax rebate or they want to not pay property taxes, they need to provide us with a fiscal impact statement. So when we have discussions about property taxes, we are asking developments that are asking to be completely or partially tax exempt to provide the city with a source of that tax exemption, the fiscal impact of the tax exemption and all other information asked in the city's application and we'll also be showing Council some of the benefits of tax credit development as well as fiscal impact. So that'll be a new thing this year and a resolutions. We've also recommended some greater fees to be eligible for a waiver and you can see on the left-hand side that there are a number of fees that we're recommending as waiverable through the tax credit policy and those include all the fees that are included in the neighborhood empowerment zone. So the fees that are part of our neighborhood empowerment zones are listed there in the dark blue and we're also suggesting that if a developer wants to apply to the individual departments for impact fee waivers, they would be able to do that but they would have to go to the individual department and come forward with a resolution or a council ordinance for that. Those impact fees are governed by the local government code and we're not able to waive them by just a policy action. Our prior policy last year and for many years prior to this was that city council would commit to waiving development fees for a value of no more than $2,500 but given the fact that tax credits are gonna be really competitive this year, given the fact that interest rates are up and it's gonna be very hard to finance affordable housing development, we wanna try to give as many fee waivers as we can to reduce the cost of development for affordable housing developers. We're also proposing a streamline process so that applications and notifications that you'll be applying for tax credits will occur on December 14th and the application deadline will be January 13th. Last year we pushed that far up so that the notifications were due in November and the applications were due right before the holidays and tax credit developers didn't like that. They didn't have enough time to put their deals together so we're pushing that back. The notification deadline has been reduced from 45 days to 30 days and we are also asking the Community Engagement Office to assist us. We're going to be preparing maps for neighborhoods but the Community Engagement Office is going to provide introductory emails to the Neighborhood Association and HOAs for all the developers. A lot of times our developers have trouble contacting and getting a hold of the Neighborhood Associations. We think this will help community outreach a little bit more and remember the developer has to hold at least one public meeting in the neighborhood. So our 2023 proposed timeline includes today's presentation and the highlight dates are that the deadline to submit notifications to council members, to all the folks that tax credit developers are required to notify is going to be December 14th so notify your staff and then the deadline to submit to Neighborhood Services so that we can get resolutions together is January 13th. Any questions or comments about the new policy? Gina? I drew a red flag. Well, first of all, your presentation's wonderful. Okay. Thank you. But I became very concerned when you talked about getting help from Community Engagement and them writing out letters to the Neighborhood Associations and whatever. My office has been told, is Renee here? Well, I'm just going to put it out there. My office has been told Mr. City Manager that the database will not be updated by Community Engagement. Mike, are you nodding with me? Until after the first of the year. So I don't know how that office can help with this when we can't even get updates for our own council offices. So... Yeah, we're going to try our best. More than likely we'll probably be notifying all the officers and that was just you. No, no, I'm not. This isn't on you guys. You guys are fine. I just don't want you depending on help that's not going to be there. Well, the developer's got... No, the developer has a responsibility to reach out as well, but I think an introductory email to the Neighborhood Association, the HOA and their entire board will actually speed things along. Amy, quit while you're ahead. What I'm saying is... Okay, I know. Okay. I know. I'm just saying. Folks around this table know that database is not up to date. We've got dead presidents still in there. We have some that are not even active. So, David? Got it. Okay. Great presentation. Thank you, ma'am. Good luck with that help. Any other questions for Amy? No, okay. Thank you, Amy, very much for the updates. Next is an update on Permanent Support of Housing with Fernando Costa. Thank you, Mayor and Council Members. Earlier this year, the City Council set an ambitious goal to end chronic homelessness in Fort Worth by using available funds to support the development of 165 permanent supportive housing units across the city. 165 is a number of units recommended to us by the Tarrant County Homeless Coalition and the Tarrant Parker Continuum of Care. And we're happy to have with us today Ms. Lauren King-Larne. Would you stand? Lauren's provided exceptional leadership on all issues associated with homelessness, including the development of permanent supportive housing. Thank you for your support, Lauren. Your stated intent in establishing that goal is to be sure that we can provide a decent home, not just a shelter, but a decent home with appropriate professional services for everyone in Fort Worth who is currently on the street with a physical or mental impediment for a period of a year or more. Those are the folks that we classify as chronically homeless, and those are the folks for whom we are seeking to provide permanent housing. That's an ambitious goal, but we're making good progress. In fact, we're very close to funding all the projects that we need to meet that goal. And today we'd like to share with you a progress report and to let you know what we need to do to get us to that goal. And so I won't read you these slides, but we've already on June 14th funded 128 units in three different projects. We didn't have enough projects to provide the full 165 units, so we issued a second notice of funding availability or NOFA in July to reach that goal of 165. The chronic homeless population represents about one out of every five homeless persons in Fort Worth, about 20%, but they're the hardest cases. They're the folks who most need this kind of permanent housing, and it's important not just from a humanitarian standpoint, if you look solely at the city's budget, it makes sense because to support folks who are on the street today, costs us anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000 a year in emergency services. That's money much better spent in providing the housing and the services that these chronically homeless folks need. And so the solution is permanent supportive housing. We discussed this topic at length in the past, so I won't repeat it, but Fort Worth has provided exceptional leadership and in fact is becoming a kind of model in many ways for cities around the country in showing how we can deliver permanent supportive housing. It really begins with leadership from the Forest City Council. It would not be happening if the council weren't making the hard choices, including the involvement of residents and community leaders, to ensure that they are well informed and to ensure that the developers of these projects are responsive to the legitimate concerns that residents might raise. That's why community engagement is so important with respect to the development of permanent supportive housing and that's why it's important for the council to have the final say in determining how we develop this kind of housing. We've seen just in the last few years several good examples of permanent supportive housing. Casa de Sparanza has been a great example in district four. In fact, Councilor Blalock hosted a meeting just a few weeks ago for constituents to answer questions about Casa de Sparanza and to tell that story of success. Yet again, New Leaf is a new project in council district two with the strong support of the council member Flores. Palm Tree Apartments was really one of the first permanent supportive housing projects on Ray Street in the Riverside neighborhood. Samaritan House has established an excellent track record of developing and managing permanent supportive housing in Fort Worth. So we certainly have plenty of precedent. The second notice of funding availability that we issued in July contemplated the allocation of $4.6 million from a combination of ARPA, American Rescue Plan Act funding and funding from the US Department of Housing Urban Development in a program called HOME, $4.6 million. We invited applications from various qualified developers. We had a committee of five staff members from the Neighborhood Services Department evaluating those applications and they made recommendations on the basis of certain criteria, which you can see depicted on this slide and they selected the two most highly ranked projects. The bigger project with 37 units is by Tarrant County Samaritan House, Inc. $4.1 million to develop a 37 unit project. A smaller project would contain four units of permanent supportive housing on Jacksboro Highway with a half billion dollars of ARPA funds. Here you see a little more information. The Samaritan House project is located on McCart Avenue just north of Loop 820 on the south side of town in the South Hills neighborhood of Fort Worth, 37 units with $4.1 million of funding for the city total development costs of $4.6 million or about $125,000 for unit. That's a significant amount, but if you compare that with what it's costing to develop permanent supportive housing and other parts of the United States, this is actually a rather modest unit cost. The Jacksboro Highway project, again, only four permanent supportive housing units and that's another $500,000 in funding from the city. Here you can see a map with the locations of all the permanent supportive housing projects that we funded across the city of Fort Worth. And you can see they're widely scattered, which is a good sign. We don't want to concentrate permanent supportive housing in any one part of Fort Worth. We want it to be spread across the city and that's exactly what we're seeing as a result of your leadership. And so we've been through a lot of steps already. Coming up, we'd like to provide you with an MNC at your next council meeting on November 8th by which you can approve funding as recommended by staff for the two permanent supportive housing projects that will get us not just to the goal of 165, but just past the goal for a total of 169 permanent supportive housing units to end chronic homelessness in our community. We anticipate about 24 months thereafter for project completion and for lease up to occur in about three months after we issue a certificate of occupancy for each of those projects. Our, back to the previous slide, some health, our staff recommendation is that you approve the MNC next Tuesday for both projects that we've described today, provided that Samaritan House secures an appropriate zoning change for the property of McCart Avenue, which could occur on February 14th. If they're able to proceed, then they would apply by a December 5th deadline. There would be a zoning commission hearing January 11th and it would reach the council in due course by mid-February. Or if they're not able to secure that zoning change, that Samaritan House select and secure council approval of a suitable alternative site for a 37-unit permanent supportive housing project. Now if for any reason Samaritan House is unable to perform either of those two tasks, then we would recommend the council reallocate the funds from ARPA and home as follows with the three million ARPA funds going to expand shelter capacity for homeless families. And that could include the development of new housing for those homeless families. Or in the case of the home funds, which we're not able to use for sheltering that we support an eligible housing project with about one million dollars. So that's our recommendation for you to consider. Obviously don't need any action today because the action would be on your agenda for next Tuesday. We would welcome your response and your guidance. Thank you Fernando Gina. Fernando, I appreciate the strategic and specific plan of action, especially incorporating the needed zoning change on a Valentine's Day. Samaritan House has been very successful in navigating the city process. So I would hope that that would continue. I support everything you've shown. What I want to just bring to your attention is that even though we don't officially know these specific locations of any schools in Fort Worth ISD to be, for lack of better term, closed, I would ask staff to look into that because that could be another source for this type of housing. We learned that during COVID that we were very successful in navigating that with hotels and motels. Schools could do the same thing. School buildings do represent the potential housing sites, yes. And I would remind staff, I have told them if you find a location in my district that is appropriate, I will walk you through it and help you through it. To date we have none, but I know there's a school in my district that will probably be closed and that could be a location. So I would ask staff to be very aggressive and assertive in having those intergovernmental dialogues. And I think Carlo could be helpful in that too. Thank you very much. Elizabeth. Councilwoman Bivens, I'm really glad that you brought up staff working with you on locations in your district on what is appropriate and what is not appropriate. And I just, for the record, want to reiterate that I think it is important as part of this process that these council offices be included in a discussion as early as possible. I understand that there are certain state and federal laws we have to follow and it's important we do that. But no one knows our districts the way that we know our districts. No one knows our neighborhoods like we know our neighborhoods. No one knows the plans for future sites, future corridors better than we do in our district. And you do it to service to us and by way of us, our constituents when you don't allow us to engage in that process of site selection and dialogue. Thank you, Elizabeth. Any other questions? Mayor, I'll jump in. Again, thank you, Fernando, for the presentation. And again, I appreciate what Mayor Pro Tem talked about finding locations in her district. And I just would implore, implore everyone at this table to work with staff to find a location. I think the only way we fix our issue and forward is that it's spread out abroad through the entire city of Fort Worth. And so I know we have that stigma that we want to help but not in our backyard. And so I want to make sure that we kind of drop that stigma down. There is a question and I know what the answer is but I would like to have one of the staff people talk about this briefly is that the qualifications for, because this kind of came up when they was coming to my district in district eight, the qualifications for these permanent support of housing can we just get a break down what the qualifications is real quick? How about Tara? Ms. King? Ms. King Gautara, yeah. She helps us in qualifying candidates for permanent support of housing. Again, these are folks who have to be homeless for a year or more. Critical. With a physical or mental impediment. And I think that's important to break down because I dealt with that in Hallmark. Some things that it is, the panhandlers that are on the street that now are gonna become residents of the neighborhoods. I think it's important that we break down what the qualifications is for this permanent support of housing. Sure. So for someone to qualify for permanent support of housing and that goes along with, so keep in mind we have the capital to actually build the unit and then we have the rental assistance to actually operate the property and keep people there. Also gives people services. So to qualify for permanent support of housing you have to experience homelessness for over a year. So that's either one consecutive year or numerous times in a three year period that adds up to a year. You also have to have a qualifying disability. So it could be a physical disability or a mental disability as well. So really we're talking about housing for people with disabilities. That's documented by either JPS or MHMR. So those are really the two qualifications that qualify someone for permanent support of housing and so we know that it's a big need. I will say supportive housing is another type of housing we're going after with the county to support people who have not been homeless for a year but who also have those disabilities. We know that's a big need in our community and that's a way we're trying to meet that. And those units that you have, I think the last three that you have built in the one at district eight has wraparound services on site to help any issues that may come up along the way. Correct, yes. So typically they're gonna have case management. MHMR is a huge partner for us. For example, at CASA, they have at least one worker there and JPS as well. So yes, we try to surround anyone receiving our services with the services, sorry, receiving that type of housing with the services they need to become self-sufficient, whatever that means. So a lot of people are gonna be on a fixed income but if we can get them those benefits and services that they need to be successful, that's our goal. Thank you so much. Thank you, Fernando. Thank you. Thanks, Lauren, Fernando. Any other questions? Nope. Thank you all very much. Thank you for a course of action and for some reasons, Maritime House can't fulfill that. Phillip, that's a good way to go about it. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Councilor, our last proposal. Recommendation is our discussion on proposed policy oversight and accountability board. Leticia Brown is gonna, there she is. And Ken Neal. Good afternoon, mayor, members of council. Leticia Coleman Brown from the law department. I am leading the discussion today because after Kim gave her recommendations, anything that you decide about having a board will be done by ordinance, which will be drafted by legal. I just wanna remind you briefly about the working groups recommendations which you saw in the IR that the city manager put forth on October the 18th. They came up with the name. They came up with the duties of the board and they made the following recommendations about board members, that it would be up to 14 members, that it would be a Fort Worth residence, diverse perspectives, that they must have training. And remember, they had no consensus on whether or not a felony conviction should preclude you from serving on the board. Their duties included basically making recommendations to the chief and to the office of the police officer police oversight monitor about policies and recommendations. There was also some discussion among the working group for taking in complaints, which they would then forward to the police monitor's office for review. During the meeting on October the 18th, we heard the following items from council members about what they would want to see in the event that there is a board. You recommended three things that we heard. One was that you wanted a smaller board, that you wanted that board appointed by council members, which meant nine members increasing to 11 after the 2023 election. You wanted to prohibit felony convictions from serving on the board. Now, in real, what I heard was that you wanted the requirement to be that you had to be able to serve on a jury in order to serve as a member of this board. Or you wanted that person to be eligible to be able to vote. In Texas, you cannot serve on a jury if you have a felony conviction or if you have a theft conviction. So I didn't include theft conviction because we never really discussed that part of it, but I just wanted to bring that part up to you for your discussion. And that you wanted it to be clear that any individual who served on this board had to have completed training prior to ever serving on the board. So those were the things we heard from you. Here's what we weren't sure that we heard from you. We weren't sure that we heard from you whether a community board should be created at all. And if it was created, if it should have additional duties to receive those complaints that the working group talked about and whether or not it would be allowed to review and make recommendations on certain investigations, most notably critical investigations such as police officer shootings or in custody deaths. So that is what we need to know from you today if we are to proceed with an ordinance, creating a board or anything at all. So that's all I have. And I am willing to, Kim is here, the chief is here to answer any questions you have. And then based on what you tell us, we'll move forward. Thank you, LaTisha. Questions, council? Go ahead, Gina. I just have a comment and I'll just be listening to the dialogue and weigh in as appropriately. But I wanna thank city manager, David Cook for getting this on today's agenda. For me, it was very important to have this matter flushed out before Kim's departure. And the calendar just worked with us. I know that there are some who may want to see this taking place later. But I think while we have this gem of wisdom in the form of Kim Neal, any gray areas can certainly be worked out while she's here. So thank you for having this on the agenda. Thank you, Gina. Are there questions or comments, council? Go ahead, Chris. Okay, thank you. So if you would just go back a couple of slides there. Or the, that one. Yeah, this one. So I think we, I think there is some type of, everybody have an opportunity to talk. I think that in the last discussion, we did discuss that we wanted the ability to be able to put it to a vote for the council on the consensus to establish this ordinance so that we can take it to a vote and see where we are. And I talked about the receiving the complaints. So let me tell you, when I looked at the ordinance that you have here, and then I kind of walked through some of my, some of the concerns, one of the things that I presented last week was that number one, that the board shall provide input guidance and recommendation to the chief of police and the police oversight monitor on development of policies, procedures and practices to the forward police department. I do see that here added a part of the ordinance. So I do appreciate that piece. Yes, sir. That was also part of what the working group recommended. And so we add the ordinance that was drafted last year when the working group was meeting, the draft of that contained that language and was tweaked a little bit when, for your comments as well. Okay, thank you. And so one of the things I want to think, I think it was the first, one of the whereas in the second paragraph says, the city council created officer police oversight monitor recommended operations to serve as a designated civil oversight and ensure greater accountability of public trust in the forward police department. There is no secret here in forward that there is an issue with trust. And I think we have done a great job or a better job even with your office, Kim Neil and the chief police going into the community and speaking with people. But we know that stigma still happens here in forward that there needs to be a greater accountability, a greater trust in the city of forward as it relates to police officers and the community. And I truly believe the only way we build that confidence is having an independent isolated board that we talked about last week that is isolated from Kim Neil's office. And although you have done a great job, you are hired and by the by forward. And so this board would be elected like just like we're elected and appointed that brings a diversity to this conversation. And so I want to put that out there is one reason why we as a community want this board. When you talked about the eligibility and I think councilman Firestone talked about the felonies and I talked last week that I was advocating for felonies to be a part of this board. But I will say when you talk about the difference between able to vote and able for jury, can you give us a distinct difference? Because I think when you're able to vote that means your rights are restored. That's correct. So a person who has been previously convicted of a felony if their rights are restored and that's normally due to a pardon they can then become eligible to vote again. Typically a felony conviction that has not been pardoned would prohibit you from being able to vote in this state. Okay. And the pardon come from who? The governor's office and it is based on the Texas State Board of Partons must make a recommendation to the governor's office and then the governor would recommend a pardon based on that recommendation. So they will have to go through some serious work to make that process happen on their behalf of their felony to be pardoned and eligible to vote again. Right. And I will submit to this board and I'm willing to go with a consensus but if someone goes that extreme to be able to vote in any municipal election and the governor and president then they should be considered in this matter. Also, and I have other things. I would like us to, I talked to Councilman Florez about that he have some things he wanna talk about today but if there is a mechanism where complaints can be given to and I think it's in the ordinance but I think the complaints are given to the board and automatically given to the police oversight monitor. If there is a CPI, which I think we don't have many do we have a kind of idea how many CPIs we have a year? So it's normally a CPI is defined by the police general orders or things such as in custody deaths and shootings and other major injuries. Not very often it just depends as I've mentioned before Chief Kraus had like seven in the first six months of his or eight months of his tenure but generally not a lot. Less than I would say 10 a year typically but it's not a lot. Okay. And so what I'm asking is that when there is a CPI and there's an issue that it's a death within the issue of arresting or in police custody that if there is a complaint filed with the board that they have the right to review in a summary or how we make that mechanism work where they review and have an opinion of policy and procedures because if anything was to happen to go wrong basically they broke a policy procedure they shouldn't have shot or shouldn't have killed. There is a procedure policy that has been broken. They should have that mechanism to review not investigate but look at a summary. And so those are one of the mechanisms that I have requested to be added in this board. And so I do want Fernando to come real quick and give us a distinct understanding because there was a such board and we talked about this briefly. I think council member Beck brought it up between the Avenger Board that was already established that was taken away. Yes, sir. I think it's important to emphasize that nobody understands the importance of community involvement in policing more than Chief Nox. Chief Nox has demonstrated that he listens to the community and that he acts in accordance with their advice. And the folks with whom he surrounds himself are not merely gonna tell him what he wants to hear is gonna tell him of what they truly believe. Having said all that to answer your question council member I think it's fair to say that the kind of independent board that you're considering creating in accordance with the staff recommendation would provide a higher level of impartiality and ultimately a greater degree of accountability than you could reasonably expect to occur if the advisory board is appointed by the chief of police. As good a job as Chief Nox is doing a future chief may not have that same level of appreciation for what our community leaders can contribute. And so I think there is value to creating independent board from that perspective. And so that board was created by the chief, correct? Yes. And appointed by the chief. And at some point was closed due to COVID and I've been able to meet. Well, Chief Nox can answer that question. Just created by the previous chief. By the previous chief? Yes. Okay. Then 2016. Mayor and council, Neil Nox, chief of police board PD was actually two chiefs ago. That was chief as Gerald and creator that I believe in 2016. And the reason it was stopped I did a little more research on that. I know COVID put a lot of pauses on a lot of things we did but it's my understanding now that the decision of chief Kraus after the police monitors office was created to pause what we were doing there to see what the establishment of that office would actually do and how this group either would work with or be able to collaborate with her office. Okay. So chief Kraus dismantled it to give the police monitor an opportunity to establish footprint. It was temporarily suspended in 2019 before our office was created. Okay. So, thank you chief. That if you just so and that's kind of why I think it's important to establish a board that's independently that's not able to be closed or shut down for any type of reason because if it was closed in 2019 then we had an issue that happened in 2019 if I'm not mistaken that that board probably would have been a sounding board for the community when the community was in a disarray. And so I don't wanna put words in your mouth but to make a difference is that this board would be chosen by the elected officials here. Yes, sir. And the things that are recommended would give a more accountability independent from the police department. Yes, sir. I have other questions but I'd like to let my council members an opportunity. Questions council. Anybody Elizabeth? Go ahead. I've got a couple. And this is for legal and maybe Kim Neal to what extent does the forward police department have the discretion to enforce or follow general orders currently on the books? So the general orders are propagated by the police department signed off on by the chief and they are changed at the discretion of the chief or of police. I don't know that in my history of working with the police department if any of our general orders or I say our PDs general orders have ever gone up to the city manager's office but of course the police chief serves at the pleasure of the city manager. So if there's a general order that the city manager would like to see I think that would be directed to the chief. Let me clarify, sorry. Once a general order is on the books what discretion does PD have to follow or not to follow or to enforce or not to enforce is my question. So general orders are put in place to help regulate the conduct of the officers as they're serving the citizens of Fort Worth. Many and some of them after the recommendations of the expert panel who recently did an exhaustive review of our policies we have things in place that show if they are not followed especially specific ones de-escalation for instance there will be a punishment that could follow. There will be some accountability there. So the orders are put in place to give officers ideas of what they need to be doing to give them specific directions on how to perform certain things and let them know that there could actually be a discipline involved if they do not follow those general orders. Okay, I appreciate that. So I'm gonna read general order 201.07. The responsibility of the policy advisory committee shall be to consider any policy which has a direct influence on the police department service to the community and to provide recommendations to the chief of police relative to one the need for development of a specific policy not already addressed in the general orders. Two, revision of a current policy which has direct influence on the police department service to the community. Three, elimination or cancellation of a current policy that has has direct influence on the police department service to the community. So that's currently on the books in our general orders right now for the Fort Worth Police Department. I'm gonna read to you what is in the ordinance provided to us by legal that we will potentially vote on next week. Purpose, the purpose of the community police oversight and accountability board is to collaborate with the office of the police oversight monitor and the Fort Worth Police Department to develop a more transparent police department through review and recommendations of the Fort Worth Police Department on policies, procedures and practices of the Fort Worth Police Department. The community oversight board shall serve as an advisory board to the city manager, the chief of police and police oversight monitor and shall provide input, guidance and recommendations in the development of policies, procedures and practices of the Fort Worth Police Department. And so when I read these two, when I read what we currently have on the books with the Fort Worth Police Department has said that they are committed to doing it's a near general order and we've just heard that we have to follow those. I don't see a substantial distinction between the two of these where the distinction comes in these two proposals or I'm sorry, not proposals. The distinction between what the Fort Worth PD should be doing right now and what we have here in this proposal is not the purpose, it's not the scope. I think there are a couple of things in this proposed ordinance that might fall outside of the scope of what we have here and I'd be happy to discuss those with you as we move through this process. There's two big distinctions. One is the composition. So here in our general order, D, the committee shall be compromised of no more than 13 members. The goal of the committee is to represent the different assignments in the department and viewpoints of the community and the committee shall include assistant police chief, policy analyst, three officers of any rank, one supervisor, sergeant or lieutenant, one officer, both of these are from the patrol bureau, likewise from the support bureau, supervisor or sergeant or lieutenant, an officer, one representative from the business community, one representative from the community at large and one representative from the youth community, ages 18 to 25. I have here a list of folks that previously served on this advisory board and I'd like to read them to give both my colleagues and the community an idea for who previously served on that board. Vince Puente, Willie Starr, Mario Jimenez, Kav Tatum, Billy George, Dr. Alex Del Carmen, Michael Cohen, Pastor Sample, Dr. Michael Bell, Felipe Gutierrez and Joseph De Leon. And so we have currently, or we have previously had on the books an advisory board that is in purpose the same thing that we're proposing here today. The difference and the distinctions are two very big variances, one in how that board is selected. The general order is very clear that the chief of police selects the board under our current policy 201.07. It specifically states that the chief of police shall approve all final appointments of the committee members. However, this one is different. This one still appoints members of the community like have done in the past. However, each council person at this table liken to any other board and commission that we have here at the city of Fort Worth gets to appoint a member of their community. We've gone through in this proposal and provided some guidance on the type of person that we're looking for to serve on this community. And so when I read those, they are diverse community perspectives, including advocates in the areas of civil rights, mental health, disability, immigration, homelessness, LGBTQ, legal education and historically marginalized communities. When I go back and read that list, when I look at that list I just read, we very clearly had members from the LGBTQ community. We had members from the faith community. We had members from the medical community. All of those, we had Dr. Alex Del Carbon who if I'm correct was on the expert panel review and is known Dr. Michael Cohen. All people that fit number one, the minimum requirements to serve on this board. And so it is in those minimum requirements that I think it is important to know the distinction. This current general order is silent with the exception of they must provide, be able to pass a background check, which is fair. Here, not only do they have to pass a background check, but we've set some guidelines on what that background check should look like and the discussions we've had about whether a felon can or cannot serve on this particular committee. I would support Councilman Nettles addition that if their rights have been, if they are a felon and their rights have been restored, it is an onerous standard. I don't know that many people can get to that. And so it may be a moot point, but I think it's at least worth having that discussion. But also to be a member of this board as proposed by this council, they must also sign a standard of professional conduct agreement and or confidentiality agreement. And so that's an extra standard that we weren't enforcing or we didn't have to service on this board under this general order, which I remind you is currently on the books that we are not abiding by. Not only do they have to pass a background check, sign some confidentiality agreements, which I know Councilman Flores was, last time we discussed that brought up that the concern of confidential information being leaked. And I'd like to circle back to that in just a moment. But not only do we make them go through these steps, but now we have formalized training requirements before they're allowed to sit on this board. And I think that is a very important distinction while the chief of police no longer has control over who serves on that board. And there could be many reasons why someone was chosen. Maybe it was you had trust, you had worked with them before you knew that they understood the policies and the procedures, they had some sort of background and you thought they would be a good fit. And I understand that it is a little, Council's appointing folks, you lose that depth of analysis, but we're ensuring that you get well-qualified people by requiring before they can serve on this board that they have some pretty rigorous training requirements. They have to complete a basic course, including classes at the Fort Worth Police Academy, Instructional and Constitutional and Criminal Protections, Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement Education, right alongs with members of the Fort Worth Police Department. And we also require continuing education as part of this. So we are not just giving you a group of nine residents from across the city, but we're saying that we're going to make sure that we're equipping those folks with all of the tools that they need to participate in active dialogue about the policies and procedures of the Fort Worth Police Department. And I think that this provides additional dialogue with the community. It provides a formalized dialogue process that we don't currently have, that I think is important. And, you know, Fernando Costa mentioned earlier how committed and dedicated you have been to engaging the community. And this particular, whatever we, whatever you want to call it, oversight advisory, we can call it Elizabeth for all I care. Whatever we want to name this is a formalized process by which the Fort Worth PD and members of the community get to have a dialogue. It's not oversight. And I want to be clear. It's not oversight. We have Kim Neal for the next week or so, couple of weeks. And then hopefully we will have just as an amazing replacement. She's got big shoes to step into. They're there for oversight. They're looking at the G file. They've got C just access. They're making sure you do your job. That's not the scope of this particular board. This particular board is there to review and to analyze, to dialogue, to sit with the Fort Worth Police Department, to have discussions about the policies and procedures as they pertain to members of the community. I think that's an important voice in the room that we have. I did some research over the past couple of days and reached out to some folks that have served on in that capacity and talked to them about what that service was like previously. And overwhelmingly, I won't say overwhelmingly, I got the sense that they didn't feel like there was much value added in the way that that operated because they weren't necessarily utilized and the folks that were selected for that committee were in large part sometimes yes men and didn't take that information back to the community and didn't have that dialogue. And by appointing folks from council, we get to make sure that our appointees are doing that, that they're doing the job because it's a disservice to you to have someone not do that because the purpose of this, for me at least, is to make sure that you're getting that feedback and you're getting that feedback in a constructive way, not in a chaotic screamin' atcha during public comment or out on the street, but there's a formalized process by which residents know that we're dialoguing. And so then I want to really briefly just touch on Chris's CPI because I think that there is a way to include that into this particular resolution within the lens of review and policy and procedure. Correct me if I'm wrong, but we currently have, do we currently have a committee that reviews CPIs? What's the name of that committee? The CPI review board. Okay, very, it's very literal. Yes. Okay. You got creative there. And so can you just tell me what they do, walk me through just a high level? I don't need to know. Well, first the CPI goes through our major case units investigation, look for any potential criminal conduct, then it goes to internal affairs unit to look for any policy violations that might've occurred. After that, it goes to the CPI review board to look at the case overall, look at any recommendations that might've been made by the major case unit or internal affairs, and then look at any opportunities we might have for training or policy change to be able to better serve our citizens. Okay, that sounds like a great committee, and I'm glad that we have it, and I'm glad the Fort Worth Police Department has it. I would love for that committee to share those results, particularly as it pertains to policy changes or amendments with some sort of advisory board to take those incidents to this advisory board and not in the context of reviewing the officer's conduct or whether or not discipline was appropriate, that's 100% within your purview, and I respect that, but what can we do different? What can we do better? And so I'm glad that we do that internally. I think there's added benefit in making sure we do that externally, and that's really where I think this board can play a huge role in knitting together our community and our police department. And so I know that you have expressed that you are reluctant to have this. We talked about it last work session, and I quite frankly think it's misguided. I think that this is a great opportunity for you to show the community that you are committed to working with them in a very formal, rigid process, and it's open and it can be productive. It was not problematic when it was stood up initially, we were doing it, and we had some folks on there, as I read that list that aren't exactly pro-police, or maybe sometimes not even exactly super reasonable to work with, but we did it. And so this is that open dialogue, and I just feel like it is disingenuous to say that we don't want it now because it can cause problems when the general order already has this type of advisory board in it. We should be doing it right now. This hasn't been taken off the books, it's still there. We're not doing it. So what council is coming and saying, okay, well, we're not doing it. How do we fix that? How do we make that happen? And it is through this policy advisory board. And so I would be interested to hear why you differ from your colleagues, your predecessors who found value in this board, who quite frankly weren't as vocal about being so pro-community. And so my question to you is, how do you justify telling us that you're pro-community, but then also telling us that you don't want this dialogue, this structured, productive dialogue with our community? One thing I wanna agree with you on, council members, is you're at the policy as it stands with our police advisory committee is woefully inadequate, especially when you look at citizen representation. What I will not agree with you on is that I'm against that, that I'm against robust conversations, against hard conversations, against connecting with the community. And actually what I will submit to you is, one thing that I believe is misguided about many of the independent review panels that are across the country. I've talked to many chiefs. Everyone I've talked to said it's adversarial in nature, it's divisive, it creates conflict. Does not solve problems, does not bring the police and community together and has actually harmed police community relations. Hal, can you give me some examples of how it's harmed relations? I'd be interested to know anecdotally what those other police chiefs said. Because they say the conversations are not conversations, they're arguments that tend to happen between these groups. What I would submit to you is, one hallmark of all these different panels is it's completely independent, there is no police involvement. When I look at one of the problems we have with policing in our communities, it's the silos we put ourselves in, sometimes self-imposed. So we have the community here in a silo, we have the police here in a silo, talking about each other, rather than coming together and talking to each other. What I submit to you is the police advisory committee, as it stands, is not what it should be. We already have a policy in place, but it needs to be revised, it needs to be reviewed, and it needs to be improved. We need to have more community representation, we need to sit down with each of you to talk about selections for the police advisory council. We need to make sure we're bringing everyone together and instead of being adversarial, let's be synergistic. Instead of having conflict, let's collaborate. Rather than divide us even more by putting us on opposite ends as if we're opponents, let's all sit down at the same table and actually talk. Let's find a way to make this work together rather than creating another group. When we already have one right here on the books, it does need to be improved, granted, but allows us to sit down and work together. One of the things that I was told when I came here, the reason I was hired because they believed I could help change the culture of the department. We are not there yet, folks. I will admit that freely, but I have talked to leaders in marginalized communities in Fort Worth who said, we're seeing that shift start to turn. We are seeing the change. We want to see it continue going in this direction. I was also told that I was selected because of a history of innovation and a history of collaboration. Please let me do the job I was hired to do. This is an opportunity by approving what we already have in place to be innovative where innovation begins, Carlo, where innovation begins. Let us be innovative. Let us find a way to do it the way Fort Worth needs to do it, not based on what any other city does across the country, but to find an innovative way to do it where we come together so we will be stronger together. I appreciate all of that. And what it sounds like to me is that you're looking for an oversight board. We have given you the blueprint for how to improve this general order. So whether it's through a general order that we improve, and I think if you sat down with us at the table, we're sitting at the table now. And I think you've heard all of us talk about what we would or wouldn't like. We've given you that. And this right here, this proposed resolution is your blueprint for how it's the council's blueprint. And we carry the voice of the residents of Fort Worth. And what we are asking you to do is to dialogue with our residents, to be that brave, innovative, cultural change agent that you have just told us that you are. It is not easy. This process is not easy. You took this job at a pretty difficult time in policing. You are charged with steering a massive ship and turning it around in a different direction. That takes effort. But you don't turn that ship around by standing there and telling us that you wanna be innovative, that you want this community dialogue, and that your policy needs to be changed, the policy that you get to control. But then we have given you a blueprint on how to do that. We have taken the control out of your hands, but that's a bridge too far. And I think it's disingenuous, Chief. I'm gonna be very honest with you. I'm disappointed. I think it's very disingenuous. I think we have given you the blueprint on how to make that innovative, and you have told us no, but then you stand up there and you tell us that you want community engagement. We have given you the opportunity to do that. We have formalized it. We have gone through and made sure that not only are these people sitting there, but they are trained. That you have people that aren't coming in willy-nilly. We're not appointing people to be argumentative. We don't wanna fight. And that's not how Fort Worth operates. But this is a collaborative process that brings the voice of our residents. We are telling you how we want you to dialogue with them. That's what we get to do here on council. Well, respectfully, if I may, I believe it's disingenuous to- No, if you can respond, that's fine. Go ahead, Chief. I believe it's disingenuous to say it's not oversight and then call it oversight, and oversight is a- I didn't name this, Neal. I didn't name this. We can call it a policy oversight board if you'd like. I was gonna say- Don't worry, Chief. Please allow him to respond because there's a lot of other dialogings that happen around the table. It was just what you just called it in your response there, oversight. So I'm calling it oversight because whoever typed this up called it oversight. But I think I very clearly said, I don't care what we call it. If we wanna call it the policy advisory committee, as it currently stands in general order 201.07, I'm down. I'm game. We call it whatever we want. We call it family alone. I don't care what we call it. Name it whatever you want, Chief. What we need is community dialogue. And this is a very, very thought out process by which we get there. One that is currently on the books for Fort Worth PD. So it's the fact that you're not following it and the fact that you're fighting us on it now, I think speaks volumes. Jared, did you have something? I'll just be brief. I think one, I support the proposal. I think that we not only have precedent in the advisory committee, but I think we also have precedent across the city with other boards and commissions. I think the time is always right to have boards and commissions on key functions of the city. I mean, I think one's so critical as, you know, the way that we do policing from a policy standpoint deserves and should have the input of our residents. And I see this as a policy review and advisory commission. I don't necessarily know if the title of the committee in this ordinance reflects that, so I'd be open to changing it. As it relates to the two questions, can you bring those questions back up? Yes, I think it should be created. Yes, I think that the advisory board should be able to receive complaints. However, I do believe that the ownership of that workflow does belong with the police office or the opom, and then I also do believe that they should be able to make recommendations from a policy advisory standpoint, similar to what's already in the general order. So I support the board and see it no differently in its advisory nature as the zoning commission, the parks advisory board, and we could go down on this with all the board's commissions. Any other questions or comments? I know we have some other dialogue coming. I just want to jump in. So I have ran on this since 2017, and what I called it was the Citizens Review Board, and I have called it since day one, and Kim May can correct me, but I think the name got changed when they was in the process of the working group trying to figure out how to make it seem more friendly to the police and the community. Yes, that was the working group itself, the Mutual Accountability Working Group. They came up with the name, and they reached a consensus on that. Right, and so I just want to throw it out there is that I don't want us to get the words twisted as which was kind of happening versus oversight and review, but the reality of what I have been working on for over five to six years is review, and a couple of incidents, and I was just throw this out there, and I'll ask the question, and you may can give us information later or if you have it now, but the gentleman, I would not send on council, but the gentleman that died in police custody, Jacquebion Slater in District Five, and when we talk about policies and procedures of how we de-escalate, because you brought that word up today, is my question is if the advisory committee was established in, did we have any conversation of how we rectify de-escalation because I for one in the community still believe that there should have been a greater de-escalation mechanism taking place when they approached that truck, and I don't want to get into the weeds of it, but I mean, you have a brief answer. I was not a part of the police advisory council, I was part of the chief's advisory board, the chief determined which people on his staff would be in which areas, so I was not a part of it to know if that was discussed or not, I can try to find out, but I don't have that information right now. Okay, and I appreciate that, and that's kind of what I'm saying, I think that this independent board gets to when things happen, again, we don't have these happen quite often and forward, and I'm greatly appreciative of that, but when we do have it, we should have some type of review that say, hey, we review that, and these are some more greater steps that we could take to make sure that doesn't happen again, and that is really what my heart is for this board. Any other questions or comments, council? No, go ahead, Leonard. I want to make a couple of quick comments, because I think it's only fair, because I think a couple of things have been misconstrued. Certainly, Chris, as you mentioned, the city of Fort Worth has a police trust problem. I can tell you that there is no trust problem in District 7, which is the largest district, and one of the most diverse in our city. There is no trust problem. There is only a desire to see more police up there, and if there's a call that we get or calls that my office gets is how can we get more of our police here? So, just be clear, when you speak, I think it's only fair when you speak for your community or your district. Isn't it black-naked? But it's not the city, fair enough. So, and then Elizabeth, I think, everyone agrees that better policing is the goal here, and I think you challenged the chief to show, I think you said, the community how much we care. Well, I think everybody may be forgetting we just approved $32 million to support the community. I'm very proud of that, and we only did that because of the chief's leadership, right? Because from that, we're gonna get greater transparency, accountability, improved policing, dialogue with the community. You look at what we did in CCPD, there are 43 programs of almost $10 million that are specifically designed to interact with the community. Have we forgotten that? Well, let me just finish. Well, you have to watch this. So there's, well, I'll give you it all. So then we've got about four and a half million in ARPA, about over 500,000 in community relations. We've got 15 million in NPO programs, a civilian response team in a million five, community information program at $230,000 almost, and also we possibly would code glue program at $1.3 million. This is great police leadership. And to suggest otherwise, I think is really misguided in this place. I think to suggest that the residents, all of them of district seven have no problem with policing, no distrust with the police department shows either an unwillingness to really listen to constituents or maybe you're choosing to interact with a certain type of constituent because I think that there are people around this table that maybe don't look like you, Leonard, that would say that their constituents are screaming for this type of dialogue. Because to be quite frank, it's the brown and black members of this community that have that distrust with the police department. And I think that is a fair statement. I think that chief would agree that when he is out talking to members of the community, that if there's a certain segment of the population that that tension exists, I think Kim Neil would say that. I think our colleagues on council would say that. And that's not to say that Neil has done anything wrong. I'm sorry, chief has done anything wrong in that. He has inherited a legacy and we stand on the shoulders of giants, but when those giants make a mess, we stand neck deep in it too. And chief notes is standing neck deep in a whole bunch of giants messes that came before him. But to say that district seven is the most diverse and that there are no issues with policing is probably the most disingenuous thing I have heard at this table all afternoon. I am proud of our CCPD funding. I am proud of the work that we've done. I am proud that chief has worked with us to enhance outreach on how to apply for grants. We have funded community partners. And let me be clear, they are community partners. They are after school programs, gang intervention programs. They are nonprofit organizations that serve the residents of the city of Fort Worth. And that is to be commended. And I'm proud of our CCPD budget. We expanded a lot. We have in a direct result, and I should be clear, Leonard, that CCPD budget didn't get to where it was overnight. I think that I've heard both chief notes and other members of the Fort Worth Police Department talk about how the CCPD budget that we inherited on council that we first voted for was a direct reflection of the community outcry in the summer of 2020. And police department did an amazing job of transitioning that CCPD and reimagining how we use it. And we are doing a good job. And I don't think that anyone said that we weren't. But what is the harm in formalizing dialogue with our community? And quite frankly, Leonard, I think your interactions with the police are probably wildly different than Councilman Williams' interactions with the police or Councilman Nettles' interaction with the police or historically. And that's what we're trying to address here. And so I do not appreciate the comment that there is complete trust because there is not. And I think the expert panel showed us that we have some work to do. That's not to say that we aren't a good police department. That's not to say we don't have good leadership. That's not to say we don't have good cops. I can tell you right now, they're Fort Worth police officers that I interact with in District 9 on a regular basis are some of the hardest working, most committed members of our community. They wake up every day, they put on that uniform, they put their life on the line for our residents. No one is begrudging that. What we are simply asking for is a voice at the table. We are asking the Chief of Police to have formalized dialogue with the members of the community. And Chief, I wanna, you said something, but I think it's really important and I wanna address that as we move forward. And that's this adversarial nature because you have this policy board here and you have this policy board here and you've got cops here and you've got members of the community here and no one's dialoguing. I think you're right. I think that that has the opportunity to create a system which we are not collaboratively working together. And so I would be willing to have some dialogue either at this table or outside of this table, ahead of this vote on how we can integrate that, on how we can have a community or an advisory board that doesn't omit the police department because your perspective is important. You're the one out there on the streets living with these policies. And so I don't think that that's an unfair perspective to have one that I think that we should address here at this body when we are giving you this blueprint for how to do it. And I think, did I get everything, Leonard? I think you did. Okay, good, great. And I'll just comment on a couple of things. One, what I said was, it's the largest district, which it is. You said the most diverse. I said one of the most diverse. So the people that elected me in the last 10 years, the black population has grown 170%, the Asian population has grown 211%, other population 297%, Hispanic population 106%. 106%, it's a diverse district. What do your black residents say about this policy board? Have you, have you dialogued with any of them, Leonard? And what did I say? You know, in fact, when you question whether I'm interacting with the same kinds of people that others around the table do, well, I can tell you that I don't think it gets much worse than a drive-by shooting. I agree. Where two kids are killed. So do I interact with those people? I don't know. Good. I'm glad, but I find it disingenuous that you would say that they have to trust in the police department. Or question that because you have no idea what you're trying to do. You question me, Leonard. Well, it's warranted. And it is warranted for you to sit at this table and for you to say that there is no distrust to the police department, that you have talked to your very diverse council district seven, and that there is no distrust with the police department, that's disingenuous. I'm not, I think this is a futile conversation, but we can continue to go. I agree. No, I can only tell you the calls that I get, and I haven't gotten one. And I would just like to respond because I think. Hold on, I'm gonna move it around the table because I know that Carlos and Alan, if we don't mind, we'll come back to you, Chris, if you don't mind. Carlos, go ahead. Thank you, Matty. Obviously, this is a matter that will draw us in with our observations and our passions. This is still a discussion. So let's all keep that in mind. The implications of what we're considering do have import, all right? So my comments are just gonna be some observations that I've made. Any system needs to have improvements along the way, right? Whether a system is perfect to start with when you implement it over time, dysfunctions occur with any system. And I'm speaking generally, okay? Going to what the consultant study said by Dr. Del Carmen, he indicated the Fort Worth Police Department has grounds, much ground to cover yet, we're not there yet, but he did also note that we're headed in the right direction. He did also commend chief notes for his efforts to change the culture. Another observation that I've made in the language of the proposed ordinance. When the first engaged in it, I tried to find and research publications or guidances from subject matter experts to maybe offer a direction to go to. One thing that I have not heard is that these standards or requirements that we're talking about proposing for members of the public to serve on, they don't follow the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. I don't know if anyone's noticed that. Big differences there. And I'm not gonna get into that. I'm just citing observations. So what framework is being used here? Because I have questions about that. I have ongoing questions about it. And another takeaway that I had in my read, when you're talking about civilian oversight of law enforcement, we talked about this when I served on a different council long ago and we were considering what do we do in light of these police and public interactions that had gone bad? How do we respond? We're very cautious in not reacting without understanding what it is that we were trying to respond to. What I'm saying is this, one of the takeaways that I can look back then on and understand better now is that any measure of oversight should employ the least forced model. And those aren't my words. Those are the words of civilian oversight of law enforcement publications. Incremental change. That's what we did back then with the office of a police monitor. And let's be honest, law enforcement's going to be resistant to change. It's an institution that has been around a long time. Any institution that has been around a long time and has been established, will to some degree resist change? Change is inevitable, but you have to be very careful in identifying what you prescribe as the needed change. So I wanna keep in brief because we've been talking about this a while and I respect other council members' time, but keep that in mind. Again, least force necessary to accomplish the task. Keep in mind that that's from the civilian oversight of law enforcement publications. Keep in mind that best practices or qualifications for any member of the public to serve as they are described in the draft document, do not follow that civilian oversight of law enforcement model. So as it's written, I have questions about it because I see gaps. Those are my comments for now. Thank you, Carlos, Jared, and then Allen. I'm sorry, I have this too. Go ahead. I'll just move down the row. Go ahead, Allen. So I have the pleasure of doing a lot of research over the last few days for this. As I've been looking through it and reading all the documents and going over everything, I think that's very important to note in the first whereas clause, set up in a point, a civilian review board or alternative model of civilian oversight. And that was from the race and culture task force. And based on that, the office of police oversight and management was created. There was further work by the mutual accountability work group to go on through this. And they made a number of recommendations. I looked through those recommendations and I see one, well, aside from the fact that the initial report said this was not necessary if OPM was created. But as I look through the other reports, one thing I notice is what we're proposing today goes far beyond what those working groups created were specifically asking to do things in this ordinance that they did not recommend. And then second, when we talk about collaborative we're also excluding participation potentially that they did not. And I would say specifically in the language of former police officers, the mutual working group recommended not current but this ordinance goes further. And so I just wonder why. I wonder why if we're trying to be collaborative we're doing these things, why we're going further by ordinance than it's recommended and why we're not working directly. I mean, why, why? So I'm currently not supportive of this the way it's written. I'm not supportive of going further than our working group and the race and culture task force recommended. And that's kind of where I am at the moment. May I, I just want to answer part of your question on what the ordinance says. And it could be that the language was clunky and that because I drafted that part of it and it wasn't my intent. The working group recommended that the board not have any current Fort Worth police officers on that. I changed the language to include city employees as well. And then as we looked at it, said retired police officers because they were still a retired police officer would still be getting money from the city of Fort Worth through the pension plan. So I didn't want it to look like there was any conflict. So that's why that language was tweaked a bit. I'm not sure if that's what you're talking about Council Member Blaylock, but that's why it was tweaked a bit. What's not in the ordinance, but is something the working group did say was that even though they did not want a police officer to be able to serve as a voting member of the board, they did intend or fully expected that police officers would be in attendance as subject matter experts, as would any other person who is a subject matter expert on any issue that they were discussing. So that's not in the ordinance, in the draft ordinance, but that is something that the working group did say. Thank you for that clarification. Michael, Jared. I just want to bring it back because I think we're chasing a lot of rabbits. I think the core of it is we have precedent of boards and commissions. Zoning, for instance, Development Services staff doesn't sit on the zoning commission. And I think we're complicating a really a simple and precedent structure in that we have advisory commissions already established. And this gives us opportunity to establish another advisory commission on a core function that allows the council to appoint representatives to that commission and the departments responsible for the work of the commission will be, of course, legal opom and for the police department. I think it's that simple. I think if we would like to make amendments to the ordinance, I think it's definitely open for a conversation, but I think we're over complicating the structure and whether or not there's precedence for that. Thanks, Jared Gina. Thank you. I'm going to share some prepared remarks and I'm gonna read them so that I don't get off the track and take us even longer. And then I'll provide some technical observations. I think when you're looking at the relationship between police and those of underserved communities, there's a very distinct difference in what happens. And I've told my peers around this table, we don't have to always vote the same way on every issue, but I am never confused about who I was elected to represent. My district is quite diverse. I'm getting off script, but Chris, I'm gonna mention Jacobean Slayton that Sunday afternoon that shooting in district five where we saw video of a man, I think he came from Tyler after abusing or assaulting his female friend. And he hid in the truck. And I think there were five officers, Chief, I don't know if you remember, not five or six. That's about right, I don't remember the exact number. It's in my brain, but I remember walking Eastbury that evening and dusk came and reporters were questioning me as I was walking and people were yelling as I was walking. And I kept telling the reporters, we've got to get the videotape, we won't see healing until we get the videotape. Later I was told by a reporter, well, police are saying, and this is still on the street of Barry, police are saying that they're not gonna release the videotape. My response was, oh yeah, we've got to get that tape. We showed that tape to a group of ministers that Wednesday morning. And later a community activist asked me, when did the first change in police videotapes occur in Fort Worth? And who did it? My response was, well, I don't know. He said, you did in district five with that shooting. And from that point, I can tell you the release of videotapes involving police related anything speeded up. And it wasn't that that police were dragged into it, but they saw the benefit of getting the information out there. Just like you see tension around this table, we need to know that professional tension is often necessary to bring about positive change, to get to our desired end result. And I think we all know what the desired end result of whatever this is going to be, if it takes place. Don't be mistaken, I support this body being created with without a doubt. I can tell you from history, the way people in underserved communities respond to police related shootings when they are the victims differs greatly. And you might think back to the Woodhaven shooting. I think his name was Mr. Waller back when I was a reporter. And Mr. Waller's family knew that he had been shot and killed by a police officer. It was a mistake. That family waited to let the process work itself out. In communities of color, there's no trust in the process to be worked out. And that's why you see an effort to bring about this type of body if you will. It is my desire that if this is created, no matter what we call it, this odd numbered body must have balance to bring about our desired end result. And what that means is there's got to be room for a Rabbi Bloom, a Michael Bell. And I can only think of two names to bring about the legal community, but there's got to be room for someone like a Jim Lane and a Lee Merrick. We've got to have that healthy tension. But we don't have to eat ourselves, okay? We don't have to eat ourselves up. And so my suggestion, number one, is we take a look at what does it take to make it happen? We vote and we see up or down what's gonna happen. I don't know what the outcome will be. So those are my comments. And now here are my technical observations. Oh, and I did share this this morning and last night with Lily Biggins. And Maddie, you recall Lily was part of that original task force. And even though the language may be changed and what we are presented, Lily was okay with the language that we've been given today. And Lily, Rosa Navajar, Estrus Tucker and a few others were on that first, the original team. And this came after a police related incident that rocked the world, put us on the international platform of media. And that was not the kind of media Karlo that we wanted to be on. And so here are my technical observations. And this one comes from a lawyer friend of mine. And he raises the question of narrowly defining family member. He also states Texas law allows convicted felons to become voters after they have discharged their sentences. I'm not advocating for anything, but what happens a lot of times, we just ice people out. And those are the very people we need to have at the table around the table. I have a few more technical observations, Leticia. On page two of section one, we need to just true up the use of the term city council because in two dash 29, we have and city council. I don't know if that's supposed to indicate revised but it needs to be up there in section A of purpose, adding the city council where you see city manager chief of police and police oversight monitor. We need to add city council. This is a question for David to figure out. We need to know what appropriate support staff is because too often we hear from department heads who I know they need more people but they're just afraid to ask. And so how do we decide ahead of time what that appropriate definition is? If we go to page three of six and this may go backwards, I don't know but on page three under section E, I wanna make sure we all know what this standard of professional conduct agreement and our confidentiality agreement is. I don't think council needs to be in the weeds of things but I do think we need to have some type of knowledge of what y'all are telling people. I've already addressed the, just let me finish. I've already talked about the felony. Number five is not a current or former police officer with Fort Worth police department. Does that mean that officers from other municipal police departments could be on here? And again, not, I just have questions. Go backwards, I guess to number four, orientation and training. It's, I'd like to know exactly if we have access to that training and I read specifically what it all entails but you don't want people who you appoint to know more about an operation than you do. And so the question is, do council members have that kind of access? I think the 90 day prerequisite of time for training is fine. I am concerned about the meeting schedule being at least quarterly. A whole bunch of stuff can happen between quarters and I'm reminded when we were bringing the Trinity Railway Express into downtown Fort Worth from Dallas and on the T board, our Trinity Metro at that time, we were meeting where we had to increase our meeting schedule and we started meeting twice monthly as opposed to once monthly, but after the construction schedule got up to probably went back to monthly. So there may be more time needed to rev up, especially since you have all this training that's gonna be in here. One thing that's important to me is the timely issuance of meeting materials. Too often I get materials from staff, maybe two hours before we meet, that puts me at a disadvantage. And so that's in the weeds I know, but that's just what came out to mind. Now go to page five, receive citizen complaints. I think that was an issue that Chris was talking about. And so it looks like that's incorporated to your liking. It's on page five, number six. And the idea is that that body can receive citizen complaints that will be forwarded to the POM. And on number five, still page five on J, develop a clear and direct informational brochure. I've not been impressed with much that we do internally. And so there should be money to make it the model. And one thing I've told police friends of mine who of course really don't like this, I think if we work together as Fort Worth leaders, we could make this, if it's approved, a model that other cities would admire. And I could see it being on the national platform such as NLC Carlo. But again, it all depends on how the vote goes. And so those are my observations, but have no doubt I am supportive of this. I have seen firsthand why there is such a cry for it. I also understand why in some districts there may not be a cry. That's no criticism. It's a very different city. And I promise you there are those of you who may live elsewhere who get calls from my constituents just like I get calls from yours. And so those are my comments. Hopefully that didn't take too long. Thank you, Gina. Thank you, everybody. Yeah. Okay. So it sounds like, go ahead, Chris. I just want to thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. And I just want to highlight on that thing. One of the things I did want to add for the quarterly, and that's why it's important for the complaints is that when a complaint is filed, and that's why it's also important for the CPIs, that when we have that, that if that board needs to meet, it needs to be somewhere, some type of mechanism or a as needed, or if something takes place, that either the office or police monitor can call a meeting. Is that already in there? It's not in there, but remember the board, if it's, I'm sorry, the commission, I'm sorry, that's not commission board. If the board's implemented, remember they have to do bylaws. So a lot of the things that Mayor Pro Tem's talking about would be put into those bylaws. And we could definitely bring it back to council so that council could see those bylaws before they're actually acted on. But many of those issues that you talk about would be in the bylaws. Thank you. And I'll just give this last thing, because since I was one of the ones, well, the person who brought this to the table, and I'll be brief, Mayor, but I mean, it's part of the work, so we're still at work session, so we're working. I would say that it is disheartening to hear you say, Leonard, that people in your district is not calling for and people in my district may. And I wanna kind of just break down the race ethic in your district versus my district. In district seven, the white population is 65.9% and the black population is 7.6 and the Hispanic is 19%. And so when you break down district eight population, the Hispanics is 49.2% and 31.1% and 13, I'm sorry, for black, 31.1% and white, 13.3%. And I would say that I have had the privilege or the curse to run for mayor in 2017 and I went all over the city of Fort Worth, including district seven, and I have family members who live in district seven. And just to be frank, I have enough money in my pocket and bank to live probably next door to you or in the gated community. And I wanna say that one area does not discredit another area and it should not be where you live, you're not considered Fort Worth. And so if we have one resident in the city of Fort Worth that says there's a police problem, then the city of Fort Worth has a police problem. I remember when the young lady kid had died on in your district because of the roadways and everyone on that table was emotional. And I think if not all of us went down and hugged that lady, we didn't hug her because she lived in our district. We hugged her because she lived in the city of Fort Worth and she was hurting. And so I think we have to not make this rhetoric. We have enough rhetoric on a Democratic party and the Republican party and all these crazy commercials that makes people look blacker than they are and uglier than they are. It's just this table is nonpartisan, should be we know what the party lines, how they flow and how people get elected, whatever. But to bring that rhetoric around this table about a review board that will enhance our police department. I have said on more than one record that I support the chief police, I support his department, but I want to bring some type of review. So there is more transparency. It is not to say that we're against the police department. All of us voted for that budget to increase the police department, every single one of us. And so to hear some say that and make the distinguish and that rhetoric, I think it's disappointing. So as we move forward to push this vote, I'm with Jared and the other ones that this is about the review, it's about making forward better and it's about, and this whole innovation crap that everybody keep talking about. Let's put something, let's put our words where our mouth is and let's actually do something that the city of Fort Worth can hang our head on. And I think this is one and I know people have their mind already set on how you're gonna vote, but as the preacher in me, I would ask you to consider not just yourself, but people in your district that you have not talked to. I represent 109,000 people in district A and I'm not gonna lie to you because Granny said, if you lie, you're still, if you're still you're killed. And so I have not talked to all 109,000 people live in my district, but the people who I have talked to have given me that concern. And so don't just consider the ones that you have talked to or the ones that have put money into your bank account or about rubber or whatever you wanna call it, but consider the people who you haven't talked to. And those are my thoughts. I hope that we can get to a place that we can move forward with this board and it passes. Council, any more questions or comments? Mayor, could I just address something Council Member Flores said? As far as the NACO requirements, Council Member, the NACO requirements that you mentioned are for practitioners. So they would be for folks that are employed in our office. And those are the requirements that are on the NACO's website. As far as boards, it doesn't specifically talk about the qualifications of a board members because they're different types of civilian review boards. And that's true, they're four models. Right, and so that was the same thing that the Chief was talking about, depending on the Chief that he talked to, you have boards that have regulatory power over police departments, such as Detroit. You have some that can investigate, this board would not have that power. So there are different types of boards and depending on the structure of those boards is depending on how they work in that specific setting. Understand also the types of the boards. After this, I'll show you what I read. Okay, I transcribed it. And it does have those different categories that you mentioned. So if you can offer clarification in that regard. Okay, absolutely, thank you. Yeah. No other questions or comments, Council? Okay, thank you very much. I think now we can move to future agenda items. I'm first. Go ahead. Ready? I only have one. I'd like for staff to give some type of report and this is development services on waivers requested by developers. Not talking about those as referenced by Amy today, but we have developers who request waivers that take away from the spirit of neighborhood, such as we don't wanna put in a sidewalk and we don't wanna put in green space where it's required. And so I'd like that kind of report because too often I sit in on PDCs and I'm not real happy with the way I hear staff offering waivers or suggesting waivers. And so I wanna see what's going on with that specific subject. Thank you, Gina. Thank you. Elizabeth? I have three. The first one is on internships in the city, whether they're what departments or offices offer internship opportunities. I'd like a historical analysis on the ethnicity of the folks that have served as interns in the city. I'd also like to know whether or not that position was paid or unpaid. And then I'd like to know if it was unpaid, what the financial cost to the city of paying our interns would be as we move forward. I would like a IR on what financial due diligence is done in the zoning process. So when we get a staff report, we get whether or not it's recommended or not, but what we don't get is the cost to the city to maintain the roads or the sidewalks or sewer associated with that new development. I think that's important for us to have before we make that ultimate decision if we're gonna be good stewards of our tax dollars. And then third, if we could get an IR on the policy and procedure around opposition for zoning cases. It's to me often murky what is official opposition that would require the super majority of the seven votes. And so sometimes we get emails to our office, but did they include zoning? Is that official opposition? And so I would like some guidance from staff in the form of an IR on what that looks like and what those trigger points are and how they notify us if that super majority is required so that we're not up there on the dais. Confused, yeah. Chris, did you have something? Yeah, I was just asking Latisha, I think we're supposed to get a consensus to move forward on the vote. Did we make that consensus or not? We can move forward with the vote, works for me. Okay. Go for it. Thank you. Any other featured in items council? No, okay, perfect. Meeting adjourned, thank you.