 I'm Fernando Costa, I'm Assistant City Manager and it's my privilege to share with you some background information about the charter review process so as to prepare you to participate in this process and provide us with the benefit of your comments. And I'll try to move briskly through some slides. First to introduce the charter review task force as appointed by the City Council. I mentioned earlier, Ms. Bagsby, Deion Bagsby is Chair of the task force. She's a former Tarrant County Commissioner. We've heard already this evening from Burt Williams, the Vice Chair. We have with us Mr. Pete Garan, whom Mr. Espino introduced. The Henry Barola serves in the task force. Carlos Flores represents District 2 on the task force. Julie Myers is not here tonight. Keith Shanklin is not here. Lou Moskowitz is here though, representing District 6, Mike Holt from District 7, Danny Scarth representing District 8, although he's actually a resident of District 4 and Mike Coffey is here from District 9. So we've got splendid representation from the task force here this evening. They're here principally to listen to you so that they can hear firsthand what the citizens think. They'll be reconvening as a full task force next week to begin formulating their conclusions and recommendations to the City Council. So it's very important that they listen directly to you so they can not just get a summary from City staff but get a sense as to what you think by hearing your thoughts directly. A brief history of the City Charter. The State Legislature granted our original City Charter back in 1873 and in 1912 the State Legislature approved a home rule amendment ratified by the voters of the State whereby any city with a population of 5,000 or more could adopt its own Charter and consequently in 1924 that's exactly what Fort Worth did, our first home rule Charter which created what we now know as the Council Manager, former government. So the day-to-day operations of the City are not run by the Mayor, they're run by the City Manager under the general oversight of the non-member City Council. And we've had 13 amendments to the City Charter since 1924, 13 times the Charter has been amended through 2006, 10 years ago was the last time the Charter was the subject of this kind of review starting in 2005 and the issues were put on the ballot in 2006 and approved at that time including Council members pay, that was one of the significant amendments that was approved in 2006 and other amendments and we'll talk about the amendments that are currently under consideration for 2016. Under State law we may consider amendments to the City Charter no more often than every two years so we can't do it annually, we have to wait at least two years before we undertake the process again as a practical matter in Fort Worth it's been done more or less every 10 years or so. The Council approves the submittal of Charter members to the voters but only the voters can amend the City Charter just as only the voters can amend the State Constitution which we just did last week. And as I mentioned we have a Charter review task force that's been the common practice in Fort Worth rather than the Council deciding on its own what Charter members they want to put before the voters they usually rely upon an independent task force to provide them with advice and that's exactly what we're doing once again this year. We won't go through all of these items, the list on the screen gives you a census to the range of topics that are addressed by the City Charter under the home rule provisions. We can cover the form of government, details about the governing body, the City Council selection of administrative personnel under the City Manager and a whole host of other topics can be covered by the City Charter. The Charter review that we're undertaking now consists of these five items which Council Merisphino has already mentioned to us the number of Council members we currently have eight Council members plus the Mayor total of nine. We have two year terms for the Council members and the Mayor. Those terms are concurrent they're all elected at the same time every other year on odd numbered years and they're compensated at the rate of $25,000 for individual Council members and $29,000 for the Mayor. We also want to consider a couple of dozen technical amendments and our City Attorney Sarah Fulvider will describe them to us in just a few moments. We're following the schedule that appears on the wall we're in the midst this is the fourth of six public hearings that we're conducting around Fort Worth for the different Council districts. We'll have two more one on Thursday evening one next Monday and then the Task Force will meet on November 18th to formulate recommendations. Those recommendations will go to the City Council on December 8th for the Council to to receive the recommendations. They then will hold two public hearings of their own so if you want to speak directly to the City Council you'll have those two opportunities in January on the 12th and the 26th in conjunction with regular City Council meetings and then on February 2nd we anticipate that the Council will be adopting an ordinance calling the Charter Election to be held in May and we'll hear more about that shortly from our City Secretary Mary Kaiser. The Charter Election will be held on Saturday May 7th. In reviewing provisions of the City Charter the Task Force decided to consider some comparison cities cities of similar size with Council Manager forms of government in Texas and in other states so we're looking at Austin, Dallas, El Paso, San Antonio from Texas as well as Charlotte, Kansas City and Oklahoma City from other states so we'll make reference to these cities as we describe the existing provisions of the City Charter and I'd like to cover those four major policy issues and for each one give you a little bit of background information and give you some questions that you might want to consider as you think about what you might want to say or do in respect to these issues. So first in respect to the number of Council members as I mentioned we have eight Council members plus the Mayor each of the eight Council members now represents a little over 800,000 citizens. We have a population now of 812,000 so divided by 8 you can get a little more than 100,000 and most of the other comparison cities Austin, Dallas, El Paso and Oklahoma City each Council member represents fewer than 100,000 residents. The exception among the comparison cities of San Antonio where each of the 10 Council members represents more than 140,000 they have a 1.4 million population so each of the 10 Council members represents about 140,000. The next big issue well before we get into the next big issue the questions as you think about the number of Council members I know this is an important issue for many of the folks here tonight. Think about would increasing the number of single member districts perhaps from 8 to 10 or possibly even 12 whatever number you think is appropriate. Would that provide all Fort Worth residents with better representation? Would increasing the number of districts provide minority groups such as Hispanics and African Americans with better representation? Would increasing the number of districts provide better representation for residents from different geographic areas as Mr. Espinoe mentioned earlier? City encompasses some older urban neighborhoods within Loop 820 as well as some newer suburban neighborhoods beyond the loop and as you can see from the map that appears on the left hand side of the screen most of the Council districts include both central city neighborhoods and neighborhoods beyond Loop 820. The only exceptions are District 6 which is entirely outside the loop and District 9 which is entirely inside Loop 820. The second big issue concerns the terms of office. We currently have two year terms and Council members are elected and not numbered years. In Dallas and San Antonio they also have two year terms but in other cities they have longer terms. Charlotte has three year terms and Austin, El Paso, Kansas City and Oklahoma City all have four year terms. So a lot of folks think that instead of running for office every other year we had to have longer terms three years or four years. And so the rhetorical questions you might ask yourself are could longer terms increase the effectiveness of the Mayor and Council members by giving them more time in office? Would longer terms in any way reduce their accountability? That's the other side of the coin. Do we want them to be accountable every other year at the ballot box? And should the cost savings of holding less frequent elections up to a half million dollars or so per municipal election be a significant factor in this decision as to how often to hold these municipal elections? The third policy issue is staggered terms. We currently have two year concurrent terms. Dallas, San Antonio, Charlotte and Kansas City also have concurrent terms. They elect all their elected officials at the city level at one time but in Austin, El Paso, Oklahoma City they stagger their terms so that not all the Council members are subject to election at the same time. So we might ask ourselves would staggering terms provide the Council with greater continuity and stability? Not running the risk of all the Council members being terminated in any one election? That has not happened in the last 50 years. The majority of the Council has never been voted out of office in any single election. It is a hypothetical possibility naturally but it has not happened in Fort Worth in the last 50 years. Is it important to limit the amount of turnover that could occur in any Council election? Again, a hypothetical possibility. Is it important to elect the mayor and all Council members at the same time? Is there a good reason for all of them to come up at the same time? Do the terms of office two years versus three or four years affect the importance of staggering those terms? So in other words, if we have two-year terms maybe you want them to be concurrent, if we go to three or possibly four years, does it become more important to stagger those terms? And finally, should the cost of holding elections be a significant factor in this decision? And finally, the fourth of the policy issues before the Charter Review Commission is compensation. The mayor is currently paid $29,000 per year. The individual Council member is $25,000. In comparable cities, salaries range from $24,000 for the mayor and $12,000 for Council members of Oklahoma City. That is at the low end of the range. Up to $123,000 for the mayor and $61,000 for Council members in Kansas City. Many folks will argue that Fort Worth has grown a lot over the last 20 or 30 years. And now with the city's large and as complex and as diverse and as rapidly changing as Fort Worth, some would argue that Council member's jobs are now full-time and they deserve to be compensated accordingly. Others think it ought to continue being a part-time job and the compensation should be proportional to part-time service. You might ask yourselves is it important to consider the time demands of the position when setting compensation? Is it important to consider the city's budget? Is this a significant issue? Would increasing the compensation allow more citizens an opportunity to serve in public office? So not just those folks who are independently wealthy can afford to serve on the City Council. So these are among the questions you might ask yourselves in pondering the issue of compensation. We're in the midst of this public engagement process. I mentioned the six public hearings are part of the community outreach effort. We have a Speaker's Bureau and the meeting in the box. If any of you are associated with a neighborhood association or with a civic group of one kind or another and would like for us to provide you with a presentation, we'll be happy to do that. We've received requests, for example, from the Hispanic Leadership Council. We received requests from the Central City Redevelopment Committee. We will be speaking to the Fort Worth League of Neighborhood Associations and are happy to meet with other groups upon request. We're using traditional media, the city's electronic newsletter, the monthly water bill insert, which is commonly read by most of our residents. The Wickely Bolton from our Community Engagement Office, Michelle Goode, is here. She's our Director of Communications and Public Engagement. Using our website and social media, a lot of folks feel more comfortable communicating to those media than through public meetings. So that's another opportunity. Videos and media relations, we're trying to cover the waterfront in all the ways in which citizens can participate in city government and communicate with their elected and appointed representatives. This is another view of the public hearing schedule. As I mentioned, we have two more coming up after tonight at Hazel Harvey P Center for Neighborhoods and the Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church. And so I'd like now to call on Sarah Fultonwater, City Attorney, to talk with us about the proposed technical amendments which complement the policy issues that we've just discussed. So hopefully you picked up a sheet that looks like this that's entitled Major Issues Identified by the City Council. And what I'm going to do is run through what these propositions and the technical amendments would look like on the ballot. Okay, so I'll go over first the policy issues that Fernando has discussed with you. So proposition number one, should the terms of the City Council be increased? And of course these are blank because the task force has not decided what they're going to recommend and ultimately the City Council will make that decision. Proposition number two is to address the staggered terms. So should the City Charter be amended to provide for staggered terms? Number three, talks about increasing the number of council members from nine to perhaps 11 or more whatever the task force recommends in the Council decides. But you will see that it would not happen until the first election following the 2020 census. Now this is because right now if we did it now we'd be using all data from 2010 which doesn't accurately reflect ethnicity and other factors that are needed to actually do a really accurate redistricting. And so that would wait till we got that 2020 census in and we would use that information. Proposition four is what Fernando really to his compensation of the Mayor and City Councils should it be increased? And this would start October 1st 2016 if it was approved by the voters. So now the technical amendments what the staff has done has gone through since we're not doing a full City Charter revision. We've gone through and tried to pick things that we think are not consistent with state law. They're not consistent with our current practice or they just need to be cleaned up. So the vacancies in the City Council right now the City Council can only appoint someone to a vacant position if it's vacant for 30 days or less. All right so just say if you have a death on the City Council either you have to wait till the next election you have to ask the governor to have a special election or you just leave the seat vacant unless it's 30 days or less. What this would do and this would be especially important if the terms are increased to allow the Council to appoint someone to sit for 12 months or until the next person is elected. Swearing in of City Councils right now what you have to do what the Council has to do is canvas the election results. In other words we get those results from Tarrant County. The Council has to canvas those in other words say yes we agree these are the results and these are the winners but we cannot swear the Council members in at that mean until the next City Council meeting and I don't know why the Charter is written like this. It doesn't really serve any purpose and we would like to have the flexibility or suggest that the Council have the flexibility of swearing you in on the same day that you're elected. Proposition number seven right now in the City Charter if employees decide they want to run for public office their employment is terminated with the city that's inconsistent now with state law so we need to revise that to make it consistent. All right proposition number eight deals with when we do redistricting we're required to do a meets and bounds description of every district and you can imagine if you have to go out and get a surveyor to do that description it's very expensive for the taxpayers and so we would like to delete this requirement allow us just to draw them on the map so that you can see where it is without having to actually go out and do a survey of the meets and bounds of each district. Proposition number nine deals with residence requirements right now it says that if you're going to run for city council seat you must reside in the district six months before the election day. Well the problem with that is you don't know when that starts you don't know how many do you count each month has a different number of days how do you count is it a full six months is that 31 days or 30 days so we're suggesting change that to 180 days from the first filing date that way it's very clear that if you have an issue of how long somebody's live there you can actually count it. All right proposition number 10 deals with the right of a public hearing by department directors. If you remember Fernando talked about that this is a city manager form of governments run by the city manager set policy by the city council so except for appointed officials like myself and Mary and the city manager in the city auditor everyone else is hired and fired by the city manager so it's up to him to make those decisions but in the city charter right now any department director has the right to go in front of the city council and ask for a hearing about his proposed termination by the city manager. Well there's just kind of conflicts with the whole way that the government is supposed to work and it doesn't tell the what the city council is supposed to do after the public hearing because they can't tell the city manager what to do because that's not consistent with the rest of the charter and so this is just kind of an odd provision in there and so we are suggesting we delete this. The second one actually goes to the same type of public hearing but for appointed officials and the current practice now although the city council does have the right to remove appointed officials the current practice now is that discussion happens in executive session usually that's where you're evaluated and the decisions are made and then you're you're told afterwards whether or not you're going to be terminated or not and so actually having a public hearing really doesn't serve any purpose there so we're suggesting that we delete this. Proposition 12 goes to municipal judges right now our municipal judges are appointed for two years and if for some reason they can't serve then we will continue to pay them in other words they won't be given any dockets but they we continue to pay them until the next till their term is up so in other words if they do something maybe unethical or they're not fit to serve for any reason the council has no way to remove them and so we're suggesting that this proposition would allow the council the majority of the council to remove a municipal judge for cause only for cause so you don't want the council to have you want to keep that independence between the judge and the council but for cause they would be able to remove them. All right proposition number 13 right now it says that the department of finance will assess and collect taxes and you know that's the job of Tarrant County now and so we would like to amend this language to reflect the current practice that Tarrant County does this job all right adoption the budget in accordance with state law right now once the city manager introduces the budget it has to be on the city council agenda for public hearing and published in the newspaper for every week until it's adopted by the city council and this usually can run anywhere from four to five weeks and so it's a cost to the taxpayers and what we would like to do is be able to have those public hearings in accordance with state law which would be at the minimum one public hearing if there's no increase in tax and then two public hearings if there's an increase in tax and you wouldn't have to publish it you know again for four or five weeks which is again an expense. The independent auditor proposition number 15 it will be amended to clarify the duties of an outside auditor's relates to the city budget what the city council is expecting them to provide for them so this is kind of just a clarification and proposition number 16 right now Tarrant County has the public health department the city of Fort Worth does not have one as it did in the past and so we're suggesting that we amend this to delete to delete that requirement now when you do a recall the council person you have to have a petition to be able to do that the citizens can say we no longer want this council member serving what they do is they get a petition together and they submit that petition to the city secretary she then has to verify the signatures on that petition and it's a percentage of the amount of citizens that registered voters in city of Fort Worth and right now that would be over 76,000 people signatures that she would have to verify she would have to do that in 10 days according to the city charter and so we're suggesting that we move that up to 25 days just to give her time to verify all those signatures because as the number of people registered then the number that she has to look at increases and this proposition number 18 is similar to the same thing it's an initiative that's if you wanted to propose an ordinance to the city council you would have to do a petition with the same number of votes on it and she would only have 10 days to verify this so this would give her 25 days okay proposition number 19 when anytime the city sells property for greater than $125,000 it has to be published for four weeks in the newspaper to give notice what we would like to do is suggest that we change that to one week and then publish it on our city's website for four weeks so you'll still get the notice but you'll get in a different fashion rather than the expense of publishing it in the newspaper all right number 20 deals with curbs and sidewalks right now the charter says that the city comes in and improves the street it is the property owners on either side of that street that must pay for the curbs and sidewalks city cannot pay for them so we were suggesting we need to change that to allow the city to pay for that if the city wants to pay for that so it's not automatically a burden of the property owners on either side Proposition 21 it's a very little technical thing the title says that the mayor will sign all contracts when in fact it's the city manager and the body of the language says it's the city manager so the two are not consistent so we just want to change the title there so that's a very slight change reporting by the tax assessor in proposition number 22 it's to allow the tax assessor to provide us with the information on the assessments of real and personal property is required by state law right now the charter requires it on by April 1st and that's just not consistent with what state law requires of the tax assessor see these are very exciting technical amendments right so i'm getting there there's not too much number 23 requires public service corporations these are utilities to submit an annual report of the receipts of their businesses in their to the city secretary every year no one is doing this and we really don't have a way to enforce it haven't done it for years as far as we know and so since this is kind of being ignored we're suggesting we just delete this since we're not following it all right the contracts for official advertising in 24 right now the city averts contracts for official newspaper to do all of our publications but we're only allowed to contract for one year at a time under the charter we would like to be able to sign a contract for longer than that if it's advantageous to the city in other words we get a better price if we have a longer term but right now we just can't do it so annexation method and procedure in 25 this is a technical amendment for mary because the ballot says strike out what you want to do rather than marking the ballot it's just not consistent with how it's usually done all right and proposition number 26 is that we've got like some provisions in there when staff has gone through they're just simply preempted by state law now the laws have changed so we want to go through and just clean that up and the last one deals with publication requirements where the voters agree to allow the city to publish in different methods electronically on our website rather than publish in the newspaper where it's allowed by state law so with that i will turn it over to mary and she's going to run through the process for how we get through the election okay as uh fernando mentioned the final report of the charter review task force after hearing hearing all of the input from all the public hearings will be on december the eighth and then the council will then hold public hearings at their regularly scheduled council meetings on january 12th in 26th where folks can come forward and and you know continue to express their opinions about what's being proposed for the charter election the council um we have on the calendar for the council to call the election on february 2nd 2016 but it must be called no later than february 19th that's a state requirement there's a deadline at which time after which you cannot call an election uh or you know with some exceptions this would not fall into one of the exceptions so we have to do it then and then the um if that election is called then we would have education and community outreach more public hearings um you know on the website we have you know various ways to reach out to the community to talk about what's actually on the ballot what does it mean what will be the impact of those how will the ballot look so that when folks go to the voting booth they'll know what they're looking at and then early voting would take place from april 25th to may second election day would be may 7th we would canvass the election which sarah mentioned that's the official uh receipt of the results of the election by the city council well they they actually accept those and they're recorded in my office and because of a this is a charter election we will also notify the secretary of state that we have held a charter election and what those results are and then the charter changes would be effective immediately unless otherwise noted there's two on there the um number of council members we noted that would not happen till after the 2020 census and then if the compensation is changed for the council that would become effective on october 1 2016 that's the start of our fiscal year for 2016 2017 and that's it that's how we would get through that process