 I have listened to you all, been inspired by you all, and every topic we're going to take on comes because of your prostrations, your challenges, your questions. And I don't want to cheat any panel team. So each panel team will have 20 minutes. Now, it'll be when they start. So we're going to talk about, why do all developers want to come here to the park? That's the first one. Now, we had some printed agendas. Well, Sandy and I were held hostage at the meeting before this one. So I have to read you what it's going to be. First one, why do developers want to bring more apartments and why are zoning laws so complicated anyway? Now, everybody wishes they could talk about that. But who we have is a unique panel. So you're going to hear from Amy Connolly. She's going to tell you there is a housing shortage, whether you knew it or not, nationwide. You will hear from DJ O'Rell, who is over development services, which means any time anybody wants to build anything, they have to go to his office. Please welcome former Councilman Frank Moss. And you will also hear from Raphael. Raphael MacDonald and I have been hooked to the hipsters, David Koresh, who is local ARLG, and then Fox Four. And speaking of Fox Four, I did not know if our moderator would make it, because our moderator is Dionne Ameland of Fox Four. And if you're watching that trial, you know, Michelle, my high school buddy, you've never come to a never-to-be meeting. I'm so glad to see you. It's my high school best friend, who lives in Woodhaven. And we did invite people from Woodhaven, White Lake Hills, and whatever other area that we may inherit. And so once again, there will be no questions until the third panel ends. So you might make notes of questions that you want to hear. The other thing you should know right there, Bob, is that you need to know about Dionne Ameland. Now, what you need to know about Dionne Ameland is, she is a true journalist. And so when I covered murder trials, you never knew what the jury was going to do. And so I was waiting on pins and needles until I had her called the last night that she would be here. So please welcome Dionne Ameland. He's from the man who writes the checks for all city employees, that being my city manager, T.V. Cook. It's great to see everybody. I love coming to this place. And as I was driving over here today, I wanted to tell you about the two previous times. One was when we talked about the budget. Were some of you here? All right, some people. And the other time was when we talked about the bond program back that was approved in May. So when we were here before the May bond referendum, I just wanted to take the time to thank you. All the referendums were approved and there's a number of projects for this side of Fort Worth and that bond program that your council member, Mayor Pro Tem, Gina Bivens, is working on. It includes the stop six hub. Does everybody know about that project? It includes the parks out here. I can't remember what else, I'll start losing track. But Ms. Bivens has been responsible for a lot of activity that's occurring in East Fort Worth. She is a great voice for the east side of Fort Worth. I could also tell you that she almost got me killed when I was with her in the early part of coming to Fort Worth. Have you heard that story? All right, so I was with Ms. Bivens and she was driving around East Fort Worth and she wanted to show me the different neighborhoods. Now she did not take me to the nice neighborhoods, right? Cause she wanted me to see some of the challenged neighborhoods on the east side of town. And so we drive up, I think it's stop six. And there could have been some drug activity occurring at this house. Now there was, there was a house that was partially boarded up. So it meant to me that nobody was supposed to be living there. But there were some people on the front porch of this boarded up house having a conversation with each other that she thought she needed to break up. And I'm thinking, I'm gonna die. I know I wasn't that scared. But she says, I think there's something illegal going on here and I'm gonna go break it up. She jumps out of the car and I'm sitting in the front seat thinking, does she think I'm getting out of this car? It all turned out just fine. They saw wisdom in fleeing the area once Gina jumped out of the car. But that's the type of person that Ms. Bivens is. She's very active in the community, very interested in making sure that the right things happen out here. And so I just want to thank you for coming out. We have a number of city staff here. We got half the police department. Thanks guys for coming. It's good to see everybody and thanks for attending. But we're available for questions. And I think the questions are after the three panels, right? Is that right? And the last thing I'll say simply is this is the time of the year that I'll just ask that you think about others. You think about friends, you think about family. And I'm just gonna ask you to take this time to enjoy this time of the year. Be thankful for the things that we have. Keep track of, again, friends, family and neighbors. And God bless everybody. Have fun the rest of the day. Who has this next? Now we're gonna turn it over to our moderator, Dionne Anglin. I just want to first start off by saying thank you for the opportunity to be here. Thank you Mayor Pro Tem, Vivins, City Manager Cook and all of you. It's a delight for me to play a small role in this and I am just happy about it for two reasons. And first, that it gives me a different perspective other than a working journalist to see this end of how the city and city government works along with the community. Rather than how I'm pretty used to encapsulating topics in a minute and 30 seconds to fit it into a newscast. The second reason I just want to say that I'm so delighted to be here is because Fort Worth is my home. I was born here. I grew up in Stop Six and also, so just to be able to cover Tarrant County, Fort Worth, the east side, it really is a privilege for me. So again, thank you. And that said, we're gonna just jump right in with our questions and I believe our first question is going to be directed toward, we'd love to hear from you, DJ. Why are there so many applications coming to the east side for apartments? Well, I don't think the east side is singled out for development. There's so many applications all over the city. East side, and I know you know because most of you guys live on the east side, it's a beautiful place to live, right? You know, we're one of the fastest growing cities in the country and this is one of the nicer areas in our city where there's mature trees, right? We're surrounded by the cross timbers and there's also great access to roadway major networks, right? To get to 820, to 30, to 20, right? To 183 and all these other major roadway networks that connect us to our partners around the region. So those are some of the major reasons I would guess that a lot of developers are reaching out to continue to develop in this area. That said, it segues right into our next question and this will be for Ms. Connolly. Why are there so many requests coming to the city for apartments and how does that tie into the housing shortage? Sure, so just introduce myself really quick. I'm Amy Connolly. I'm an assistant director in the neighborhood services department for Fort Worth and my particular division in neighborhood services works a lot with housing affordability. We work with a lot of developers to do projects through our Fort Worth Housing Finance Corporation. So we work in that affordability housing finance realm along with our city council partners and a lot of our development partners. So the reason why the east side is seeing a lot of new housing development is, first of all, it's a great market to build in. There's a lot of need for housing on the east side of Fort Worth. It's near transit, it's near highways. If you're looking for a job in Fort Worth and you wanna live somewhere in Fort Worth affordably, living on the east side is a really good place to live. So that's primarily market-wise why you're seeing it. Adding in the piece for housing shortage, let's talk about that a little bit. I think, as you know, Fort Worth is growing tremendously and while we have a lot of land that we can annex and bring into the city, we still have issues of where are jobs located in the city and where is housing located? What you really wanna see is that jobs and housing need to be located relatively close together so you can have less driving so people can live in neighborhoods close to where they work and they have a higher quality of life. In Fort Worth, we're projected to add something like 200,000 new residents over the next 10 years. And that kind of, when you break that down year by year, that means that maybe something like 20,000 residents are coming to the city of Fort Worth every year. So we have to find housing or have to build housing for 20,000 new people of all income levels. We don't just have people that are billionaires moving to Fort Worth. We have people that have regular jobs that maybe pay $20 an hour and they need a place to live just as much as everybody else does. So we have to think about not just housing and where it's located, but we also have to think about the income of the folks moving to Fort Worth, the income of the folks that live in Fort Worth and where they can afford housing. Some interesting things have been happening in Fort Worth over the last 20 years. What we've seen is that we've seen a very slow rise in household income. And this is across the United States. Household incomes are not rising very fast. So it may be that we're not getting big raises anymore in our jobs. We may, the economy is growing, but our incomes are not really growing with it. But the sales price of new homes in Fort Worth have skyrocketed. So what we have today is that today in Fort Worth, the median, meaning the very middle household income in Fort Worth is $67,000 a year. So think about that. The average, the very middle person in Fort Worth, that household, meaning the mother or father, kids, or everybody who's contributing is making $67,000 a year. The median sale price of a home in Fort Worth is $350,000. That's the middle sales price. There's half above and half below. So when you think about that, there's a mismatch there. A household that makes $67,000 a year cannot afford a $350,000 house. They won't get approved for that. And this is happening all over DFW. This is actually helped across urban Texas. In all the major cities in Texas, you're seeing elevated house prices compared to household income. You're seeing a limited supply and what's being built is largely not apartments, but I think DJ will say, while we're getting more apartments, we're actually probably building a lot more single family houses in Fort Worth. And our income growth are just not keeping up with the sales price of housing. So there in lies, we're having a housing shortage. We're having a housing shortage, not in the top levels of Fort Worth. We're having a housing shortage with lower income levels. People below median income are having a very hard time affording and finding housing in Fort Worth. So the market knows that. And developers who build apartments know that people can usually afford an apartment when they can't afford a home, or maybe that's the first step that they take in their path to home ownership. And so that's why you're seeing a lot of apartments. There's just a market for it. People can't afford to get into a single family home. They need apartments to live because there's just so many people coming here. So I hope that kind of explains what's going on in the market without a bunch of charts. I have a hard time explaining it without the graphs that have all the symbols that go up and up. But that kind of explains what's going on in the market. Well, thank you. It does. It provides a better look at that. And we'll have a chance to maybe give you some other questions to answer along those lines in just a bit. But I'll move along so that we can hear from Mr. McDonald, Rafael. I'd like for you to address what role does zoning play in this discussion? And feel free to introduce yourself. Well, as I said, I'm Rafael McDonald. I'm proud to be a councilwoman with Mayor Pro Tem Bivens, appointee to the Zoning Commission. I've been there, I think four years or so now. Before that, I was on historic and cultural landmarks and then I was on urban design. I also acknowledged my fellow commissioner, Wanda Collin, who represents District 8, who's with us here as well. She is really the queen here of the East Side in terms of her knowledge. I lean on her institutional knowledge quite a bit, particularly one of these things. When we get requests from builders, when we get requests from people to make zoning changes on their properties, they first go to staff. And then after they go through staff, they go through, in some cases, they have the pre-development conference where Sandy is very involved with. And then eventually it comes to us. After city staff reviews it, they'll give us a determination in what way we go, one way or another. We do pay attention to that. We don't always agree with what city staff says. We get a lot, and I would say, particularly a hot button case, we get a lot of response from the public. And that weighs very heavily in our decisions. We hear from various neighborhood associations. John T. White has been very vocal about when there have been developments in that particular area and concerns that they have, they speak from one voice, as well as the individual members of the HOA speaking in. And we've seen this also happen in a number of other areas and a number of other areas throughout the city. And that's very important. It's very hard for folks to sometime be able to make a meeting on a Wednesday afternoon at one o'clock in the afternoon. One of the, I don't want to call it a blessing of the pandemic, but certainly one of the pluses, I think is the ability for people to join these meetings virtually. It is vitally important that we hear from the public when it comes time to make these decisions. We don't make these decisions lightly. I spend my weekends reading through the correspondence. If you've sent something, whether it is here in district five or whether it's in district seven or district three or district six, I'm going to read it because I have to cast a vote and I'm going to cast the most informed vote I possibly can make. And so that's very important that we do hear from the public when it comes to these particular issues because these decisions are not made in a vacuum. Remember a couple of years ago, we had a person from that city to the west or city of the east where I have a full-time job that basically said that they were going to do whatever they wanted and they really didn't care about our input and myself and another commissioner who's no longer on the zoning commission set him straight. And I don't hesitate to do that if we had someone this week talking about a particular project that they didn't reach out to the neighborhood until the day before the meeting and I said, you reached out yesterday? No, that's not acceptable. That is not acceptable. So we take our roles very seriously. We listen to you and we act accordingly. Thank you so much, Rafael. I know that just listening to each of them respond to the different questions, you all do have some questions. And if you saw Mayor Pro Tem Bivens whispering in my ear just a moment ago, she's had a change of heart. And we are gonna take a few questions if there are any with regard to the housing shortage, the influx of apartments seeking to locate here. So if you have a question, now's the time. I believe I'd like to direct this to you, sir. And I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm a little too tall. I don't even have the technical height. South of Rosedale, just last night I was wondering, this very question. How many permits, I guess that's the right word, have been requested for, how can I find out just for a particular area? How many permits have been requested to say 20 years ago, 10 years ago, last year? So on our website, and it's not separated out by neighborhood, but we could get you that information. So on our website we show permit applications year over year. So it goes back 10 years. So for instance, like last calendar year, we had 18,500 single family permit applications. This year we're teetering around 19,200, but we still have December to go. But basically it's a chart that kind of goes down and it lets you know each year over year. But pretty much the gist of it is year over year we've increased in all land uses. Commercial, residential, multifamily has also increased. So if you give me your email address, I'll send it to you, the parameters that I'm looking for if you can give me a general idea of what that looks like. And let me say it for anybody who else would like to get this information. And also forgive me for not introducing myself. Also when I started talking, my name's DJ Harrell and I am the director of development services for the city of Fort Worth. You know, in development services we're over zoning, we're over plating, building permits, and you know, preservation. So my email address is d as in duck.j as in joseph.harrell h-a-r-r-e-l-l at Fort Worth, Texas dot gov. Thank you very much, I appreciate you. Okay, front row. Okay, thank you for the promise. And I had a question for DJ and that was about he said that primarily that the reason that there's so many apartment applications for these areas is because of accessibility. And what I'm really asking, could we not think about trying to build more affordable housing where homeowners can purchase homes on the east side rather than renters? Because we all, we know that that really is the gateway to homelessness because if people can't afford rent, they're gonna end up on the street. So can we not consider trying to provide more housing as opposed to apartments? And so when you state it as tax, you don't make it and what housing is possible. Can we not try to address that issue? Absolutely. Well, I also think it's a balance, right? Like Amy rightfully said, there is a need for apartment uses, but I do understand your question and the thought behind it, right? Should there be other land uses between high density multifamily and single family residences? So one of the things that we're looking at in the city, we just thank you, David, and thank you all that voted on the budget, but we just got approved to hire a consultant to look at this exact thing. One thing that we're looking at is those uses between multifamily and single family. So some of your duplexes, some of your triplexes, your quads, we call that the missing middle housing. And so this missing middle is unique in that it also provides a buffer between like the 5,000 square foot A5 residential to the higher density dense commercial land uses. So if you just imagine a scale where there's A5 residential and then maybe there's duplex, maybe there's triplex, maybe there's quad, and then maybe there's higher density multifamily uses. And so the goal is to make sure that all these uses contextually work together to form our community. So we are looking at that exact thing. We're getting ready to go out for an RFP to hire a consultant to help guide us through that. And at that time also I'll say there'll be stakeholder engagement meetings like this so that we get feedback from the communities in which we serve. My question was, is there ever a point where we just kind of go, it's too congested, it's just too much, all our green spaces aren't enough, and then we just go, okay, we're topped out on the people in my department so whatever, otherwise I'm gonna have to span the roads and make it a mess. Well, was that me? I'm sorry guys. What are the demands for the best? I'm the permit guy. I know I'm gonna get the most questions there. Right, right. Well, I don't think there's an exact point that's been identified for that, but I do think that we also try to balance those open space and other uses in transportation stormwater and drainage and water sewer infrastructure. We try to address that as we go forward with these development types. For example, we've got an open space acquisition program in the city where we try to focus on areas that we'd like to preserve for our city for open space. We also have parkland dedication policies. So when a developer comes and wants to develop an entire neighborhood, we make sure that we get some clawbacks in order to ensure that we have adequate parks and recreation for the neighborhood that it's gonna be going into. And so it's not necessarily a cap, but it's also trying to strike that balance. And I would just add, there's something that I think we wanna be very watchful for that we do at Zoning Commission is we have, we don't wanna give away what commercial space that we have already on the books. We had a case mentioned about John T. White earlier. It was a case, if you're familiar with the area, kind of over East Chase, John T. White, over behind the Lowe's kind of catty corner there from the Walmart. A developer wanted to come in and put in some apartments and townhomes over there between John T. White and Bentley Village. That's not what that area is zoned for. He bought the land, he had the temerity, and that's the kind word I'd use, to go ahead and tell a newspaper that this is what was going to go there and this is what was best for the neighborhood. Well, no, it wasn't. That's why I got voted down. That's why you stuck with the property. Great. Definitely, we just have to wrap this topic up and I just wanna ask maybe if our panelists can just do a really quick round robin, 30 seconds or less, what you'd like to leave our community members with regard to this subject. I'll start with you, DJ. Okay, okay. Well, the only thing that I'll add, I know I've kind of monopolized this thing, but I'll add is in the city of Fort Worth, we do want to hear from you guys. We're not these city planners of the 80s that just sit down in the basement and make plans, right? That affect you guys on a daily basis. What we'd like to do is, and we're trying to do a better job of stakeholder engagement, to get feedback from the community on the decisions that we make. And just like we talked a lot about, the zoning commission and the council hearings are areas for participation, but we're open every day, right? And if you have a question or concern or if you'd like to participate in our comprehensive planning meetings, we welcome that type of participation from our citizenry. Wonderful. Amy, briefly. Sure, I just want to let everybody know that affordability is gonna continue to be a hot issue. In 2021, the Pew Charitable Trust did a survey across America, and they found that more than half of Americans think that housing affordability is going to be the top issue for the United States. It ranked above COVID, healthcare, crime, and jobs in terms of concerns for Americans. So as we think about zoning policy and we think about where we're locating jobs and where we're locating transportation and transit networks, we really have to think through where we're locating housing and how affordable it is and making sure we're covering that for the residents of our city and future residents, too. Very, very important. Rafael? Get involved. I think that's a simple thing. Get involved. If you're a part of a homeowners association, you will find out about proposed development coming to your part of town weeks before it hits the agenda. We find out at the same time that the HOA members find out, and usually it's at that point that I'm checking with the HOAs and I'm checking in with Sandy and Gina going, hey, this seems okay, or no, this isn't quite what I think we need to be doing. And we talk back and forth about that. So you have that in terms of involvement. If there is something that you suddenly find on an agenda on a Friday, they're published the Friday before our Wednesday meeting, usually late in the afternoon, send a letter. Like I said, I read every letter. I'm up until one in the morning reading letters. I should be going to sleep, but here I am reading letters because I want to hear from folks and I'm very interested in their feedback. Take that time. We talk about the importance of voting. Take the time to speak out to those of us who are volunteering our time to serve on these boards and commissions. We need to hear from you. We can't make our decisions in a vacuum. And attend community events like this one. So much appreciated. Rafael McDonald, Amy Connelly, DJ Harrell, we thank you for your insight. Let's give them a round of applause. And so what does it take to have a high-performing neighborhood association in how to energize members is what they're going to talk about. David, even though we have that case still today, you can talk about the energizing because they tell us not to. So, because I know what y'all do. We have these competitions. So, well, thank them for being here. Well, we are going to jump right in with our questions. And the first one, I am not directing it toward anyone in particular, but whomever would like to take the opportunity to respond, just go right ahead and feel free. What are some of the projects that you all have led that brought more engagement from neighbors or members of H-O-A? Well, I'm the preacher in the group, so I'll take the first stab at it. What we've been able to do, I think the first event that we had was an Easter celebration in Rosedale Plaza Park. And that event really galvanized the community. It brought the children out. It brought a lot of the people who once lived in the Calvo development. It brought them back to the community. And it was a very, we worked in correlation with the Fort Worth East Side Police Department, our neighborhood officer, Officer Daugherty, rallied all of the troops. They provided the food, housing, sponsored, some of the events that we had. So it was really a community gathering that brought the community together. And so I think that speaks volumes to what Stop Six is doing compared to the reputation that it's had. It was high crime. People didn't want to come to the East Side. And once they see the changes that are being made, then we're trying to promote people to choose the East Side for a place to make their homes. So... Very, very good points, May. Go right ahead. One of the things that we've done, we wanted to make sure that when a person came into our neighborhood, they knew where they were. And how did we do it? We approached Crape Myrtles. We said Crape Myrtles is gonna be the say so for our neighborhood. And we started off with a concept. We raised about $1,500. We got trees from the city of Fort Worth. There was a private company that wanted to put in trees. And many of them, the first phase, was around the Martin Luther King Center. And we got, in fact, we started the project. And people saw what was going on and they wanted to become part of it. And so they donated trees to that. And we had enough money to put in about 30 Crape Myrtles trees and that's by working with local companies, stores, where they came up and provided us an incredible price. And so we put out within about a two year period about 70 plus Crape Myrtles and regular trees. And I just saw on the, I talked to Sandy and Ms. Accountswoman Vivins, that I see that the plants that's going in the island down East Rosedale of Crape Myrtles. So we've got a lot to go. But one of the real interesting things that happened is that there was other people that saw what was going on and even though they didn't necessarily join the association, they were aware of it. And that's very important. We also looked at working, Jonathan Morrison was here, but there was a group of them that worked together on persons who had criminal records, but they were eligible to be cleared, but it cost so much for them to do it. And so that was a project that we looked at, we supported, and we got a national award for it from the neighborhood group. We decided at this particular point, we have an entry way into our neighborhood and that's Stahlkut. And that's something that we're gonna take on as a neighborhood association because this leads to some of the best schools. In fact, one of the better best schools in the city of Fort Worth. And that's the Young Men's Leadership Academy stuck on our high school and the middle school. So that's one of the things that we're working with. And we're also working with, through our police department and other individuals, we have a real problem about a park that's located in our community that we wanna make sure there's some adults or police out there doing lunchtime. And that's another project that we're taking on and I was gonna say it later in here, but we as a neighborhood association don't take on any project that we don't set down, review, set as a goal. And if we assign individuals, we hold them accountable for getting results from those activities, either on a monthly basis or under an established period of time that they have to show that they're doing something and not just talking. Right, all so very important. We wanna just move along to our next question here. Go ahead and weigh in. I'd rather just weigh in on the why a neighborhood association. Well, and I think that's gonna really, I think you'll be perfect to do so in the next question. Here's what I think you might welcome answering. What's the value for it, for anyone to be in or participate in an association? It will be, I'm Dave Folson, I'm a director of the John T. White neighborhood association and the answer to that question, you're gonna get out of it exactly what you put into it as a community and we're all stronger together than we are as individuals. John T. White, like most of the big neighborhood associations that's very diverse group of people and that covers race, that covers age, that covers gender, that covers political lines. We've got a great group of people and we all have differences. Some live in homes, some live in apartments, some are an R2 and town homes, but the people that tend to join an association wanna take ownership of their area and they wanna take ownership of the issues that affect their area and job one on that if you decide to get together with your neighbors and make a neighborhood association, you've gotta build coalitions and that starts with city leadership and you know, my fight years ago, what got me involved was a gigantic town home project that they were gonna put in areas that were not zoned for town homes and it started as kind of a one man fight. John T. White had kind of went fallow over the years. We just didn't have the onslaught that we have now of development coming into our area and we became really frustrated with it. We kind of have a slogan over in our area. We're trying to change, but right now it's apt. You know, John T. White Neighborhood Association you know, where no new services, just new apartments and you know, we fight really hard for zoning. For us, it's our battle cry. Zoning is everything to us. We work with Councilwoman Bivens who I cannot imagine under 15 lifetimes we could ever be more fortunate than to have Gina representing us and Sandy Brough and Juan de Conlon and Raphael, you know, as zoning commissioners that are tuned in with our area. We are so grateful to their participation and more than anything, we're grateful for their ear because when you need guidance or you are trying to make your point and that goes all the way up to the city. We have worked really, really hard as an association to have the ears of our city to be respectful and to be respected in return. And I believe we share that, you know, Mayor Parker and Mayor Price before her, David Cook, you know, he hears from us, all of our zoning commissioners hear from us. The key is being active. It's being engaged and it's combining your voices. And you know, we're seen as fighters and a lot of times I tell the commissioners both in zoning and when we get in front of council, you know, we don't wanna always be the party and no. God's sake, come at us with some good ideas and we will be the champions of the answer, yes. Unfortunately, you know, we right now are under a tsunami of development in our East Fort Worth because what we all have, they don't have in a lot of areas, we have land. And we appreciate our land and we appreciate our trees. And you know, the days are over in John T. White of developers coming in and just saying, well, we're gonna buy land. It's not in zone for our intended purposes, but we'll purchase it and we'll rubber stamp that and get it and then we'll go into our next project. Those days are over. We may not always win, but we will damn sure always fight and we do. And I would say that is the key. You don't have to have a thousand people to make a difference, but it's volunteering your time and effort. I mean, my wife says this is, she comes home to my night job, but we're proud of the fact that we are making a difference and I'm always, and we try to work really hard with the other sister neighborhood associations and homeowner associations when we can because we don't just look at it as John T. White and I know Metta Brook and Hanley, they don't look at it just as, you know, stop six. We're all part of a combined community. And, you know, so we reach out and support others when they ask us to give our two cents and we often ask for their support too. So if you are in an area that has an HOA or has a neighborhood association, get involved. If you don't have one, create one. And I always tell people, Gina knows how to get ahold of me. If you would like to create a neighborhood association, we're pretty good at it. And we're always happy to help others develop theirs, you know, your websites and your Facebook. So we're always trying to be a resource for somebody who's trying to do what we've done. Getting involved and working together, two key things. I wanna do a really brief round robin. Before we take a few questions for the interest of time, I'd like for each of you to briefly answer or communicate for your particular neighborhood and they are unique, what is the number one challenge that you face? And you don't have to go in depth, but state and explain briefly the challenge, the number one challenge you face. It may spark some questions from our folks and we'd like to get to the questions. So let's start with you, Michael. Okay, first challenge is safety. One of the things that we've tried to promote throughout our neighborhood association is safety because if the community is not safe, then people don't wanna live where they don't feel safe. And so I've been taking that message throughout the community, talking to some of the people that are regulars of the community. And I've convinced them that if they wanna become prosperous that we've gotta create a safe community first. Infrastructure is important because the east side cannot look different from the west side. And I think for too long, the money has been spent on the west side and the east side's been treated like a stepchild. Great perspective, yeah. And so what the push is is to push the citizens to participate in neighborhood association so that their voice can be heard. Individually, your voice is not heard. It's only when you are speaking through the neighborhood association is your voice heard. And so I've been really trying to promote that because we need safety, we need infrastructure, we need sidewalks, we need green spaces, we need the Young Man's Leadership Academy is one great asset that we can build around, but we need more parks. We need more facilities for people to get out and to have a feel of being community. And so that's one of the things that I feel that we need to emphasize. Great perspective, safety among your top challenges. Let's move right to you Dave. Briefly, what is the number one challenge? I'm sorry. You left me out. No, we're going down the road. All right. We're gonna... I will be happy to let him go first if he likes. No, that's all right, go ahead. But it's up to you who goes first, but yes, I just want to hear from you briefly from each of you about the number one challenge. Beauty goes first. Oh, you got that, you got that, I will tie it up. I think one of the most important things that we have right now is, well, it's a couple of things that I need to put on the table. The number one, all citizens in our neighborhood is important regardless to whether we agree or disagree. It shapes where you're going. Keep our residents informed. And that's either through newsletter, through a news report, through television, not television, but through whatever method that we can use. And we've kind of come back and discovered it's too expensive to try to put out a monthly newsletter. That's roughly $750 or more that our volunteers was paying for. That's a little bit too much. Don't set your meetings, stick to that schedule. Don't change them unless there is an approval of our membership. We don't wanna be flipping all over. We wanna know if they wanna go to our neighborhood meeting, you can come because it's gonna always be at this time and this place. So that's important. Attending areas that we need to answer at all of our meetings with input and reports of what happened. And that's crime and law enforcement, code violation and code enforcement, streets, water and drainage. And we are a historic overlay district. And what we do is that we drive our neighborhood and we make sure if there's something going on that shouldn't be like fences or changes in properties, then we take advantage of that. And set measurable goals and evaluate them on a monthly, with a report back to our members about what we've done within one month period, within a year, and we require an annual report because we feel it's important that even though you're having a good time talking and enjoying yourself at our meeting, it doesn't say what we've done, but you had a good time talking. Thank you. Great. I love that information. Keeping everybody informed. Knowledge is power. I'm not gonna disagree with that one. When you know more and you know better, the better the lives for your family members and those around you. Now, Dave, how about the number one challenge? I agree with knowledge is power and shining the light on something good or shining the light on something bad can even be more advantageous to us as neighborhoods. You know, I come from a little bit of a media background and something that we've tried to do when we're fighting a developer, which is the main thing that we tend to fight in the John T. White area. Very quickly, they find out we're not just a little bitty island because we've made it our business to be friendly with not only our city leadership and our city staff, but our city media. And you know, area issues that we've had to deal with have been on channel 11, channel eight, channel four, channel five. We've even been mentioned in the Dallas Morning News, but we've certainly been mentioned a lot in the Fort Worth Star Telegram. And we are very active, you know, as an association trying to get our messages out there to as big an audience as we can. Of course, we have a good website and we have a Facebook page that we stay up to date on. But keeping our fighters, and I call them our fighters that's generally what we do, keeping our fighters armed with information and what's current and what we need to, the threats that we're facing, that is job one with us. So zoning right now, we are seeing a literal tsunami of out of town, out of state developers coming at us, wanting to take trees and put four stories of apartments in areas that aren't zoned for them. Now again, I understand our area is diverse and district five and especially our area over here, we are already oversaturated. There is a need for apartments, just like there's a need for A43, you know, the larger single family rural residential properties. We've got a really good mix. We've got townhomes, but we wanna keep a good mix. We just don't wanna knuckle under to the call we keep here and we've gotta build more affordable housing. We've got a lot of areas that are zoned for that. If you wanna do it in our area, buy areas that are zoned for your intended purposes or be ready for a fight. Very, very important. We have time probably for two questions. So right there with your hand up in the back. Hi, I know all of y'all, except for the city rolling central, have y'all been successful, found some successful ways to get young people to join your association? Young, in my definition, is anyone under 48? Or maybe just, how did you get the possible? We just try to say, if we identify a person that's interested or a new email address of whatever we can get, we try to get in contact with that, but it's also a matter, and this has always been with me, picking up a telephone and calling that person. We have just had a young man that's joined who is a vice president right now and he wants to walk the neighborhoods. Active engagement. Any other questions? Okay. Have you consulted on the high-speed rail that's about to go through your property or your land there in the Long Eye 30 project? Who's the question? Poor? Well, it's all free of you, actually. I mean, is that a high-speed rail that's being studied, environmental impact study that's going to fly right over these neighborhoods? That's got a certain topic, but I'll put you in touch with somebody whose an answer now continues with. Well, I promise you we'll be involved in it when that comes our way. Yeah, you may not have heard from us yet, but they will. Let's give our panelists a round of applause. Holiday season. Just really get antsy when you hear all the fireworks going on. Yes. I actually turned on my spiritual assistant two days before because it's really disturbing for me. When you call 911, it's hard to get somebody to come. But I can tell you these two neighborhood presidents took it upon themselves to start these talks with police and fire. I'm going to tell you how these ladies roll. Both of them have been involved in the law. Cindy Bowling, I think it was 20, was it 2015? Well, that's when we got our legislation passes. The law. Well. There was a tragic accident. An officer showed up at Cindy and Mark's home. Mark, raise your hand. And it was the wrong house for the officer to come. I had this border colleague so very friendly border colleague right up to the officer. Right the officer and the dog was shot. And I met Cindy when I got elected in 2013. And she had been working with Nicole Collier. And who else? Charlie Garen. Yeah. And yes, ma'am. And we also worked with John Whitmire. So we had the top representative and the top senator in the state that actually John Whitmire reached out to me and said, can we carry your bill? You know, you know, I don't know if y'all know who John Whitmire is. And of course, Charlie Garen, but our amazing Nicole Collier. And P.J. Patterson. Yes. Absolutely. Who's still with the city. Cindy was able to literally craft a law that requires training for police officers, not just in poor warden. Across the state of Texas in our law, our bill is also influenced other states to pass similar bills. And the Department of Justice has modeled it into their training recommendations. That's what I call take charge. Now let me tell you about Charlie. And that name was, I don't know how your parents knew that's what you were going to do, but they named her accurately and appropriately. And I know you see Michelle, your Carl Hyde's buddy. Back in the day, there were convenience stores who would sell cigarettes one by one. Not in that area. But let me tell you, when those types of sales were going on, oh, we're using those to do dope. And so the police knew that the Historic Carver Hyde's Neighborhood Association was just put up with that. They had a lot of foot traffic, people coming into their neighborhood at this one store, this one store where you could buy a cigarette. And so Targie with the police, what was it, a lawsuit that you're doing? The police got fed up with the foot traffic. The police became fed up with the foot traffic, the drugs and prostitution and the co-violations on the property and what that property generated and what it sent into the neighborhoods. Because it sent into the neighborhoods people looking for drugs, looking for prostitution at many drug houses. See, we grew up in Historic Carver Heights and many of us moved away. And we were educated in other states and we came back to Historic Carver Heights. And we found that many of our historic, our parents who actually were fathers of this city, they moved back, we moved back. And we looked around and we saw that our parents had been disrespected. What makes our community historic is the fact that black people came into this particular community, they bought a piece of property and they built their homes from the ground up. We are not a result of white flight. And as Judge Davis always says, we were the first to sit on those toilet stools. Okay. Carver Heights was the first residential development in Fort Worth built by important black people who could not build anywhere else because of racism at the time. When I grew up we called it Teacher Hill because all of your educators and doctors lived over there. But what Tarja ended up doing, the lawsuit that they were complaining so on put a stop to all that foolishness. And I tell you about these two ladies, their next target, they joined forces and they decided enough is enough with all these fireworks, all this street racing and lo and behold the new East Side Commander arrived just in time. And for her very first meeting she ran into those crazy John T. White people. They told her, well you heard Dave, they told her that plus four. But street racing was really the issue. But what they didn't know is that further east we had four sentiment cards involved in street racing. And so these ladies took on two topics. I'm going to leave it up to Dion and this team so that they can tell you what they did, how they got to where we are and what changes have been put in place. And I may just have to water my lawn one night. So please thank them for coming. Great. With that we'll just jump right in. We'll begin with, I'll pretty much have you each briefly introduce yourselves once again before you answer your question. And remember the people in the back if you could just keep your voices elevated so that everybody can hear you. But you all tell me who's best to address this and take it and run. Are there citations actually being written when citizens complain about fireworks in the city limits? Hello, I'm Commander Martin. And so I'll address that question. Again, when I first came on two things hit me hard. What are you going to do about fireworks? What are you going to do about the street racing? And this was probably like my second day and I'm like, let me see what I can do. I went out and personally work 4th of July all three days. And I got to see what our citizens deal with when 4th of July comes around. And we're not talking about black cats being popped. We're talking about things called COVID killers, massive bombs over Baghdad so to speak. And they're beautiful artwork, right? But I can see how it was a nuisance to the community and to the neighbors that were experiencing that and how it was a public safety. So I went back to my office and I was like, how can we fix this problem with the barriers that we do face in law enforcement? And so I thought about forming a fireworks committee. Torchy and Cindy had been in my ear for quite some time about things going on in their neighborhood. So I called them to the table and I was like, hey, we need to get some stakeholders to be a part of the committee so we can fall in love with the problem and have viable solutions versus just officers coming to the table and trying to fix the problems that were unique to each community that we served. And so for several months now we have been meeting once a month talking about fireworks and solutions. So to answer that question, I think the department stance in the past was that we were not going to act. We were just going to hold our ground and make sure that if there were fires that FD could get there. But I tell you this, I am not about inaction because inaction means that we accept the behavior that people are displaying, the illegal behavior that people are displaying. So we have come together and formed viable solutions. So our first test is going to be December 31st because we do know fireworks and gunfire happens on New Year's Eve, correct? So we're going to have a team of officers that will go out and strategically address fireworks being popped in neighborhoods, right? We're going to have an undercover card that will also let our officers know, hey, we have a house here at 69 Lincoln. Go here and address that problem. We're going to confiscate. We're going to do citations. And these are going to be our key performance measures to let us know what worked, what didn't work so that way we can adapt accordingly for the grand stage of 4th of July. Wonderful. Wonderful. Thank you, girl. I think that segues into what I'd like to perhaps have you address next, Chief. A lot of times it's about educating people in the community about why this is so dangerous. We know that it's illegal to set off fireworks within city limits. But because of perhaps the lack of education about the dangers, you just have people say, I can get away with it. How would you weigh in on that and what more needs to happen to dispel that? Well, first of all, thank you. Thanks for allowing me to be here. Thanks for the work that you're doing with the police. That's fantastic because it can only be done in collaboration. My name is Jim Davis. I'm the fire chief. I've been here a little over four years and I'm very grateful to have the opportunity to talk to you. From a safety standpoint, fireworks in every community present three big challenges. First of all, the challenge of dry conditions and setting fires to people's homes, people's property. Like the council member said, you know, wetting her yard down and her roof down because she's concerned about that. Secondly is the injury and the injuries that can occur. We, in my four years being here, we have had fatal incidents in which someone has been struck in the chest with a firework and it was fatal to them. We've had multiple hand injuries where fireworks have gone off in people's hands. We attempt to work with the media during the lead up to the Fourth of July to talk about safety precautions. But to the commander's point, it's hard to say to people, hey, if you're going to break the law, do it safely, right? So it's really difficult to do that. We work with some of the trauma centers around the region who actually treat these folks and we try to get public messaging out about the safety risks associated with fireworks. One of the big challenges is that they're illegal in the city of Fort Worth, but they're legal throughout the county. So last year as an example, just to give you, just not making excuses, just giving you a little bit of background, the county permitted 105 firework stands just outside the city limits all around Tarrant County. So that really does create some of the challenges. And so that's the third complexity to this, the fire, the safety risk from medical components. And then the public nuisance part where you've got so much fireworks and you've got people being put in a position where they can't even get out of their own homes to get to work, to get to the hospital to do those type of things. And there's were some of the issues that we've come upon that we try to actually prioritize our response because we get so many concerns about fireworks over that weekend period that it becomes a real challenge. So what we try to do is prioritize them working with the police. Thank you. Certainly. That is so very important. The safety aspect of it, because there are lives that have been lost from this type of thing. I want to move now just to maybe focus a little bit on the issue of street racing. I've done stories on this. I just want to thank you commander for engaging me when I needed an interview. She was right there to talk about the issue and it goes back to I think more about awareness. So whichever or whomever would like to take this on regarding street racing. Certainly the city moved to toughen or stiffen the penalties for those caught engaging in street racing. Is that making a difference? And where would you say things stand right now with trying to combat this problem? Right. Yes. So the second hot topic for me was street racing, right? My family at John T. White and my family over in Miller, more importantly, Miller Street was chaotic. We had a small area at Miller and Hardiman where we maybe had about 800 to a thousand people that were congregating there doing donuts, racing up and down the street. I mean, it was a scary sight to see and I shared this with the people at the fireworks committee so they could know that some of the barriers we face when we're trying to address fireworks, right? And so our sisters and brothers over in Dallas, they have been dealing with street racing for quite some time, but they had got it minimized to such a level that it wasn't even a concern for them anymore. So I allowed for one of my sergeants who is here and I'll let him speak here shortly, Sergeant Walker and four officers to go over there and learn how they were doing it without even having a pursuit policy. And so they went over there and got some key ideas and brought it back home. So I'm going to let Sergeant Walker kind of introduce that. You got it. How are you guys doing? My name is Sergeant Matt Walker. I work for y'all. I'm a patrol sergeant here on East Side. I got sent to Dallas to have a task force to deal with street racing. They're very successful so much so that we started to see it grow more here because they were leaving there. I've been working with the city. I've contacted city attorney. We've talked about different ways that we could be better here in Fort Worth about dealing with it. We're aware of it. I see it. It's going on on all sides of town also, but I understand what you are saying. And believe me, I've been working. You ask anybody in uniform in here or anybody in uniform in city of Fort Worth, they'll tell you, you ask who the street racing guy is. They'll say, yeah, I'm working on it and I annoy the crap out of them by talking about it so they know about it, right? Tell them about some of the successes we've had thus far just on East Division. So my whole thing with this is these guys are driving a lot faster cars than we are. Chasing them is dangerous. It is. And so we've started using different techniques in order to actually make a rest on these guys and without having to chase them, which I think is key because they have a tendency to always run. But there's been about 14 incidences where we've managed to make an arrest on some of these. At least nine guns were recovered in all of these. So these aren't like the safest things. Lots of drugs. I mean, I understand what's happening. And I know, has anybody in here been trapped in one of these before? Ever seen one of these? What about it? It's called a takeover. They take over an intersection and don't allow any other traffic to come through. Yeah, there's two different things I'm speaking of when I speak of street racing. I am talking about the takeovers where they take over an intersection, hundreds of people, sometimes 1,000 plus, sometimes it's a parking lot. And then I'm also talking about the drag racing, which is scary and I understand that. Especially when you're driving home at night and somebody goes by you so fast you've never heard them. And then you jump out of your seat and you almost wreck yourself, right? So I've seen it and witnessed it myself. But we are having success with some of these strategies. We're working on them. We're working with the city to try and make this a city-wide thing because this is not just an east side thing. It's heavy everywhere. And I guess that's all I have for now. I would like to take a few questions and hopefully we can give some of our panelists who have yet to weigh in. You have a question. Okay, go right ahead. Chief, you enlightened me to something I did not know. Over a hundred permits issued by Tarrant County for the sale of fireworks. How do we stop that? BS. So I don't know that I have a good answer for you on how to stop that. I will tell you that working with the city and the city manager's office, city attorney's office, we have reached out to Tarrant County to the folks and we have attempted to have dialogue and conversation about that. Who in Tarrant County have you reached out to? Tarrant County has a fire marshal that oversees all the unincorporated areas of Tarrant County regarding the fire. So, you know, I can reach back out and you and I can sit down and talk. I would like that very much. Torchy, would you do that? I'm happy to do that. Yes. Anybody else want to talk to the fire marshal about issuing these permits to burn down our homes and cause chaos in our neighborhoods? I see a hand up. Oh, okay. I'd like to get in a few questions for our panelists if we could before we run out of time. Go right ahead and you're in the standing in the red hat. Right now I've got a couple of questions I've been trying to do briefly so you can answer briefly and get to others. First of all, with regard to the firewoods. When I call, you tell me, you ask me what is the address. I don't know what the address is. I'm in my bedroom trying to keep my head down. So, I keep those addresses. I can tell you that lying in my bed, it's southwest or southeast of me, or it sounds like it's coming from the northeast or whatever, about two blocks over from my address or whatever. I did have a talk with one of my neighbors who told me that he is doing the fireworks because I said, it sounds as though it's coming in the alley between these two streets. So he admitted, yes, I am doing it. I told him he needs to quit because that ain't cool and it's against the law. And then add in to the fireworks, fire arms. Okay, we can't just go that it's fireworks because it's fire arms. Why are they out there just letting it off? And how do we address that? That's question number one all along. Along with this detail that we're running, it will be a fireworks and gunshot detail. That's why we have the use undercover vehicle that will be there, that will be searching for anyone out there shooting guns. That way he'll know where to deploy our resources to and fireworks. Now, to your other question about when you're calling into communications, just be as general as you can, as specific as you can about where you think it is coming from. And we can have officers dispatch in the area and they are looking to try to see if they can figure out where it's coming from. I'm telling you without a shadow of a doubt that that ain't happening because I'm right here and I sneak a peek out the front door and they're right in the intersection at this and this spot. You talking about the person shooting firecrackers for that? I'm on and on and on and I tell them where they are, they never come. And they're going out and let go of these fireworks until two, three in the morning and it sounds like we're at Afghanistan, Baghdad, Ukraine, wherever it sounds like we walk. Over time? Oh yeah, yeah. So Ms. Reba, everybody in here, we have to have realistic expectations about how our officers are responding. That's one of the reasons why I created a special detail for these officers that will not be answering just calls for service, they'll be targeting calls for fireworks and calls for gunshots. But as far as calls that come in for service to dispatch officers, we're always going to protect life first, right? So if we have someone that is out there, a family violence situation versus a fireworks call, we will dispatch to the family violence. The fireworks call unfortunately will be dispatched at a later time, but we have to take priority over life. And I just want us to have realistic expectations about what barriers police face when we go into these calls, when Fourth of July happens, because calls go up, not just fireworks calls, all calls go up. So we have to take into consideration how stressful that is for dispatch to try to get these calls out, for officers to try to make it to these calls. So that's why it was so important to collaborate with the community to educate the community on barriers. Street racing is one of the barriers that we face, and that takes a lot of resources when we get called to those type of situations. And so one of the things that we generated is targeted enforcement. And so we're going to try this in East and see how it works. And remember in my speech I said we're going to have key performance measures that'll let us know what worked, what didn't work, what we need to adapt to, what we need to keep, what we need to get rid of. Wonderful. Thank you so much for that. We'd like to get in some other questions. Let's see a show of hands. Oh. Okay. In the Santa hat. Well, this question goes right along with what you said about starting on the 31st. If they start this coming weekend, which is what they will do and go throughout. So no, no, she's, she's fine. So Ms. Reba, we're doing something that we haven't done before, right? In a long time. Remember, I said we have been, we have been an active on it, right? Yeah, yeah, go ahead. We have been an active on it. So the week before we're going to go out to communities. We created a flyer and we're going to reeducate the community because that's part of enforcement as well to let them know that, hey, this is illegal. There are penalties when you are out here doing things that are illegal. So three days before we're going to go out to do our community walks to reeducate the community. And then on the 31st of December, we'll be out there. And this is just a start to something that we haven't been doing in a long time. Chief, did you want to weigh in briefly on it? You know, I just would like to add to everything that was said that the 911 system that you spoke of, there's a published fireworks hotline number. And I want to, I want to explain to you the purpose of it though, because I think this is important. That is the primary purpose of that number is to keep those calls off of the 911 system. What we found was that everything else is busy as well, right? And so those calls going through the 911 system actually causes disruption to the phone system and actually creates a lot of problems. So the purpose of the firework hotline number is to take the calls off of the 911 system and also as far as the addressing that you're commenting about, the goal of that is to create heat maps of areas of increased call volume from fireworks to send a targeted group out to drive through the neighborhood, see if they can actually put eyes on people that are doing it. Does someone answer that on yes? Yes. Yes. And I know that. And I ask that question to say to you, specifically to all of you and to all of the people there for him, that it doesn't work. It doesn't work. Well, I'm going to help by doing my part, because as a journalist I'll probably be giving you a call next week, chief, for an interview and so that we can get as much information included within our newscast and share it with all of our viewers. Let's take the next question. I promised you're in the Santa hat. Let's let's do that and then I'll get to you. My question is a step child to street racing. How do we appropriately respond to the donuts and the circles at 2, 3, 4 o'clock in the morning? What's our destiny? Are you speaking about large groups or like one or two vehicles? One-offs. One-offs. I won't lie to you, though. The one-offs are pretty hard because some 16-year-old performing in front of his girlfriend is pretty difficult sometimes. And sometimes it is related to the overall large groups that are breaking up and just not going home yet. But what I would ask you to do, though, is please dial 911, describe the vehicle and where it is. That'll help me out tremendously. Now, just because an officer shows up and doesn't make a report, I read the 911 phone calls every Tuesday when I come in on my Monday just to see how many and where they are. Because I oftentimes like to report all the way up. Again, I annoy people about this stuff higher than me sometimes and let them know where it's going on. So if you see that, please make a 911 phone call. If you have a description, please give a description. If you have a plate, fantastic. And all of those things also go into a stats also. Like he was talking about a heat map. Those things show what's going on in the city. That also gets a reaction from higher up as far as resources. And as y'all know, resources dictate tactics. So I'm going to take a question that was over here. And then I'm going to move to the gold jacket on the end of the front. So state yours, sir. What about the noise pollution? With that also real quick? Party after 12 o'clock in the night on the street? Go on. You can be called 911 or call an officer over the code. That's noise pollution. That's the best way to handle that, please. I mean, if it's at night, then definitely call 911 so they can get that call dispatched to our officers. If it's something during the daytime and you have your MPO's number, definitely give them a call. Even if you called 911 at night the very next day, follow up and let your MPO know as well. We have to prevent information distortion, right? So we have to, when we see something, say something that's been the theme, right? And like we have said, we look at that data. And that is how we are deploying our resources based off that data. I've had several people tell me that, hey, we've been calling about street racing, and then I go and pull the call and I've had two calls. Well, what that shows is that it's not a big concern because it's nothing but two calls going there. So maybe it's something that isn't happening on a constant measure. So if you guys are seeing something, please call in and let us know. We look at that data. That's how we deploy our resources. That's how we become strategic and how we find solutions for it. Thank you, Commander. You and the gold jacket. I'm not sure if y'all are aware. I follow these car ventures. I live off the coast lanes. And we run up and down there all the time. It's mainly like Thursdays and Sundays. And we have a fun home for a long time. And we just got help from the street race. And then if we have cameras inside our community, they take the license that's also behind us. And they use it on the streets. And these are car vets? These are car vets. Okay. I'll have to look into that. Are you calling it in when you see it? Yeah, we call it in. Okay, okay. Tell your MPL, but call it in, please. Please call it in. I can't express that enough. When you see it, call it in. John T. White has some input here because John T. White, actually their information is what came to us and made us aware of the street racing. So I want to make sure that Dave Fulton has some input in because he does have input into our fireworks situation. Well, unfortunately, we have a lot of input. They use us as a... They call it drag racing. The circles and shutting it down. They're very organized events and officers know we've kind of been filtering it. But we have a... One of our president of our association lives on the corner of John T. White and cooks. And he got out there on one of the worst nights and had his camera on him. We had it on 11, 4, 5, 8. And I mean, that thing made the rounds. It was all over our website. We shared it with our sister neighborhood association. And I want to say this. The four police departments' response to it was so immediate and so effective. The commander was out there. You were interviewed by the right-of-the-corner. You got to see it firsthand. And Regina's office was involved in it. And the police response was wonderful. And not only just to come out there until they did something about it, we now have the camera up there. And with the light that we were able to shine on it, you know, we sent them stirring somewhere else because the commander said, well, the next time they come, the eye in the sky will be here. And we will be making an impact. We will bring some financial pain. We will impound some car. We are very grateful. But, you know, that little camera that you carry everywhere, you know, don't put yourself in danger. But if it's happening in your area, and you can get it, let me tell you, it's very helpful. And the police are trying so hard to work with us and if we can work with them to help us, John D. White has proved that work to work. And also I want to add some input to this real quick that Cindy and I did go down to the city council and we did ask for additional funding if we need more funding to put a cap on fireworks and street racing. We went and we asked for the CCPD money because that is what it is for. So if we need some money, that's where we're going to go and ask for help. We have a hand in the back. I'd like to get to enforcement regarding the fines after citations are issued. Who can take that on? So that's going to be a court-related question. And unfortunately, we don't have a representative here. Now I will tell you this. I worked in the courts for six years as a court liaison. When we get the tickets, we push the tickets to the prosecutors, to the courts for them to put it in. So I can't see if our officers are out there writing a citation that they just dismissed that citation. I think we're going to take like two more questions. Can you go ahead? So I will tell you that Fourth of July holiday, we did do a trial program using the camera system with fireworks. We did write more tickets than we had written collectively in the previous couple of years. Citations were issued and we did work with our colleagues in the court system to make sure that that was done correctly, that that was defendable, and that we had worked with the city attorney's office on that as well. So what was their feedback? Well, I think that that remained coming into the upcoming events, we need to re-look at that. There were questions that were asked, but overall, it worked. So the questions that need to be finalized about whether or not we're going to continue that. Okay, we're going to wrap with the hand in the back has been up so patiently. Can you stand and state your question and then we're going to wrap up. I had a question with gunfire. I used to call for a gunfire shot. Two day scopes, officers came out real fast. 15 minutes, drove right by. They didn't even pull it in the parking lot. They didn't even slow down, really. And clear out the call. The callback number one that asked me is the call could be called still active. I was clear. I left it like that because it's not the first time to leave it. I don't know why they don't want to pull it in the parking lot. Too scared, go find another job. You know, because that's not the first time. And I want to know what's the process of if I give you an address, should you pull into that location, take a look at what's going on. Somebody could die laying on the floor. But nobody's, it just kind of drove by there. So when you called it in, what details did you provide? I told them the address where I heard it. And I'm sorry, sir, I can barely hear you. I told them the address where I heard it from. I just stayed right across the street and I heard it from there. So I gave them the address. Then I told them it's too big a fire. They weren't right after each other. I told them before that 30 minutes ago there was a crowd of people hanging out over there. And right now I don't see a couple of people hanging out over there. Saw the officer came through there, drove right by it. Then pulled in the parking lot. Then, you know, I would think they pulled in the parking lot to kind of zest, kind of look to see if we see anything. What was it? That was a car wash. It was a car wash on Lancaster. Can you hang around and talk to the Mayor after this? I can. I was having such a good time. I lost track. Certainly, certainly. We're going to close with some remarks by Mayor Pro Tem Bivins. But first, just a round of applause for our panelists and their insight on all this topic. I'm not going to give you any number. I just want to thank you for your time, for your support. Don't listen to me. I can't see. I can't hear. What did you say? Mayor Christmas, happy holidays. Can we put this lady in the red? Thank you. Come on down so we can hear you. Oh, okay. My name is Capka Edney. I live on the east side. Major Morton is my daughter. Our team. All the police officers on the east side that have really had her back. This young lady, I'm so proud of, I live on the east side of Fort Worth. And she knows a lot of things that we have been through. My husband retired from the Fort Worth Police Department. Lieutenant Edney. You know what? He used to also be assigned to the east side. Stand behind her so I can get a picture of you. And I also have my other daughter, Ashley. Ashley, Edney, come down. Come down. Her job at the east side of Fort Worth because she finished from the east side of Fort Worth. So she really had a passion for it. And I watch her every day trying to figure out how can she make the east side better. So she's not faking off. And I'm not saying that this one because she's my daughter. She really do care about the east side of Fort Worth. And it's a hard job because we know we are short of officers. We love her.