Aug 25, 2015 City Council on 2015-08-25 2:00 PM

Good afternoon and want to welcome everybody to the Tuesday , August 25, 2015 Denton City Council meeting, a special called work session. We'll go through our agenda items. Our first one is work session report, meet with representative of Texas Women's University to receive information and discuss campus planning issues including but not necessarily limited to use and reuse or development possibilities of the TWU golf course. And we're really honored to have you all here this afternoon, really appreciate it. I want to introduce Chancellor Faiton and you'll be having this agenda item and I think you'll be making some introductions as you go. I will. Yes. Thank you and I wanted to take an opportunity and thank you for giving us the time to be here and I know it's your agenda so you're giving us some time so I really appreciate that. And I was just mentioning to Mayor Watts that as I was looking at the names of everyone on city council I realized I knew almost everybody except for Keeley and so I thought wow, it's only been a year but it's a good feeling not to walk into a room of strangers anyway. So the purpose for us being here is you've all read the paper. We've had lots of conversations about our golf course. We've had a task force that has met on campus involving people from the community to give us advice about the use of the golf course because it has quite a bit of financial challenges and so we wanted to take a look at that. And I also had a meeting with Mayor Watts and George Campbell and Howard, whatever they are. And they recommended that we also bring this to this body because you probably have also read this in the paper. The majority of the usage of the golf course is really from people in the community so we felt since this is the only public course in Denton that it would only be fair to really bring this to the community and kind of hear what you have to say. So we kind of, Monica Mendez-Grant, Dr. Mendez-Grant will in a minute introduce a few facts to you about the golf course but really our intent is to sort of listen to what you have to say give us input, you know, the impact on the community, how important this is to the community, those kinds of things is what we want to take into consideration and we didn't feel we could make a decision without honestly have a conversation about this. So that's why we're here and I will introduce Dr. Mendez-G rant who is our Vice President for Student Life and the golf course is considered in the university terms an auxiliary which falls under her authority. So that's why I've asked her to come here and give us a few facts and she's a little worried about hiding behind that podium. Oh there you go. They provided me with a stool. So as Dr. Faiton was saying I want to thank you for giving Texas Women's University the time just to share a little bit of information with you but before I actually go right to the golf course I thought it would be good just to share a little bit of information about Texas Women's University because I think it will really help to contextualize some of my comments today. So who is the student? Well we have last year we had just a little over 15,000 students. Gary Ray who is our Vice President for Enrollment Services is reporting that our numbers are up primarily in the undergraduate area so we expect to make more formal announcements later but we'll be over 15,000 students when we start the beginning of the fall semester. We have a very diverse student body and as you can see here this is really with regard to our undergraduate students we have over 20% of our students are African American, 25% of our students are Hispanic which means that Texas Women's University according to federal guidelines is considered a Hispanic serving institution. And then our white student population is around 42% and our Asian student population is 9% and I think most of you know we aren't mostly women and so 88% of our students are women with almost 12% of our student body being 12%. When you are looking at the students at TWU half of the students at Texas Women's University are what we call Pell Grant Eligible and what that means is that their family is reporting to the federal government that they have an income, a combined family income of $40,000 or less. So that's half of our undergraduate students. When you look at the average financial package that's made available to TWU students last fall the average student received a little bit over $11,000 in federal aid and the average family income for our student when they reported on that FA FSA it was $51,900 so almost right at $52,000 and that's a combined family income. Mayor Watts. Quick question on the financial aid award. Are those simply Pell Grants or does that include student loans or is that money that is sort of a grant that they don't have to pay back? So that includes everything. So that would be a combination of grants that they received as well as a combination of loan package. When I report on half of our students receive Pell Grants that's actually the Pell Grant is money that's made available to students that is money that does not have to be paid back. Alright so going into actually charging a committee the university had a five year trend of an average of $150,000 loss per year and what's important to know at TWU is that that loss is really being underwritten by students and student fees in that area of auxiliary services and so I just gave you some of that the financial information about the university and so we really wanted to bring together a group of stakeholders to talk about look at the different options with regard to the course and the charge really for the committee was exploring possible revenue streams for the golf course that we might realize a positive revenue stream and I know that early actually is about this time last year I actually talked with the mayor and I know that we had city representatives included on that particular task force as well. We had members from the school district as well as members of our own university community. And then this is a little bit about the timeline so the very first meeting for the golf course group to meet was September of last year. They developed an RFP early in the fall semester and then the consultant that we used his name was Tom Brough and we selected him in February and he really began to put together his recommendations in the spring and then developed a set of recommendations for consideration of the university community in May and that's really what I'm going to primarily share with you today. And so this is an infographic for us to just talk somewhat about his findings. So when you're looking at the trends for golf when you look at women golfers 23% fewer women play golf today than they did a decade ago. And when you're looking at junior golfers that number is 35 % fewer and today there are fewer this is the lowest participation rate for golf that we have seen in the last 25 years. Nationally. Nationally, yeah. So the next picture that you see there is that pie and it says relevance and that's to say and that was actually really interesting because I had a conversation with Joey and he said oh I'm in that 2% because I play golf four times a year and I said well really you're in the 98% because when you're looking at the actual number of rounds played at TWU only 3% of the rounds that are played are faculty staff and students combined. Right and that's rounds not even people so that means that the primary users for the golf course at TWU are primarily Denton residents or people outside of the university. You're not supposed to pick on me until the end of the meeting. When we're looking at operations that I mentioned that earlier that we had this five year trend of losing money. The design is just to talk about when you're looking if you 're a golfer and you've played at Texas Women's University you know it's a short course and there's a lot of par 3s. Well it's not as attractive to some golfers today because the course has been there a long time and when you look at the design of golf balls and especially what they've done with those drivers and the oversized drivers it's not a particularly attractive course and not as long a course as some avid golfers. And so the course is considered a short course. And then added value. The actual golf course takes 108 acres of our 270 acre campus and this is probably a good time to say that while we certainly charge the golf course committee the leadership at the institution primarily driven by Dr. Faiton her ultimate charge is to ensure that the institution is always meeting our core values and the mission of the institution. And we have a lot of needs at TWU including future housing. If you not only have we been in the paper recently for the golf course but we've also been in the paper for really having a housing deficit and if you've read the paper you know that we opened the fall semester with 43 students in our local Holiday Inn. And so we are in the process of currently doing a housing study to make recommendations for the future. In addition our Chancellor is leading us in a strategic planning process to really ensure that the university is forward thinking not only for tomorrow but really for the next 25 years. And so when we look at this added value of course I think it's natural to want to look at the space and say what are the future needs of TWU going to be. >> A little foot means footprint. >> Yes, foot means footprint. And then sustainability. So the golf course uses 20 million gallons of potable water a year at about a cost of approximately $100,000 a year. And it's probably interesting to note that the consultant when he did his study also said really for the golf course to be viable for the future it's going to take a minimum of a million dollar investment. And for the TWU course that's really primarily with an irrigation system. The irrigation system that we have at the university and the golf course is an old one. And so we certainly would have to look at addressing that. And then because we're an institution of higher education and really believe that we have a responsibility for sustainability, the use of potable water for the golf course is not an attractive option for us at this time. And then the only other item I really wanted to mention is with regard to capital improvements, not only did our golf course consultant mention the need for an irrigation system, but we also have a need at the golf course for a cart structure, golf cart, not a house, but a college unit. Thank you. I'm sorry. And so we would need to look at that as well. So that's primarily what the major recommendations were. And I just would, like Dr. Faiton said, we would be happy to answer any questions or and primarily to listen to your comments. Council Member Johnson. The RFP that you did, was that specifically to determine what will it take to make the golf course viable or was it an RFP to say, like, here's 108 acres. We're open to all suggestions for what we would do with it. That's a good question. And really the RFP was what would it take to make the golf course viable. It's really the strategic planning process as we're moving forward that would really yield some specific ideas about potential uses for the property. Council Member Faiton. Dr. Faiton, I mean, I don't want to speak for you. If you want to jump in, feel free to. First of all, thank you guys for being here and for bringing this to us for a discussion. That is very refreshing to see and it's very helpful knowing that you guys are just a key community partner that we're trying to engage in an asset like this in community to see what's the best practices. It seems like from your presentation that you guys are interested in getting out of the golf course business. Is it the feeling of the leadership of the university that you just have room to grow and you need space to do it and so you're looking at this as a possible place to do it and you're just concerned about the impact on the community of taking away our only public? Is that the gist of this? It's part of it. I mean, one of the things that Dr. Mendez-Grant was all uding to also is as part of our strategic plan, we also are developing a master plan for all of the assets at the university in terms of all of the land and et cetera and all the buildings and the future construction et cetera. So we really don't have that ready yet. So that's part of the whole decision making process so to speak. But I'm personally concerned with, when I found out from the consultant, the low usage from the TWU community, meaning it's not really integrated. We don't have a golf team because the golf course is too short to have a competitive golf team. It's not really integrated in the academics. The students aren't using it but yet they're paying for it and so I have to ask the question, well, is that a good use of taxpayers' money? And how does this fit the mission? The type of students, I think one of the reasons Dr. Mendez -Grant presented to you some of the data about the demographics is to understand the type of students coming to TWU and they are probably not, one thing we didn't mention is about almost 80% of our students are commuters. So they are probably not going to be playing golf. Well, the data shows they're not but even in the best, let 's say we changed the marketing about it et cetera, the type of students are the least likely, that's what I should say, to be likely to play golf. So we want to really look at all that but the part you're very right about is that this realization like wow, this is really a community, has community impact, right? Because the community is mostly the external to the university is the one using the golf course. That's why I didn't feel right about making a decision on our own when this had such an impact because the city may feel strongly about it, I don't know. And that's really the purpose. Yes, Kathleen. Councilmember Wasney. These are for education, education not golf. And it may have been a good idea years ago, oh, let's build a golf course because we have a lot of land. But if you look at that whole scenario, there wasn't one part of it that made sense. Nationwide golf courses lose money like crazy. I don't care how good you are at business, it's a money pit . So I come back to your needs and I want to go on the record as well that we do have another golf course in Denton that's open to the public. It's at Ropes and Ranch. You can play at Ropes and Ranch. You do not have to live there. You don't have to join. You can book and come out there and play golf anytime you want to. So in terms of making that decision because we don't have any place else for the public to play golf, we do. And they're adding onto it. So it gets bigger. They're adding an additional nine holes. So it's an 18-hole golf course. They're adding another nine. And so there is a place for people to play golf if they would like to play golf and not belong to a golf club. So we need to make that clear. But in terms of where I am, close that golf course, let the university grow, make that land -- gosh, it's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful piece of land. Make it all that it can be as you grow and expand and make it part of what it is you do, which is help young people grow and develop and get an education. So I appreciate you coming here so that the public can kind of have a listen in on the whole conversation. And I think it's important. But I say it's time. So thank you. Thank you. Appreciate the feedback. Thank you, Mayor. Was there a point in time where the golf course was deemed financially successful or is it really ever? I think from what I hear about 20 years or so ago, it was. But you know, like with anything else, you have maintenance issues, right? So Dr. Mendez-Grant mentioned the irrigation system, but there's the golf carts. Half of them don't work. There's no storage space. The bridges are in dire need of repair. So there's many, many things. There are no sand features on the golf course, no water features. So if we wanted to make it something that today would be meaningful and attractive, it would take a huge investment. Right. Okay. Thank you. So being a man of a certain age, it's hard for me to get subtleties in communications. You have to be blunt. Just ask my wife. She has to be blunt. Are you all here today to say we're either going to close it or we need to go into a partnership with you all? What is it? Why are you talking to us? Are you just preparing us for it closing or you say you want to be a partner? I really wanted to hear from the city whether there was a great interest or a great upset on the part of the city if we were to do something different with the golf course. Or if the city said, well, this is so important for us to have this that we want to go into a partnership with you and share the expenses or invest or I don't know, you know, whatever the options may be. And I will say this too, that our task force committee, that was one of their recommendations. The committee was very committed to the golf course. No pun intended. And so they really wanted us to explore partnerships possibly with the city, with UNT, with businesses who wanted to see are there ways of salvaging this or is this meaningful enough for somebody else to want to get into the business? By ourselves, we just can't do it. Then, and I may be going someplace that you don't want to go with this next question, but it's a chance to ask it. If you were to not use the golf course for golf and if you were to expand that either with classrooms or laboratories or student housing, would that mean that it would be less likely that you would need to be acquiring private property, other places on the edges of campus? The folks were quite concerned about some of the property just south of the campus, south of the multi, MLT I think is what it's called, and east of Belle Avenue. Those are being acquired regularly by the, in an acute little neighborhood is just kind of dying away. Right. So, you're saying that the expansion in that way would stop ? It's interesting you asked that question because when I read the paper this morning too I thought, hmm, somebody else had brought this up to me before too, so I did some investigation in what happened in the past. And apparently none of those properties, by the way, were ever taken by eminent domain or anything like that. It was just if folks wanted to sell their houses, but there was a certain area that had been indicated as an area that the university would be interested in. And so whenever people had houses available they would sell them. But at this point, I don't really know yet at this point what the rationale was for that plan. But it's not part of a plan that we have right now. And I feel like we have land and we should explore what we have at our current assets and how to best use them for the students and the mission of the university. And also we talk a lot about construction, but it's not just buildings. We do like having some green space and maybe use it differently for outdoor activities. I think it's really important to develop that in our students. But if our students aren't going to use the golf course then there should be other things we engage them in in outdoors activities and it's part of their development as well. So we're really looking at the land we have now. What can we best do with what we have? And what's our demands are, what our assets are, and then decide where we would put what based on once we have the input on that. But yes, we're not looking right now at acquiring or expanding or we've got land right now. We need to figure out what to do. Does that answer your question? Yes, it does. Thank you. I'll go first. I just wanted to say that I received and we may have all received several emails from citizens that really appreciate the golf course and from families that can afford it. I said that I'm not sure about ropes and ranch and what the price is, but as far as the citizens in Denton are concerned for families, it's remotely affordable. So I just wanted to thank you for providing it for so long and just go ahead and put that out there. But that's why we're here, because those are the people using it and so I felt it was only fair to at least put it out on the table and hear feedback. I appreciate that. Thank you. Sure. Councilmember Jackson. Thanks. Dr. Faiton, you mentioned, I think, 80% commuters. So is that just 80% that don't live on campus? Correct. Okay. Do you have a goal, a target? In other words, some universities now are saying, "Hey, we want to have this percentage of our students living on campus property." Do you have a stated goal at this point? What you want to get to? That's all part of our strategic plan. This is the first time we're actually embarking on a comprehensive strategic plan, not just an academic strategic plan, but really a university-wide strategic plan. In other words, who do we want to be 20 years from now? What type of students do we want to attract? Do we want to have more residential? All of those questions, what kind of programs do we want to emphasize? What's our identity that we see 25 years from now? What kind of space would we need? That's all part of the strategic plan and that's exactly what we are engaged in right now and hopefully by the end of the academic year we'll have some answers. And City Councilman Johnson, I'll just add one comment that might also be of interest to you and that is we are currently not allowing each student who requests to live on campus the opportunity to live there. So, any student who is an upperclassman, a junior, a senior over the age of 20 has to enter into a lotto system. So we could use a lot more. That was going to be my next question because you read about that you guys are having to lease apartment complexes and put people in hotels. No, we absolutely need housing. That's why we brought in a consultant to give us the best advice on how to approach this because building dorms is expensive. And so what are some of the options? What's the industry? What are the industry standards today? So that we can then make a decision about how we move forward. But no question, we need housing. That's definitely a big need. Thank you. Go ahead. I understand if we did decide to invest a lot of money into this course, you know, a clubhouse, the bridges, irrigation, it's still going to be known as a short course. Absolutely. So that does not ensure that there would be a golf team. That cannot be changed. The consultant made that very clear. Okay. Nor is there space for a driving range because I were asking. Yeah, that's always. Yeah. Okay. And changing the entrance. That was another thing that the consultant looked at because some people were saying when it's not marketed very well, you'd have to really know where it is. It's kind of a hidden, you know. So he looked at changing the entrance so it could be more marketable, more visible, and all of those, none of those options were really viable. Yes, Kevin. In the discussions with our staff, in thinking about future uses of that golf course, has any mobility issues been discussed? I mean, Mingo Road is in need of some serious widening. It needs sidewalks. It needs a bike path or something like that down there for several other reasons in addition to university students. As we continue this conversation as a city to make sure that we look into some of those mutually beneficial needs, because that's a long stretch of Mingo if you think that goes from almost Texas Street all the way down to Vredell, I think. So just to keep that on our radar as we continue this discussion because some pretty great synergy could probably happen as we look at that being rede veloped. But I personally have no interest, I'll just state it, in the city getting in the golf course business. I don't think it financially makes any sense for us. I don't hear an overwhelming desire for it except for when the paper put that editorial out, I hadn't really given it much thought. So I don't think the community is calling in great numbers for this. So I'm much more interested in you guys growing and doing what you need as an institution. So I'm in favor of you turning this over. Thank you. Well first of all, I really want to thank you for coming and having this conversation because I think it shows just the commitment to teamwork and cooperation and that our partnership is valuable to your institution and I do appreciate that. Hey look, I can't tell you how many rounds I played on that golf course growing up as a high schooler and college kid in this town. But as I sat and listened to the consultant, because you all really, you gave some of the expenses, I could be wrong, but what I heard was you got the million dollars for irrigation, you got the clubhouse storage shed to keep the carts in, you got, and it was adding up to the tune of three to five million dollars pretty rapidly . And you're right, there's certainly a part of our segment of our population that that's a more affordable option for golf. I guess though if that's something that is important to the city, to the city, bureaucracy and to this community, that's something we need to be willing to pay for and I'm not quite sure that we're willing to do that and I certainly respect your right to take this almost half of your campus. I know. Half of your campus. Yes. And to be able to use that. I'm hugely aware of that. Yes, yes. So I think I share the sentiments of some of the other, my colleagues who've said that they certainly encourage you to do what you need to do, the further education of the students that you're trying to reach and that the city right now, if that's something we need to do then we'll have those conversations down the road but I do want to say to Councilmember Roden's comment that you know maybe that is can be part of the conversation as you continue with what you're going to do with it is because there's some things that you know Belle Avenue and those kind of things that may be synergistic as far as some trade-offs so I think there are some some good opportunities but boy I tell you no matter how this conversation turns out I really appreciate you coming down and at least having it because I think it really shows your commitment to the to the community and to the partnership you have with the community and I really appreciate that. Well I appreciate the fact that you're on your agenda. Yes, absolutely. It is teamwork really. Yes, go ahead. The, I'm not opposed to the golf course staying there. I drive either down Mingo Road or University Drive by the golf course almost every day and when I'm driving down University Drive one of the things I notice this is a really attractive part of town I mean even though it's in a major US highway that's coming right through the middle of town this is this is pretty and I really appreciate if it ends up being developed I would say that that I would hope that you would exercise the same kind of thoughtfulness about maintaining some green space that you that the university did when the Lowry apartments were built on University and Loc ust Street because a lot of trees were preserved and it fit into the neighborhood well and and I'm very appreciative I'm appreciative of the fact that that I can't recall many times in our history when this kind of dialogue has been initiated by one of the universities to talk to us about the impact of their decisions on the community and that's great also and I'll say I'm in my seventh year on council and in the first six years I've had one person to say that we needed a municipal golf course after this series of articles came out in the newspaper I 've had maybe a 600 percent increase. Wow. So, so six more people have said that. So so and I know that it's important for some folks and I know that that that having affordable rounds of golf there is another golf course that's partially in the city of Denton Oakmont part of it most of its in Corinth but part of its actually in the Denton city limits I believe but so there's some other options but but I suspect that they're not nearly as affordable as as a round of golf. Right. No I mean I totally understand that and I want to address your point you made about the green space I personally am very committed to that and I just this morning read an article about one of the factors that attracts students to a campus is the beauty of the campus so the last thing you want to do is you know build so many buildings that there's no more beauty and so that's part of what we need to do and there are many uses of outdoor space other than golf that would be much more attractive probably to our students and where they were more students could be engaged in and I think that's part to me it's a really important part of health and well-being and it's part of what we need to do to develop our students and so I'm very committed to from the perspective of the outdoors but also from the perspective of the beauty and the space and trees I mean I'm very committed to those kinds of issues so I you won't find any resistance on my part on that. I think it would be helpful to hear from staff in at some future time maybe an informal staff report on you know we've gotten calls that or emails that we're the only city of our size that does not have a municipal course and I don't know if that's true or not I don't know if that makes any difference it would be kind of nice to know and it would be nice to know indeed I've heard also that that that you don't make any money off of golf courses that they that they generally cost a lot of course we don't make any money off of our other recreation facilities and we're not expecting to but but I'm not sure that that the cost versus use of citizens is a is a good balance in the golf course but it would be it would be handy if staff could provide us some additional background information on one of the interesting things in the report from the consultant was he gave us a picture of the typical demographic of who in nationwide who plays golf and it's very much people like you all and not like the people at DWU. Older white men I'll say yeah I'm just speaking for myself any other questions or comments well thank you very much thank you thank you for that thorough presentation nice to meet you too thank you thank you well let's go ahead take five minutes so I want to reconvene this council work session Tuesday August the 25th 2015 will now go on to our agenda item 1B which is receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the 2015-16 program budget capital improvement program and five-year forecast thank you mayor if I could I'd like to call on Chuck Springer to present last week when we had budget discussions the council gave us some pretty clear direction and we've tried to summarize that and put it in a more concise form because we're getting closer and closer to the adoption date of the budget and so we've tried to synthesize what you all in the direction you gave us last time and Chuck's gonna go through that and then we'll have another budget discussion scheduled for next week as well and I guess Chuck's gonna go we do have public hearing I think also scheduled next week correct with that I'm gonna ask Chuck to summarize where we are at this point and let me summarize too on there were some questions we answered on the 18th we received some additional questions and we've received some since then so we're working on a second memo of question and answers that will include with the work session item hopefully on September 1st will include with that item so we are coming back with some more answers to questions want to let you know that we're doing that. And I have a lot of questions today as well. We'll try to answer as many of them as we can during the discussion. I wanted to go through this sheet and summarize it I can open it up on the screen so everyone else can see it. And we've made some changes we've tried to highlight those changes in blue on here and on the sheet in front of you so we started off with the 959 188 going down to the first change that's been made is the exposition parking lot that was 403,000 what we've done there is look at when I talk about repurposed debt from City Hall West we talked about some delayed maintenance to City Hall West and what we've looked at is that was scheduled within the next couple of years we sell a million and a half each year for facility improvements so what we've done is drop that down to a million one kind of eliminated those planned facility upgrades to City Hall West and replace it with debt funding of this parking lot the 400,000 so the capital program is still the same size based on this change but we've moved that from a one-time cash expense to a debt funded which would be a 10-year debt funded expense. Do you have the slide that was this template but at the end of our meeting last time that showed sort of what we had done at that point? I've got a hard copy but I had changed the slide. Can we get a copy of the hard copy? Because I just want to look at what it was last time. I think it's essentially, Chuck correct me, that's what's in black up there is what the council put on the line. Well but if I remember correctly we had a difference of about $440 something thousand dollars and so at the bottom was a negative and then when you took out so if we take out the part I just need to see how this all plays out from last week so I just if we could get that before the end. So give me a second I'll just cut and paste and put one into. You're not under any technological pressure. Okay. Well I'm actually going to the new version here of let's see if I can do it this way. [ Inaudible ] [ Inaudible ] >> I think it was 403,600 as I remember. So I think this is where we had ended last time. I think we had added these two at the end. So we were drawing down fund balance about 507,000. >> Okay. Okay. >> So that's the end of last year's -- excuse me, last meeting. >> All right. So if we take out the 403, that leaves us with -- what is that, 104, 103. And if we go back and look at now the new one, then that's sort of -- we have to find the 103 somewhere. But when we look at -- >> We've done four additional items, and I'll go through those four additional items. >> Okay. All right. So there's some things that are being added that we hadn't talked about. Okay. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> So we've really moved that over to debt funded and using the removal of the need to do some capital maintenance at City Hall West. And what we added is based on the discussions to eliminate the cash funding for vehicle replacement, there was discussions of continuing to do that in debt at least the first year. We still got that in the five-year plan going forward, but for the first year, we've talked about doing that. >> I know Councilmember Hawkins had a question. I'm sorry, Joey. >> Chuck, he can finish and then I'll ask. >> Okay. Sure. I'm sorry. You bet. Thank you. >> The second item was the $200,000 facility study. We were looking at the future needs for potentially a combined City Hall and other city facilities. So we've reduced that. That was originally budgeted at $200,000. We've reduced that to $150,000. >> But we're -- >> We're taking it out. >> Okay. I'm sorry. Go ahead. It's my fault. Let's get through it. >> Yeah. And I apologize the negatives and positives since we started with a positive -- >> No, no. I understand. >> I understand that that's a positive when we're adding expenditures. It's a negative. The funding, the one quarter year of lease for office space is in the potential that we enter into that lease agreement for moving the departments in City Hall West over to the new facility. This would cover the first year, which is really just a quarter of a year. And then there was a discussion about the GIS technician for planning. This would fund that position as a full-time position next year. >> Okay. You open for questions now? >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. >> Thank you, Mayor. I'm very happy to see that GIS technician in there. I just watched the work session Sunday morning, four-hour work session at home. It seems like it's an eight-hour to watch, by the way. Anyway, so I just want to make sure on the exposition parking lot, if we're going to be able to pay for that, it's coming out of the City Hall West deferred maintenance. >> Well, really it's just replacing -- we were going to issue one and a half million issue on annual basis, 10-year debt, one and a half million mainly for roof replacements, heating, air conditioning systems of city facilities. >> But that parking lot being built and paid for is not contingent on us abandoning City Hall West. It's just -- >> Well, it would be. In other words, it would be not making the capital improvements to City Hall West. >> Okay. >> In order to offset that. There was some discussion, I think, at some point of that some of those maintenance items being deferred until we had a decision on City Hall West. >> Gotcha. >> So this would kind of eliminate those items from being done. >> Joey, if I could check, it's kind of trying to take into consideration everything the council was saying last time, move forward with potentially leasing space for the occupants of City Hall West. So what we're talking about here is continuing to defer that maintenance that had been programmed on City Hall West until we know what we're going to do with that building and in the meantime use $400,000 of that debt to do the parking lot. >> Sure. >> The council added back into the budget at the last meeting. >> I just wanted to make sure I understood it fully. I definitely like this direction that we're going. >> I think I saw -- yes. >> Well, I have a whole lot. >> Can you maybe give it to us in increments so others can maybe -- because we've got about 30 minutes to an hour. >> No, I'm serious. >> No, it may be 20 minutes. >> Okay. All right. But I just -- I've studied this in depth, a line item budget analysis. What I want staff to really understand is that this is fluid. This is not poured in concrete. This is a suggested budget from the staff to council. As a new council member, I just want staff to really understand where I'm coming from that it's fluid. It's up for discussion. And so that's why I studied it so hard and why I have recommendations today. The first one, with the community market, 250,000, if you look at the convention and visitors bureau, they've earmarked 150,000 for the convention center over at razor ranch. Well, I would like to pull that 150 out of that budget and put it towards the community market because the convention center has not been approved. It hasn't been approved at any stage at this point. So I'd like to move that 150 into to help pay for the community market. I also found a farmer's market grant that's 50,000. It's unspent. I'd like to check from staff and see if we can add that to that 150,000. That will get us to 200,000 out of the 253 that we need for the community market. On the next one, human resources, it's on the small budget here. If you go to page four, under human resources, there's $125 ,000 earmarked for a consultant fee to review the pay plan structure. And it looks like we're going to spend 65,000 to save 60, 000. So my question for staff is, I'm not crazy about the 125, 000 for that consultant. What is it and is it necessary? You have to convince me. Next one, also page four, also under human resources, there 's 78,000 for leasing management software. It has to do with our LEAP program. And I understand LEAP. I know it's important. I'm looking at $78,000 expenditure here for management software. I'd like to know what it is and again why it's important. Let's come back to that citywide space study. I specifically remembered the mayor looking at our city manager and saying that he was not comfortable in spending, at this time, $200,000 on a citywide space study and I agree with the mayor. It's premature. That frees up $200,000 at this point in time that we can put into this whole equation. On page two, there's a new employee hire. It's 84,000 a year. It's under the park department. But the specific job for this person is to care for plants and trees on Hickory Street in the square. Now let me repeat that. $84,000 for an employee to take care of the plants on the square and on Hickory. That seems like a lot of money for a job that I honestly would hope that the rest of our park department could absorb. That if we're having to make some tough decisions here, that's a decision that I would like to say no to. Everybody knows the body cameras are important and they're on the list. So just want to emphasize that that needs to stay. With that $250,000, Chuck, that you're talking about with the vehicles, what we haven't talked about is that we have $2.97 million that we are financing for the rest of our vehicles. So it seems like chump change to say, well, let's kind of have $250,000 each year to try to fund vehicles in cash. When in reality, interest rates are really low. If we're already spending almost $3 million on vehicle replacement, forget that $250,000 for the next five years. Just amortize that in with the rest of that $3 million and free up that $250,000 each year. And I know we're agreeing to do it theoretically this year, but I'd like to see it for the next five years and just wrap that. Vehicles depreciate, lease them, borrow the money, but not the $250,000. So let's have a heart to heart on healthcare costs for the city employees and city payroll because we spend a lot of money. The city is spending $20 million a year for healthcare costs, $20 million a year. It went up $3 million in the last two years. So for people to say, well, we were not doing enough for our staff, well, I think we are. It's our staff, their families, our retirees, and there is a lot of money that the taxpayers are paying through this council and through this budget to take care of our staff, their families, and their retirees. So I bring up that big figure and that huge jump of $3 million in healthcare costs for this city. Because I want to come back to payroll, and I don't see anything on that screen, Chuck, that talks about the payroll reduction. We brushed on it last week, but what I would like to again bring up, in 2012 and 2013, we had an average pay increase of 3%. And our city manager brought up last week that it wasn't a cap of 3, it was actually a cap of 5, but that it averaged out at 3. So if we look at pay raise 2012, 2013, pay raise 2013, 2014 , also averaging out to 3%. So that we are now at 9% over three years with a theoretical cap of 15% over three years if an employee received the 5% over three years. So I'm using the healthcare costs with the staff pay to try to balance this out. That is, we're not going to have to pay a lot of money to get this done. So I'm using the healthcare costs with the staff pay to try to balance this out. That we have paid a lot of money in healthcare costs, and if you're reading the news, they are continuing to spiral. So in terms of trying to tap down in terms of what we're going to spend in payroll this year, I'd like to offer the following matrix. 50,000 and below, cap it at 3%. 51,000 to 100,000, cap it at 1.5. And if you're making 100,000 and above, for this year, I think we freeze that salary because you have had anywhere from 9 to 15% in the last three to four years. And I just think at this point in time where we're splitting hairs up here with council on trying to make really good decisions on things that are important, I think that's a decision that this council really needs to take a look at. There's been a tremendous groundswell of citizens that have said, wow, thanks for bringing that up, Kathleen. And so I'm bringing it up again with a solid plan, and I'd like to see staff incorporate that so that, Chuck, you said it was 200 to $400,000. Now you have a matrix. I'd like to see it. And is that for non-public safety employees? Yeah, it does not include police and fire. They have their own agreements. This is city staff. Good? I was just asking. So let's talk about fleet management. This is on 81 of your big budget. The good news is we're spending less on fuel, a lot less, because oil prices are dropping. And I haven't heard this from a staff report, but I think it's important for council to hear it. I think it's important for our citizens to hear it. The cost for fuel for city vehicles is down $2 million. And that's compared to the 2013-2014 budget. I'm going to repeat that. It's down $2 million. Let me point out there that we had an agreement with DCTA where we were supplying them fuel, and that agreement ended . So a good portion of that drop is related to us not selling fuel to DCTA. They built their own facility. So they have that. But some of the drop is just lower prices. But some of the drop, I think about $1.3 million to $1.5 million, was what DCTA was buying through the city before they had a facility for refueling. So I just want to point that out. So good to know that. But even with that information, it sounds like half a million in 500,000 in fuel savings. So if you look at what the cost predictions are for 2016, with gas and oil dropping, it's a 19% reduction in terms of fuel for 2016. The price of oil right now is $38 a barrel. So I'm just saying, good news for us, I think in this whole big ledger, we're going to have good news in terms of the gas prices that our city vehicles have to drive. And these are big numbers, big numbers. I know that in our budget right now, we have something called a fuel contingency, and I understand that. It's $1,250,000. And that's monies that we've set aside in case the price of oil skyrockets and we have to increase our-- and am I correct on that, that we've set that aside? And that's within the fleet services fund, this is an internal service fund. So they kind of buy the fuel and sell it. And not really a profit or loss. They just cover their costs. So that's citywide. So we put that contingency in there in case fuel cost goes back up so we don't have to return to the council for a budget amendment. But the fleet services fund is kind of a balancing of revenues and expenses, but it's not necessarily-- it just sells throughout the city to all the other funds. So I just wanted to bring that up because I think it is a savings in the ledger when we see other areas just continuing to skyrocket. Have some questions on the $200,000 on the website redesign for the city. And I know it says CRM, customer relationship management, to enhance basic service requests from citizens. So my question is, does this include requests related to planning? What are these requests? And I'd like to have that answered in terms of-- and will this $200,000 go out for an RFP? How did we come up with the $200,000? Are we just trying to make sure we're covering all our bases there and that we have enough to do the job? But I come back to, well, what are the requests and does it impact planning or is your software a whole different software? In terms of-- I'll answer what I can, let Brian fill in some more. Yes, it would go through a competitive process. The $200,000 is an estimate of the cost to upgrade the city 's website. And when you're talking about request, it's any type of citizen request that they want to put through electronically in terms of through the website. It was an enhancement that was discussed kind of when we discussed overall customer service system called the 311 system. We looked at doing this as kind of a first step as part of the website redesign. Well, I'd sure like to hear some more about that just so I can justify the cost. And we can include the white paper on that, the discussion. And I'd like to read that. And Amy, if you could answer that question, does this impact planning at all or is this just everything in addition to planning in terms of citizen requests? This is not specific to planning. The software that we use is specific to builders and contractors and developers. And that is available. You access that through the city's website. But these enhancements are for all citizen engagement, and it's not specifically related to planning. And I guess I'm not sold in terms of-- I'd like to see an example of what the citizen requests would be to justify the $200,000 for a new website. If I could add a little bit of a description to that, the $ 200,000 is not just for the CRM functionality, but that would be an element of the website. And so one of the components that we look at is some routine type questions that we get, a routine request for service, fix a pothole, here's an area that needs attention , we've got a code enforcement issue, something like that. If someone could submit that electronically through the website via their computer or on a mobile device, if they could submit those through to the city, then we could take those service requests and then try to perform that service for the citizen. That's one component. The other pieces of that are building a more robust website , something that is really the front door to the city. That would be a first class product to provide the communication to all of our citizens. So that's really the components. And the way we came up with looking at that number was trying to identify some other cities in the Metroplex that had done a similar type project and picked what we thought was a reasonable number based on what some of those had spent. It's certainly an estimate at this point. We'd have to go through a competitive process, as Chuck mentioned, and to see what that actual proposal would be. Well, I know right now if somebody needs a pothole fix, they contact their councilman or woman and say, need some help with this. So whether we could change that culture, I'm not sure. I don't know that I want to. I love to hear when somebody's having a problem and can council step in and fix it. So I just come back to, you know, I'm not sure because if it's not related to planning with those specific requests, I'm not sure a $200,000 remake of the city's website to just have somebody put in simple requests like that. I think citizens are doing that just fine right now. But we can talk about that and yeah, dig into that. One thing I'd like council to think about for next year's budget, and in 2009, when the budget was so tight, we let go a part of the fire department called the fire training captain. It's an expensive position. It's an important position. Why is it important? Because we're gearing up for a new ISO rating in 2019. And this is a very important position for us to get there because he is going to help us get there in terms of overse eing all the different pieces that have to come together with that. Talk to the fire chief at length. And this is something that next year budget, I'd like us to really zone in on and see if we can bring that back. I know we talked about, and this is on page six of our supplemental, we talked about the asphalt recycle machine, 200,000 and five additional employees essentially to run it , which is 360 or 370,000. Combined, that's half a mil. So when I listened to the discussion, it sounded like it was more of a time factor and a time savings than it was a money saver. And again, I think I'd like to revisit that to really justify, because five new employees, it's not just a one- time cost. It's the benefits, it's the retirement, it's all of the everything that comes with hiring five full-time employees with this machine. So if staff can justify that half a million in terms of what is it costing us now in terms of contractor fees, is there a cost savings to owning the equipment, bringing on five employees to do the work that we now farm out to a contractor? Or are we looking at this to try to save time, because I understand sometimes we have to wait for that equipment. So I'd really like to zone in on that half a million. One last discussion. The animal shelter is understaffed. I'm just going to go on the record as saying that. And I had a really great meeting with our police chief, with our assistant city manager Cabrillas, and some other members of the police department. And I think we met for three hours, and we really tore apart and studied the animal shelter. And what we've done is moved, of course, from a small facility to a larger facility. And we're struggling on having to try to staff that up. And there were three options, and you all received an email that outlined the three different positions that we would look at. So because I'm not a vet, and because I don't have animal shelter experience, I reached out to some other veterinarians who do have shelter experience to ask them, here's what we have, what do you think we need, and what do you think we should spend our money on right now? And 100% said, get the vet tech. That the additional vet tech, five days a week, will make that animal shelter so much more productive. And if I could ask Mr. Cabrillas to come up to the mic and weigh in on this discussion. We're looking at a salary of $62,000 a year. Yes, ma'am. For the vet tech, under the current contract that we have with RSVP, that's our provider for vet services out at the Animal Adoption Center, our calculations are if we added another full time vet tech being out there five days a week, it would be approximately $62,816 under the current terms of the contract. So that would be my recommendation to, we found some cost savings in here. And so with those cost savings, I would like the council to seriously consider adding that vet tech out at the animal shelter. And staff is on board with that. I believe our police chief is on board with that. And we just need to find the money. Long term, and again, because the contract has been signed again for another year, between now and next spring, I would like to see what the difference would be if we hired our own people and not worked through a third party. Understanding that I think our salaries would be lower, but we would also be responsible now for benefits for those people. But I'd like a work session to really take a look at where we are right now and what we're paying. What is the competitive rate with other shelter employees around North Texas? And then take a look at using the third party and make a really good fiscal sound decision on do we continue with that contract or do we take a different route and hire our own? I don't know. So it's a discussion. Can't do it now because we're locked into the contract until next spring, early summer. So that's my contribution. And thank you all for being patient. So you had asked on some of these for an explanation of the expenses or the budgetary figure. I mean, is that what we're going to do now is answer because you'd asked for a couple of explanations on some of these. Well, I think on some of these, at least that I made note on, the intent would be for us to try to put together some of the explanation and justification for some of the things that have been included in my recommended budget to you. And I mean, I don't I don't have that whole document and all those explanations here, but I think we can come back before next week and add those to the other questions that we're attempting to answer at this point and provide that to you prior to the meeting next week. We've got white papers on all of the packages that we can add to that budget discussion and kind of refer to those and see what else you want. I mean, there's a couple of things here that I mean, for instance, the request that we add the vet tech, we've got a very specific number that we could. I mean, if it's council decision for us to put that in the mix on this one before we go forward, we can certainly do that. It's just there's an impact on that bottom line that Chuck, I don't think I've got to hear. But mixing that with the other thing that you suggested. With the other monies that I think we can free up if we really if we really move some dollars around, I think we can free up we can free up some some money. Yeah, I guess my only point, Mr. Mayor, is I think some of those things you've asked for an explanation of before and unless council ready to give a direction on all of those things right now. I think we need to put it together in some understandable format that we can respond to those justifications and put the numbers together to show you some alternatives and scenarios of how they work together. Joey. Thank you, Mayor. You bring up some interesting points on a lot of these things. But if one thing that I do want to go on record, though, I think just internally I struggle with saying you make $100, 000 so you're not getting a raise this year. The way that work that you kind of break down the pay salaries. I just think that those numbers are a little just arbitrary . And I just wonder if if someone's making $101,000 and they are been working towards a merit system. What, what that does to morale. I think a lot of those salaries are based on just what the market does not necessarily just what the city of Denton or our manager decided or council. So I'm very concerned. I'm concerned about that. I don't want to send a message to our city staff that because we think you just make enough money. So we're not giving you a raise this year. And I just how many years did you want this the system to continue or is this just a one year thing? It's a one year thing for now based upon a nine to 15 percent pay raise that the employees have had since 2012 2013. I'm just saying with three million and added health care costs. You know you have to step back and take a look at the whole package in the hole. I know it's competitive out there. I also know that we're spending a lot of money in the city on staff salaries. And I just want to go on the record of questioning some of those upper tier salaries. And I know people work hard. Sure. I also know health care costs have added three mil to the bottom line. You've got to take a look at that too. And that's also a contribution that we've made to our staff . Well, no, I too I want to be responsible with this budget here. But I just I really worry about the message that you send to staff when you do when you propose something like that. I we do spend a lot on 70 percent of our budget goes towards staff. You're right. And I know health care costs are rising. But I just I want to go on the record and I appreciate you digging in deep and not living a rock unturned. I really do. And I feel like I'm finally getting to the point where I'm doing that all the way. But I just want to go on record saying I'm I'm very against that. Our raises right now are based on merit. And if somebody is doing a good job, I want them to be able to get a raise. And if they're making one hundred thousand dollars a year, that's that's the American dream. And just because they're making ninety nine, I just just in principle, I feel like I'm in I'm very against that. So I just thank you. OK, I'm trying to any questions over here. Yes, Councilmember Johnson. Well, question for you, Mayor, in terms of clarification. So, everyone, Kathleen, thank you for all all that digging because there's some cool stuff in there that because you 're able to link a bunch of things. The some of Kathleen's comments were questions and some were I don't think we should do this. So I'm just curious. I mean, how it sounded like she was going to go through her list and then get responses. Do we want to have any discussion about that? Those things now. Do we want to wait till next week until staff has a chance to give responses or what? Because on the on the topic, like Joey said, well, I want to weigh in on that, too. So, sure. Well, I guess and so I can understand our next council meeting is September the first. I believe that correct. And when do we have to formally adopt the budget and is it a statutory requirement or when is that? When do we officially adopt the budget? We've got it scheduled for the meeting of the 15th. OK, so we have a couple weeks. I think that's a good point, because what you're saying is if we're going to start really trying to integrate some of these changes or some of these requests. First of all, we've got to get a consensus on this body of what is it that we're saying we'd like to see done differently. And we're running out of time. I don't know how to say that. So that's what I'm getting at. So on things like move the hundred fifty K from the CVB because the Convention Center probably won't happen in the next fiscal year. What a great find. I mean, that never clicked for me until you said that. Then you got things like employee compensation. Well, we probably have differing views on some of that. So I'm just saying, do we want to go through those one by one? Do we want to mean what we could say is that was a request for clarification from staff. No need for discussion. Next one. You know, because I couldn't keep I couldn't keep up. Well, and I guess I would ask the city because I think there's going to come a point where we have to decide with all the different discussions we're having, because I've got a few here that are similar. That we have to decide come to a point where we have a point in time where we decide this is what we're going to do. This is not what we're going to do. And that's rapidly approaching. And it sounds like next week, the next council meeting, which is next week, is going to be one of those sort of kind of moments. And because when you get to the 15th, you know, you can, I guess, do it on the fly on the 15th and work session, but you're still you're running out of time. So I think some of them, if we can handle them now and then some of them later. But Mr. City Manager, I'll let you weigh in on that. I think if you want to go down and I tried to take some notes and I don't have as detailed as Kathleen has. But if you want, for instance, I think if you want to talk about the marketing money for the Convention Center as an example, we probably need to have a little bit of discussion. And I could ask John to come up and give some information because that may be money that John can correct me if I'm wrong. But that we're we anticipate needing to spend in an effort to market the Convention Center that's part of our deal on the Convention Center that's going to be coming before the city council. So it's not just a matter of the center is not going to be built by this time next year, but it may be money that in fact needs to be spent. I just like some discussion of that before. Well, then council just says no. I'm a chair, then we're going to discuss it. Yeah, we're just gonna make a recommendation. So if Kathleen could give her a detailed list, a copy of her detailed list to the city manager, city manager could then come back and say, send to all of us. Here are all the items. This was request for clarification. This one's for council discussion so that maybe next week, then we've got the list of here's all the ones that need council discussion. Some were questions, some were recommendations for the following year, but some of them require discussion now for this budget. Maybe that that list could get condensed for next week and then we could talk about all of them next week. I mean, I don't know. Just a thought. Okay, Councilman Rhoad. Yeah, I think time is going to be important on some of this . I mean, if you look at from the last week, we had a $400, 000 deficit to a $40,000 surplus, I guess, in this list alone, which was a result of, I think, some pretty severe compromise on some folks. I mean, some of us were uncomfortable with the tax cuts. Some of us were uncomfortable with the community market. And we've reached some creative funding schemes to get consensus after a long discussion last week that took to this week to get to that point. We start changing a lot of stuff too late in the game, our consensus might be back out the window and then we're kind of starting from fresh a week before we have to approve this thing. And so if there are some things we can discuss now that involve significant cuts or significant additions, at least to get some philosophical framework. If we talk about pay raise issue, and as a council, consensus is no, we like the way it's going, then there's no need to put any extra work on that for the next couple of weeks. If there's things we can hammer out, I think it would be helpful. Okay, all right. Yes, Councilmember. Mayor Pro Tem. Well, to go along with that, I like the idea of if you're going to make suggestions to increase the budget some places that you're finding places to cut the budget. I think that's a great way to do things. I wish we would do that more often. All of us at the table here. You know, I'd be open to some of those. But again, for some of them, I'm not prepared to discuss it until I get information from staff because I don't know what the implications are of the 150,000 cut from the Convention Center. If that, you know, I don't know how long in advance you have to start marketing something like that. Since we don't have an agreement yet, I don't know what our responsibilities are. So I think that that could be a great idea, but we have to understand the implications of it. I own some of the things that are not so much requiring staff answers, and it's more of a policy decision. Yeah, I think that we could hold off on cash funding the 250,000 for cash funding vehicle replacement. But I think in the long run, that's the right direction. And I don't think I don't think 250,000 is such a change when you start adding it up and adding another 250,000 the next year and another 250,000 the next year, because in the long run, interest rates are going to stay down. And at some point, you know, there's been there's been an indication that that that we would be better off not spending the interest. The interest now is insignificant, but the interest varies from being low to being high. And I would like for us to be positioning ourselves and, and so that we're in a better place for when interest go up as it inevitably will. So, so I'm, I'm, I'm interested in trying to continue to move towards doing some more cash funding, those kind of short term purchases. The I'm in a completely different place as far as the payroll issues concerned because, while as well we've had several years when we've had merit pay that could go from 1 % to 5%. And it's an average of three that doesn't mean everybody's getting the same amount. Some people are getting nothing at all. And for several years before that we've had salary freezes. And, and I've never been one to to try to balance a budget or try to find new activities of the city on the backs of the employees. We have, we have, you know, you'd made the comment that we 're looking at a lot of important things in the budget and I agree. But, but I hope that that's not meaning to say that the staff is not important, because they are the only reason that city operates and many of our staff people have specialized training, and they have marketable skills that they could go to other cities or go into the private sector. And so, our pay has to remain competitive with other cities, we don't want to be a city that is paying entry level pay for a lot of our positions and creating unnecessary turnover, because they come in and they get trained here. And then they know that they're going to have to go somewhere else in order to further their career and their profession so so I'm real uncomfortable with with with that kind of a plan, especially given the fact that for about three years when I was on council. We weren't doing anything for the staff. Everything was frozen. So, so I'm looking at it more than just nice raises or decent raises the last three years. You know, I had a citizen come up and say to me the other day, you're wanting to raise people's pay 3% and the cost of living is only 1.7 % you shouldn't do any more than 1.7. So, I guess what that person saying is, our, our employees shouldn't have any room to have any expectation for for having any more expendable income while they're employees here. I don't, I just don't think that's a good philosophy and so I, I'm uncomfortable with that is in terms of the policy thing. And I'm looking forward then though to hearing some of the answers that we'll get from staff on some of these other things because I think there's some good things in your suggestions that we ought to explore. But I don't agree with all of them. Okay, well, I'm going to sort of throw my couple comments out and then I want to start going through these and I do want to hear. I think the one of them we can tackle is the, the 150,000 for the hot funds Convention Center I couldn't tell if you were saying it was out of CBB budget or if it's $150,000 line item in our hot funds but we can certainly hear from George, but I guess. From my perspective on at least this slide. I'm not so sure that this is the only place that we have to , to make some changes. I don't, I don't think this is the only place that it's not like we'll counsel you're giving $ 959,000 and, and so we got to give and take and sort of, because on the, the eliminate the, the reduced facility study by 50,000. I'm uncomfortable with having that in there in general only because we have until I'm able to see the space study that we did in 2001 or 2002 we did a space study. Back then at that time. I would like to see that to sort of see what the recommendations worth and none of us were here. Okay, city manager wasn't here. Most of executive staff wasn't here, say for Howard Martin. I think Howard Martin's . Come on, Howard, you knew you knew I had to throw something your way. Okay, all right. And John fortune was but here when, but I'd like to see that to see exactly what it recommended. What have we done? What kept us from getting there or how did we get there? And as far as the funding of the one quarter year of lease for office space, I understand that's going to be a need, but I don't know if that's necessarily money that again, the way that this is being presented is here's our budget. You can't really mess with that. Well, here's what we can do here because the reduce the funding of the quarter year of lease for office space, I think should, I don't know if it necessarily should come from this part and I don't know if I see him as two separate parts. It's a good way to conceptualize it. It's a good way to have a good head start and my observations don't deviate a lot from this. But when I saw that fund a quarter of year lease for office space, I mean, that's that's a need that's coming in the planning department. And I think that, yes, it was a council priority. It was a council initiative said, hey, find some space, but it came into at the end of the budget cycle. So I still would look would like to look at the space study . There's nothing about the Clary on consulting up here as far as whether that we can lower the estimate. I mean, I understand these are estimates. I agree Dalton with the elimination of the cash funding for vehicle replacement, I guess. I'm comfortable with it this year only because the climate still looks like we're going to have some lower rates and next year is just right around the corner, and we'll be able to make that adjustment if we can. I still I still think that's something that we can maybe maybe postpone. Let me flip over here. I've asked for several things from staff which I guess George I sent you that email that could be included in this memo. Basically I asked for there's some CDBG funds that have not been spent from prior years, just sort of like to get an explanation on that I'm just sharing this with the council, just so that they'll know what's coming. There's a fund balance of a million dollars in the red light camera fund would just like to know what that's about . And really what what the purpose of that is I'm sure there is one would like a slide that compares the forecast from last year with what the budget is this year. Staffing summary by department for the last seven years just showing what departments how much have they increased, did they shrink any during the recession, and then just what's the total compensation, not trying to make an argument for or against, but just to have a historical context of our growth in employees because it is it is getting up there. Let's see. That's the balance in the home funds. The GIS technician planning, I get that I think Joey that was something you were and you weren't here at the meeting so I think if you were here at the meeting that would have been something that we would have put in here so I certainly am very comfortable with that. But I just don't want to get locked in and this is a good this slide is a good start it's a good place and it may wind up being exactly what we do. But sometimes I get the perspective of, we're sort of confined within this matrix, and I just I'm not so sure if I, and I know that's not something that the staff is intended to just this was where the council discussion last week. It's kind of a starting place to add subtract yes whatever. And Kathleen said this is a fluid document, and we need numbers to start and end with and that's all this is an attempt. And I would really like for us to, I'll just throw this out and certainly entertain some some comments but, well, never mind you've done it. We've changed the community events enhancements because I know that we had that labeled as community market, and I know that they were sort of the, the initiator of that discussion on that space, and I appreciate that but I think that's going to be open to other organizations, other type of activities and so it's not just a funding mechanism for them. That's why I asked that some of that be brought out of the budget because it was more specifically tailored to them so I was going to see if we could maybe reframe that because to more accurately reflect what that what that money is for . So, the biggest. Well, the exposition parking lot I want to make sure I understand what we're doing there. Because what we're saying is conceptually is if planning staff stayed. We're going to spend x amount of dollars, along with some other facility needs on that building. So if they're moving, then we can delay that, or, you know, reduce that because there's not going to be that need so quickly for that but I want to make sure that City Hall West. From my perspective, this is just me personally, there's going to be some use for that somewhere down the line. That is may not require as much enhancements as if it was a staff occupied facility. So there's still going to be some money needed for that building. So I don't want to necessarily Rob Peter to pay Paul excuse the expression that says okay, we're not going to do this over here, we're going to do this instead when we are going to have to do something over there. No matter what use we have, we're going to have to do something if we maintain ownership which that would obviously be my preference. So, so I'm not hearing that we 've taken all of that money that was earmarked for these facility, either repairs or enhancements in order to do that just the amounts that were scheduled this year and next for City Hall West. In other words, there was a million five scheduled over the next two years, citywide, we've taken the amounts that were specifically for some enhancements at City Hall West and replace that with the 400,000 but we still have funding for facility enhancements around the city, and we could have some at City Hall West just not those large capital items that if we're going to have staff in there we're going to have to do. So if with counsel's question. Okay, well, with counsel's indulgence or comments. We got to start talking about some of these items at some point and of course I'm going to say that and maybe bring up one that we won't talk about but obviously, I think the one that we could probably dispatch with pretty quickly is the suggestion of, do we move some funds from hot funds over to this. And that is precipitated by maybe a discussion from Mr fortune about what that line item is. And if we can do that then that would be, that would be something, but we had a question up did you have a question before we start that. You sure. Okay. If you need more information, then I think generally I can concur with George and conclusion that we had as a reason for that proposal as the convention center project advances and if it were to advance during the construction period is the key marketing phase. In other words, you don't want to wait till you're constructed and start marketing it because you'd like to be able to have facility open in coordinated in such a way that events can be booked to to be timed with that opening and so there is an element of marketing is associated with that. Now, what we plan to do is partner with the CVB and the CVB have a role in that marketing and so this funding was essentially an earmark if you will to allow us to have a capacity to in the future once we have that agreement to be able to sit down with the CVB and see what, what is what relationship or what needs would be to be, they would have to be able to start that marketing. Is this is this general operating fund or is it hot. This is from Hotel occupancy tax fund this is not general fund dollars. Okay, so I'm not sure it would even be eligible for. I think that's a different question that perhaps Chuck can address is whether or not you could use the funding for the event location. I have to defer to them. Okay, just so I understand so in the in the hot funds budget. This is a separate line item. This isn't necessarily a budgeted amount in the CVB. That's right. It's separate right now because we haven't determined what that program would look like at this point. And I think it's safe to say and my colleagues on that committee can correct me if I misspeak that we did have some discussion about that and there was some some discussion about well is this really you know we haven't got a deal yet as far as an incentive agreement. We're not really doing any marketing right now. We're not sure when the construction phases. So it's simply a place holder so that we don't spend that money or or encumber it with some other project. That's right. Whereas if it wasn't the line item, if it didn't exist on the line item, it would just roll down into the fund balance as long as it's not reality. You're right. The committee discussed concern about whether or not if we have if we don't set aside a line item for the convention center generically at this point that there would be a propensity to maybe allocate or appropriate those dollars or something else. And then when the need comes in the near future to be able to address that issue, you wouldn't have the capacity to do so. And I think that was the conversation that the committee had. Yes. But I come back to a very real comment that this convention center has not been approved. So right now it's a it's a theory. It's a thought. It's but we are moving forward on our what are we calling it now community event center which is very real and we're looking for $250,000. And I've come up with 200,000, 150 from hot funds and this $50,000 grant, farmers market grant if we can throw that in there too. That's 200 of the $253,000. This is a $2 million budget right here of hot funds. And so we've already spent $324,000 on a convention center that didn't happen. So right now I just want to take that $150, 000, spend it on something that I think we're all looking forward to as more immediate need than later need. And if you can't find 150,000 out of a $2 million budget next year, then we have a problem. What I'd like to do because I think I think we're going to have an opportunity to ask questions of john but I'd like to hear because I think the first question that we have to ask is, is this is this a legitimate use of, of hot fund money and so it's either gonna be Mr. Chuck Springer who now has a JD degree over his head. And so I was gonna say I'd rather consult with the legal staff before I answer that question because, you know, specifically we're doing some enhancements to, I guess it would still be city owned property but to see if that fits in, I'd really rather have a discussion with them and maybe write something up before I do that. Unless I think that would be proven to think we do need to have some discussion on that and we can bring something back to you all as early as Friday and status and give you a little more information on the use of these hot funds. So I think that's a proven suggestion. Okay. That. All right. Yes, Councilman Roden. I don't know I feel like an expert at the reading that Texas two step article. It's pretty clearly a capital expense and I'm not sure it's going to qualify just from my reading, but I'm not an attorney. But the other point with that, John, I guess would be as we discuss the potential agreement that might come someday between us and the potential convention center. There was something in there about some sort of small sl ither of city involvement that was necessary to contribute some of the hot funds towards that project. And so would it require when we do come around to having that agreement, would we have to demonstrate involvement through something and in this case, a line item in our budget that we approve now so that that's in place for the rest of this year gives us that ability to actually have that agreement in the first place. This particular line item was not contemplated to satisfy that requirement, but you are correct in your right. You're thinking that in order for the city to be able to use hotel tax fund is a rebate toward or as a reef as an incentive toward the convention center. There has to be some management responsibility associated in whole or in part by the city and we'll have a separate agreement with them. If we get to that point for that, but this line item wasn't intended to be that there would be a much larger line item. Quite frankly, it would be the amount of hotel tax associated with that facility. Maybe five, six hundred thousand dollars a year that would be allocated to that purpose at that point, but it would be coming in. >> It's a revenue in and revenue out scenario. >> Okay, that's helpful. On the $50,000, I know that they got that grant to $75,000 initially as a partnership between them and our sustainability department, maybe folks on the committee for the environment know a bit more. That also has to be earmarked for certain types of things and marketing type. You guys might speak to that, but I do understand in some of the discussions with the community market team leading up to even their final kind of sheet of expenses and kind of what they needed in year one. There had been discussions with Catherine Barnett who I think is overseeing that particular grant as to ways they could utilize that slim down their total ass to begin with. Is that correct, Mark? So I think that's already been accounted for, but it was previous to the final numbers being given to us. So I think they contemplate utilizing that already. Right, because it's all of them. >> I think it specifically has to do with the grant having to do with making it possible for people who are buying fresh fruits and vegetables at the market to be able to use the snap card, whatever it's called these days. But I think that it's an appropriate question to ask and I think that Ms. Barnett can give us a staff report that will tell us if there would be any monies there that might be eligible. I had just had a meeting with her earlier today partially about that and I'm not sure that they would be eligible, but I love the approach of looking under every rock for those funds. Okay, any, I have one other comment as far as on some of the, yes, Council Member Johnson. >> Well. >> She's watching. >> The answer is coming. >> You want to, nice to see that you're watching. We've got a text. >> I heard my name and there are certain things that the grant is looking to do. It's a farmer's microphone. It's a farmer's market promotion program so it could not be used for infrastructure. Marketing, website redesign, trying to help get more local vendors in, bringing the snap program to the market to increase access to local food for low income families. That was the focus of this grant. It's a two year grant. That's $78,000. And we were hoping to be able to use some of the marketing funds to help with the relocation advertising. And I missed some of the questions as I was running down the hall probably. >> Does that suffice? Okay. All right. >> Okay. >> Thank you. Yes, Council Member Johnson. >> Thank you, Mayor. So a couple comments. One, I think what we're going through right now speaks to what we talked about I think last week, Mayor, which is we need to start this process earlier. Because we're sitting here and we're like, we got two weeks . We got two weeks. And for some of us who have jobs and four kids and whatever else, it's hard to pour through all this stuff line on and by line on and not the time that we have. So I want to just, I want us to keep talking about that because we need to start earlier in the process. I know it's hard, but we definitely need to because it's impossible. Kathleen, I don't know how you did it. But I mean, it's impossible to go through this thing line by line for me anyway and find all those things. What I would say in terms of talking about the funding, taking the funding from the City Hall West improvements. So we've been deferring maintenance on City Hall West for a long time. And you've got just those items that absolutely have to be done right now for it to function. But until we know what we're going to do with that building , in my mind, it doesn't make sense to spend a dollar. You go replace the HVAC system and then we come up with a whole different use and you didn't need it. Or you need it, but you need them in different places and all that stuff. And then now you're spending more money to rework something that you just put in. So to me, spending any money on City Hall West at this point doesn't make sense. But I agree with you, Mayor, which is okay, let's deal with no's. So if we know we're going to keep it and we know we want to change it into something else, let's don't say staff should have the right to say to councils from now or whenever it is. No, they didn't say never spend money on it. They said we weren't going to spend money on it at that time until we knew what we needed to do. So having placeholders, I think, is a good idea. But only if you know how soon is that coming. It reminds me of just the whole budget process, right? You're trying to project out five years, but you don't know what next year is going to bring. So to budget increases and to budget tax rate increases and those things, until you get there you don't know. So the whole conversation we had last week about a rate reduction or hold the rate tight, but we don't want to reduce it and then have to raise it next year. Well, we may grow 15% next year and be able to reduce it again. Or the stock market may completely crash and interest rates go up 3%. We're having a whole different conversation. So the point is you don't know until you've got a known on exactly what you need to spend the money on. So I am right now a big fan of using debt for everything we can because debt is so cheap right now. We'd be crazy not to use it, especially given our credit rating. We can change that next year. So if rates go up 2% next year, then things that we were contemplating debt funding next year, we may say, well, our fund balance is now 29% because we had a great year. So let's go cash fund some of the stuff we wanted to debt fund. I mean, that's what you do in your business, right? You make decisions based on the climate that you're in at the time. So to me, when we can go get money for 2%, 3%, whatever it is we can get now, Chuck, you guys are good. You probably get 1.7% money. To me, you'd use debt for everything you can right now. And next year, look at the situation and decide what you want to do. So to me, debt funding the parking lot on exposition, given that we already had that in the budget for something else makes sense. I'm in favor of debt funding vehicles because you've got a, what is it, a five year payoff on vehicle fund vehicle debt . Most of it, a little bit of the fire equipment we sell for longer that lasts longer, but the majority of it's five year debt. But if you can lock up 5% money at these low rates, to me you use it. And then the last thing I want to comment on is the facility study. I totally agree, Mayor, we ought to take a look at what we had from 2001. But I want to push on staff to do as much as we, I've done this in my past corporate life where you had to close factories and add factories and all this stuff. And what I found anyway, my experience was, those consultants are necessary to walk you through the process. But you need to have your own team doing the heavy lifting on that. And we can figure out a lot of that stuff on our own. I'm not in favor of saying don't do it at all, and here's why. Because for a long time, I think, as a city we've been ignoring our facility needs. And that's how you get three city halls and people going through what they go through to get a CO and all that junk. And if we don't fund this and say, well, the staff needs to figure it out, we're going to be talking about this again next year. And we need to address our long term plan for a municipal facility. We're not going to do that if we don't put some money into it. I just want to challenge us to, let's don't go throw money at consultants in $100,000 increments. Let's make sure we find one that's going to. I go back to, for those that are involved in economic development, our economic development staff found a consultant for $10,000 that led us through one of the most meaningful one day exercises on economic development. And out of that came some real actionable stuff for $10,000 . So you don't always get incrementally more quality consultants by spending more money. But I'm not in favor of completely eliminating that because I don't think we'll go get after it the way we need to get after it. So are you saying that, but you're saying you would want to see, because I guess this is my point. Whatever we budget it for, yes, staff is going to use their best means to get the lowest deal. I believe that. But it's still, I mean, so are you saying? So I'm saying if it's $100,000 or it's $50,000 or it's $150 ,000, I mean, whatever the real, we've gone from $200,000 to $150,000 in a week. I don't know if that was through talking to consultants or whatever it was. But I don't want to say it just seems like too much, so let 's don't do it. We need to go do it. We need to get after this. And I don't know if it's $150,000. I don't know what the number is. But we need to plug a number. We shouldn't eliminate it, is my opinion. OK. Councilmember Rhoads. Why don't we do, here's a suggestion on that particular item. Because I think there's wisdom in all parts of this conversation. There's so much contingencies involved in this. I mean, we're committing now to a temporary place for everyone in City Hall West. So we know that's temporary. So we know we have to get after it or else we're going to be in that for years and years without a permanent solution . We have to have some serious conversations of what we're doing with these, at least one now empty building and some of these other buildings that are on the table for discussion. So I want to have the flexibility as policymakers as we move through this year and have that conversation. What if we earmarked and just call it that earmarked $150, 000, but give the council direction that that's not to be spent or done anything with until we have that more comprehensive discussion and get some more feedback on what it's going to take to get to that next level. Could be it's $30,000. It could be that it's $150,000. But we have it in the budget to give us the flexibility. But the direction is don't spend it until council gives the direction on how we want to approach that. That way we still we very well may not do it and we retain the oversight as we get to that. That's just a thought. And personally, I'm okay with that. Well, and, you know, as I'm thinking about it, I think everything is negotiable and, you know, where we need to do compromises. And I'm if we need to cash fund vehicles next year, I mean, it's not a bad time to do it. I mean, if we if we need to go ahead and drop that for this year, I'm okay. I don't know that I want to wait five years to to start implementing it. But that's for next year's council to make that decision. I for sure want to get moving on on some long range facility issues, especially if we're committing to three hundred sixty thousand dollars a year for rent. I don't want to keep paying that for very long. And and and if and if paying one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for committing to that for a space study with with the provisions of Mr. Rodin said about waiting and making sure that we know what kind of direction we're going. But that's that's that's cheap money when you compare to if it shortened our paying rent for just one year. We've more than made it back by by by moving ahead and having a better plan in place. So so I appreciate that. That that notion of going ahead and getting getting started on it sooner rather than later. But that means like Mr. Rodin said that we're going to need to have our own conversation to to to have more clear direction as to what we want to do. And I think part of that, too, is I mean, again, I've been around here long enough to know that we spend a lot of money sometimes on plans. And I just like to go and back test them to make sure that the plans that we spent money on we back we're actually using. And so we have a space study out there. And so that could be part of that conversation of, hey, let 's look at this space study we did in 2001, 2002. Let's see what they were recommending. If we made no movement at all, then that's that's going to help us try to understand the direction we need to go. And that was before the time of all. So I'm just a real good real proponent on back testing and confirming the things that we've studied in the past to see if we're actually doing that. So that's that that might have been my hesitation. But with the caveat that we have a special work session on that to really look at that and to give staff direction on on where we go on that. I'm real OK with that because it still provides at least some more stringent oversight on something that I just want to make sure that whatever we get, we're going to do. And you can look back and see if that's what you've done in the past. OK, let me see. Did you have a question? Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Joey. Well, just why we're on these studies. I agree with you. I want us to look back and if we had a study, did we actually use it? Was it useful? But I think I want this council. There's a couple of things just personally that I want us to be looked upon as we fixed our streets. We finally addressed our streets and we're going to we want to continue to do that. And we started the ball rolling on an overall plan of how the city is going to function and how we're going to consolidate all these city halls. And I just want us to really be looked at like that. So we definitely whatever money we put towards that, if it 's 50 or 100, but we can't just neglect it. So I just while we're on that. All right. Good. Thank you. Council member. One item that's not here and you guys had talked about kind of reconvening a hot funds committee to look at some of the recommended changes. Has that taken place yet or is that planning on taking place before? I think what we were going to do is include in the nine one memorandum for your next meeting a revised hot funds. We had talked about taking 40,000 over to the hot funds from the fireworks. We'd also talked about the South by Southwest being funded out of the hot fund. We were going to bring back to the council just a revised hot fund budget. And now we'll have to have this discussion on the 150,000 also. Yeah. OK. That's good. We'll try to bring that back. But we thought that the whole council can kind of make that decision for that fund. And the hot fund committees would be here for their. No, that's that's great. And I just I had that South by Southwest thing on my note. So I just wanted to follow up on that. So that that answers that question. I did want to and I guess council member was these questions about the website, the CRM issue, the CRM component wasn't actually part of the city manager's budget . Correct. There was 100,000 earmarked in that. And that that didn't make the cut, did it? But there was some talk of maybe being able to given kind of updates and technology include some of that technology in with the website overhaul. That is correct. The hundred thousand dollar request for a CRM was really a separate request for that more robust CRM system that the Committee on Citizen Engagement had looked at. What's included in the website redesign is a sort of a lower functioning CRM that's more of a self service request where citizens can go on and report a pothole broken or request trash service or any of the things that they do. But it doesn't have that more robust back end capability that the hundred thousand dollar request had. Yeah, and you know the demographics of the city are increasingly not the demographics of the folks playing golf at TWU. So that the front door of the city is the website. And I tell people all the time, people aren't comparing our website to what is Plano doing. They're comparing it to their experience on Amazon.com. And that is I have to be able to get here and find what the answers to my questions are, find the appropriate department, be able to get the services I need. And that's just an expectation I think in 2015. I know the Council Committee on Citizen Engagement has looked at the website. We've talked about CRMs for a couple years at this point. And I think everyone was in agreement on that committee at least. There's a definite need for some major overhauls on our website. Whether it costs $200,000 or not, maybe it will, maybe it won't. But I think from a policy property, I'm always going to be an advocate that we invest in that sort of technology. Because I think our citizens are going to increasingly expect that they can find things 24/7 at their fingertips. But I guess to answer her question, were you going to get some more feedback on what that all involves so that she can have more background on that? Sure. I could give you a little bit more description on what the project entails. And I think a website redesign as we've listed it may be a little bit of a misnomer. What we're really talking about is designing a new website for the city. And that's come from the Council and the city's focus on citizen engagement and communications. And the website is our biggest communication platform by far of everything that we do. So October 2014 to date we've had almost 1.5 million unique visitors to the website. And that's more people than we serve walking in through our doors. And our conversations internally have been how can we make that experience the best customer service that we can provide for our customers. Even though they're not walking in our door, they're not calling us on their phone. We don't get to proactively be there. We make the website a great experience for them. And so what we're looking at is redesigning the navigation and the site architecture so that it's user friendly. So that a user doesn't have to understand the city's organizational structure to be able to get the information they need or to be able to conduct business with the city online. It adds some additional functionality so that it's not just about getting information or downloading documents. It's about I can go online and it's easy to make a utility payment. It's easy to request service. I can find who I'm looking for, that kind of functionality kind of at your fingertips. And then as we mentioned, a CRM that is accessible to citizens so they can go in and they can request services. And has some back end functionality so that staff can track the status of those and make sure that we're following up. So right now, service is typically done through a phone call or an email. And sometimes that gets lost in the system because we get a lot of phone calls. We get a lot of emails. And so this is something that keeps those and tracks those and can escalate those if they're not acted upon in a certain amount of time. One of your other questions was how did we come up with that $200,000 figure? And we've done a lot of research so far. So we've done interviews with each of our departments that use the website and gotten some feedback on the functionality that's important to them and their work processes. We've also done an external survey of our users to figure out what are our weaknesses and where can we improve. And from there we've been kind of identifying, okay, what do we want our website to look like? And we've had conversations with vendors, our current vendor and some other sort of best in class vendors of municipal websites. And then with other cities who've recently done those websites. And the $200,000 is a figure that we got from those other cities that have done a similar site in size and scope as ours. We have a lot of pages on our website. So a lot of times you go and you see just the front page and it looks like, well, that shouldn't cost $200,000 to do . But we have a lot of pages and a lot of things that go behind there, a lot of documents, a lot of transfer of information that happens. And so it's quite an undertaking. I've been on this website for eight years. So I know those pages, I know those departments, and I've never had a problem finding what I needed to find. I think the planning department's enhancement with this new tool to be able to go and look at the projects as they are coming through the system is huge. And I want to compliment planning on that. That's huge. So I'm just questioning 200,000 and the need. And if it's not quite what we hoped it would be, do we still have to spend 200,000 on the changes? And I get it, that people are online. I mean, I've been on this website for eight years. So I've never had a problem trying to find. My key is to ask questions and to really look at the money, because it's very easy to come up with a huge budget and throw money here and there and here and there and here and there. And when you're done, it's a big fat bill and it's our taxpayers paying the bill. So that's why I'm questioning all of these things today, because it's our job as a council to do diligence on this budget. Did you have a couple? I will say on the website, I've been on it as well. Sorry. Sorry. Golly, I'm sorry, too. I guess that's the website. Wow, hold on a second. Let me reset. Let me reset. But I will say when I've gone to look at how to find places to apply for permits or check things that we certainly, whether it's this planning software that will help, but if someone just says, hey, go look at the city website to figure out how to file for a permit or check on it, it's pretty limited. A couple of things that we haven't really, that I'd like to get some closure on or some direction from my colleagues on a couple of things that I'd sort of brought up. One is we've got the economic development fund for downtown that is funded from the, I believe it's the mixed beverage tax of $100,000. And I've made the suggestion or the recommendation or the ask, if you will, that that particular fund, not for the economic development fund that we talked about today in EDP , but to say are we able to just expand the scope of that to include maybe some other companies who want to do similar things that people will be doing that would be doing downtown. It doesn't exclude downtown, but it opens us up. I just want to ask, is that something, I mean, is that something that we're wanting to do in this budget? And I don't know if we need to then run that by EDP or not. I don't know if that's an EDP function on expanding the scope of that. I certainly don't want to leave them out of the loop. Can I ask you why, so what's the why behind that? Sure. I can tell you the why. The why is because we've got so much money concentrated in the downtown area through the TIF, through the contribution of our general funds and through economic development, that that fund has been in existence for many years. First it was $50,000 to go for awnings, signs, and those kind of things. And I just think that there's other parts of town and people who have businesses that would benefit from that if they had the capability to do it that would provide us an opportunity to make some kind of those enhancements somewhere else. And I would turn the question around, not necessarily to you, because you haven't stated that, but if not, why not? And secondly, I would say we've got $40,000 remaining here. Okay. We can either leave it sitting there or put it somewhere else or put it in an economic development fund, as we've been talking. So some direction on that would be helpful on the downtown fund. So I don't know if that helps you in that. Well, so can I go first? Sure. So I was on the downtown task force, I think, shortly after that was created. And I think the reason we did that, even though the ask initially I think was for $250,000, was the stated ask to economic development and then to the council was it was all about the pedestrian experience downtown. So people are in the downtown and they're parked and they 're walking from place to place. It was all about beautification of the downtown. Right? So if you want to build that- Are you talking about the $100,000 that's being funded? Well, it was 50 initially and then it got increased to 100. It was all about, because it can't be for the inside, it was about facade improvements, etc. So my question is, because one of the things we talked about a lot when I was on the task force and then on economic development was, well, how impactful is it really? Right. The philosophical conversation went to, well, why should we give it to this guy because he spends a lot of money on buildings downtown. He has a lot of money, so why should we give it to him? And it's not impactful enough to really make a difference. So we should really only give it to people who can't afford to do anything to their building. So that's the philosophical gamut that he ran, that the conversation has run over this 50 grand, which is now 100 grand. So what I would say is, the philosophical conversation in my mind should be, what's it for? Meaning, if we want to say, let's open it up to anybody who has a building in the city limits, if you want to replace your awnings, here's city grant money. I think first we have to back up and say, why would we have it at all? Because one conversation now would be to say, downtown is rocking. That fund has done its job. Let's take that money now and say that money should now roll into the economic development. Is that what you're proposing? I would rather do that. Because to me, to say, if you need awnings on your building , no matter where you are in the city, this is available to you. Well, now you're just setting yourself up for, it's going to be a rush, a money grab, right? Whoever can get all their applications in the fastest can get new awnings. That's not why we did it. It was to try to promote downtown, and if you've got a block, and other cities still do it this way, for example, McKinney, they will go to a building owner and say, hey, everything else has been redone and it looks good, and yours really looks bad. So we'd like to offer this up to you if you'll do the following things. Because it's all about the person's experience when they're down there. So to me, it's about spending money, it's no different than spending money on wayfinding signage or whatever else it is for the experience downtown. I don't think we should have a grant as a city for awnings and building improvements. It's open to the whole city. Because to me, then there's no stated purpose other than here's some free money, first one here gets it. I'd rather remove it altogether, in my opinion, and roll that cash into an economic investment fund that can be used throughout the whole city. Go ahead. It's a fight for the response. I think it's a good conversation. I know, Mary, you've raised it the last couple years even before you rolled off council. Two thoughts on it. One would be to say, is there something else relating to the downtown area that is in need of investment that maybe we'd have to have the downtown task force or something else that would be worth thinking about along these lines. I don't know what that would be, but maybe that's a way of thinking about it. The other thing would be, my fear, if you look at the criteria for approving this particular grant, it doesn't make sense outside of the downtown area. Because it's involving historic nature of the building and it's a place making tool, as he mentioned, and makes sense if it's concentrated. So you have a lot more bang for your buck as you're investing. You see it, if you kind of do it here, there, and everywhere, it doesn't make sense. You'd have to rewrite it. My other thought has been either you identify another specific promising area of town that we want to begin investing in, and Denton is right for that. The reason downtown is where it is today is because 20, 30 years ago, people started focusing on it. And I think we have about four or five other places like that in town that we can look at. Some of those places could be still contained within the D TIP area, but we could say, let's restrict the expenditure of these funds to a particular part of DTIP that we think hasn't popped yet. Or maybe we look at a different area in town altogether, but I think we're going to get the most bang for our buck and see some real change to the extent that we target those funds. So my suggestion would be find that geographical location, whether it's in downtown or outside. Okay. I didn't hear the last part of it because apparently I was about to crush Councilmember Keely's phone. And I'm sorry for doing that, but I didn't know it was there. So I got distracted on the last couple of minutes. Well, you lost your place in whose name? I'm sorry. No, I'm kidding. I think it's a great question, Mayor. I think this is a great start of a discussion. And I was going to make the suggestion that Ms. Roden did about there may be some other places we need to focus. I think that leaving that money for the time being and maybe getting a report back from staff, I think it would be informative to look over the last couple of years how it was spent. And reminding all of us of what the criteria is, what you can get money for, what's not eligible. And maybe it's time to look at do we need to redirect it to another area? Do we need to keep it here? Have we accomplished everything that we want to accomplish? But just spend some more time on it and see if it's not. I was really ready a few years ago to move away from downtown. And a person who has an awful lot of investment property that is not downtown said, no, we need to leave it downtown . And I said, why? And his comment was because you always put more energy into where you have strength already. You focus on your strengths. And our downtown is our strength. It's like in public education, you can take a kid who is never going to be a good runner and keep trying to make them a runner when really they're going to be a good shot putter. So you find what they're good at and focus your effort where they have the strength. So because our strengths is our downtown, it's been very appropriate to have our money going in that direction to help make it even stronger. But is it time to start finding other potential areas of strength that we need to do? I think we just need to put this on for some more study and some more real careful analysis for the next budget cycle. I don't think we can do it for this. Well, I think I want to put a caveat on it like we did on the $150,000 that we may earmark it, but I want us to be able to have a conference. I don't want this to wait on the next budget cycle, quite frankly. I've been bringing this up for two years, and we need to have some direction on it. And I agree with the strength aspect, but I also look at all the money that we're funneling into that strength. And it's hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars that we've got to make sure that once it's arrived, it needs to be continuing to help us. But we have other parts in the city or altogether do something else different with it. So I want to have this conversation. You asked her if I wanted to -- so I will make a recommendation on that. I would recommend that we take the $100,000 that is in the downtown investment grant and use that $100,000 as seed capital for the economic development investment fund. Which is part of the 80 up there? Correct. Okay. So you add that, and because that money as economic development investment funds could be spent anywhere in the city on a project that this council deemed a worthy cause to spend that money on. Right? So we're not eliminating it from the budget. If it's a project that's downtown that we all said, heck, yeah, let's go make that happen because that's a purple building and it should be great if it looked the way it did 100 years ago. We all get behind that. So I say the grant has done its job. I don't think it's very impactful. I wasn't taking a shot at anybody. Yeah, I agree with that. Take that $100,000 and let's just set it aside and wait. And that's what you're saying, Greg, yes? What I'm saying is you could still use it downtown. Sure. You could still, you know, economic development is going to make a recommendation or, because the downtown task force makes recommendations to the ED Board. ED Board does. So if there's a project that-- But hang on to it and let council discuss it and approve it . Which is what happens anyway if it's over $10,000, I believe. I want to make sure, yes? So are we saying that the $80,000 is going to stay there with the $100,000 or the $100,000 going to move over and the $80,000 is now free? Did you add that to the $80,000? Or is it--or is the $80,000 freed up now that the $100,000 is moving into it? I'm just-- Yeah, I would say we add the $100,000 to that $80,000 because, I mean, honestly, until we get some serious money in that account, we're not going to be able to do anything impactful. Just confirming. Okay. Councilmember Rhoads. Well, I guess my struggle with that idea, I mean, that's a major philosophical shift in thinking about the $100,000. I mean, I think you made the case a couple years back that we couldn't refer to that $100,000 fund as an incentive fund because it wasn't properly being used as an incentive. It was kind of an afterthought after people already invested a bunch of money and they're kind of getting--it's a nice kind of honoring, yes, we're trying to achieve certain goals. With this, but it wasn't an incentive purely. If we put it--if we're channeling it to that fund, the criteria for that fund will never get a purple building painted something else. I can't imagine us having an economic development incentive fund that we're going to use that for incentivizing changing building colors because we're looking at that for trying to kind of draw significant corporations and jobs and things like that. So that's fine, but I can't--I think we shift the complete purpose of that. I still think there's a value in a place making kind of fund that focuses on some part of the city to achieve walk ability, to achieve historic preservation, to achieve the things that this fund was meant to do. So I hear where you're going with that. I think we just have to all realize that we're completely--we'll never have another incentive to change building color to get awnings and stuff like that once it's in that fund. I can't imagine the criteria will ever lend itself to that. So I guess I'm in favor of having a more comprehensive conversation about the possibilities with that before making the decision. Okay. Did you have a--oh. Just to add, I think I would agree with Kevin on that. Just a more comprehensive conversation and more focused area picked. And it seems like it did well towards the downtown area. And let's try it again towards another focused area. Well, I was just going to say, so for clarification, because we had an ED board before this, our conversation in the ED board was that incentive is really the wrong term for that fund. It's investment, economic development and investment. This $80,000 and whatever it's going to become at some point, for that specific reason, we talked about, you know, today we refer to reimbursements for sewer lines as incentives. They're not incentives. They're reimbursements. And I think the public really gets confused. Why would you give a grocery store an incentive or a convenience store an incentive or whatever it is when we're really just reimbursing them for a street they put in or a sewer line they put in that becomes the property of the city? That's a reimbursement. So the conversation we had was this fund can be used for all kinds of things if we do this. It could be an incentive. It could be a reimbursement. It could be an investment, making an investment into a particular area of town that could really use something new and shiny to try to spur growth around it, redevelopment around it, etc. So I wanted to give you that clarification. We talked about this should be called investment, which gives us the ability to do all kinds of things with the money, but it should be something that's meaningful. So my suggestion was let's don't lose that $100,000. I think this is a good place to put it because it gives us a lot of opportunities on what we could do with it. I don't care if you guys say, I don't care if we say, well, let's don't do anything with it, but let's keep it in the budget for this year and let's, you know, find another area . But I will tell you that the, I would respectfully disagree with your assessment of the mayor's assessment of what that downtown $100,000 did because not all of those grants, in fact, probably less than half of those grants, went to projects that were a foregone conclusion and going to be done anyway. Secondly, you know, $10,000 or $20,000 against what the public opinion might be can make a deal work or not work. And then, and you can probably think of some buildings around downtown that you look at and say, man, if they just would have gone one step more, it would look so much better . That's what that extra $10,000 or $20,000 does. It doesn't necessarily make the deal work or not, but it might make it much more appealing to the eye and so on. But I think a lot of those grants went to awnings and facade improvements that wouldn't have otherwise been done by folks that already own the building and are operating in them today. In many cases, because Julie would go proactively and say, your awnings are about to fall down. You know this is available. Well, you can't get 100% of it funded. It's usually about 20%, 25%. I think you max out at 50, but we've never given anybody enough money to go really pay for half of their whole improvement. So, while there have been some where you go, they were going to do it anyway, you don't know if they were going to do that work anyway. So, you know, I would just like to say that I think it has worked very well downtown and I think it's made improvements to downtown that wouldn't have otherwise been done. But I would say it's done its job now and we need to think about other ways to use it. Did you? Just to personally add to that, at Hoochies, you know, we got open on a shoestring budget and that $5,000 did pay for our awnings. I mean, those awnings would have not have been up and it greatly beautifies that space. So, just wanted to add that there. So, well, I think what's clear is, well, first of all, I tell you, I really appreciate the conversations. I know it may seem like they're minutiae and it seems like we're arguing about peanuts or talking about peanuts, advocating for peanuts, but we're not. Because these are good philosophical discussions. So, I'm really okay with leaving it in the budget with us being able to have a more extensive conversation about it before it gets spent. Because I think that would be the most helpful because I think it's important that we, I mean, we've all talked about sending messages here. You know, what message does it send to staff? What message does it do this? What message is it when we say, well, we're going to continue to talk about this level of money in this area of town when there may be some other areas of town that could benefit from this? Or there could be, if we decide bigger projects that would, we'd get more benefit from it, from an economic and maybe aesthetic and pedestrian. But it's certainly worthy of another conversation. If we can, if we have a consensus that we'll leave it where it is and we can come back, have a discussion about it, and not necessarily have any money spent from it. So that means I think we should have the conversation sooner than later so as not to upset the apple cart with people who might have an expectation of that. Do it as quickly as possible and then just sort of decide where we go with that because I think it'll be a good indication of, you know, just some of the philosophical kind of approaches we're going to have for the city in general. So, I'm okay with that. Council Member Johnson, if you. But I think we should give staff direction then to suspend applications for that because otherwise they're all going to start stacking up and there will be more and then Julie 's going to be in a bad spot on what order and so I think if we're going to have a future conversation, I would say to give the direction to say, don't request or receive any more applications for that grant until further notice. Or you could receive them but you have to make sure you give them notice that this has been council direction and that you apply and that if the direction changes, then you 're out. I would just respectfully request we not do that because what will happen is they're all going to stack up on our desk and then the direction we had in the past when it was suspended for a bit, when we were devising the scoring system, was they had to be reviewed then in the order they were received. And you may have one that's fantastic halfway down that you never get to because you had so many stack up. That would be my thought. Yeah, let's hear staff's thoughts on that based upon the conversation they've heard. We're still in a budget cycle right now where that money has been allocated and dollars have been spent on that program and there's an existing policy in place. So I think my inclination would be to allow applications to continue to come in that are being considered under the existing fiscal years allocation. And maybe change that at around October 1st or on October 1 st with the adoption of the new budget if if you wish to do so. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. Any other questions on that matter. One thing and I'm going to I'm going to I'm either going to get a really, really heavy paper rattle over here or a notebook upside the head. Moving forward for the five year forecast. We're not quite sure if in the five year forecast there's going to be any money that the city is going to be alloc ating. The ask hasn't come in. We're still in the process of determining that for the new behavioral health leadership team and sort of the new paradigm that we're trying to create for mental health services within the city. As part of that team, the city council is to appoint two people. And I was on the council committee that created the behavioral health leadership team. So I just naturally rolled in there sort of as an interim placeholder. And so did assistant city manager Brian Langley. So I'm just saying that for a future agenda item regarding the five year forecast associated with any monies that might need to be spent. If at all that we need to get on there for council to determine who those two appointees shall be because they're meeting hot and heavy and next meeting at the middle of September. And I'd like to try to get that decided by then. Mayor. One final comment on the current year budget. Yes. That as we as staff comes back with a lot of answers to questions about the possibilities of other funds being available and looking at the $40,000 that's there. I would just like to for all of us to think about that. We 're still not where we need to be with funding our road repairs that we've added money in this year's budget. I think another 600,000 or so. Close to million. It's about 900,000 in growth and for all the growth in franchise fees and the bond sale savings go. Well, I'm not talking about the bond sales. I'm just talking about the franchise fees, which is part of the correct. Yeah, that's about 650,000. So, so while we were doing that and that money, that's money that could have gone into the general fund, we could have changed the policy. It still leaves us short of the amount that we need in order to stabilize the overall road conditions. Am I correct? Well, I know that Howard and them gave a presentation and they had the interim study where they were really talking about if you want to get to the point, I think it was about a 10 year plan. If you want to get to the point where you won't have to be debt funding road reconstruction, you would really have to take the growth that we plan right now. Plus about 740,000, 750,000 additional dollars every year to be able to get there. Yeah, and my thought behind that is given given that that that I don't think that we've we've hit the amount of money that it's taking to stabilize our overall road condition. And given the fact that we've gotten a fairly recent citizen survey that continues to say that that the conditions of our roads are serious concern to our citizens . We ought to think about any monies that we that we find in the course of these activities that we have over the next couple of weeks that we might direct a little bit of that or all of that to helping with road repairs. Just an idea. Just a thought. Yes. Do we know of all the bond money from the last two bond elections for streets. What percentage of that money total between the two aggregate so what was it's like 60 million bucks right. Something like that. I can remember the number. It was 20 million. 24 million for 24 to 14 and 29. 44 total. What percentage of that 44 million dollars has been spent so far on streets. Because my sense is what I'm hearing from a lot of citizens is, you know, we're hearing from a lot of people that the roads are in bad shape. We're also hearing from some people I can't get anywhere now because there's too much dead gum construction. So you're hearing both of those but my. What I'm wondering is. If we did that same survey. 18 months from now after we've had a chance for a lot of these major roads to get repaired. If the same sentiment would exist because it feels to me like we're throwing an awful lot of money at streets right now. But people just aren't seeing the results yet because we you know the initial and we did a bunch of these little segments all over the place which is why I think we want to have this. Yes. Different conversation. But also there's just a lot yet to be done because there's utility work underneath and so on. So to me. We got 44 million bucks were thrown at streets right now. I don't know that we need to add another 700,000. I think we need to go spend. What we've got and then. OCI rating. I don't know that there's. You know the measurement. I don't know that there's a better way to measure out there but I found it interesting. The consultant you know I'd like to see you get to this number and it was two different right. It was 60 versus 62 or so. I don't remember. I just it seems like we need to go spend this money that the voters have agreed to and let's see where we stand. That's my thoughts. Yes. I think to continue on that discussion. I agree. I mean I feel like we're investing more each year in roads but I don't feel like I can go out to my constituents and say here's the plan to fix the problem. Over the next 20 years or whatever that happens to be. I think we're we're we're depending heavily on on bond funding for this. There's been discussion of what it would take here. Here's I guess the budget request that I think we can get some information for the next time in terms of projections. But we have been kind of pacing out all new growth and the franchise fees and taking that and dedicating it to street improvements. There's been discussion about what if we were to get ourselves into the place not next year not the next year but over a long period of time. Eventually weaning off the general funds from all of the franchise fees and putting that directly into street improvement to be able to get on pace with revenue coming in every year with what we need to do to to fix our streets . So to be able to see a few scenarios. What does that look like if we weaned our so I think we still have another 7 million. I think that that goes into the general fund each year from franchise fees. Is that about right? You mean growth in franchise? Just what goes into general fund every year is about 7 million. We've lowered it down. Okay so just to humor me if we were to take that over the course of 10 years what's that implication on the general fund as we're looking out on a large forecast. Because what I would like to see ultimately with this and some of this discussion might have to wait a bit until we get our latest study in from our engineering on these OCI figures. But I think what we need to do is to say let's set a goal maybe it's the goal suggested by the guy that came here maybe it's another goal that we agree upon. And I imagine that's going to have a price tag associated with it. And then we're going to be able to look at that and say if we do some of the franchise fees what do we have to depend on in terms of bond funding. So I'd love to just be able to say folks here's what we're investing now but also we've got a 10 year plan to get us into a much more healthy revenue. Whatever it happens to me to get ourselves into a healthier spot so we're not constantly treading water on this issue. So some of that we can do in this budget cycle in terms of at least projecting out if we make some policy decisions about something like franchise fee. But some of that we're just going to have to have a larger conversation. Go ahead. Well just on the policy decision on the franchise fees I like that because it just puts a system in place. And in future if councils you know don't feel like roads are as important they're still going to be maintained and they're still going to be fixed. And I think in our history some councils maybe it wasn't as high of a priority. So I'm glad you brought that up and I agree with that. Yeah. And I mean I get confused when we have this conversation honestly because what I hear are sort of two different types of things. One is we've got two different components of our streets. We have our maintenance which can never be funded from bond funding. Then we have total reconstruction of streets or the construction of new streets. Well I hope what I'm not hearing is we're thinking we can build that street fund up per year on a yearly basis to fund cash fund new construction streets because I don't think that's what anybody's saying. But that sort of seems because we're going to have to still have some bond funding for the reconstruction because you 're building a street that's 25 years or 30 year life and you're not going to do that. So I my sentiment is I mean yes the survey went down to 21 percent. I don't understand that because when we read the study about how much we put into streets and how much I think a lot of it has to do councilmember road with what you observed. And that is we're doing a lot of streets that are sort of in the outlying areas where you know not very many people travel and the ones that are so heavily traveled. I mean Eagle Drive. I mean they're doing a lot of utility construction there which I don't know why they didn't do the gas lines when they did the water and sewer line. But so I hear we have an issue. I don't feel as I mean I'm pretty positive that we have we are putting in a place and that we are going to. But if we're talking about increasing that by half a million or a million dollars additional a year we're going to have to also start. We can't get all that from the taxpayers as far as rent as far as tax increases and things like that. We're going to have to have some some really super hyper active economic development projects or we're going to have to make some really really tough decisions on priorities. And I'm just going to say this I'm not so sold on the OCI system anyway. I mean I thought I mean I think I mean when I saw that it was a machine a truck that went out and measured roughness physical observation visual observation and something I thought it was penetrating the soil. Anyway I just I really want to make sure that I'm still comfortable with that but I feel comfortable we are spending. Guys if you look back Chuck had the slide is we spent for over five or six years back in the early 2000s the street funding from the one of those years to the end of that term of five or six years. It only went up aggregate total over those years about a million and a half dollars. All right. So we are really trying to make up for some really really really lost time and I guess it's that's the delicate policy decision. How do we balance trying to catch up when we've gotten so far behind with all the other things that we're trying to stay ahead on or at least even in the different services that we provide. So you're standing there and I'm sure you have a comment so I'm going to let you say a couple of things. First of all the money that you were talking about the systematic trend transition of the franchise fee is really there's about half of it was transferred to the street improvement fund we still have about six point two that's not that's still going to general fund. If you'll remember in the study we talked about trying to get to a 10 million dollar a year figure now twelve point two the way that that's been accomplished is two ways we have increased the O and M but the bond funding has been added into that. The value of the bond funding is to reduce the overall backlog that we have the other part of that if you'll remember that the consultant talked about having a backlog of no more than 12 percent and ours is higher than that. Well the bond funding is really focused on total reconstruction of the roads that are in disrepair and so that's helping us reduce the backlog that's accumulated over all these years. We still need the annual O and M funding to maintain the maintenance of the streets overall so it's a combination of both. It doesn't address new capacity. Capacity is if you remember in the impact fee discussion we have a hundred and twenty two million of roadways that are deficient in capacity existing today. That's taken place over the last 40 years. And so the O and M part of this doesn't touch that capacity component. We still have that hundred and twenty two that our service level C or below. So those are two different issues. Well in the reason I think the thing that I took away from that conversation with the consultant that I think was very powerful and just very down to earth is because of a long history of past city councils not giving adequate funding to repairing the roads. We've had to depend on bond money to rebuild roads in the end rebuild them sooner than they would have had to be rebuilt because they weren't because they weren't maintained. And so to what we've done is we we we defer maintenance to the point that we have to spend a lot more money to have roads at all because we're having to rebuild the whole thing. We're having to not only rebuild them at a higher price but then we're also having to pay the interest to borrow the money to do that. Whereas had we had we kept maintaining them all along the overall cost to the taxpayers per year per road mile would have been less. And we're just trying to fix that. And so while we're going to always have to have some roads that are rebuilt. I mean that's just part of the thing. We can extend the life of the road significantly and save the taxpayers a lot of money in the long run. And I think that's, that's just part of the proper stewardship that we as a council have is to try to. And again, we've made big big in roads. Since 2009, when when we saw the percentage of money going into roads, start increasing. So, so, I think, I think we've already are counseled it's a part of that trend that has changed for the positive in terms of making the roads, safer and easier to navigate. But, but we're not there yet. And that's the only reason I brought it up. No, no, good, good discussion. One last point of clarification back on the $730,000 that was based over on eight year period of time. We started this discussion if you remember back in around 2010 and we 've been trying to improve the road maintenance funds since that around that time and so we, the way I was looking at that is we're two years into a 10 year program. It doesn't have to be eight years, it could be 10 years, it could be 15. But the plan to get us there I think is the important component. That's my rodent. Yeah, so I, and we're clearly making improvements. I guess my, my thought is this, what I'd like to see us do is, and we had this conversation way back when, almost a year ago now when we talked about this, what we call it street maintenance fees or something, an additional tax or assessment, although it's not that fee. Which I thought was an interesting thing. There wasn't a lot of taste for it around the council. But I'd really like to get to a point, and we may reject the plan, but to be able to say here's our goal and here's how much it takes to get there. Both in O&M fees every year, here's our O&M costs every year, what we need to get to, and here's the possibilities of getting to that and the amount in terms of complete reconstruction money that we know we need to have. Not only clean up the backlog, but to get ahead of the game and get ourselves stabilized and moving in a positive direction. I'd love to just see what that is. What would be the goals and what's the financial consequences of that? We may at the end of the day as a council say, that's too much bite to bite off on this particular thing these next few years because we might have other priorities or stuff like that. But I'd love the chance as a council to at least have the opportunity to reject that plan or at least modify it, but to at least have that conversation. Because for me, even if it's a 20 year plan, to be able to go to the, I think would help keep us on pace. Because I think we get, I know in two year election cycles it's easy to be able to go before the voters. They always have this question and say, well, this is the progress we've made, but not really have a plan of fixing it. So I guess the question for you, Howard, is that study is due October-ish, is that right? Right. So in that would be an appropriate time, I guess, to be able to kind of look at the state of the OCI across the city and be able to look at what goals we might have and then what are the financial. I think it would be. Possibilities. The thing that I would also add is if you remember we've added a sidewalk component to that also. And so I think when we get in and recognize, we have to recognize that not all of the dollars in the street program are OCI related. Some of those, about 40% of that is doing other things and some of that is sidewalk maintenance, curb and gutter repair, that type of thing. And so that would be a good time to also try to include the next component that I think the council is interested in including. So thank you. Yeah, what I hear you say is we've talked a lot about this. Let's finally get something down on the plan that we can at least agree to, agree with, change and move toward. I agree. All right. Any other questions? Oh yes, I'm sorry. Go ahead. One quick question. Yes. On here it says fireworks are 20,000 and up there it turned to 40,000. So I was just curious. We currently had 20,000 in the general fund we'd been spending on the fireworks. And there was a request to increase it to 40,000. So it was recommended in the recommended budget to go up to 40,000 and then the council said they wanted to fund that full amount from the general fund, the 20 from prior years plus the additional 20,000 out of the hot funds. So that's where we reduced it by 40. Does that make sense? Okay. We actually spent 40 last year though. Or the current year we did, I think we took 20 out of the city manager's contingency to do that, to get it up to 40, 000. About time. Yes. Does staff want me to type this up and email it to you? Would that be good? That'd be helpful. I tried to take notes on it, I'm sure some others had, but it'd be helpful if you could send it. And does council want that list as well? Yeah, or just something staff could forward it. Yeah, and I'm going to try to also organize it just so we can get a checklist maybe by next week. I'll keep it concise and then y'all have that. That'd help. Okay, any other questions on this work session item? All right, then we will take a break after I call the convening of the closed session. We'll convene the closed session at 453 p.m. on August the 25th, 2015. We'll consider the following items, certain public power utilities competitive matters under Texas Government Code section 551.086. Deliberations regarding real property under Texas Government Code section 551.072. Deliberations regarding economic development negotiations under Texas Government Code section 551.087 and consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code section 551.071. I want to remind staff.