 Good evening. I'm Council Member Carlos Flores and thank you for joining us today. We will also be doing a special town hall next week in Spanish. Watch for those details soon. You can use the phone number on the screen to text or call in your questions. You can also email them to FWConnectionAtFortwardTexas.gov. My first guest tonight is City Manager David Cook. Thanks for joining us, David. Before we get started, some questions about the budget. So could you please go over the goals you used to develop our annual budget and how those goals were met? Well, thank you for having me join you. You know, we're doing a lot of these town hall meetings to get some input on the budget. And I usually start by saying, you know, we meet with the council members back in February and we talk about the upcoming budget. And that in some ways starts the planning process from a policy-making level. And what I've started with is describing a very different budget that we described to you back in February. This is before we asked people to stay at home, before businesses and restaurants and so forth had to shut down. So we've had to modify those goals along the way too. And I think you'll see that in some of the goals that we talk about. But we work with the city council on what these goals are for the upcoming year. But again, as we're going to talk about the budget tonight, what we talked about in February when we set the goals are very different from where we are tonight. And I think the folks can see the budget goals. We're going to go through those, but real them off real quick. First, it's maintain or reduce the property tax rate. The second goal is about our infrastructure and level of maintenance, and we want to either maintain or increase that level of funding. The third goal relates to opening new facilities and meeting obligations. So there's a lot of things that we do that we know we have future obligations for. We did a bond program in 2014, another one in 2018. We build those capital projects like libraries or fire stations, and once we build them, we staff them, put materials in them or fire trucks or whatever it is, and that creates an obligation on the operating side. The fourth goal is related to the task force on race and culture, and we'll talk more about that as we go forward. Goal five is about police funding, and there's been a lot of discussion not only in our city, but around the state and around the country about police funding. Yes. And I know Chief Ed Krauss is on your show later on, so I won't steal anything that he's going to say. Believe it or not. And then I think this goal number six really relates to the current situation, and that is to prepare for fewer resources over the next couple fiscal years. Absolutely. And that's a very important caution. So thank you, David, you know, for that overview. And as far as goal four is concerned, you mentioned the race and culture task force recommendations. Can you explain how those recommendations affected and factored in to city governance and the delivery of services? Sure. When we jump to the task force on race and culture, if you remember that the council set up the task force, I think it was in 2017. They brought us recommendations 18 at the end of calendar year 18. So that was in our fiscal year 19. And so we started implementing the race and culture task force recommendations in the budget we're currently in. And what we're saying is we're simply going to carry that forward. This included the creation of the police monitor function that came out of the task force. It also included creating the Department of Diversity and Inclusion. Yes. And it also included, and Chief Kraus could talk about it, a cadet program in the police department. And we also talked about doing things, looking at our investments, our service levels, our level of maintenance with an equity viewpoint. Not an equal viewpoint, but an equity viewpoint. And our Department of Diversity and Inclusion will be working with all of the departments in the city. Starting with transportation and public works. Now I want to add a little bit to that because even in the current year budget, we have more money in transportation and public works and street lighting, in sidewalks, in pavement markings and street maintenance with that eye toward equity. So William Johnson, our director of transportation and public works could talk about how some of that has been implemented as well. Yeah, and that'll be good to hear because that's very important. These are very basic services that our citizens, our residents deserve and expect. So in goal six, you cautioned again that as a city, we must prepare for these fewer resources. So that creates a gap in funding. So tell us how we are anticipating how city management plans to fill that gap and how long, for example, the hiring freeze will remain. And then when dealing with any reduction in positions, how that allocation will work out can be happy to. And again, I refer back to where we were in January and February and everything looked pretty good. Right. Yeah. The stock market was humming development in the areas humming. Our unemployment rate was around 3%. And then we have the pandemic. And then in March, we asked people to stay home and we asked businesses to keep their employees at home. So at that time, offices are closed, restaurants are closed. I think everybody can recall that. Yes. We knew that those actions would put stress on this year's budget. And so we implemented a hiring freeze at that time. We asked departments to look at what discretionary spending they have for the rest of the year that they could put on hold. We looked at capital projects to see if we wanted to have them delayed. And we also, on the upside though, we got CARES funding from the federal government to help offset some expenditures that we had not anticipated. So we've kept you and the council informed along the way. At one time, we thought we were going to be 40 million underwater this year. We believe now the number looks more like 22 million. Yes. But what we're warning about next year is this year was more of a sales tax impact because it hit buyers immediately and it hit the hotel industry dramatically. Next year, I think we might see a downturn in the property tax. And I think the slide that was before this showed what we think the potential impact might be to property tax revenue. And I don't know that that's going to hit the residential tax base, but I do think there's a possibility of hitting retail, office, hotel values. And so there's a chance we might see that property tax going down. So I do think that we're going to have a hiring freeze in place for the foreseeable future. Again, we'll work with all departments about discretionary spending. We'll prioritize services and see how we make it through the next two years in a positive way. And on the note of property taxes, you had previously said that what Fort Worth needs to get away from is a high reliance on residential property tax revenue and shift that more so to commercial. So all these are going to have very impactful effects. Can you tell me when you and your staff, and I think you kind of covered this, but just elaborate. When you start working on the budget for next year and in particular how residents can be involved because we've gotten a lot of feedback from the public on that point. That's a good question. So I don't think the budget is a time of year event. I think financial management and financial stewardship is a year round process. So we're always evaluating how we're spending the taxpayers money. So when you think about it, we're right now talking about the budget for fiscal year 21. We're also simultaneously talking about how are we going to make it through the rest of fiscal year 20. I would say citizens can be involved in a number of ways. One, I've shared with you before we get feedback year round about what citizens think we ought to be either investing more in, investing less in, or how we ought to spend the taxpayers' dollars. I don't think we wait for the budget year or the budget process time to count on all the feedback that we might get. Also, and we also, I think you and others encourage citizens to participate in citizen advisory committees. We have advisory committees for most of the businesses, departments that the city operates, whether it's the library commission or parks and recreation or planning. So those citizens advisory committees are involved in the budget process for those departments. And they're giving input throughout the year of what they think the investment ought to be related to those different departments. So again, I see as the budget is year round process, financial stewardship is a year round process. And I think one way to get involved are the advisory committees. And the other is the direct input that comes to you and other council members and comes to me and the different department heads across the city. That's certainly a great suggestion on getting involved through volunteerism by participating in advisory bodies, committees, what have you. So can you explain the general fund and the enterprise fund respectively and what each pays for? I'll be happy to. And we've done some of this in our setups for the budget on some of our town halls. And so when you look at the operating budget of the city, we spend about $1.8 billion a year. And the budget we have for fiscal year 21 of all the money we spend in the operating budget is going up by less than one half of 1%. And so when people see the slide that's on the screen right now, the general fund makes up about 40, 41% of that. And so when you think about the city overall, what I try to emphasize is that we're in multiple businesses. We run a regional water and sewer utility. We operate three general aviation airports. We have a stormwater utility. We have parking facilities. So we're in a number of different businesses. The businesses that aren't in the general fund usually have their own revenue stream and expenditure, right? So even those citizens might see their water bill and they have a solid waste fee and a stormwater fee. Those dollars aren't necessarily competing in the general fund. So when we talk about the general fund, I think that'll be the next slide. This is the way the revenue stream breaks out. It's property tax, the majority. Sales tax is the next largest revenue. And all the departments that people think about, police, fire, transportation, public works, municipal court, code enforcement, libraries, parks and recreation, they all compete for those same dollars, right? Yes. So the departments that are in the general fund where we spend property tax revenue and sales tax revenue, they are competing against the same dollar. And so sometimes when we talk about, well, I'd like to see more parks and recreation, then sometimes that choices and trade-offs conversation is, okay, what are we willing to give up? Or are we willing to raise taxes in order to do those things, right? So choices and trade-offs to me are always required when you're having a conversation of how we spend the citizens' resources. Absolutely. And it is a balancing of priorities. You mentioned property taxes as a source of revenue for the city. Sales tax is another, as you know. So could you explain how city management plans to maintain or reduce the municipal property tax, the municipal tax rate if we're looking at a potential shortfall in the city budget around, as you said, $22 million. So in this year's budget, right, the first thing we did is to look at, one, hiring freeze just so we can, our greatest cost or expense area is personnel, right? So one, we've got to then say, okay, we're going to put a hiring freeze in place and that's all about freeing up current year salaries to balance the budget. We looked at stopping some capital projects or shifting capital projects from cash to debt so we can pay over time and all that was about creating short-term cash to meet a short-term situation. But now we've got to turn our attention to a longer horizon, right? So we look at the property tax rate and the tax values that the city's going to get next year. This year, the growth in existing values, right? So these are all the values in Fort Worth. They grew by less than one half of one percent, right? And that's the lowest amount in probably the last six to eight years. So current values have slowed down. That could be because of protests. Anyway, the short answer is we don't have the growth in those values that we've seen over the last number of years. And I'll tell you that I believe the reason we've been able to lower the tax rate over the last four years is we had both growth in current values and we had growth in new development. And that allowed the tax base to grow. It also allowed us to reduce the tax rate, right, to soften the blow of increased values. But part of that is how that's supposed to work. If values go up a lot, we're supposed to bring the property tax rate down. And we've been able to do that over the last four years. The tax rate for next year is recommended to say the same. And part of that is because we didn't see growth in existing values. We are fortunate that we have new development that's fairly strong. It's about two and a half billion dollars of new development. But the total of those two numbers is the slowest growth we've seen in the last six or eight years. And so, again, I think next year can be more problematic. I think we'll still see some new development, but there's a chance we may see a decline in existing values. I see. And I think, in light of all that you mentioned, one of Fort Worth's strengths is that we've had a very robust financial position going in to this COVID situation. So, in terms of what our capacity position is as we approach 2022 and the next bond program, could you tell us how you plan to fund that particular bond program if we're looking at a $250 million reduction in capacity? That's a good question. Let me roll through that. I'm not an easy one. I know. Sorry. First, I think part of the premise on needing another bond referendum in 2022 is that we continue to grow. We're still growing at 15,000 to 20,000 people a year. So, when you think about it at the end of five years or so, we've added 100,000 people. So, I just ask people to think about what it takes to provide infrastructure for just a city of 100,000, and we're doing that every five to six years. So, I do think bond programs have to be on our planning horizon because if we're continuing to grow, we're going to have to continue to provide infrastructure. Back in February, we showed you in the council that, based on our old assumptions, that our debt capacity for the next bond program could be as high as $750 million. That sounds pretty awesome. It did sound very ample. And so, recently we brought back to you, if you revise those numbers down based on the current economy and current projections, we got to notch that number down $250 million. So, that was a third of the total capacity. So, we're going to watch how we actually perform over the next year. We'll also be finalizing the project list in the different areas of parks and libraries, transportation, public works and whatever, and probably taking that to the public for input and feedback. And we'll finalize that number along the way. I see. Well, good. David, thank you for covering a very complex subject, you know, for budgets. Even us on council have to absorb, you know, a lot of material in a very short time. But as you said, really the process goes year-round. But when we settle, during that period of time where we actually sit down at top particulars, it can get complicated. So, I don't think. Let's see if we have any questions right now. Doesn't appear that we do. But I want to thank you, you know, for taking that time and going through that. So, thanks for joining us this evening. And I think the next person that we have is the aforementioned director of TPW. That's our Transportation and Public Works Department, William Johnson. Thanks, David, and take care. Thank you. Welcome, William. Thanks for joining us tonight. Thank you. Okay. Well, as you've probably heard, David Cook, preface. This department is going to be one of the implemental programs, if you will, to address, you know, these challenges that we have in our budget. So, in as far as the proposed budget is concerned, I'd like for you to cover how that may have impacts on the capital improvement plan, you know, for district two. And just provide us some insight into that with some examples, if you can. Yes. The, fortunately, the impacts of COVID are expected to be somewhat minimal when it comes to our capital program and our major maintenance program, mainly because a lot of the major projects are bond funded. So they're already funded. We have funds in place and those projects are underway. The other thing is that fortunately, this council and our city manager's office has been able to project that our pay go capital for fiscal year 2021 is going to be relatively flat as compared to fiscal year 2020. So what that means is that while we have approximately 3.9 lane miles of resurfacing planned that we're that we're currently executing in fiscal year 20 will maintain at about that same level going into fiscal year 2021. What you see now on this on the screen is a list of roadways that we're planning to do in fiscal year 2021. And this list is currently being vetted with major stakeholders like the water department and others to make sure that there are no conflicts as we go forward. Also, in fiscal year 20 have done about 1200 square yards of asphalt of concrete restoration. And in 2021, we anticipate doing about 1600 a few more square yards of concrete restoration in district two. Again, this list is just a sample of some of the projects that we're planning is currently being vetted and will will once this finalized will execute on a plan for next year. So again, to your point, what and David alluded to this, TPW is actually able to continue doing more in terms of whether it be a pavement repair or other, you know, transportation related priorities. That's correct. This is all what we consider critical infrastructure. It's important to our communities and it's important to the economy. You know, we created a lot of jobs with the projects that we're doing. So at a time like this, we really do need to keep these projects going as much as we can. Sure. And from an equity standpoint, my understanding is that your department was the first to work with the diversity and inclusion department. So why don't you tell us a little bit how that experience was and what you learned during that process? Yes, TPW is one of the largest departments when it comes to contracting opportunities here in the city of Fort Worth. And we were going through a process where we were looking at all of our architectural and engineering contracts and we were doing a pre qualification process. And we requested to work with the diversity inclusion department to do kind of an equity review of our process. We solicited and received over 75 responses from different firms here in the Fort Worth area, Dallas Fort Worth area. And through an equity lens, we've been able to increase the number of minority and women owned businesses that are going to be able to participate on our projects here in the city all the way up to a number of around 47 firms. I believe that are going to be able to work with us on some of these projects that we have. Well, that's an impressive number. And MWBE efforts are certainly something that we, you know, from a standpoint of city governance pay very close attention to. So again, going back to how, you know, your department impacts this, you've covered the standpoint from the delivery of services, you know, repair to our infrastructure. And you also tied it in with the importance of delivering equity, you know, through those efforts. So if there's anything else that you'd like to add, you know, give you that opportunity right now. Well, I just say that, you know, the council has been very generous to TPW, especially when it comes to looking at the equitable delivery of services. And in fiscal year 20, the council actually increased funding to TPW to focus on neighborhood streets, sidewalks, street lights, street markings, signage. And we've been very diligent in executing on that. A lot of that work has been done in District 2. Yes. And thank you, by the way. And again, we look forward to seeing those sources of funds, those dedicated sources of funds rolling forward into fiscal year 2021 and continuing that work of our team. Great. Well, William, thank you so much again for joining us this evening and for helping to educate our District 2 residents on some of the projects that are currently taking place in our district and how they impact their neighborhoods. So thanks very much. I do appreciate it. Yes, thank you. So next, I believe we have Police Chief Ed Krauss with us. Can I see him coming? Good job. Chief, good evening. Good evening. Thank you, Councilman. Thank you for taking time from your busy schedule to be with us. So why don't we start and talk a little bit about the, again, the issues specific to District 2. Sure. I think at one point in time, you and I had talked about this. You have some authorized positions in the police department that haven't been filled as of yet. For example, you have, you know, NPO positions in North Division that, again, have been authorized but not filled. So there are funds for these officers, are there funds for these officers in the 2021 CCPD budget? And when can you tell us when they may be filled? Okay, so we do have a neighborhood police officer that we want to have assigned to every beat in the city. We had a staffing study, the Matrix Consulting Group did a staffing study commissioned by the city of the police department and that report came out in February of 2019. And what they recommended is that we do not fill certain beats with an NPO. And these are the outlying beats in the city, the ones on the fringes that are not as populous, don't have as many residential or businesses on them. And their thinking was that the adjacent NPO could cover the needs of that beat until such time as the population on that beat increased. So they have looked at the two beats up in the North Division. I think we have three or four of these unstaffed beats throughout the city. They're all in the outlying areas. But the two in North Division were scheduled to be filled in fiscal year 2023 according to the Matrix study. So there is no funding for those positions to be filled this fiscal year. So our plan to be filled not just in 2021 but in 2023? That's correct. Okay, well good. Well, thanks for that particular update for North Division. And again, another North Division related question that I have received. And it pertains to the bicycle patrol unit. So when will that be activated? Okay, so we have gotten requests from the Far North Division and Northwest Division. I know you're very interested in getting a bike patrol unit for around the stockyards area and in the neighborhoods surrounding that. We also have a request from South Division to have a bike unit installed down there. Currently we have the Central Division bike unit, which is downtown and the West Division entertainment bike unit, which is in the West 7th Entertainment District. They're highly effective. They get to interact with a diverse group of people who are visiting those entertainment areas. The officers are well versed in dealing with a wide variety of different people. And they are in those areas because we do sometimes have issues with people having their vehicles broken into, people getting assaulted, especially when you're talking about a lot of bars in a concentrated area. And the stockyards is an area similar to that where they could use that type of response. During the protests, the bike units have shown their value, just how much they're worth, in the way they interact with the protesters and the counter protesters, how they work to keep those that are demonstrating safe, but also keep the businesses and the people in the surrounding areas safe as well. So it isn't something we want to expand to other areas of the city, but at this point, again, the Matrix Consulting Group did not identify this as a high-priority need. That's not to say that our priorities can't change based on police department needs and city council needs and city leaders, what they see the need is. We've seen that this year with the COVID and with the protests that we have already started shifting away from some of the recommendations in that staffing study to try other things that we see as more of a priority. But the bike unit is something, again, that we would like to see expanded. And to that point, we are currently still certifying other patrol officers and neighborhood police officers to become bike certified. We have a great bike support group, which is a nonprofit group that supplies bikes and other bicycle equipment to the officers and helps supplement our revenue or our ability to outfit those individuals. And so when a neighborhood police officer, for instance, gets bike certified, they'll get them a bike and a bike rack for the car. And so as time allows that individual can go out on the trails or the parks or high crime areas or areas like the stockyards where they can do a bike patrol. Yes, and the bike patrol has proven its worth. It is very versatile and it has been already used in a variety of situations. So very supportive of that. I look forward to any recommendations that you may make in that regard. So then, you know, I know that COVID-19 restrictions and some of the protests that you've already referred to have taken place around town and necessitated the use of overtime for officers. They had a lot of assignments to cover and a lot of work very hard to meet that challenge and covered it in, I thought, in a very good and professional fashion. So what can you tell us about how overtime is paid for? Does that come out of the general fund? Does it come out of the CCPD fund? The easy answer is yes. There are overtime accounts in both the general fund and the CCPD fund. The general fund overtime basically covers when an officer gets stuck at the end of their shift because they're out on a report call and they're going to run over there a lot of time and they need some overtime to cover that or if there are shortages on that teams for, you know, vacancies on the team or somebody's out on vacation or out sick and we need to bring in somebody else to staff that beat for that shift. We can pay overtime out of general fund overtime for that. The CCPD overtime funds, for instance, we have a strategic overtime fund so if a commander sees a burglary trend or a robbery trend or some other trend on their beat that they need overtime to address to bring in additional officers, they can then tap into that overtime fund. There are other ones such as the stockyards overtime fund designated specifically to put extra officers as a deterrent presence in the stockyards area and the surrounding neighborhoods to prevent burglary thefts, assaults and other issues like that. Similarly, there's one for the Miller Detail on Miller Street for the same reason and then the West 7th Entertainment District also has its own specific overtime fund in the CCPD. You mentioned that COVID overtime, a lot of that was, we are able to pay for that out of the federal CARES Act funding that the city received. That is true. I was very fortunate that we did have that money to use. So CCPD has its rules that we as the board have to maintain. One of them that I think it's important to explain to folks is what fund balance does CCPD have to keep? Okay, so the fund balance is I guess like a rainy day fund if something cataclysmic happens and say the CCPD wasn't renewed and we had to finish out commitments in that contract, we would have a fund to do that with. So that's what the reserve fund is and the requirement from the CCPD is to maintain 16.67% of the fund in that reserve and that equates to about $11.8 million. The city manager's office has asked us to take an extra step and hold a little bit more back and so we're holding back 18% and that equates to $12.7 million. Alright, so we increase that just a little bit again as a security measure if you will and improved our margins in that regard. Okay, you talked about the renewal of the CCPD so following the recent CCPD election you and your staff got to work and suggested some changes in funding between FY20 and FY21. Can you go over what some of those changes and recommendations were? Yeah, so let me first start by saying of course in fiscal year 20 we took a big financial hit with a decreased revenue and sales tax and so we had to cut the budget by approximately $12 million and find ways to do that which we were able to do. That carries on into fiscal year 2021 so our projections going into FY20-21 are not as high as FY20 was so we have a reduced capacity at the get-go. But what we also wanted to deal with is something that came up as a prelude to the election. People were asking why are we funding this instead of funding this and what we found was a lot of stuff that people wanted funded we were funding in the CCPD but we were doing a really poor job of explaining it. So we said how can we make this clearer and one of the things we wanted to do is to make sure more traditional basic police services were housed in the general fund and more enhanced services dealing with crime prevention and control were moved to the crime control and prevention district. So part of our re-envisioning of the CCPD is simply swapping units into their more appropriate category but we also went beyond that and we actually looked at what funds can we reduce and what funds can we increase to listen to some of the great ideas that were being floated out there by the people who were making suggestions and there were some good suggestions. I agree there were some very good suggestions. And so we looked at how do we police differently but still police as effectively or even more effectively than we have been doing. So we looked at the five different funding categories and that's enhanced enforcement, neighborhood crime prevention recruitment and training, equipment, technology and infrastructure and of course I'm forgetting one. Partners with a shared mission. One of the big ones. Community-based programs. Yes. Absolutely. So what we looked at enhanced enforcement was one of those areas where we had enhanced SWAT officers in there. Most of SWAT is housed in the general fund but when we added to it we did it through the CCPD and that doesn't make sense to have that split between two different funds. So we moved the enhanced SWAT into the general fund with the rest of the SWAT unit. Similarly we moved the criminal tracking unit and the special response teams into the general fund. What we pulled out of general fund were some of the softer units like the bike units because they are more of an enhancement. They do not provide the basic traditional police services of officer in a car working a beat. They are a unit addressed to deal with a specific purpose. So we were able to pull some of those units out. So the enhanced enforcement we reduced that budget by six and a half percent or so. We were able to do that by moving those different functions out and also we reduced some of the SOF overtime that I talked about earlier by about $150,000 because traditionally we had not used all that over time. So we saw an ability to decrease that. With the COVID restrictions, the budget, we are not getting increased to authorized staff as far as more sworn officers this year. But what we were able to do was apply for and receive a Department of Justice grant to hire 13 officers at half cost. So that was an opportunity that we wanted to present to the city manager's office and a half cost officer for three years is quite a savings and they agreed that that was worth pursuing and allowed us to get that grant. So as we looked at the neighborhood prevention category, what we did is we moved a lot of our people that were monitoring some of our volunteer programs like our citizens on patrol, our community emergency response teams, our ministers against crime, our clergy and police alliance. Those programs are housed in the CCPD but the administrative personnel that are paid to administer those programs were in the general fund. It didn't make sense. So we brought them over to where it makes more sense. We were also able to move our crisis intervention teams and our homeless outreach teams out of the general fund and move them in to CCPD. That crisis intervention team, we're expanding that more than double its size. That is good news. Yeah, so we can have those dual response teams of police officer and a mental health worker going out to deal with people in mental crisis and following up with people that they've dealt with before to make sure they're getting the medications, the services, access to the doctors that they need and whereas we had the one team, they were only able to deal with the one shift Monday through Friday. The expanded team will give us the ability to have that available to chefs seven days a week. So there's still a need to increase it for that third and final shift but hopefully in subsequent budgets we'll be able to do that or we'll be able to defer the number of calls coming in to stretch our resources farther. Yeah. And one of the things we're doing in the program is adding some non-sworn members of the community to go out and answer non-emergency calls in their community. So this community response unit will handle calls such as minor accidents that aren't on highway, loose livestock calls, welfare checks, things like that will report calls where the suspect's not on scene and we don't want to put them in any danger but we recognize there are a lot of calls that could be handled by someone who's not a police officer and that would free up your police officers to be the beat officers we want them to be and to be available for emergency calls and we're hoping that this will reduce response times for emergency calls but also reduce response times for those non-emergency calls and sometimes you have to wait hours to get an officer too. So we see this as one of those great ideas from the community that we could implement this pilot program and hopefully expand it in future years as funding allows. Yeah. Partners with the shared vision is one of the funding initiatives where we were able to make substantial increases. We're actually increasing this category by over 50%. Yes, big jump. It's a huge jump and what's exciting about that is there are some existing programs in there, you know, after-school programs, gang intervention programs and these programs haven't had an increase in their funding in many, many years. They've been flat for a while. For quite a while and we're able to increase those budgets by 15% right across the board and within this category there is another program called community-based programs and this is where we have had a quarter million dollars available for community members and organizations to come to us and ask for money through the CCPD. It has been stuck at $250,000 for a while. Actually it was $200,000 for some time and then we got an increase through the council to $250,000 and it's been stuck there for a while. We are going to increase that by 1.5 million or more than 1.5 million and it will be a $2 million annual solicitation where these groups can come and apply for multi-year funding. There will be caps on how much any one organization can get. Some organizations will be able to get multi-year fundings and others will get one-year fundings but it's basically seed money to allow some of the great ideas in the community dealing with crime prevention or crime control to actually get started up and running, see how effective they are. Fund them, you know, to find other funding streams to continue if they are of value. So that's a huge increase and something we're pretty excited about and so that next solicitation we're hoping to have that out here in the later fall after the budget gets approved with these programs starting up in January. One of the other programs in this category is VIP Fort Worth which is a violence interruption program that we started last year. City Manager gave us an extra quarter million or let us designate an extra quarter million dollars toward this project and Council Member Gray is one who brought the idea to us and so this was an idea where city leaders said hey let's take a look at this, if you think it has value we'll give you the funding to pursue it. We looked at it, we said we like it, we want to pursue it. City leaders gave us the ability to finance it and that pretty well successful in the first nine months of the fiscal year and so we want to continue that we're able to increase that funding by 15% as well. Recruitment training is a category we're actually reducing but it's not because we don't need to recruit it's not because we don't want to hire more officers but we ran four police academy classes this fiscal year and we only anticipate needing one next fiscal year so CCPD pays for those recruits to go through the police academy pays for their equipment in the police academy and then once they graduate they are moved to the general fund so we don't have as many recruits to train that category can come down in training and most of the decrease that we did was oh sorry you asked about the cadet program when David was up here cadet program is a recommendation from the culture task force as a way to pipeline younger people from the community into the police department jobs and so what we did is we hired 20 part time cadets and they're working at various jobs throughout the police department and the goal is to get them started in the police career give them preference to getting into the police academy when they become of age which is 21 and use that as a pipeline to get people from the community into the police academy growing them within the department that is the hope and the goal we used to have a program like that called the cadet program in the downturn of 2008-2009 we had to cut that program but we have several officers that used to be cadets and came up through that with something we're excited about starting again and then the final funding category equipment technology and infrastructure we're decreasing that by almost 23% and a lot of the decreases here pay for a lot of the other programs that we're able to start up such as the community response unit and the partners with the shared vision increases and the decreases here come from everything from vehicle fleet reductions I've been asked by some of the city leaders can you actually afford to do that I mean you know and right now our fleet is in the best shape it's been in my 28 years absolutely it's an envy of agencies throughout the state and the nation so we're able to reduce make some reductions there at least for a one year reduction to finance some of this other stuff and then we'll re-evaluate next year and see if we need to increase that category and hopefully the sales tax revenues will be up and we'll be able to do that but we will look at that at a year-to-year basis moving forward some of the other savings occurred because we've been we borrowed some money from a solid waste department in the city to fund the Bob Bowlin public safety complex we've paid off that loan as of this fiscal year so next fiscal year we don't have to repay that debt any longer we don't have to carry that those are the highlights there are a lot of highlights and certainly I want to commend your leadership in that regard and for the department being responsive and also do credit where credit is due collectively a city leadership as well as city staff has been approaching this with an open mind trying to take in those good ideas that can make a difference that we can apply to make our police department better and also you know improve the processes in CCPD so a lot of great examples there thank you very much chief so I think we have a question for you chief let's hear it we do have questions I think you already covered it was about the VIP program and the additional funding that it will get this coming year the next one is could you describe in detail why the CCPD board this is really more for you council member floris why the CCPD board of directors is in charge of deciding whether or not to levy attacks on electric and gas utilities can that function be given back to the city council well I guess I'll start with vine and then chief can answer his if that's ok some people may know that before I became a city council member as a citizen I served on the citizen version of the CCPD board and at the time you know we were we have the authority to levy taxes we're well aware of that fortunately we never used you know that that power to do it when we had fund balances to maintain things to pay for like the crime lab at that time we found ways of cutting costs where we could getting rid of duplication so we could avoid to do that a concern arose with the city council then that you have a citizen body you know imbued with the power to levy taxes in other words a non-elected body so the council then decided you know within its own authority that they would go ahead and take that responsibility from the citizens and invest it in theirs so they are the elected officials that represent you know our locality and they would assume that so to if I understood the question correctly the authority to levy taxes should be placed in the I guess in the scope of responsibilities of elected officials because there are a lot of considerations to make it's not an easy decision to arrive at a given circumstance where you know an elected official determines that they do have to support raising taxes city of Fort Worth has been very fortunate back to David's point when it came to our property our municipal tax rate that we have actually reduced it you know up to 11 years and this go around despite our challenges were able to maintain it at its current level without burdening you know our citizenry so I hope that answers the question again you know very basically that should decide with the elected body of officials and not with a citizen body the next question what specific equipment for officers comes out of the CCPD funding so we have a lot of protective equipment that comes out of there so your body armor you know we never used to outfit officers with rifle resistant body armor and helmets after the incident that occurred in Dallas with the loss of five officers that has become standard equipment to officers in agencies around the country so that enhanced equipment is something that goes to them what is being done to ease the difficult process of getting access to the money for the CCPD community programs so that is something we have been asked to look at specifically and other council members and it's a process we're working on I think you were surprised the other day when you asked when you said when you were on the board it was a pen and paper deal that certainly we moved beyond that only to find out we really haven't moved beyond that so we do have to update some of the processes but we have a team in place now that is committed to doing that and with the new solicitation the new RFP that is going to be going out making a lot more programs we'll have a lot more interest in it and it's something that we actually have to we're going to have to make it easier for them to make it easier for us we also are setting aside enough money now to actually have programs evaluated and help with that so the different programs that are participating don't have to take spend so much time and effort into reporting their effectiveness that we'll have an outside group that we partner with with a university that can actually help evaluate those programs and make it a smoother system for everybody why are the stockyards provided security by Fort Worth police officers but south side businesses have to pay for their own private security the stockyard businesses are not provided extra police officers to provide security at their businesses the stockyards area because it attracts so many people and when you attract that many people you also have a criminal element that can come in there and we've had a high number of vehicle burglaries, a high number of assaults and so we as a department decided we need to put some extra resources out there and so we created that stockyards overtime fund to do that individual bars and businesses in the stockyards if they have an officer working security that business or bar is paying for that officer security those are the only ones I had that were police related I think there was one more that the city manager was going to come back out so that you could talk about that certainly a lot of time for that well chief grounds thank you so much again for coming out tonight and being able to talk about these things that you're doing as a department and also the changes that we are seeing now in the CCPD program and I'm very pleased that I think we've been again very open to suggestions on how to make better changes for how we typically do things so I commend you for that thank you very much for joining us tonight my pleasure so I think we're going to call David Cook once again back on the hot seat David Field the question welcome back David this question has to do with Trinity Metro Trinity Metro's funding request was almost 10 million what was the process to determine only funding 1.5 million ok that's a fair question we've had a lot of discussion about that both on staff and city council it starts with we have in the current year's budget 1.5 million dollars for transit initiatives and a lot of that is to pilot programs, evaluate them and see if they ought to be replicated and that's all valid when we looked at the situation the financial situation that the city is in now and then going forward I recommended that we keep the funding at the same level in fiscal year 21 currently we've worked with Trinity Metro and have asked them to go back and look at some of their assumptions in the sales tax revenue projection so we get a half-cent sales tax in CCPD like the chief was talking about we're using a number that's around 79 million so we're making some assumptions of what sales tax will look like next year we recently recognize that Trinity Metro is using a different set of assumptions and that would produce 20 million dollars less than what we think would be available in the next fiscal year so we've asked them to go back and look at their projections I think they have the capacity to fund the programs they're requesting from the city through the sales tax that they'll collect next year but I think that conversation will continue I know that the mayor and all council members are supportive of transit and moving it forward I think in the current financial situation and again looking at different revenue projections we want to make sure we're all on the same page that's a very good point if I can just interject once we determine an agreed upon projection that both Trinity Metro and the city agree upon that's going to also answer what sort of debt capacity Trinity Metro has because they carry debt and that also has to factor in it and again we're in a dynamic situation right now with the COVID restrictions impacting all budgets so it's a work in progress again as David said council does support public transit and transportation we have to be very selective in the things that we are able to fund right now that we are comfortable with and physically responsible for as we approach this you know I mentioned today at our at our budget workshop that I was very supportive of those measures that Trinity Metro recommended connections to alliance, zip zones there on the south side of town all these things are important and have a common emphasis that is connecting people to jobs and right now that's very important during this pandemic a lot of people have lost their livelihoods so we have to do all we can to help Trinity Metro help residents keep them connected to the jobs they have and open up new opportunities through transit so they can access those jobs and get our local economy working again so I think that may be the questions we have right now so again thanks David for returning you might not want to go far there may be another one but just in case but thanks very much for joining us tonight so I want to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of our speakers again David, Chief Kraus William Johnson for being here tonight and talking about the budget to help people understand you know that it's more than a document okay it's a living guide post in how we conduct city business what we're able to pay for what we're able to invest in et cetera so if anyone wants to tell their neighbors about this broadcast please let them know that it will be available on the city website and you can share that if you have any questions that may come up after this broadcast remember send them to fwconnections at FortwardTexas.gov and staff will get the answer to you and we'll send all feedback to council members for their own budget so thanks again everyone stay safe and have a good night