Aug 09, 2025 City Council on 2025-08-09 8:30 AM (BUDGET WORKSHOP)

Yes, it is. Today is Saturday, August 9 2025. It is 832 a.m. so I'll call the meeting to order. First thing on the agenda, work session reports, item A, IE 242619, see report, work session, and give staff direction regarding the fiscal year 2025-26, city manager proposed budget capital improvement program, and five-year financial forecast. Good morning. Good morning, Mayor and Council, Christine Taylor's manager. Louder? No, there's music playing. Oh, there's music playing. We can hear you. Okay, hold on. If you'll just hold that background slide down. Okay, sorry. We are all happy that you are here this morning on a Saturday to go over the city manager's proposed budget. The budget is a very important financial plan and policy tool. As you can tell from the well-attended meeting by our team, a lot of work has gone into this budget. Every director, every department, the budget team, and I just want to give a special thanks to the budget team led by Matt Hamilton and Seth Harrell. They have done a lot of work pulling this together so we can be here today. So for our agenda today, we're going to briefly go through our budget process and structure, go through our assumptions for the general fund, talk about our tax rate. We have some general fund assumptions to go through, some operating decisions for the general fund budget, and then we'll move into our internal service funds, go over our special revenue funds, briefly cover the capital budget, and then talk about the next steps on the way to budget adoption in September. So this slide briefly covers what our budget process looks like. This is a year-round process. When our fiscal year begins in October, people are spending, we are closing out the prior year, and then before you know it, we are kicking off for the next budget year again in January. Our budget is worked on by our department directors looking at revenues or operating budgets in the early spring, and then we begin the process of having the conversations with council through the summer to submitting that proposed budget to you all on July 31st, having our budget workshop, setting the tax rate, adopting the budget, and then doing it all over again starting on a triple fund. So this year was filled with a couple challenges. So we changed our methodology and strategy going in 2024-25, and then looking at 2025-26. When our department started their budget process this year, we started with a zero base budgeting methodology, meaning that all spending was justified from a zero base, regardless of past allocations. This process actually ended us up with some higher expenses as we right-sized overtime, looked at where our spending may need to be reallocated. And then on top of the zero base budgeting, we did, we asked key questions of our departments to look at their programs and the services they're providing. These questions were, are we duplicating any efforts or resources? Are there activities we should no longer be doing? And where can we improve our existing services? In addition, as we were in the current fiscal year and started to see that we were going to have a forecasted gap in our current year budget, we implemented a managed vacancy program, meaning we were freezing existing vacant positions, focusing on data, and focusing on our front line and our public safety positions. This managed vacancy resulted in about $3 million in salary savings in the current year, and we have the same projection moving into next year, including that program was successful, and we'll continue to do it in the next fiscal year. In addition, one additional strategy that we utilized that was new is we implemented a budget task force. This was compiled of a cross-discipline team throughout the city who took a look at all the recommended reductions, was able to give a different lens perspective on what are we doing, what makes no sense, and a really unified together on the recommendations you're seeing went through a really good look from that budget task force. So with all of that, what we hoped to achieve through that strategy methodology was improved financial mobility, enhanced strategic alignment, and increased transparency and accountability with how we were reporting. This slide is a quick overview on our budget structure. We utilize a fund accounting, and that helps explain how you see the budget in the format that you do. Our budget is structured and guided by governmental accounting principles, and our goal is to demonstrate compliance with legal and regulatory restrictions. So the major funds that you'll see today are we have the general fund. Our other major funds include debt service, our utility funds. Today we'll discuss our special revenue funds that are dedicated for a special purpose such as catalysts, sustainability, streets. And then we have our internal service funds that support the operations of the city including technology services, fleet, our health insurance fund, our customer service, and environmental services. So going into next year, here are the financial assumptions that you'll see as part of the forecast. We are estimating for 25-26, a 4.62% increase over the prior year over our estimated 24-25 growth. And then beyond in the forecast, we're doing a 5% growth for the out years. For our property tax, our total certified price value this year was 22.7 billion. This does represent a 7% growth over the prior year. And a component of that, our new value added 600 million, which was a 50% decrease from the prior year. One additional note, a change from the prior year, our forecast is including that we will collect 98.5% of that property tax in a prior year. It was a little higher, so we brought that down forecasting now. Additionally, we have fund balances. Why are they important to the city? The city currently holds the second highest rating, the AA plus bond rating, which is important to our city as we go out and have sell debt, have bond programs. So for the general fund, the targeted fund balance is between 20 and 25%. And in our proprietary funds, there is two components. We have a working capital target and an operating reserve target. The chart indicates for each of those funds what those target reserves are. We want to call out that we have two of the funds that will fall below fund balance, 25-26. But our policy requires for any fund that does fall below that you have a plan to get that back to those minimum targets within five years. So for the general fund, we do forecast that we will fall below fund balance in 25-26, but be brought back up that next year. And electric will fall below fund balance in that prior year and be back up within that five-year time frame for that five-29 year. Compensation and benefits. So included in the budget this year, we are not proposing any cost of living or merit adjustments for non-Civil Service employees. As part of meet and confer, our public safety employees that were eligible and meet the requirements will receive their stuff increases at those regular intervals throughout the year. The city manager did meet with both of those associations as we were going through the budget process to talk about the cost of living and the no merit. On our health insurance side for employees, the city contribution will be increasing by a little over 2 percent, bringing the, which is higher than the prior year, bringing the little say $1,331 per employee. That is the city side of the contribution. And as employees go through open enrollment in the fall, based on plan changes, their contributions can change. So if an employee likes to go from a high dental to a low, they may see a decrease versus vice versa. If they want to move from a low plan to a high, they may see an increase on their pay plan. Our budget includes assumptions for our retirement contributions. This rate is set by TMRS. This is the second year that we have seen a decrease, which is a good thing. The rate is decreasing from 18.88 percent to 18.6. In fire pension, it remains aligned with TMRS. This savings, this change represented a savings of about $400,000 citywide. So along with our compensation and benefits, we do have a couple schedule changes that are being proposed. Our administrative offices are being proposed to go from to a four and a half day work week, meaning administrative offices in the city would close at noon. And this is proposed to be piloted starting in October. This is a pilot program, so we will collect information throughout the year. How's this working? What type of challenges or feedback are we receiving? And we'll reevaluate next budget process. Do want to call out this is something we are seeing in the Metroplex. Several of our neighboring cities follow this four and a half week work week. Flower Mound, Lewisville, Corinth. So we're excited to pilot it and see how that goes for our employees and our residents. Additionally, the fire department held a vote and their schedule will be moving to a 48.96 schedule. They're currently on a 24.48 schedule and this is tentative to go into effect in January. All right, moving into our tax rate. These are just a couple definitions. We have the no new revenue rate, which is our operation and maintenance portion of the tax rate needed to raise essentially the same maintenance and operation revenue as the prior year. Then we also calculate the voter approval tax rate, which limits operations and maintenance portion of the tax rate to increase three and a half percent over the prior year. On this next slide, we have a chart just demonstrating the changes in our tax rate over the last couple years. And at the bottom, we are showing our proposed tax rate shows no change to the operation and maintenance component of it and a one cent increase on the debt service side with the proposed rate at 0.595420. You can see below that we are not at the ceiling of the voter approved rate, but it is higher than the no new revenue. With the proposed rate, this is what it will look like for residents. We have two things going here. So we've got a comparison showing in 2526, the average home value was 379,000. And this year values, our average homestead in Denton is $386,698. So there's an increase in the value and a one cent increase on the debt side. These two changes to the tax rate estimate to result in an annual increase in our residential tax bill of $84 for the city's portion of the tax rate, which equates to $7. To further break down on the debt side of the tax rate, there are several factors that go into how that debt is calculated and what's influencing it. So we wanted to break out to show that part of the debt rate is comprised of prior certificates of obligation and bond programs and then break out and show what portion of the debt rate is from the 2023 bond program. So it's important to know that this rate is influenced by several things. What is our taxable value growth, market rates, our bond issuance schedule, how we're issuing the projects within the 2023 program, how are we doing on CO issuance, did we issue more or less, and refunding and refinancing. So that tax rate for the bond program does include the first two years of the 2023 program and we still anticipate that new rate to remain under what was presented to city council and to the bond committee from 2023 for the life of the program. This chart is just a quick overview of where we fall on our property tax rate comparison. The blue is how cities in the area ended up last year and the gold is our proposed rate that we have. We don't have additional cities proposed rate, but we still are falling pretty evenly in the Metroplex. Okay, moving into our forecast for next year. This is an overview of our revenues. For 25-26 and in the five-year forecast, two of our major changes from probably the last time that we spoke to you all about the forecast was where we ended on our property tax value and then adjustment on the ROI franchise fees, which shows an increase based on higher demand and load increases on those large load customers and our utilities. On our expenditure side, we are estimating to come in under budget as for the current fiscal year as we have implemented managed vacancies, reduced spending, and then going into next year some of those major changes that we talked about resulted from zero-based budgeting. So two that I will highlight are the personnel services where there is a larger increase. Through the zero-based budgeting, we right-sized overtime and our public safety. One thing we are doing to look at that to make sure that we are doing that correctly are there additional reductions we can make as there is currently an audit of public safety overtime, which we feel will impact this number potentially once that audit is complete. And the second larger increase is in the operations line, and part of that is from our economic development incentives that have come online in our economic development forecast. We talked briefly at the beginning of the presentation about that budget task force. Here is a summary of the reductions that you saw at the June 17th budget work session. As our departments looked at asking themselves those questions, what are we possibly duplicating? What do we need to do differently? We have come up with $7 million in reductions, which led to the submission of the balanced budget. $3 million of that falls in personnel, and that will be achieved through our managed vacancy program that we discussed. The remaining portion of the deficit is various programs, contractual services, travel and training, equipment and supplies. All of those fall within the operations component of that five-year forecast, so you are seeing that number already reduced. Okay. Last year we implemented a new two-minute pitch process, and through that, if there were pitches that received consensus, went through a process, but had a budgetary component, we agreed on rolling them to the budget conversation, so it wasn't seen individually. It could be weighed against everything being considered as part of the budget process. We have three out of the two-minute pitch process to talk about today. The first one is the catalyst fund, where expiring incentives from the general fund can be considered through the budget process to be rolled into the catalyst fund as we build that and work on being more competitive for economic development. That amount we had one small incentive rolling off for '24-'25 is approximately $38,000. The second item is a campaign finance consultant fee. The cost presented is about $70,000, and this would include research on the campaign finance ordinance and the consultant presenting at one meeting. The third two-minute pitch came from requesting to amend the downtown master plan to include renovation of the Civic Center pool, and so out of that, the budget item is to do a comprehensive site analysis and end-of-life cycle plan on the Civic Center pool prior to any recommendations we made on renovating that asset. So those are the three for your consideration today. I just want to note these are one-time expenses and are not currently included in the city manager's proposed budget, so we're looking for direction today specifically from the council on priority order and interest in moving this forward if funding becomes available. The last one I want to mention is a two-minute pitch item, but it's not being considered during the '25-'26 budget. It will be considered next budget year. This was a pitch to add an election day holiday. We've got the cost up there, but this one would apply to a midterm election in November of 2026, so we will consider it during next budget process, but didn't want anyone to think it was left off. Additionally, we had a few follow-up items from the June 17th work session when we talked about reductions. One of those was in-kind funding for special events. The budget previously had $400,000 to fund special event festivals providing in-kind services of public safety, solid waste, park staff, and that was reduced from the $400,000 to the $200,000. We talked about adding additional funding or having another conversation, so that's an additional consideration for the council today of $120,000, and it is not currently included in the city manager's proposed budget. The second item was the ambassador program that was recommended as a reduction out of the general fund. Through that conversation, there was consensus from council to consider it as part of the community partnership allocation out of hotel occupancy tax funds, and that is currently in the city manager's proposed budget. It was recommended by that committee at their last meeting for next year's allocation, and one note on that, it is recommended to be in there and we're still working to make sure that it meets that hot fund eligibility, but it can continue to stay in there as a recommendation. So Mayor, if you'd like to pause here or we can wait till the end, we are looking for direction on the one-time considerations that are not currently included in the city manager's proposed budget. What we're hoping for is consensus on what the council would like to move forward with and if there is a priority order. Our strategy is as we come to the end of the fiscal year, we have capital jobs that have general funding in them that as they end could have remaining funds, so we feel like going through those accounts, closing out, there should be savings there that could fund these and any year-end savings from operating funding. So if they are in priority order and we get to the end of the year and there's a hundred thousand, we could fund priority one, priority two. So we're looking for direction on the two-minute pitch. Got it. So yeah, I know it's a good time to stop, have that conversation. Recommendations for staff on or make your positions known on these items of course that would be considered additional funding. Representative from District 6, Samantha. Thank you. First, I just want to say what a great job you all have done on the budget. I was very impressed with the numbers going into the budget cycle being unexpected for all the cities in the area. The fact that you were able to come through and with the recommendations and with the balanced budget was very appreciative. I'm very appreciative. So thank you for that. I want to ask about the campaign finance consultant. I mean that's a year's salary, $70,000 to make some suggestions to the ordinance. Is that correct? That seems out of black to me. Well, it's to hire a consultant, but it's also the consultant would hold public meetings. So it isn't just to hire the consultant. The whole idea is that you're going to do campaign finance. They need to have public meetings. It's one meeting. I think Madison, where are you? One meeting with the council and then a follow-up, I guess a meeting or two. Yeah, the $70,000 would include multiple meetings. I think we just communicated on that. When was that direction given by council? It was a two-minute pitch from council member Meltzer. Okay, well my direction would be to go with the expiring incentive role to catalyst fund, the civic center, pull site analysis, and the life cycle plan, and kind of funding for special events, but not the campaign finance consultant. I would like to re-look at that. So that would be my direction. Yeah, and I want to be clear, there is no funding now at all. This is if funding becomes available. Oh goodness. Yes, this is not in the budget. This is only if we have a jackpot or we have extra money and we're asking for you to give us what priorities, if any, are these. So if money becomes available, what order would we fund them in? And other things can be considered too though. I mean, if you don't want to fund any of these, you want to leave it to go into fund balance, you want to pay down the debt, whatever that is you want to do. These are the four things that we promised we'd bring back from a two-minute pitch from council members or discussed in an agreement. All right, well thank you very much for that clarification of what it is we're deciding right now. So as far as my direction, I would say the low-hanging fruit is the smallest amount, the incentive role to catalyst fund. I would say then the end-kind funding for special events, then the Civic Center poolside, then campaign finance consultant as far as the priorities that I would recommend. Thank you. Okay, Mayor Porteson. Mine's similar, slightly different order. It's based on sort of the size of the total amount and just how much I've heard the community talking about it. So for that reason, I would say Civic Center poolside analysis is the first, followed by expiring incentives to roll in the catalyst fund, followed by campaign finance consultant, and then finally the end-kind funding for special events would be my priority order. Representative from district four. Thank you and I apologize for being so slow. Is the ambassador program to be considered within this? Yes sir, we have it recommended as part of hotel occupancy tax funds, so you don't need to consider it from the general fund. Okay, the only one of these that I'm the least bit excited about is the Civic Center pool. Okay, anyone else? President from district five. Christine, did I see 3.6 million is what we're leaving on the table for vacancies, staff vacancies? Yeah, we're doing a managed vacancy program. We didn't do any reduction in force. That's what we expect in salary savings, but yes you're correct it is a reduction. Okay, of those staff positions we're not filling, what's the most important? Which one would get filled first? When we start filling staff vacancies, obviously pending applicants and whatnot. Sure, we have a multi-approach to that. So through our managed vacancy program, we have a vacancy review committee and our focus has been on frontline positions and public safety. So as requests come through, we evaluate what is the current staffing, what are the challenges, and then decide in which order to fill. We do anticipate through that program being to continue to fill positions each quarter. If money is available. I want to be real clear here. On managed vacancies. This managed vacancy program is going to continue into the next year. So we have the managed vacancy program going on now, we have the managed vacancy program that's going to continue into the next budget year. Only if money is available will we fill positions. So while we're giving you this because we want to be completely transparent, it was council members who asked for this money, there is no money right now and we have to continue manage vacancies into next year and probably will go the whole year next fiscal year into managed vacancies. So I want to make sure because I don't want anybody leaving and thinking there's money on the table or anything else. So if you choose these things, I guess I want to know are we choosing these things over managed vacancies? No. But I want to be, you know, I just want to make sure you know that when money is available, maybe if we get it, we'll be able to fill some positions, but we're heading into a new budget year with managed vacancies, significant managed vacancies. So sir, what I'm hearing you say is that we've got three million dollars in managed vacancies. After those are filled, then we'll get to council priorities? No. Or intermittently? No. If there's money. If there is money, as we go into the 20, 25, 26 budget, I get this is always confusing me, we have the same amount of managed vacancies that we have now and as we see where we are in the general fund, that's kind of how we manage this, oh yeah, you know, we can fill this one maybe or whatever, it kind of rises to the top and we decide which ones are the most important, obviously public safety comes to the top, but if we have money available as we're filling positions and so forth and we see that we have extra funding available, that's why we wanted to know your priorities here. We anticipate the latter part of 26 or at least the 26, 27 budget, a much better financial situation. I'll be honest, I don't think we're going to be able to do any of these things to be real frank, but if we are, it's important for us to know what your priorities are. Obviously, our priority is going to be fill vacancies and particularly the ones that are the most important, public safety, those kinds of things, so it's not an and this, it's all right now, it's vacancies and when they roll in and we can fill them and then if we hit the jackpot or we find out we have more money available, then we can start shipping away these things. I appreciate that explanation, that I agree with. I think the essential management vacancies should go first. Fill police first, fill fire first, fill V&E, fill water utilities first. If there's money left over, which I'm hearing you said there probably won't be, my priorities would be catalyst fund, campaign finance, city center pool, income especially. Thank you all for bringing this to us. I know it's a lot of a lot of work and so you know we as a community, we appreciate everything that you're bringing to us and the transparency and educating us on what we need to do. So I am on the community building committee and so I am very particular to how we as a community appreciate all of our events. We like the arts and jazz festival and we like having that part of our lives you know to share with each other and so I'm really hoping that we could you know stay up with that. We got a lot of hard work in front of us. People are not happy. There's a lot of changes going on personally but we can find some time to still celebrate us. So and I'm very much a quality of life individual so I definitely want to put my ability in for the income funding for special events with me to encourage other people to come and see our great city to help us do that. I think that the Civic Center pool I want to call it the Quaker Town pool would be appreciated of course the inspiring incentives for the Calais Fund and the campaign finance consultant. I want to say something about the campaign finance consultant. I understand that I understood when Meltzer brought this to us is because there's got to be some kind of way that we can be more proactive in educating our community. I know that we're putting a lot of energy and a lot of work in educating our community. We put stuff in the newspaper. We have a online presence a significant online presence. We are gossiping on all of our next door neighbor whoever else other kind of social media stuff out there and sometimes that gets a little bit out of hand. I really appreciated the opportunity to have someone that's dedicated to what's going on with us as a community to make sure that we are getting the proper information out to the community. Each one of the council members are pretty much basically respected and understood that they're going to talk to their communities. They're going to have their Facebook pages and have their town halls and all of that but sometimes a lot of people miss some things so having someone I see campaign finance consultant having someone out there to make sure the word for the city is what it is that I could definitely understand that so I really don't want to dismiss that but I just don't think that that is a particular priority you know right now for us so in so just not going back over that thank you for chance to speak. Anyone else? Representative from district two. Mr. Premier I didn't get my priorities but I want to get clarity from you on do you also want questions from earlier in the slide deck? Yes. Okay so I'm going to start with priorities so we have cohesive thought then I'll jump back to those other ones. Quick question on the managed vacancies some of these were some of the absences especially in parks say for Clear Creek and some others were I'm not sure where they fall on the managed vacancy spectrum can I get some clarity on that because some of these activities will die without staff and so while it's a it could potentially be a managed vacancy continuing it too long will will make it the whole program disappear and how that would impact projections going into the future for this year and next year. Our managed vacancy program is all of our salaried full-time positions. Our seasonal positions that are program-based are always going through cost recovery process and so programs out at Clear Creek if there is low attendance or the program doesn't make we would not hire those are seasonal positions not associated with the managed vacancy program. We do cost recovery look at the program so it is separate managed vacancy is focused on our full-time positions. We do have just some clarity this is a question do we do have some in these various areas where some full-time staff in some of these areas that that oversee seasonal programs but the staff themselves are full-time so where where do those staff fall in this spectrum? If a position becomes vacant if someone leaves for another job leaves the city that position is frozen and then evaluated among all the other positions quarterly but it is our full-time positions. We do have parks vacancies sure we have a special event one that helps with a special event process that is currently frozen so yes and then those duties are absorbed within the department and then we continue to work with the director on priority need what they need to be filled as we take those requests. So I love that clarity can I just get a touch more and that is and I guess this is all leading to my highest priority is some of these managed vacancies so that's why I'm asking a lot of managed vacancy questions in terms of putting those above and I think you've answered that to Councilor McGee that that remains staff's highest priority as well and I'm just sort of adding emphasis to that. The activities that the programmatic activities that we were going to do will be absorbed into other staff as best we can given time concerns okay so that gives me some some comfort. I heard in terms of priority I heard overwhelming support for Civic Center pool it was a whole thing in our community about amending the downtown master plan so that that would be a high priority for me. I have a question on the campaign finance I understand that there's some of this funding was proposed as consultancy and some of it was proposed as an engagement do you have a rough feel for those ratios? I understand if 70,000 is completely consulted. Well the consultant will conduct the meeting so it's the consultant doing the work and then having the public engagement piece up. If you don't want any public engagement and not any thought and follow the public about what finance should be the consultant would have to say well just to do the work I don't know 25, 30,000, 40,000 something like that so that's a guesstimate too. My recommendation would be to in-house that consultation thing as best we're able and still do the community engagement part. I understand that staff has concerns about their expertise in this area and some trepidation but when you're faced with budget concerns but something you also want to do that's when you give it a full faith good effort with your existing staff and in existing opportunities for community engagement I don't know what that number would look like in terms of budgeting. I don't know I would assume it's not zero because it's an activity that would have to be programmed in but I would be extremely interested in what an in-housing of that looked like with some reasonable community engagement. I'm not my next priority I voted for the catalyst fund it's fine I think one of the reasons I voted for it for it as a as an opportunity was because we had the ability when I asked questions to sweep it back in during the budget process which is exactly what we're discussing now is whether we needed to keep it in the general fund or its source funds or roll it back out for economic development. I don't necessarily want to get rid of it for the future I so I will just put it as an extremely low priority for me and then I have no interest given given the size of the the ambassador program potential impact and on some of these other possibility of activities. I said this the community program partnership thank you appreciate that that I've given the cost of it relative to all the other programs and activities and cultural events and everything else we wanted to do that I'm still not interested in that so while I can see my way clear to you know as warning down these priorities I can't see my way clear to get into that last hundred and twenty thousand for that one program I think it's just too expensive I just want to clarify that it's not the ambassador program well okay I appreciate the clarity I'm just reading from the slide oh that's the where is what is that one then this is the in-time funding the general fund budget previously had four hundred thousand and one of our recommendations was to reduce that down to two hundred thousand and this is a request to bring that a conversation to is council interested in bringing that back up to three hundred and twenty thousand I'm not I mean I'd like for any I mean you say that's not the ambassador program I get that so I'm I'm interested in bringing that funding up then if that's if that's the clarity I'm interested in bringing that up for other events but but not if it's part of the investor program special events like I would be I would be interested in having that then so then I would put that above I would put that above catalyst not because again I'm not I'm not bashing on catalyst and I know it's only thirty thousand but there's an opportunity there to do that kinds of safe things versus economic development and I know that one leads to the other so I'm not naive about that but so then I would change the order to the 120 after in-housing the campaign finance so pool in-housing the campaign finance 120 for in-kind and and and and then I mean if we get to it we get to it on the catalyst file oh and then um real quick um couple question okay I'm from what you said and in the slide again was it clear on how the 4.5 hour work week could you just briefly re-describe how that will work and where the cost savings are coming from it's not I don't think we're not recommending it as a cost saving strategy going into next fiscal year with no compensation cost of living or merit we've done employee surveys and one benefit which would be more of a quality of life benefit for our administrative offices would be to close at noon on Friday several cities in the Metroplex do it and I've adopted to that model so essentially City Hall Development Services City Hall East would be open Monday through Thursday eight to five and then we would close open at 8 a.m. on Friday close at noon so employees in those administrative positions would end their work day at noon on Friday there could be small savings associated with energy use in the building but overall the recommendation to pilot the program is a quality of life benefit for employees no and we talked about that sort of the multi-day work you know the extra half a Saturday kind of concept I'm for supporting that in general I guess if you could give council in in no particular rush but soon during the budget process sort of what we expect in terms of amount of activities that go on on a Friday afternoon yes I figured you would have that so you know we you know one percent of our permitting is on a Friday afternoon or something like that just so we have a feel for what going to an extra half Saturday means in terms of services not not in terms of supporting the program we can certainly provide that part of going into that recommendation look at what is our activity each of these and are there still online options available can you pay a court ticket can you pay your utility bill the answer is yes an activity was especially with the legislative changes on agendas our busy day for agenda our council meeting will now be Wednesday but we certainly as we get closer to launching the pilot can send here's what's changing here's the volume and here's what to expect I appreciate that thank you that's all thank you any other questions directions what does a 4896 schedule for the fire department looks like I read 2448 or something like that I will attempt to explain oh sorry you're going to come up four days off for five days right now please work 24 hours on then they get two days off 48 hours 4896 has been around for years we are actually one of the last departments in county that has not adopted it yet so association's been working with me for three years really kind of pushing this we started in January and actually I formed a committee and had our employees go out and do the research bring it back to us as far as administration we went through that we drafted policies what it looked like talked to other cities and this is a metropolitan city sacramento albert he's found this los vegas has been on for 15 years so what it looks like is the way it goes to work 48 hours straight so two full days and then they get 96 hours off so four days what that does actually help our employees recover you're off two days you don't really truly recover you never really get your sleep habits back to normal state so there's a lot of research a lot of data says is actually better for employees around health less commute to work you're sending your time down 50% drive in from outskirts as well so everything we see is very positive I did do a vote internally and 87 percent of the department wanted to move towards this new schedule that's great that sounds like a great quality of life the benefit for the firefighters thank you all for bringing it to us I appreciate that also um I was looking oh I also had a question about the four and a half day work week I believe that you answered that uh and I was writing down ambassadors when you start explaining that so uh those were the only things um that I had appreciated do you want to give your input on this slide I'm probably about to start bouncing around on slides no go ahead I'm gonna hit a lot of things uh as quickly as possible yeah uh slide seven so I did math and I think in the 2024 2025 fiscal year uh sales tax increased by 4.15 and I think we're targeting that the future for the coming year will be 4.62 so that's a little higher than last year was I know last year doesn't necessarily predict what's going to happen in the future here um my question is is that conservative enough to help us avoid an additional you know sort of surprise shortfall yes I mean finance recommendation I'm looking at it we had it higher previously they brought in a consultant who looked at how our sales tax has performed what do we anticipate and we feel that 4.62 is realistic and still conservative and then we have increased it slightly in the out years yes we plus just the first atv so come online uh and that will help us and then they're pulling permits right now for the second atv so we will see an uptick there'll be some other businesses coming in surrounding the area around the atv so uh just a little slide uptick for 25 26 but you see you'll see going up much better which should be good for the city in new york so we see some projects yes absolutely yes thank you I appreciate that question I have the exact same question and just a point uh this that we got today it also references that is estimated uh on the historical sales tax data as well as third party data and then it cites city based dot net so you might go there because I have the exact same question we want to be incredibly Thank you thank you Mary going back to okay so slide eight now I'm sorry nine let's go one more so I definitely don't like two years in a row where staff aren't getting some sort of positive living or um merit increase um do we feel like we will have potential in the fall in the fly 27 that we'll be able to provide that certainly don't like to have that two years staff did receive increases last year or in the current year that we're in so we're not proposing them for next year but the forecast moving forward does include compensation increases there and then uh slide 10 so the voter approval tax rate only applies to the maintenance and operations right correct not the ins where I may need to bring cassie in with that oh cassie may get tagged in for that it it yes so there are portions that apply to both okay uh but the overall voter approval rate does include your um so the go to the next slide next one oh yeah right there the right voter approval rate that is the six one two that does include your ins rate oh so it's just the overall yes got it uh and then slide 12 about half of that household are renters do we have a mechanism to be able to provide a similar type of slide for how it would impact the average renter i don't know if there's a way to really calculate that i know that question came up first part 2023 program too i mean i assume we could take you could do something to show average rent last year versus this year but how that's passed on to the renter is not possible for us to right i will say that uh having talked to some people that own rental property it fluctuates because depending on uh the economy and everything and they will raise their rates a little bit go up and then when they see they're not getting their rental facilities filled they'll start giving specials and lowering their monthly payouts their rates so it's it's really interesting how they do it because they pass it on obviously but but many you know and didn't it's easier to film because of the students and housing issues but yeah you're saying that i mean it's there's no guarantee like this is sort of a guaranteed this is yeah uh renders it's fine okay thank you for clarifying that a little bit um slide 15 what is intergovernmental revenue just definition i don't know what it is specifically i can say specifically so this line includes where we fill little realm for handling their dispatch services and their program when it comes into us as a partnership the safety resource officers okay so it's people other cities paying the city of denton for some sort of service we provide 9-1-1 resources to little out right and we have a contract with them and they have a certain amount of money and it's based on uh it's a base and it's based on calls and so it works as well but uh rebuild them and that's where the money goes into okay thank you um and then slide 16 can you provide an example of an interfund transfer like at least one maybe one big example that we see most often or something right yes this is a constant question so we have internal service funds we have the technology service fund the fleet fund so the fleet fund for the police department supports x amount of vehicles through maintenance oil change so we take that data and have a number that will move out from the general fund to support those activities in fleet anything that is in house that is supporting these operations as an allocation model so then we're putting that share back to that fund to continue the activities so much i think i think that's all i have at this point thank you anyone else all right uh so let's see so first and foremost on the special uh i think i have the title right on the special revenue funds um example ones that we we're kind of holding money like the holding funds do we have a calculation to say uh or better said when it comes to debt do we have a do we have a math algorithm that says for example when we're talking about if we one cent off the budget affects it this way do we have that where if we pay down this much debt it affects the uh rate by one cent we do and so effectively if you're talking about reducing the tax rate proposed from one cent back to what it would have been it's approximately 1.8 million dollars that would be a one time item this would apply to this year so for those funds what you're speaking about is that we we transfer revenue from the general fund to the catalyst fund sustainability fund and the streets fund within those fund balances there's approximately five million dollars available but it would reduce those activities so are any of those funds jumping to my next question one of my latter questions any of those funds you said catalyst sustainability and streets and do you have and so are any of those funds such that we've not spent any money out of those in 20 24 25 budget like this past budget year they all have different ways that you're spending i will say that funding mechanism has been not stable it is a large load customers at data center revenue so it's been inconsistent so each of them have spent funds the amount that we anticipated no it is not but there are plans for all of those funds but we do have uh fund balance available in each of those but but better let me clarify what i heard you say so you said we we did spend money out of the catalyst fund on on various economic development incentives when they've come forward this past year a headquarters grant a job space grant those are funded from the catalyst fund and then on the sustainability fund what's some examples of stuff we spent over last year i might have to call michael the fire truck he's asking what's the balance in this no no no no it's examples of what they've spent the money on yeah like if we if we've actually used the fund and if it was something like program or something oh by the way here's where we can fund this either way they have the sustainability framework advisory committee who puts together how they're going to spend that funding part of the challenge has been because this revenue was not as stable they could not spend it until we received the revenue which has caused some timing timing challenges there has been some funds spent but there is a million dollars sitting in that fund balance for the sustainability fund specifically and so and so is it staff and financial department best practices they say to leave those funds or is it better to just have it in the general fund and spend from there council's policy direction was to create those funds and that was the priority funding so the purpose was you know for the street sustainability so the money has stayed there unless we get direction to pull it back or right so my question again was though is that financial best practices a staff's recommendation to do that understand the council's decision but is that best practices and best practices leave it in the general fund and spend from there i don't have an answer for that right now there's there's not a financial principle or i don't know that there's a financial principle about it i think it's i think if you're trying to have you up there sorry this is how the meeting works right uh madison rofe i've been city auditor uh if you if you're trying to spend something specifically for a potential revenue source it's best to have its own fund um so that you can clearly see like see how much you're spending how much you have available so if that's the council's direction to spend a certain amount of money for sustainability or for streets maintenance or uh catalyst whatever i think that's our current development um it's best to be able to see it that way but you would still be able to transfer it back to the general fund like christine was saying does that help but generally and i don't want to belay your point so it's something i'll take up afterwards we can we can parse through it yes as far as like a transparency yes it's best practice to do it that way um not necessarily like it's not necessarily best practice to have a sustainability but so got it and so my point would be no other questions just kind of direction so for me as an individual right uh just i have one voice and i do not want to raise taxes on people uh this year and so my direction would be for staff now and if if there's not a majority don't do a thing we'll just let it sit but i'm i'm gonna bang the drum uh pretty regular going forward if we have five million dollars sitting in those funds unallocated on a project not project specific so they're sitting there waiting for a project and we're going to raise taxes by one cent i want to find 1.8 million dollars out of that fund to then pay down debt which we're all we're focused on to then put us back to the same rate we were last year so my goal is to put us at the same rate that we were before by taking money that's not encumbered and applying it to debt so that lowers that debt by one cent puts us back where we were so that's that's my thing and those can always be backfield no different than we're sacrificing filling positions we're sacrificing donations to non-profits for events everyone's taking a haircut and i don't think it's fair for the city to sit there and say hey we have five million dollars in this war chest that and we have bond money that's paying for the streets so we're not hurting any street activity there plus i hear more about people going crazy about street work than people saying hey we need more street work it's evolved since we've been a constant attack over the last uh and i don't want that to change i'm fine with the complaints about street work let's do street work uh but that that would be my my ask not that i pick it out but that staff look at it and if there's a majority that gets up coalesces around that that would say hey let's do that or there may be a majority that says stay the lot stay the course no it matters not then uh can you help me on the civic center pool plan that would be that's not actionable that's is that just kind of a like a 2030 plan or is that hey we're going the study would yield a actionable we're going to do this i think it would land us so what that pitch was to renovate the civic center pool and the isr indicated it's a really large it's a really old asset so what we would like to do is this study so that we can make some concrete decisions what's the cost what's the life analysis of it should we continue to put more money in and renovate it so it will be an actual document that can help us make a decision but it's not like a um a 2030 plan or uh got it yeah so the only way i would at all rank that is if one if it was done same year as same council right like if we're doing something and it can be turned around when the same council is there and that council agrees to follow that through all the public outreach and all the things and follow that to the t because we all know we're losing money on that thing and whatever it decides so that we can get back home you just can't keep throwing good money after bad and so if the council agrees to encumber itself or commit to whatever the findings whatever that comes out to be that we go forward with that my concern is if you spend that much money and then it gets ignored then we it's all for not if the professionals say this needs to happen and let's say whatever majority of council doesn't subscribe to that theory then why did we do the study so that's really my thing and i don't know if there's a way i'm certain there's a way for a council sitting to encumber itself and hold itself accountable i don't know if that's the case for future councils that's why and so i just put a pin on that if there's a scenario that arrives that that allows for that fact pattern to happen i'm all on board but if we're going to just spend money to ignore what the consultant says i i'm not interested just mayor so you know this pool is the civic center pool is anywhere between 60 and 70 years old so um and having a lot of experience with antiquated pools in austin um you really don't want to do anything to it because it's like putting lipstick on a pig and calling it pretty um what you want to do is figure out if eventually through a capital program if you have money to renovate the pool and well literally completely redo it because the underground or below the ground is going to be antiquated and probably is leaking right now and then all the fixtures restroom and everything else is is also antiquated so it is it's probably right for complete rebuild and completely not renovate but redo the pool and have a nice pool but to spend the money on i mean you would want someone to tell you that but i can tell you that's exactly what is that age of that pool no and i couldn't agree more but my concern would be to arrive at that conclusion and then people say what we're going to be without a pool downtown for this much time and as many people can't afford it but i don't want to do it what else can we do i mean you know it's like if you're not willing to do what we need to do then why faint as though we are so uh and that's and let me say that's consistent with my concern about the water wastewater thing and and that's the neat thing about that they they have a plan they have a budget they have these things and they're moving forward uh and so i think that's really once we get to that point i think it's a good conversation to have um also this is not in your slides but making decisions can you can staff come back with for me a effect of tax exempt properties on the city of denton so for example if we do this it affects the taxes because that's been heavy on my mind we use the last example of a council meeting so we're it's proposed to take whatever five fifty thousand hundred thousand dollars off the tax roll what effect does that have on the budget so when we're having these shortfalls and we're giving away tax money uh is that a wise investment of that money or so i just i don't have a chart to say what the effect that that is so i'd like to have that going forward and then um is is today the day we talk about uh rate percentage for dme we're going to discuss that on the 19th 19 so not today got it and then on the ambassador program here have do we have a quote from them yeah it's i keep mixing up it's either 219 or 291 that's an official quote from them we have a different service level so what's being proposed is the smallest service level so it reduces the boundary down to i believe is where proper and it's only five days a week so less number of days smaller boundary was the 291 yeah so i'm just telling you i'm gonna have a problem with that because i would need the property owners to to pay in but and so my question is is that an option for the council to to mandate some sort of uh tax or is that they have to opt in uh for a public improvement district which would be supported by the property owners it is does need to be petitioned and supported by the property owners we did meet with them and discuss it and they were not interested in moving forward with a pit at this time yeah so just to be clear for me for to have a clear record i can't see my way forward to support something like that and one we have the county that got that 160 000 they requested they got the proposal was zero is that right correct yeah so the county that's helped us with a number of things and partner with us regularly and has a community market which everyone talks about gets zero i can't get on board with that that's we already have a problem with the deals and that exacerbates that two if it's so valuable that the property owners won't participate how valuable is it that i just think there's a hard conversation if you had and i get it if they don't opt in but the square proper i mean that doesn't cover any of those backstreets where most of the issues happen if you look at look at the reports most of your naked people in downtown are not found on the square proper most of calls for hey this issue is just off the square and and and most of the festivals just off the square uh industrial street you know fuzzies all those people and so uh i understand the intent of it i'm obviously i'm supportive of the project i i pushed for it from day one but when we're telling the arts and jazz we can't give you money we're telling the county we can't participate in the community market cost we're telling the uh texas veterans hall of fame we can't participate then i i think it's there's not one department that bore the full brunt of these holes on positions right you you spread it out amongst every department and so this seems like it's a coalescing around this one thing to the detriment of others and i just don't think it's diversified enough and i think if i i would be fine with a match of some sort like the city will put up this if you put up that and go back to the property owners that to me is fair this is not fair so i won't be supportive and if that if that remains as projected and the county shut out and the texas veterans hall of fame shut out uh then and some others then i'm just and we're bearing 100 and it's just the square proper i'm going to be a no just transparency wise and then yes and then last thing i guess if you could just give me the um well when you look at those funds just in there you'll include you know whatever the balance are so lastly you need from me a a list of let me get back there sorry um so if i were to look at the projects priority wise just so that i have a clear record it's the catalyst project or the catalyst two minute pitch then i'll say this i don't support moving forward campaign finance because as my as as i understand it that and maybe i'm wrong but that has nothing to do with the city we don't host those reports we take those reports we post them but that's the state and the ethics we don't enforce it we don't do anything there and so it's a straight pass through has nothing to do with the city we don't investigate those things so i'm not interested in spending seventy thousand dollars for something we don't control or take care of uh and then obviously i've spoken on the civic center pool so those two are non-starters for me and then um i guess second would be the to have a conversation about the in-kind funding and uh yeah that's that's everything that that one's not until next year so yeah that's what from that okay yes we are okay uh briefly we will cover the internal service funds there are some questions on those in the forecast of the transfer line out so we have a variety of internal service funds that are used to account for those goods and services provided from one department to another within the city of den organization so here is a list of our internal service funds we have the customer service funds primarily supported by those utility funds technology services materials management which is our warehouse and purchasing group fleet facilities risk engineering environmental services all of those we're showing here on the screen their budget from last year their proposed budget does reflect a decrease and that comes from that same um strategy we utilize by looking at zero-based budgeting they also implemented the same type of reductions in travel and training looking at their consulting services so did an excellent job on their proposed budgets and one item that will come back in a future budget is those credit card fees that we talked about over the summer we'll talk about that again in the fall as that progresses moving into our special revenue funds we have numerous special revenue funds i think 25 uh that account for the receipts of specific revenue sources that are restricted for a specific purpose we're going to highlight just a few of them today the the ones that we feel council would want to speak the most about that's that tourist and convention fund which is the hotel occupancy tax funds we've already had a bit of conversation on those catalyst sustainability and streets those are the ones primarily receiving their revenue from that general fund transfer and then the tree fund that one's being highlighted not that it's a large special revenue but there was a two-minute pitch item to incorporate some information in the budget process here's a list of all of those special revenue funds with their adopted budget and proposed we do have backup information on these and it was detailed in the budget document if there are specific questions we can certainly answer them but we're going to stick to the couple that we want to highlight so on this tourist and convention fund it is our hotel occupancy tax it's a seven percent levy on the hotel rooms and we use this funding to support the promotion of tourism and we have a community partnership committee that looks at this annually and recommends the the funding allocation this chart we felt would be helpful it's a little more than the hotel occupancy tax but we've not presented information where council can see all of the funding sources for our festivals which may help give a more holistic look on what they're receiving so all of the organizations are listed on the left that first column represents what they put their application in for requesting on hot funds the second column is what the community partnership recommended the the next two are from the general fund but we wanted to again let you see that whole picture so we do have cash dollars that are part of the general fund and which organizations can receive a cash sponsorship without and then that last column is the in-kind funding that we've had conversations on now this in-kind recommendation only includes an allocation of 200 000 which is currently in the budget if the consideration is to up that we have we'd go back and redo that allocation process up to the 320 000 one other piece i want to note why there were several changes on the hotel occupancy tax allocations this year that community partnership committee has had a lot of discussions on how do we allocate are we looking at how are they promoting tourism how are they getting out of town visitors so this year included an application process with a rubric and then there was a scoring matrix which then impacted how funding was allocated two other pieces to point out on this is that we do have a contingency budgeted of 130 000 and that ambassador program is in the recommendation right now mayor would you like to pause and talk about this fund or you want to keep going there's i'll leave it to the council there as there's questions about the fund and let's get it now representative from district 2-1 for that the let me get to the right page remember for slide 23 do we have i appreciate the the the differences and distinctions from last year to this year do we have a sort of crude breakout on what what's equipment versus what's mno like where like i noticed on the uh the fleet some of that you just presumably is replacement kicking the can so that we can you know we make a piece of equipment last longer than maybe is ideal in our long-term planning do we have that kind of equipment capital project breakout versus uh you know mno kind of breakout versus salaries and benefits can we get that i'm not asking for it now but if we can get that so we could see well okay this budget changes due to salaries and this budget changes due to equipment yes i would love to get that we should have that or we do have that broken out in detail and the proposed budget i'll follow up and mark the page but we're going to show you the salary amount it's got the actuals the current year budget and proposed so that you can see those changes by category for personnel operations which is our vehicle maintenance then i uh then i apologize if i overlooked it missed it that's my bad jet lag i'll do that to you um then on the um the ordering um i i said this in the community partnership meeting but i i just tremendously commend staff for making a a more objective rubric for funding these things i think that's the only way to move forward um i i do you know we had conversations at the time that and that meeting that um i think we do need a sort of break-in period figuring out how what's what's the impact of using the rubric and how does that change things because you end up having people that are experienced at getting grants and doing grant development being better able to to have staff their staff again on top of those rubrics and meet our specific objectives than you know some of these these smaller groups that are asking for bits and pieces you know the mayor mentioned the texas veterans they're they're less able to throw staff at a making sure that they've properly gotten it so i i think it would behoove us as a council to sort of have a break-in period and a and a re-evaluation period to make sure that the rubric is matching our our goals um it's sort of maybe even up to the point of you know two different application streams are you a a brand new don't really know what you're doing application stream and are you a more of a professional organization application stream just so that um that that's being properly uh compared to and uh the the the question i had on the the expenditures uh on the the 320 000 versus the 200 000 that that was the 120 000 that we talked about at the community partnership um for and that was mostly for the in-kind um that those in-kind donations can you remind us and what what exactly the types of things that were being funded by in-kind yes it includes uh public safety so police or fire services solid waste services park services so i'll just give you an example and and we've made several changes on this and continue to make them more positive if one of the festivals we'll just pick blues festival needs police services we look at it and say it's going to be ten thousand dollars and you fund them the city says we're going to allocate you 50 percent of that we're going to give you five thousand then the festival will be responsible for paying the remaining portion so it's a it's like a grant uh essentially for those types of services that occur during the festival and one of the again one of the questions i brought up at the meeting so i i don't think we record those so that's kind of why i'm reiterating some of it now is um um staff has done a sort of gargantuan jobs to try to help these organizations right size their their request and i appreciate that uh don't don't ask for you know 300,000 people if you need 50,000 people kind of thing uh or support for 50,000 uh so i i really appreciate stuff doing that sort of thing but then we we saw um across the funds that we reviewed sort of um a growth potential um that we i think we need to kick the tires on back to my earlier comment so um i guess where i'm going with this is if we if we don't if we don't set those that extra 120,000 to allow for the rubric to to kick in because we've adjusted everything in terms of smart reallocation of resources based on an actual more realistic participation level and the actual number of firefighters the actual resources and things like that if we if we simultaneously pull that lever and defund them in another level then we don't know which one had the desired impact in terms of right sizing the program so i'm encouraging us to to allocate the extra amount and and then right size separately and not pull both at the same time i know that was a lot of verbiage i apologize that but we're trying to steer with two different levers and we don't know the effect of either one independently is what i'm saying we don't have the other money the 120,000 is not real money it's only if if we find that meaning if there's a savings so i hear what you're saying and i think i mean i looked at the allocations and not a special place in my heart for the veterans and gary steel and everything but a lot of these events um this is an opportunity for them to write side as well it's an opportunity for them to realize they need to do a better job of fundraising and better sponsorships and i think you and and the group that did this work did a really yeoman's job basing it on the rubric but i hear what you're saying there has to be a human element to the human rubric as well and so this might be a good time to say okay how did it go this year after this is all there and then see what are the events that suffered the most or really need help and figuring out how to help them get sponsorships and stuff and you know i offer to help and never hurt from them again but i think we we are still standing with that how can we help them how can we help them figure out how to get the sponsorships and those kinds of things and i do think quite frankly as we see the more economic development come in town particularly big stores i think you'll see more opportunities no i appreciate i appreciate that clarity and i'll just end with there were two things that were brought up in that committee one was is there an opportunity for our grant staff to educate folks on how better to apply for grants so that they get to a more professional level that will help them get and you know what's appropriate what's not that was brought up by christine at the meeting and uh another thing that i want to give credits christine for was um she wasn't advocating or not advocating out but she threw it out as an option she's very good to not advocate or not or advocate so i'm not saying that but she threw it out as something to consider during the budget process which is why i bring it up here was if we um put that 120 000 in as contingency funds then that allows us to budget and know if there's an emergency as we hit these events to get to some of these quality of life things that are so critical to what makes denton different than mckinney and plano and everything else because these are our special babies and we want to make sure that in an emergency we could step up then i think budgeting it as a contingency fund rather than allocated means that in an emergency we can we could step in and and you and the staff already have the authority to step in and that's what i'm going to advocate that we do with that 120 000 is make it potentially available rather than allocated parcel by parcel that way we can backstop some of these events if they don't achieve their fundraising goals if we find that money like i said and it ranks up with the the you know the members with the council and we have that money and where it's where it ends up as a priority for all council members i mean certainly it's something we could set aside if we find that money and hopefully over after this year there'll be more opportunities to put money aside and and let it grow so that it can be supportive of the ones that are just getting started or like somehow just didn't like it or whatever it takes me to do that's all right thank you represent for this report i this is about 50 year on this particular committee and i have been very uh blessed to be on this committee because it's it's just so important to us um like council member big stated you know our quality of life and these are the people that makes us unique and different from any other city in the state we have to rely on these people we're so always so proud to say oh didn't this and didn't north of ordinary indigenous uh you know we didn't weird or whatever whatever we like to call ourselves and these are the groups of people that was really putting in all that effort and all of that work to make sure that we can you know be proud of ourselves halloween all of that and so willing in just community members we've had time in our history or in my history to be able to walk into these meetings and say yes you get yes you get yes yes yes to practically everything that's when our economy was going well we were feeling good about what we wanted to accomplish people have had uh you know i have had some have some had uh extra extra dollars in their pockets uh to do these uh have make these events occur donations were up all of these people are working extremely hard uh to keep our quality of life uh for us here in this city this year um and i think uh joe holland can attest to this after the last couple of years and we were just so proud to walk out of there and say you know what we're just really doing such a great job around here and this year was very hard for us because we had to have that uh deep conversation we went back and forth it was hard uh to go back and forth and say you know we just don't have the funding for it and we just um you know either that or we're gonna have to go back to our community and see if they'll just push a little bit more out of their wallets to help us um help these folks it's all of our funds it's our money and we're just pushing that money back into our community and sometimes we have to go back to our citizens and say hey we want to do this or we need to do this and we've got to ask for another penny uh in in and that's difficult for some people to do um i'm just wanting to make sure that we just maximize our potential uh sitting in that meeting to come to these conclusions um please a community i want the community to know that we really put that effort in to give as much as we could now we have to go back to the community we have to go back to the citizens and ask you to dig into your wallets again support these um support these groups when they come and ask for funding if you have a little bit extra to support them because they're going to be giving back to you it's just a cycle it's a beautiful cycle and when they're struggling they need help is it going to come from the tax payers pockets or is it going to come from the donors pockets it's the same funding uh if you kind of really think about it so uh being okay with all of this looking at all of those groups heads and beds also considering who comes to dinner who comes to dinner spend the night to go to something specific up on that board who are the people is it the people that's going to these events do they already live here because i already live here i cannot i don't have to spend the night in the hotel just to go to something here so we have to be attractive enough to have people to come here and spend the night and you have to rely on those that fun that uh percentage to go to these to these groups to help them to keep giving us what we like just logic behind all of that i would say that if we choose to go uh whatever route that we go to are we um okay with doing that either way um i did have some other stuff to say actually say but um i actually kind of forgot about what i was really trying to say um but in but in any case uh let's go ahead and be as supportive as we possibly can pushing that money over to uh ambassadors and asking for the ambassadors um to be funded in some kind of way our downtown gets so much press there are people that i just saw a video and a young man was walking around downtown and he was letting the world know how great denton is how great downtown denton is and how um appreciative we are in this community having such a great downtown and one of the things that i noticed on that video as that man was literally walking downtown it was so clean because i could see it and i was looking for it that was not a speck of anything on the ground not a rapper or anything and he literally walked downtown and i said that's what the people are asking for well we don't have any home we don't hardly ever see any homeless people downtown well because we have the ambassador's program and the ambassador's program was designed to help the people that find their way downtown and and give them information to help them go somewhere else and it has been working now our only thing that we like to do in that regard for the ambassador specifically is to talk our downtown merchants into assisting us with continuing to give back to them what they want there is this whole notion i'm going to get on my high horse now there's this whole notion of always wanting to have something the way that it was and there's a rising cost associated with that and then not understanding that it has to be paid for in some kind of way you want a nice downtown but you don't want to pay the cost or you can't i'm seeing you're being selfish i'm just saying the reality is is the funding has to come from somewhere to be able to keep your downtown nice we're not hiring anybody to keep the downtown nice we're not hiring we're not it's not an in-house that's why we got the ambassadors so in any case sir let me finish yeah and i'm gonna wrap it up please do in any case i think that we should continue to give credence and significantly support the idea of the ambassador's program for downtown i'd like to see it stay there and i like for the downtown merchants to be mindful that it is we'd like to have some help with that thank you anyone else just one quick question slide 23 when i was looking at this slide only one thing just really stood out to me and that was the west park tour tours what explains that very big drop off what happened there so that fund balance has been building and we have one large reimbursement payment this year so then that fund balance will continue to build over the next couple of years until we get to the next dollar amount reimbursement stay on that same slide i had i had two questions so the street improvement fund what's the remaining fund balance if we spend the 23 or does this spend to zero uh no there is a fund balance in there i have to move on it's on a future slide it's okay matt said it's on a future slide and the second question when i was looking last night in the back up can you just explain to me why we have a slight dip in the legends district fund as i understand it isn't that that's for the fire agreement between us and them yes yeah both are estimates i believe so when they prepared the budget last year the 170 was likely the thought of what they would need for those expenditures and going into next year they will refine that cost the reason why i asked because i've given that construction given that dirt is moving now i would have thought that the cost would have gone up it didn't have much in the back of just to explain that i'm just wondering why it's going down we're talking about the fire agreements as they're in our ccn right right do they not need as much protection since stuff is not built built yet right it's it's we'll see an increase when houses go in start going in there has to be so many houses in the ground right before we can put so what's the 147 for now i don't know if that's do you have the answer i didn't hear we can man we can go in and come back if you want i need to know why on the legends municipal district mud it went from 169 to 50 to 147 well we'll follow up on a response i would say that the budgets are prepared and estimating what they believe they're going to need so that would have been last year when we're preparing the budget what we believe that they would need because it's still for the same services it says it's our creation of the new mud and then fire service and capital needs so going into next year this is what we are estimated they will need so we can follow up in a follow-up on what specifically changed from the 169 to the 147 any other questions representative this report mayor just a statement please i greatly support the ambassador's program and i'm concerned about cutting it back and reducing it to five days a week i'm afraid that the first after after a two-day off that first day back might be might be tough there's there's roughly 40 agencies on these on these two pages and and virtually every one of them touches the square one way or another the ambassadors not only pick up gum wrappers and and water bottles and remove graffiti and power washed but they also deal with uh with people experiencing homelessness and and i think that makes our downtown safer people who come to our community who don't know anybody in the community see somebody in a red polo shirt and they trust that person and i think that's very very important i i get that the taxpayers don't want to don't want to fund that i get it i get that the downtown merchants don't want to pay any more to get that but i think this is a benefit that all of us have and people that we don't even know who are coming here need that i i greatly support the ambassador thank you okay anyone else well this is a hot funds discussion so it'd be hot funds they they made a decision a recommendation better said to allocate the 291 and 131 is it being the 131 that's being evaluated to research to see if it applies 131 is just a contingency amount being held for future allocation the ambassador program is in there at 291 yeah and we just it's in there as an appropriation and we'll continue to work on does this meet eligibility to use hot funds so if you have a thought on the 298 this is a hot funds discussion okay they've allocated three hundred thousand dollars for that so so just a question if we did not fund the ambassador's program in theory could we fund everything else at the request i don't believe so at the about i mean it would leave three hundred thousand dollars that could be reallocated but it wouldn't satisfy everyone 100% and the goal was not to fund everyone 100% since we did a rubric scoring on how are they meeting that tour promotion tourism but surely we can get closer so we can do 75 80 percent of the entire request it would be eligible the community partnership could reallocate funding if they chose to do so i guess for me it's not necessarily whether or not we should fund it it's who should fund it who should pay for the thing that i have heard about the ambassador's program is that no one thinks that it is bad but people in other parts of the city are concerned that they don't necessarily want to pay for it since it doesn't have a direct benefit to them that's different than our road in a different part of the city because we can go drive to the roof but not everyone is directly benefits from the ambassador's program our perspective is that everyone can come downtown everyone should feel safe and everyone should take advantage of the clean streets and whatnot but what i hear in the community is that if i'm in if i'm in district you know pecan creek i might not always go downtown i don't know that i want my tax dollars to be funding a program which directly benefits downtown businesses i understand why the downtown businesses don't necessarily want to appropriate a portion of their tax dollars to it but they are the ones who do get the most benefit from so i guess it's a it's a catch-22 where i guess i'm not i guess i'm not giving direction i'm just saying that if we could get closer on funding some of these requests at a higher percentage or funding some of the ones that are unfunded i might prefer to do that and look for ambassador's program money elsewhere the other question i have is uh to council member holland's point five days a week um how did we come up with that was that was that just a program that they offered or did we request that and then they came up with the potential funding for that that makes sense no we asked for options uh because knowing that our recommendation was to discontinue the program we asked for different funding levels that could be considered so at the lowest level so they already have this team they've given us different options yes the community partnership evaluated and they selected 291 which is the lowest uh service level days of the week in the country but that doesn't mean i mean when they say five days a week and i know the busiest times are on the weekend yeah we get to jesus saturdays that doesn't mean we can't say well we want to only do you know wednesday thursday friday saturday kind of thing and monday or you just have a day in between those you can pick the schedule so that the day that the city is downtown is not as busy which is during the week and look at what events are if they can they can go around that not saying that's the best solution i'm just saying it isn't set that saturdays and sundays would be the only the cut days this is a this is a tier that they offered us how much flexibility exists in that what i'm asking is could we come back in theory and say hey we only look right into our incentive i mean i assume that they want our business everything is on the table right yeah i think what's important for this conversation is that contracting it's always a two-step process so right now we're talking about do we want to have the allocation the expenditure authority always and there's a second conversation of what we want the service to look like as we bring back the contract so they don't have to be married together today today we're talking about do you want to move forward exploring can this continue to be funded at this level from hotel occupancy tax plans okay represent district six i'll try to be fast i know we need to move along um uh what is the texas filmmakers and how are they drawing people here i saw this sizeable amount and i was unfamiliar with them it's been line film festival okay i'll do that all right second i would say that i too have well i have concerns that we were funding the county office of history and culture at 300 went from 300 000 to zero um that that just didn't seem fair i think some kind of step down would be more appropriate they are our partners they are in denton uh they do play a big role in the center of denton and i don't support going from 300 000 to zero uh with our partners there um and and what shock waves are going to be felt from that uh and then lastly as far as the ambassador program i am on board with uh the scaled down version um the square is the center of culture it's the center of community gatherings it is where our conventions are bus to uh when they come to embassy suites when people come in from out of town this is where they go so although the square is not everywhere across the city the square is the focus of the city and where it's our front porch it's our um gazebo it's our it's where it's the center of what is happening and it is um i think of the utmost importance and as far as the businesses choosing not to add into the ambassador program the feedback i've heard is it's just not financially possible it's not that they wouldn't do it it's that the square in in the areas around the square which it also benefits even if it's just the square uh being treated by the ambassador program um it has some of the highest rents which means the highest insurance which uh it has some of the highest costs so i don't think we can just assume that businesses are refusing because they want to make another dollar and don't want to participate in something that benefits them i think we should give some of them the benefit of the doubt like chestnut tree like you know some of these places that are uh have very thin margins and want to stay where they are but it is just not possible for them to pony up this and i don't believe that it just helps the square businesses uh at all i think it helps the entire community so i'm in favor of it and sorry i'm trying to be brief thank you mary i do want to echo that though that that was not their sentiment and i hope we didn't communicate that or come across as that it wasn't no we don't want a pit ever it was just not at this time i was holding my hot comments because i thought that it was on a different slide and just so just add to the ambassador program comments i mean i also see it as a benefit to the city as a whole remind me the downtown tours is just related to downtown property taxes and not sales tax correct right so that is our economic engine of the city it is a tourism center when somebody says i'm going to go to denton usually it's probably for a tourism reason it's usually somewhere in the downtown area something relating to that um so you know if the city or the downtown is a nice place to visit it's clean i've been to places cities where it was not clean and i really didn't wasn't excited to go back you know so it is good to get people to return for tourism to increase the sales tax revenue of downtown so i do see the benefit of it and i am and i also see the connection of hot funds to it because of the tourism component so i'm on board with trying out this new scale back option uh people with hot funds and just kind of see how we can maybe adjust it after that if it's working or not great anyone else one sentence representative for time i want to remind everybody that hot stands for hotel occupancy tax how many of these agencies are able to bring human beings into denton and spend the night at a hotel you're not coming to visit grandma and stay at her house you're coming to denton for xyz event and and you're staying in a hotel that's the that's the key here and if you're not every one of these are wonderful wonderful agencies and wonderful events i love every one of them but not all of them are bringing human beings to spend the night in a hotel that was one sentence anyone else great uh there is an error on here and i can't believe no one caught it uh so if you look on the first page especially event funding go down a few it says denton halloween 2026 there's a typo that would be halloween texas so disappointed that none of y'all caught that but it's okay and i got an iro next year next year when i'm not sitting here i'm gonna hold your accountable to get that right and then um um do you take a breath on that one mr no sir you know how it's great through uh then let's see uh let me put that there sorry so i'm curious about the total the total recommendation i i total sponsorship i get it on that one column but the recommendation is it explicitly said that this is how much we're going to give them is the let me ask it this way is the income amount known when they allocate the recommendation to the committee yes uh to the applicant no okay yeah i just i do yeah okay the if it's known in advance i i just have questions about that i wonder if it should be it should in time and it should be deduced or reduced by that much and then uh so the total so for example somebody's fully funded black film festival at 625 maybe it should be 625 as a total but if you're saying they go in knowing there's no in kind or there is in kind then then that answers uh my question and then um i would like a report on sales tax generation sorry can i clarify i may have answered that incorrectly so the uh special event team works with those events to come up with those estimates on what they're going to need for their application so it's not just a guess from the event organizers they've worked with police to say this is how many officers we're getting how many trash cans so what they're requesting is what they think they're going to need and then we come behind and say this is how much we can allocate i hope that yeah i just wanted to make sure that if someone's getting and i'll just keep it simple if someone's getting two dollars and in time donations that that is known before we advocate these other donations so if you're getting if you're getting five dollars total for what you've asked for and then you're also getting the benefit of another two dollars or a dollar whatever in in kind that it's seven total and we know that in advance versus we're going to give you this cash upfront amount of five dollars and then later it's tacked on to bump that number up unbeknownst to that committee no the committee does see it all at one time so we go through the sponsorships and then we prepare them where they can see it in an entirety perfect so yeah my request would be to see the sales tax generation by business in the current ambassador history because what i believe is and i don't know if while i'm talking someone can put up a map can you put up a google maps by chance on the square because what i believe is the the majority of the sales tax generation is not generated on the square problem and zero parking lots are on the square problem so you're saying so it's you're you're you have these competing interests you're saying we want to bring people downtown i don't even think when conventions come down here they park the bus on the square problem so you that you're and have we talked to the ambassadors about how they handle that if if someone calls for help on cedar street did they just say hey that's out of my zone you gotta call 3-1-1 that's really weird have we talked about how that machine works because right now it's so vast that you don't have that problem have we processed through what a day in the life is going to look like and what we're proposing are we just winning well i mean we're not winning it but we will have to work through those conversations on how we're going to handle that with a boundary chain yeah so i would think we would go through that before we suggest right like we i think those are some of the things we would have to have in our pocket right now to discuss before because we're discussing something that that it's not steeped in reality so anyway that i'd like to see the sales tax and then it creates a business class conflict because imagine this so who do we have here from dme no one okay i'll represent it to be true you tell me if i'm wrong what we had was when winter storm uri happened there were certain neighborhoods that stayed with power because of their location in the zone area and then when you had a retail market that they put that house on sale they were advertising hey my house is directly connected not going to be turned off is that rent true to you i know there were certain ones that did not turn off of their proximity to a fire station or hospital but yes and so that's the case so you have the same thing here you have hey i have a business on the square proper i'm going to charge you more rent because you have this resource that we're providing so you create a class system on the square and you create a market where a a potential property owner just says hey well i have this extra service that's provided for free and all right no cost to me so i'm going to charge you more rent and so i don't like pinning business against business um and to the question about more rent or the increased cost i'll tell you this nowhere in downtown do they have parking requirements correct so where a business has to build a parking lot they have to pay money they pay more than downtown businesses that's how we get cheech and chong downtown because they didn't have to pay for parking they didn't have how parking accounts so downtown benefits just as much as it costs some stuff so they're you know they're not having to pay for parking and all those things so they benefit and again no one's saying it's not a good program uh that's not the case just as it is we can buy for pay hot funds what they should be used for all mobile causes that's what we've heard like hey these are all great organizations have all great services but we got to figure out how to pay for and then this is interesting so you look at the square proper right if we're covering the square proper the new theater is coming online when is that new theater coming online i just started construction and they'd estimated a 12 18 months so next next year next year so imagine this and again this is just thinking through what we're proposing in actuality so the new theater that comes online would be would benefit from what's proposed in the downtown ambassador program one block the other way and just on the side of cedar street campus theater who's been here forever who served very well gets left out in the cold no we're not coming to your business but this brand new business that just happens to face this way you're in this business is a legacy business you're out and isn't our isn't it our express goal to our plan is to expand people to walk off the square like we want to get people industrial streets humming we need to get hickory the other way and hope the other way going to generate more foot traffic but we're not going to have a clean environment for them they just hey you got to walk through this trash and then you get to the square proper and it's it's great that then incentivizes what we're against we're forward spreading people out and then we're we're creating an environment where people coalesce around the square it just it conflicts with what we said we want to do and it conflicts with there's no parking cover um and then uh yes the other report i need to to wrap up is i need a report on arrests and that and uh and i guarantee you the vast majority will be off the square proper and so i'm not talking about encounters i'm talking about actual arrests that's a more severe issue and where did those happen so obviously to restate i'm not for giving them 291 thousand dollars because we don't have a plan we don't know how that's got that handoff is going to be i don't want to incentivize a class issue on the square i want to take that money and i want to re-advocate it to um the county and uh look at others and reevaluate the same criteria but for for sure the county and then um i i want to uh go back to the businesses and say hey we need to allocate or we'll take the rest of it and and put it to something else too mayor point of clarification the rest in the square area no no in the ambassador footprint in the current ambassador footprint yeah yeah yeah okay okay we have 30 minutes left so we will quickly move through the capital budget uh just quick fun this is catalyst fund it is proposed to have the one million dollar transfer in from the general fund the focus of this funding is those headquarter grants various economic development cash grants that are separate from the sales tax and property tax rebates sustainability proposed uh budget with a one million dollar allocation on that general fund revenue do you have a million dollars worth of projects identified as supported by the sustainability framework advisory committee and our streets improvement fund is the other special revenue fund we had called out in detail because it does receive that funding uh it is 2.5 million dollars from the general fund which is a smaller portion of their revenue source the tree fund was a result of a two minute pitch item the request during it was just to look at how are the actions that are being carried out with this budget contributing towards the tree canopy goal so we have included this slide in the budget presentation that talks about of the proposed budget how many trees will be planted and how these actions directly tie to increasing the future tree canopy i'm going to quickly move through the capital improvement budget you saw this at a july work session so we are talking about the 552 billion and planned new funding it is a mix between our general government projects our bond programs our utility funds and our enterprise funds including our utilities in the airport it is a mix of several funding sources we have revenue funded projects geo bonds and certificates of obligation various federal and state loan programs and impact fees make up our capital improvement program you've seen this chart multiple times but it is the 2023 bond program and showing what we have planned for our 2026 issuance which is on the rodel mingo roadway the oakland street drainage project the concrete four phases three and four and then a public art component which is tied to those vertical construction public safety projects the two fire stations and the animal shelter okay so discussion and next steps we received and we'll tally up that priority order on those additional considerations we're looking for any feedback on the tax rate we have one thing to follow up on for the mayor and then a few things on those special revenue funds one thing we want to quickly show you we do have the public feedback platform on the proposed budget that will launch early next week and it gives our residents an opportunity to weigh in on the budget discussion one thing i really want to highlight is that jacob who is an intern for us in the city he is here he built this from scratch he was able to whip this out in what eight hours i asked for can we just put an excel spreadsheet up there that people can type in and he coded an entire program in three hours so we will have this live he did a fantastic job residents can go in and adjust that spending they can increase the tax rate to show additional revenues so then they can submit their comments so we will track all of that and provide that information back to council on the public feedback on the budget process okay so we will be back quickly on the 19th to go over all of the general fund proposed rates and fees we'll go over the enterprise funds all the utilities and airport we will follow up on all of the questions that we need to follow up on today to provide those answers back we have the intent to set the tax rate and then on september 16th we have the budget and tax right here and one item i kind of skipped over is that in prior budget years there was a request for a line item budget so we will be providing that information also the individual line items that's the end of the presentation happy to answer any additional questions yeah before we go to do you want to talk about when you may have already touched on it and i missed it but uh do you want to talk about the not to exceed rate we got to go through that machination for those that hadn't or maybe a refresher right because we have a vote on it's going to be no more than this but that's not what it is so can you talk about that phasing um i don't know if i'm the best person maybe cassie so where we we have to vote on the not to exceed right the maximum but that's not the vote that's to come back and just because if people have questions and just to make sure everyone's on the same page is what the process is so um at the next council meeting on the 19th we will bring what we call the max tax rate um it you are simply stating that this is the maximum the council will adopt we will not we were not allowed by law to go over that tax rate once it's adopted or voted on um and so what we typically do is we allow just some cushion just in case uh as we're calculating those rates um some things change going through the calculation so it's the the max tax rate allowable by law you'll adopt you'll vote on the ordinance on the 19th and then during the budget process you will actually adopt the final tax rate which will be less than the max tax rate voted on great thank you appreciate that clarification okay questions for their first time may have more questions depending on what everyone else says slide 29 just one little clarification question under expenditures reconstruction and neighborhood street reconstruction are separate what's the difference between those two that reconstruction is things that are um part of our oci the streets um maintenance operations the neighborhoods reconstructions are those reconstructions that are tied to the 2019 bond program specifically so they were planned as part of that that bond program the other ones are things that we've identified through our street maintenance and operations program and explain two different plots of money basically the oci overall condition assessment or index so that's how we rate our streets council adopted or gave us direction um to try to meet a 70 oci so it goes from a scale from zero to 100 our target is 70 the 2019 bond program really focused on the streets that were less than 40 oci um and and we approach so we're not just trying to do the streets we're trying to look at the sidewalks um the water and wastewater lines that needed to be replaced in those areas so we're trying to come in to the neighborhood one time get everything done and then and then be done so the difference here is really just the source of the money basically yes it's it's this funding is um it's passing through the street improvement fund um it's get it gets transferred to the capital uh to a capital project but it's really additional revenue funding that we are using to supplement the 2019 bond program so we're not issuing gos to complete that because we have a cap that was voted on by the the voters um and so this is just additional revenue funding that we're using to supplement to complete those projects that makes sense thank you president for district two thank you um so just just for some clarity on page uh 28 um the uh the sustainability fund uh a million is encumbered it's it's in it's in process a million they have a million dollars of identified projects okay and and we have or have not encumbered them for purchase or they're currently planned or do we know they're planned and uh there are there is some encumbered says but the entire million is not okay and then uh on 29 the next one um i i'm gonna praise and then ask an impact in the next day um i think the complete streets approach that we're doing trying to get everything in these segments and top to bottom it's great there's a learning curve for our community as they understand what it means you know to put a temporary patch back down while we go through these layers and and i i i'm very sympathetic to Seth and others that are having to go through that we do have some standout places in our community where there's been some pronounced delays and and um we also had some asphalt issues and because this is the budgeting time i don't know what else to ask it but when do those when do the are we estimating the costs to the city for some of these you know one-year projects that became three-year projects and what's that what that's costing us you know um i can think of a couple of idiots who are pretty famous and then um do we have uh i i think the answer you from a few months ago that we when we go back and review streets um and they and they do the one-year 18-month evaluation that they're most of those costs are on the vendor but there is a still a i can see that we don't pay any additional asphalt you know costs or something like that so that project on paper won't look like it costs anymore if it takes 18 months to go back and redo asphalt because it immediately cracked or something like that but do we have any estimates on the the our larger budget or what those delays cost and and that's why i'm putting these two questions together what do delays cost us and do we have any estimates on what those kinds of delays cost us and i realize that's a it's a complex question so it may need to come back and so i'm not asking you unless you just know the answer what that is right at the moment but if we could get back with these you know what a six-month delay what a year delay whatever what these things cost us in terms of economic impact uh and why we we want to be johnny on the spot and getting these these projects done under their etas that they originally uh set to and and uh still on this like um this the all these costs are for these high i of these low oci streets but we have we tend to bundle our side paths in with our street projects and our side path ocis are different than our street ocis so i would i would love some clarity on how we propose fixing our sidewalks at their oci levels because they may not match our streets and sometimes we have good streets and bad sidewalks and vice versa and and so um again that's not that's a real complex question so i don't expect an answer now uh final question is on the tree um page 30 slide 30 and we we're planning about 3200 trees a year uh is is what i'm i'm reading but i'm a little confused let me get to that slide sorry um is that under we're that that's under our operations expenses our our interfund transfers where where is the actual tree costs going into um in in terms of the expenditure line items and um some of that i know will be salaried for the staff to to plant the trees but i'm trying to parse sort of how we are parsing the cost of these 3200 trees and how they're lining up with our fund categories does that make sense it does we'll follow up with the exact breakdown um but the majority of the funding in there both in operations and transfers are the actual planting of the trees um you anticipated my question is are we mostly spending our money getting trees because that's the goal of the tree fund and the canopy goal that uh former council melzer put this up for and that we all agreed to was are we getting more trees if we're spending a lot on ancillary things and they don't want to put salary into that because that's not fair to the staff but if we're are we making sure that we're getting the maximum number of trees put into the ground kind of argument yes we'll follow up there's two components we have the keep in beautiful so the tree giveaway that's one component and then the trees that we're actually planting but it is minimal personnel services out of this like maybe a thousand dollars for seasonal help for kdb this is all tree planting yeah i know i that's that's great so i i know there are a lot of complex answers but i i got that one i'll take that one as the answer but if you if you want to follow up with more complex answer uh and i think i'm good thank you mr anyone else summary feedback or questions seeing none okay thank you thank you thank you yes um this has been a tough year for us um and for staff because of the quick outcome of your financial situation and i just i do want to take the time to recognize christine who led this after he knew that uh our chief financial officer was leaving and then we have a plethora of our department heads who formed a group to go through the reductions say which ones were more important versus others and it's our employees were involved in this it meant everyone having to give up um matt seth the team in budget this was uh truly a tough year for us i mean when you have money to move around it's not so difficult but i want to thank them because this is truly a good budget it's it's not an easy budget it's um it was a tough one and it's reflective of the hard work so just wanted to thank everybody and the committee that did the partnership allocations and all the other things that come along with it um it just takes a you know takes a village to do it and thank everybody for doing it thanks to the directors and the staff who worked so hard on it and our directors are going to leave us now because they don't they got they want to take the rest of their saturday and spend it with their family so appreciate all y'all's work you've done a yeoman's job and um we'll get through it next year hopefully we'll be a lot better very good thank you very much appreciate y'all everybody okay and uh so the next item is so we're back and the next item is item b id 25 1201 the city board hold discussion give staff direction regarding municipal finances bills municipal finance bills on the 89th legislature first call special session and uh thanks sir morning i'm logan spence with hascarborough uh good to be back and uh and uh good to see you mr mayor mayor pro tem good to meet you first time council members good to see you again um i am uh in town to give you a special session update uh and to talk about in particular the property tax bills that uh are are not moving or not moving uh in uh in austin right now so high level about the special session we're in it started july 21 uh it's going to end on the august 19 which is 10 days from now uh they're uh the democrats have left the state in order to break quorum so the house hasn't been able to conduct business for the last several days so uh as a well they'll be gaveling in in five minutes uh so we'll see if that holds all expectations are it will hold and the house will continue not to have enough right now they only need five so there's a handful of democrats that have stayed but they need a total of 12 democrats and right now they're down to just missing five so uh there's some people optimistic about having a quorum and conducting business in the house starting monday but recent events uh make that sound less likely as pressure mounts uh litigation begins punishments penalties get put in place i think it'll be become more entrenched of the situation the house has filed 293 bills and 36 constitutional amendments the senate has filed 73 bills and three constitutional amendments and the a lot of the biggest issues on the agenda right now relate to disaster preparedness as a result of the flooding that occurred in the hill country around july 4th congressional redistricting along with several other issues including regulation of hemp derived products so the senate has passed many of these bills and moved them over to the house the house has been able to receive them but hasn't taken any action on any of them the senate will take up redistricting on tuesday likely several of the flooding bills on wednesday so the senate continues to chip away at the special items that have been put on the agenda by the governor and the house has not been able to move forward so that's a high level situation i wanted to focus a lot of our time on sb9 by senator bettencourt this was voted out of the senate just this last week right now it it it changes the voter approval tax rate from 3.5 percent as y'all were discussing earlier today moves it down to 2.5 percent initially it exempted cities under 30 000 and then the committee substitute they wrote they increased that to 75 000 so cities under 75 i sent christy a list of the cities that that affected uh and um it's about i forget maybe 40 maybe 50 or so cities not that many but i'm not sure which one was the crucial city in there to uh merit that amendment but um it passed out of committee four to one senator molly cook democrat out of houston was the no vote the senate passed it on a vote of 18 to 3 and uh senator chewy hinojosa senator zafferini and the lone republican senator perry uh was the no vote on the bill so it'll go over to the house uh but importantly hb9 which is the filed companion to sb9 uh has not been referred so that's an interesting signal out of the house the house of course has always been a little uh less uh motivated uh to pass bills like this and uh that seems to be the signal at this time but uh now the senate bills come over we'll see what they do uh if this you know a decrease from 3.5 to two and a half percent i'm sorry 2.5 percent uh passes uh that's going to affect your general fund uh by a reduction of almost eight hundred thousand dollars as you know 51 of your general fund goes to police and fire and that revenue loss could mean as much as five city civil service positions you've got a great story to tell to these legislators who are pushing this bill because you've adopted a rate at least one cent lower than the voter approval rate every year for the past five years and we've communicated that with your delegation and legislative members uh on this uh on this bill but um as you as you can see didn't have much effect and the senate's rolling on uh and we'll move our focus to the house side depending on what happens if they get a quorum if they start doing business if they refer the legislation to the committee then that's going to handle this we'll continue to ratchet down and increase our uh our efforts with that um there's other legislative proposals that uh have been filed on property taxes and this one is a limit on annual expenditures for cities and counties uh basically try to put a cap uh population and inflation on how much your expenditures can grow and you can exceed that by voter approval on your former election day uh or there's some wiggle room given uh for disasters and if the disaster declaration is is given so certain revenues uh like bond revenues and gifts are excluded but importantly neither one of the house bills on this have been referred to a committee either so we'll see what that changes or not so put some interesting information together on this issue about denting uh in this fast growing area limits would apply to a lot of sources of revenue including enterprise systems uh special purpose districts and as you know enterprise system revenue water wastewater drainers electric uh these things are uh they're not uh driven by population or inflation but more by market forces that's a that's a message we're trying to deliver to legislators as well so as we move forward uh we're with christy and i are coordinating constantly and uh we discuss options all the time what do we how do we respond what do we do um and right now we've been registering uh our position on uh sb9 we registered opposed to the bill and communicated the data behind our opposition of that bill to your delegation members senator parker and senator hagenbu but as we move forward the options to ratchet up our opposition include many things like sending a letter from the city council requesting meetings phone calls with legislators delegation members having some of you come to town and participate in the hearing to speak to the issue uh we should also consider encouraging allied organizations fire police tml tack to continue to work the delegation members and or to start and then finally uh reach out to our local media to explain what's going on what the concerns are give you a chance to talk about the positive decisions you've made in the past about taxes property taxes so i was going to discuss what happened during the regular legislative session a little bit as you know several bills did pass on property taxes the legislature increased the personal business personal property tax exemption from 2500 to 125 000 they increased the homestead exemption from 100 000 to 140 000 and then finally they they raised the value for 65 year old exemption to 200 000 but the governor and lieutenant governor and the speaker are all intent on continuing to find ways to lower property taxes it's always a major issue on voters minds so they're going to be continuing to look for those ideas so one of those that was kicked around last session was limiting debt and what a city can issue debt for it failed to pass out of the committee but it would have prohibited a city from authorizing debt if it would exceed 20 percent of the average amount of property tax collection this is a significant impact on the city didn't as your tax collection 20 percent of your tax collection is 18.2 million and as you can see your your total annual debt is estimated around 50 million so this would be a significant problem it didn't move out of committee so that's good news but a little more detail is it codified types of projects that a city can issue debt for it went on to especially prohibit the use of certificates of obligation for certain projects as you can read some of that list and then required an election to authorize general obligation bonds or approve an increase in the tax rate on the november election so that that's kind of the broad picture of what's going on and what we're facing and property tax issues happy to take questions or great thank you questions for that representative for district 62 so um i mean i i get some of the you know looking at both sides of their rationale of wanting to help the citizens of the state of texas afford things however uh as a city council person you wonder how are we going to pay for things that are necessary um what is the rationale behind these would you say i mean i just want to understand so that when i speak to someone i can articulate why sure uh the legislature spent a ton of money i wish i had the figure on lowering school property taxes mno they're using the state's general fund to buy down school property taxes so as they keep ratcheting down that amount the amount of uh of the property tax burden from cities and counties uh becomes larger because they're buying down school property taxes which is the largest amount largest proportion of property taxes so their argument is we're doing so much to lower property taxes and the cities and counties uh portion of that property tax burden is growing so we gotta put more restrictions on how much they can levy and um and on a larger you know perspective property taxes is always you know number two number three issue on voters minds so they want to show responsiveness proactivity on property taxes and they're going to continue looking at revenue caps debt caps appraisal caps what all these things and um and seeing what sticks i think that's i think that's why this is going on hopefully we can find some magic to make money to pay for all of you thank you um no jill i really appreciate you asking that question i have very similar questions you have to know what your what your what the logic is so that you can insert in that in that process um it is costly for us to hold elections um for service increases that are sort of commensurate with existing community will and population growth so it feels in some way having an election which somebody correct me i think it's like 50 60 grand an election to have an election is that about right 90 90 to 100 okay so it you know it's it's on order of 100 000 to host an election and if i mean we do some of those elections every every time but but you know it's it's problematic to have one for for co's all the time for regular ordinary services and so i i wonder if we brought if if that has been brought up to the legislatures do they have any response to that that we're essentially throwing additional money after the same activity making that same activity even more costly absolutely you know that that these uh the cost the local government cost and that financial burden is required to be included in the bill analysis that's that's done on each one of these bills and it's part of what they consider when they take these votes so um they understand that that's why most of the time these these elections are are required to be on a uniform election date the concept being these elections are happening already so just throw this in there but they do consider the local cost and um i guess that's uh that hasn't been compelling enough to to get them not to do these things and and i guess the other question is is the one that you i want to follow up from again from what um council jester was asking and if if the target is school districts and you know this community supports their school districts to the nth degree so i don't don't take anything but if if that is the target then then are we just painting with a broad brush and we're just taking all property taxes writ large we're not the legislature's not interested in parsing city county and and other other government bodies from from that one area they're not interested in in providing solutions for that one area and not sledgehammering the other areas yeah like i said den has a great story to tell you have kept property taxes low and you haven't increased them as much at all over the last five years at least and we're giving that story but they're also hearing stories from other parts of the state that don't have that kind of a record and are raising their tax rates while values are increasing so uh they you know like i said if you put a statewide poll out to voters particularly republican voters that the statewide leaders are looking at in particular property taxes is always at the top you know and so they're trying to be responsible i appreciate that thank you that's all my questions mr any other questions i just i'll say this i do as gently as possible right your assumption on hey the police are affected if we have a 800 000 shortfall that could be anything right i understand why we shift towards police because that's a compelling message but i i'll listen to the rest of the comments but i'll tell you i don't i don't if you think the city of denton is a good model to stand on for fiscal responsibility over the last four years i wonder if you have all the background information and because we are a right target we align most with the city that they would like to take over austin right so i don't know that we help those and i was going to pull up the the chart but staff can pull it up we don't mckinney grapevine lewisville lewisville right next to us is their 41 42 cents they're like geographically right next to us the difference is they don't have the controversial things that we do they don't have the waste that we do it just so i don't know that we're i don't know that i align with we're a good i think what we would do is enter that and mess it up for other people candidly so i'll circle back but i just wonder if you've seen all the data because i don't want you to walk into a buzzsaw no no i appreciate that i uh i work for the city and i'm here to to gather the the messaging and the data and take it you know charge the hill with it and your defense so if we need to if we need to change that messaging i'm happy to i'll do that yeah no i just i don't know that you'll find another i mean and i bang this drum a lot but i think it's it's one worth banging four billion dollars in legal fees we're one of what five that got sued by the attorney general so the minute we go down there and say oh be like them you know it's just we're right for issues and that's just the the legal issues not to say the other spending and so when people like oh well what about this what about that so uh the staff has done an amazing job certainly uh given those encumbrances to to maintain that line but yeah so i i'll have other comments with those i want to just say i i loved it as much the next person but i am i absolutely frustrated with our spending and we didn't get here in this budget issue on accident it was decided decisions over the last few years to put us here we've had plenty of money the income is great it's the spending that's out of control and i think there is some value in tightening that up to force harder discussions so that you don't have this free for all like hey i have a bunch of money i can do a bunch of things i can afford to because we're we're one decision short from being a half million that's another 300 000 into lawsuit money illegal fees right and so it's it's i don't i i love the city love staff what they're doing decisions we've had some bad ones and as a consultant said you have every right to make bad decisions you know and so then i i believe we're not a good role model for this conversation right that's my concern but i'll listen to the comments i'll have other thoughts anyone else will this cause will this cause another special session i believe so i believe the quorum break is going to stick uh they just they just tried to gavel in at 11 and they didn't have enough again so they're going to come back at one on monday the senate will come back on monday as well and continue working uh but yeah i think i think this is possible they could come back and everything's fine but i don't think as this continues that they'll be coming back now that likely means there will be another special session um and i've heard that they're you know the play is to just kind of slow this redistricting down uh so the calendar starts getting problematic for implementation for the upcoming election which we've delayed elections in the past before and moved them back to may for the primary so that's that wouldn't be the first time but um i think their second special is very likely and coming back to do redistricting plus many of these other items the governor did 18 items uh on the special this time so i think you're you're right that you are going to see and is the meter running right now i mean we're we're wasting money spinning our wheels in the hopes that the illinois democrats come come back to texas uh i think i i think i remember reading somewhere it costs a million dollars a day for the legislature to meet wow so that number is probably grown but uh that's that is the situation for at least 30 days 10 more representative mr six um i'm curious i only know what i've also read in the news as far as statements that the form breaking members could be expelled in their seats considered vacant is there a general wisdom or what do you hear in this scope but as far as is that legal is that a real possibility or is that just a statement um the attorney general uh has given an opinion in the past that that uh there is a possibility of vacating those positions of legislators who have abandoned their their jobs and so the attorney general and the governor have both filed petitions with the spring court texas spring court to make that move forward but will the governor be able to then appoint someone to fill that spot would there be special elections or are they not that vacancy is not considered in the calculation of form i believe um there could be a possibility of the governor putting someone in place temporarily until the special election is called he has the authority to decide one thank you it's kind of hard sometimes to parse what you're hearing from different people in the news so i appreciate your time thanks man anyone else which um i'm gonna talk about 19 in a minute but just generally which delegation which members of our delegation have you met with and kind of about what specifications um you know like i said senator parker and senator hagenbu are your senators for the city of denton and we've shared this information about at least symbol 19 as well as other matters over the course of the special about the house members house members we have been talking to and sharing the data as well there just hasn't been any hearings or bills being referred or moving so the focus has been on where the action is this time so you've met with you've met with all the house members in person i have not met with all the house members in person because they don't have a quorum they're not there on a daily basis but i have been communicating with their staff did you meet with them all in person during the regular sir so with respect to 19 and staff y'all can help me out with the exception of stadiums arenas convention centers and the civic center because we have we have a sixth center already we do everything else with you with co's right generally speaking the geos for a lot of our construction capsule projects and then what happened using co's for vehicle replacement tech technology and other things so at a high level from from logan's slide with 19 what things would be using co's for that he doesn't have listed so technology vehicles study well like an animal shelter the libraries parks stadiums those kinds of things would be general obligation bonds but and the same thing for airports and others we've used some co's though for vehicles and technology bottom line is it would limit us if you can't use it co's we've used that for like technology vehicle replacement things like that that's a lot for those kinds of community projects and use the general obligation bonds i assume this would come this is going to come back more than likely um like i said it didn't it didn't come out of the house committee last time there's a house bill so that's a good sign but it will likely come back and we'll have to do the do the work what is our strategy for defeating if it is filed we go to our members go to the leadership and say this is going to hurt us the 18 million cap versus the 50 million uh and to export a debt here in the city didn't we lay out these data points and and ask them to help is that it um there's all the all the variable advocacy tactics that i listed previously that as you decide as a council to do we will do them um if and christy help me if i'm incorrect on this this is this came from tepper's original bill right correct i don't i couldn't answer if it came from tepper's which came first but tepper did have hb 1453 from the regular session that was limiting co's and there were several iterations of it that changed what projects were included and what worked he's and he told us this was originally about the city's love it yeah his home county what's the population alone um i i'm not certain 150 plus it's 600 000 thank you 600 000 i believe so around that i think to your point council member maybe on what our what our strategies is our strategies would be um if and when hb 19 or something similar comes back um one of the things that we have addressed as a council uh that you guys have given direction on is we understand that maybe there are issues um with certificates of obligation being issued um in perpetuity and um we are trying to right size our budget at this time and issuing less co's and being better taxpayer stewards so i think that would be a part of our messaging is explaining yes we understand you know we have been potentially a problem child for this in the past we recognize that but we are currently trying to right size and be good stewards of our taxpayer dollars and showing the data for that and our current budget and our projections for the future would be a part of our strategy as well i guess my last question to you what can we do to help you meet with our delegation in person uh i think those in-person conversations are crucial yes staff is important letters are important but until you or we sit down across the table from our legislature and really explain what's happening i don't think we can effectively tell the city of getting story about where we were where we are and where we're going i know from from my time a lot of letters they usually don't get read by the reps usually read by the senate that's all they have staff yes i understand the sentiments we communicated but those direct in-person conversations face to face matter more than anything any ink on paper absolutely and we we did a lot of that this last session i think you participated in all of those and so as these bills get filed start to be considered you know hearings happen we will amp up our our engagement certainly to include visits with you and even without you directly with the legislators isn't that too late um waiting until the bills get filed to amp up i mean what could these conversations be happening now particularly while certainly during quorum break are our entire county delegations republicans they're all still there couldn't some of these conversations be happening right now while no legislation is moving just in advance of legislation being filed certainly could uh use this time during the interim leading up to the next regular uh to discuss some of these property tax issues and get ahead of it so i agree we can do that all right anyone else can you go to your activity no advocacy tactics page sir and so listen those are options before if there's any i'll just say this i'm not for any of those other than what you're normally doing because i think it it was interesting when i reflect back on the the fracking ban we had here one of the people that were supportive of the fracking ban came to the council and said hey we're asking you to pull it back because this is not the jurisdiction we want that decided that you know they said hey we'll fight this fight on other fronts but not here and i think that that parallels this any message you send around even what staff suggested and i think that's right and proper to say hey we we are paying down debt we are focused on not co funding things we're moving in that direction but the timing of it to me is not it doesn't put you in a strong negotiation standpoint because then they they will see that as oh yeah you're you're doing that under the threat of us lowering this cap ergo we should lower this percentage to continue you or force you to think that way if the message doesn't say hey we're we're doing this independent of you which is i believe to be the truth it'll be that you know these things are said uh and done and now it's being done because we don't have any money if we had extra money we'd be in the same boat my guess right uh but because we don't have any money it's forcing that action and because the future prospect forces that action so i just don't think the time is good to do any of those things i think your normal advocacy is great i think y'all's relationships and that sort of thing are great i think the city staff focusing on doing those things is great but i just think we're at a disadvantage when you have other cities that are similarly situated geographically etc etc that that are in a much better financial position than we are and i think that's for a reason um i think there's there's value in um again i'll use louisville as an example i think there's value in louisville having uh geographic requirements for whether where their single member representatives live they have geographic requirements but they every election is at large so you have to live in this area but every citizen's heard so i think there's just if we had something like that some story to tell like that i just don't think we have what we need to be successful in this argument uh so my my direction would be that we stay the course and you do what you you and your team do what y'all have been doing uh but that's that's the extent of it just my my thoughts any um anyone else on suggestions representing district two mr mayor are you wanting direction for the rest of us on this issue well it's on the slide just we're doing no no yeah no that's what they he stated that at the beginning and no one i mean again i i try to i'm not picking i just try to follow the workflow no no i just yes yes so he stated in the beginning here's the things i noticed no one talked about it so i'm circling back and making because what i could have just closed us out and left and moved to the next thing uh but i didn't i didn't i could i could see christy's brain being like hey they didn't give us direction or they didn't speak to these things or wasn't spotlighted even though they did a good job so i'm trying to circle back and say hey everyone that spoke didn't give direction on where they follow these things pull the slide back up and let's focus and let the chips fall away mate completely fair thank you for for clarifying that if you if you don't want to say have the floor um i i to the extent that i can participate in any of those bullets um please let me know i'm i'm ready willing and able to to participate in whatever works best so i'll just leave it like that is this now i heard you say keep doing what you're doing this is the instead of what you're doing correct uh no we're not doing all of these things which ones are you doing second understanding where we are there there wasn't a signed letter from the council uh we do meet with uh legislators and their staff so that is happening uh you know if there is a hearing in the house you'll have the option to decide if you want to come and testify uh do you want to encourage allied organizations to get more engaged or continue to be engaged you know that that's your call and of course you know the media uh that's that's gonna need to be a very deliberate decision as well for this body so um you know i i'm happy to work with the city of denton we have enjoyed the relationship and uh and i hope it continues uh but i do what you what the council wants me to do and christy helps me filter that of course but you know we can launch you know all release the hounds and do all of these things but it's got to be a direction i get from from christy and the council of course i'll just add these advocacy tactics are focused more on the front-facing um logan and i are constantly working on the back end of things having conversations with legislators their staff so our advocacy never stops this is more advocacy for council to consider and we don't need direction from council these are just the options available should you wish to provide direction okay um are we posted for direction yes yes okay yeah so of the five things up there we're currently only doing number two we are meeting with staff and legislators yes sir um and you know we attend the committee committee hearings as well we register uh and we registered against sb9 uh and when it had a hearing in the senate so okay so um my direction will be yes let's do all those things i hear you saying that this is front end and you're having those conversations on the back end but when i just asked has he met with our legislators individually i didn't get a specific answer when i suggested this is the time to be having those in-person conversations he agreed so i'm not sure if that's happening and that is a major concern to me so my additional direction would be in the interim before those things are filed please have these conversations in an ongoing in-person manner so that we won't have to wait until this file so that our delegation knows us like the back of their hand on the front side because we then need our delegation to go talk to the other members in the house and the senate about what we're doing the best way we can get them to do that is to constantly educate them about where we are where where we were where we're on where we're going so it's those conversations that i wish were happening even out of session between sessions special sessions during quorum break so that when we get in the session it's just a simple reminder hey remember that conversation we've had two other times see what i'm saying yes sir presented from district one thank you mayor for bringing us back around to these advocacy tactics um i'm trying to appreciate that um i'm for doing all of them uh if it's gonna make any kind of difference you know in the direction for us um then why not so uh getting that letter ready and i'm ready to send it and going directly to our members you know we're ready to do that as well to do that i am um you know when i think about didn't end our uh public awareness we just have so many more so many newcomers newcomers into our city um you know people that are coming from around the country moving here they're not really into what's happening you know in the city so uh we have to depend on our local media uh all that social media stuff to help drive this public awareness we have a great communications team here in our city um and i like for us to get that data out there to those folks the ones that are are the eagle-eyed people that we depend on to help us um make decisions and they're there we appreciate them um to help us push this out there so everybody can be aware i'm just not um really understanding how people cannot know you know especially people that are representing us that they just they cannot know that we're going to be struggling here we're sending a broad message to our community and we're going to be struggling just look at this conversation about special you know special funding for special things that was that's a hard conversation um so driving public awareness i like to make that a priority uh of course along with everything else but i think that that for me this is just the educational piece uh for this so thank you very much yes ma'am anyone else representative from district six for mayor patel um i'll just say that i know that uh bills passing or not passing is not always straightforward why they pass or why they don't pass it's not always two plus two equals four so my direction would be that you use your expertise uh and experience in the field uh and i would be in favor of what you believe would have the right effect um sometimes it's not always a sledgehammer sometimes it's behind the scenes is really the only way to sway things so uh that would be my direction is that um of the tactics any or none that you think is in the best interest of our city um as opposed to um not leaving this in the right direction of making us someone that they want to avoid so thank you representative from district four two questions please first of all do you think that letters get much attention um i think they can uh you got to get it to the right person and it's got to be uh i would say pithy uh data is important facts are important uh so if it's if it's written well to the extent that it's informative and is delivered to the right person at the right time i think it can't be okay uh i have i personally have not been impressed with our delegation sending representatives to talk with us i've not been impressed with that interchange uh if if we could if we could have a eyeball eyeball discussion with members of our of our delegation i think that would be one thing otherwise i think i think that's just it's an exercise in futility i don't see the benefits sure you know we're in a special session the governor has said do something on property taxes the lieutenant governor has said this is the bill uh it's come out of the senate 18 to 3 with with one republican against it uh and that kind of a you know situation that we're in uh it's hard to have an impact on on a bill given that amount of political weight uh so i think i understand it just seems to lose something in translation between here and and getting to the the ear of of that of that elected official sure and you know as elected uh people yourselves you understand you know you're talking to voters every day just like state reps and senators and so are they hearing my property taxes are too high probably uh and they they need to do something as well so i i think uh that's their perspective along with having the governor telling them they better get something done so so my direction would be if we could have them eye to eye busy with our with our representatives otherwise i don't i don't i'm not excited about anything mayor patel i want to agree with the mayor in terms of the arguments that we're making on some of these you know showing that we're already doing it if i'm one of these representatives and i want to show them doing something about taxes because i know i know they're hearing that right we're all we're all feeling that to some degree um and so for them to show that they're being responsive right so this is why they're doing it so if they hear from a city oh we're already doing that they might be like okay well great so this won't hurt you right so you know that would be my concern about using that argument why that one might not be as effective um i do agree with councilmember mcgee and councilmember holland that face-to-face i would expect is the most effective um however i also take councilmember jester's suggestion that whatever you know you might assess is the most effective i'd be on board with my personal experiences face-to-face but if you think there's something more effective i can totally get on board with that um i i think for the arguments of someone oh and i do also back up councilmember mcgee's argument that getting ahead of these things can be more effective i i know somebody comes to me too late even on our council items i don't have as much time to process really process it so getting ahead of it can be really helpful um but in terms of arguments i i think demonstrating how it would hurt our local residents some of these in terms of our ability to maintain existing infrastructure maintain existing services that are critical to running the city you know what would that look like uh if we lost that for for existing groups because i believe most of our budget you know a huge chunk of it's dead and most of that is replacing existing infrastructure and then a huge chunk of our our city budget is things like personnel and those things are critical to keeping the city running so i think if we can give concrete examples of how some of these would impact our ability to continue to provide good infrastructure and services i think that might be more effective than we're already doing it you know or we're already working on leaving and i totally agree we should be using the book spending funds as effectively as possible and be as cost effective as possible and that should always be a goal for us in the city so i absolutely am on board okay anything else all right thank you very much we sure appreciate you thank y'all yeah good evening uh so food is here so we'll take a another let's take a 10 minute break to grab that that'll put us that let's say round up and 11 55 we're back in seats and we'll take on uh this dynamic uh discussion regarding code of ordinances chapter 2 article 9 no 11 right one after an accident yeah yeah we're all excited yeah can't work all right back at 11 55 um the ethics ordinance includes three mandates and nine prohibitions that cover different actions or behaviors that city officials may take and i'll briefly cover them over the next couple of slides in more detail uh beginning with the mandates the city's ethics ordinance requires that city officials disclose certain business relationships if they are relevant to a pending matter and if requires that city officials disclose certain business relationships if they are relevant to a pending matter uh specifically if a business entity with a pending matter is owned by a city official's partner the city official must disclose this relationship to the city secretary and the city auditor at least one business day before the meeting where the pending matter will be deliberated all disclosures will be provided to the relevant body before the deliberations occur and this just um so this disclosure requirement is a yellow light in the ethics code as even though city officials are allowed to deliberate on these matters um uh it calls out that there may be a risk that this type of business interests may receive unfair treatment from a related city official in addition it requires that the city officials comply with any financial disclosures required by texas state law and that city officials report any person that they know has violated the city's ethics ordinance these mandates are red lights and are and not reporting a known violation is itself considered to be a violation of the ordinance uh so any questions on the mandates before we move on i know this one is kind of confusing but i tried to illustrate it with my picture sure any questions all right so for prohibitions beginning with conflicts of interest uh just to start off this conversation it's important to note that conflicts of interest are a natural part of being a member of a committee ordinance does not prohibit a certain a city official from having conflicts of interest but instead requires that city officials be transparent when a conflict of interest arises and take steps to ensure that your conflict of interest does not inappropriately influence the business of the city city's ethics ordinance was recently amended to define a conflict of interest as a situation in which personal and or financial considerations actually have influenced or compromised or reasonably certain to influence or compromise the judgment or actions of a city official when acting in their official capacity conflicts of interest arise when city officials in their official capacity act or fail to act in ways that they know or should know are likely to impact the personal or financial interests the following uh in a way that is not shared with a potential satellite on the city's pipeline so there are three kind of key pieces to this prohibition the first is when a conflict of interest arises second is who creates a conflict of interest and the third is what creates a conflict of interest so my walk through each of those so first the ethics ordinance outlines that a conflict of interest arises when a city official is acting in their official capacity um it defines this kind of as when you are deliberating which has a specific definition in the ordinance and that that definition includes one discussions of the dais two voting as a member of the board or commission that you're on three presentations uh as a member of the audience before any city border commission or four conversing or corresponding with other city officials or staff city officials exist to deliberate so this is a green light right you're just deliberating that's what you exist however you should always be aware that deliberations are when conflict of interest arise so if you're taking one of these actions you should determine it with what elements of a conflict of interests are if they're met before you proceed so second the ethics ordinance outlines that a conflict of interest arises when a city official deliberates an action or inaction that impacts certain organizations people or property specifically conflict of interest may arise if the action involves a business entity that you own at least five percent voting shares or stocking or at least six hundred dollars of their market value of or that you receive at least six hundred dollars can come from or that you serve as a director officer or other policymaker for unless you're appointed by the city council or that you solicited received or accepted an offer of employment or business opportunity from in the past 12 months so business entity that you are involved with in some capacity there's several different options or it could be a person that you have solicited received or accepted an offer of employment or business opportunity from in the past 12 months it could also involve real property that you own at least six hundred dollars of the fair market value of or a non-profit corporation or unincorporated association that you serve on a border commission for unless you are appointed by the city council further if your relative has one of these interests you are also considered to have this interest and that extends to the third degree of consequence or affinity i'm not going to go over that but it's outlined in the code and ask me if you have questions so if you know that you'll be deliberating an action or inaction that impacts one of these interests this is a yellow light um and and i would recommend that you request an advisory opinion from the board of ethics before proceeding on that issue with deliberating that issue third uh the ethics ordinance states that a conflict of interest only arises if you are deliberating an action or inaction that you know uh or should know will affect one of the interests we just discussed in a way that is not short of a substantial segment of the city's property this is by far the broadest definition of each of these three pieces um i'll try to provide kind of each of the spectrum things of the spectrum on this example so on one end there is clearly a conflict of interest a city official votes to approve a contract between the city and their employer so in this example there is a conflict of interest because the city official is deliberating by voting uh the action of approving the contract and the action of proving the contract will significantly impact the financial interests of the city's employer in a way that's not shared with the substantial segment of the population on the other end where there's not a conflict of interest a city official votes unless the board of ethics says i'm wrong about this but a city official votes to approve an increase to the city's property tax rate so while the city is deliberating by voting right in this example uh and and it is likely to impact the financial instruments even of the city official themselves right the property tax rate applies to all property in the city so the impact is shared with the substantial segment of the city's population so i know that was a lot of information this is the newest section any questions on this complex of interest piece trying to make it as clear as possible any questions member 10 procedural question so let's say we have our big consent agenda and somebody has a conflict with just one of the items would the process be that that one would be separated out that person could vote on consent and then i guess please for a second for the vote for the one item right okay any other questions okay uh also on this slide um it's also a violation of the ordinance for a city current city official to represent a person group or entity before a city border commission or compensation so this prohibition also applies to former city officials for one year after termination of their official duties similarly formal former city officials are prohibited from performing compensated work on a city contract or arrangement that they substantially participated in the negotiation award or administration of the contract unless that was just deliberated that just limited to deliver okay next we're talking about gifts so the ethics ordinance prohibits a city official or their relative from accepting any gift that might reasonably influence city official and discharging their official duties this is a general prohibition that acts as a yellow light for city officials also includes gift related red lights specifically a city official cannot accept a single gift valued more than 50 dollars or multiple gifts with a total value of more than 200 dollars in general gift is considered to be anything of monetary values cash property services meals entertainment or travel related expenses if a gift is accepted the city official may remedy that violation by promptly donating it or reimbursing the gift giver the actual or fair market value of the gift and if you do accept the gift you should disclose the acceptance and the remedy by filing a disclosure with me the city auditor the ordinance does allow certain exceptions to the gift prohibition meaning these are considered green lights and they're actually not considered gifts at all at that point which means you don't have to disclose them and these include lawful campaign contributions expenses related to city a city officials travel to a conference or other training event that is connected to the city expenses related to appearances at non-profit or community events related to city business complimentary attendance at fundraising events or hospitality functions complimentary or promotional copies of trade publications or clothing items or gifts that are given to your personal familial or professional relationship regardless of the city officials city related duties and so any questions about gifts from the district six you mentioned reporting anything to you is that even if it's less than 50 dollars like a pen or cookies or you know something like that that's under 50 do no i don't believe so because it would not need the definition of a gift okay that makes sense yeah make sure i understand thank you there question about travel okay for example if if somebody said we'd like to um what we'd like to put a a uh a monument to toilets in in denton and they have one of these in omaha nebraska we'd like you to go and art at the toilet factory and and go to omaha nebraska where are we going we'll fly you to omaha nebraska to look at this monument to toilets and you can come back and now you'll know what we're talking about would that be a problem um okay i don't believe so because it would be an expense related to city business but it wouldn't be funded by the city that's true um i think it's really hard to answer a hypothetical without more clear facts but i don't believe so because it would be an expense related to city business but if that happened you don't pardon me you don't think there'd be a conflict i don't think that would be against the prohibition of the ordinance um i'm not speaking about the complex venture section that's why some of this is complicated so i would recommend in that situation you ask the board but okay but i don't think it would be there is a law that addresses that as well oh yeah and i don't i don't i'm not an expert on that either i'm just here the key to the travel because it's a big exception to the loophole is the person has to actually be hosting you you can't just give you tickets to a game or whatever it is they have to be hosting you and be there in order for it to be an acceptable gift for travel or expenses associated with that so in your situation it would matter whether they're sending you on a trip somewhere to go check something out versus are they there are they hosting you are they going to be there and be there with you at that time those are kind of key distinctions in the law as far as whether that's legal or not under state law now we may have a higher standard rather ours the advisory meeting from our board would give you the insight on that but just let me know that they can't just send you on travel wherever they want to send you and say that's city business they would have to actually be there hosting you okay and so if i took it to the board of ethics how long would it how long would the turnaround be if you get an answer um usually we need at least i would say probably 15 days 15 to 20 days okay okay thank you i'm interested though if you do have a took if you're going for a toilet toilet bowl that that would be a toilet bowl i see i didn't even say that that's just the $50 makes sense to me the $200 i have questions about so in the cookie example that councilmember jester gave um you know is this $200 all time $200 per year does it matter how many people are involved so if this person gives you cookies and this gives you cookies and it eventually adds up to $200 over time like you know how does that $200 work i believe it's annual i'd have to double check the ordinance to see if it's clear about that um uh i i think like if if somebody gave you $100 of cookies and your spouse $100 of cookies that aggregates sure um so that would hit the $200 cap uh does that answer your question somewhat multiple people give you cookies and it adds up to $200 by the end of the year if they're not the same entity then you know it doesn't add up i believe so the spirit of it is the 200 is sort of that's like the if it's over this it's implied that it's impacting your judgment even if it's cookies okay does that make sense yes yes absolutely okay any other questions all right next it is a violation of the ordinance for a city official to misuse the influence or information gained due to their official city position specifically a city official may not use their influence to secure special privileges or treatment for a person group or business organization beyond what is normally available or to imply that they can do such things so while this is a specific prohibition it's a it's a yellow light as it's not meant to prohibit a city official from providing individuals groups or businesses with information on how city processes work so that they can more easily access normally available resources so for instance or for that reason city officials should proceed cautiously and thoughtfully when they try to help the public with specific concerns specifically city officials should be cautious when stating that they what they can do to ensure a concern is addressed further a city official may not state or imply that they are acting as a representative of the city unless they have been authorized to do so by the city council and it's a violation of the ordinance for a city official either current or hammer to use confidential information gained through their official capacity to advance personal or private financial interests of themselves or anyone else so these are red lights there's no instances where misrepresenting yourself as an authorized city representative or using confidential information for personal or private interests would be ethical under the city's ethics ordinance any questions on that please any questions thank you last prohibition it is a violation of the ordinance for a city official to abuse the city's resources or the power or privileges granted by their official position specifically a city official should not use or request or allow the use of city resources such as facilities personnel equipment software or staff time for private purposes including political except to the extent that those are available to other residents while this is a specific prohibition it's also a yellow light as it does not have clearly defined threshold instances where a city official can ethically use city resources like raising a city facility at the publicly publicly available price on the other hand it is a violation of the ordinance for a city official to harass or discriminate against a person based on their ethnicity race gender gender identity sexual orientation marital or parental status or religion it's also a violation to interfere with any city related criminal or administrative investigation including persuading or forcing someone else to uphold their cooperation these are red lights as there is no instance where harassment discrimination or interfering with an investigation would be considered ethical behavior under the ethics ordinance this is the last prohibition slide i have a couple more kind of procedural things but any questions on it i'll get it i'll get it across the room all right everyone brief yes this is everyone's most favorite item of research yeah i get it any questions about this last uh couple more slides yeah no worries okay you got it all right so now that you have an understanding of the expectations mandates and how the prohibitions outline in the ordinance if you ever come upon a situation where you need additional guidance you have a couple of options first if you need direction helping to find the section of the ordinance related to a particular situation or an answer about how to submit disclosures or complaints you can reach out to me i have all the administrative knowledge second if you have an attorney they may be able to help provide you with an interpretation of the ethics ordinance to decide whether to recuse yourself or not in a given situation and finally you can also request that the board of ethics issue an advisory opinion which is intended to answer a question about compliance with ethics ordinance in a particular situation the biggest advantage to an advisory opinion is that a city official may use it as an affirmative defense to a submitted ethics complaint if they relied upon it in good faith if the opinion was that the action in that situation would not be again a violation that makes sense so to receive an advisory opinion a city official must submit the request in writing to the city auditor including relevant details of the situation in question i will then communicate the request to the board of ethics chair who assigns it to a panel of three board of ethics members for review the panel has technically has 30 days to issue the advisory opinion once the request is received but we usually turn it around in a quicker time so any questions about the advisory opinion process any questions obviously for me my only question is is it your understanding that it does it matters who asked the question it's not my understanding that it matters who asked the question per the ethics ordinance right so you just is there any guidance on who can ask for an advisory opinion city officials city officials for what purpose to get to uh get an answer about how the ethics ordinance would apply to this particular situation so only themselves or a situation my understanding is a particular situation okay any other questions how is this three panel i assume these are ethics people that are already on the ethics board how are the three people because it's a bigger than a three person committee how are the three people identified the ethics board chair assigns them what usually happens administratively is i sent her a list uh currently the chair i sent her a list of here's all the members and the number of panels they've served on previously so that we try to get them rotated through basically so they all are sort of serving the same amount if that makes sense thank you any other questions all right all right finally the board of ethics's primary function is to process ethics complaints there are four phases of the ethics complaint process i'll briefly run through additional information of the process is available on the city's board of ethics webpage or you can just talk to me about it first initiation during this period an individual submits an ethics complaint using the prescribed form to the city auditor the complaint form should be accompanied by any evidence such as images videos or documentation that the complainant has to support their allegations and must be sworn in front of a notary the city auditor then determines if the ethics complaint is administratively complete but does not make any judgment on the complaint's merits if a complaint is accepted a copy is forwarded to the complainant the respondent the board of ethics chair and the board of ethics chair who is assigned to a preliminary assessment panel i believe the city attorney is also required during the preliminary assessment phase a panel of three board of ethics members reviews the submitted ethics complaint and determines if it is actionable or baseless a complaint is actionable if it's if on its face the behavior is alleged in the complaint would constitute a violation of the ordinance the panel may also recommend that a hearing be held to determine if the complaint is frivolous instead of determining if it is actionable or baseless the outcome of the preliminary assessment is communicated to the complainant and the respondent by the city auditor if the complaint is determined to be baseless for the process stops there though the complainant may submit a written appeal within 10 business days which will initiate the hearing phase so during the hearing phase the board of ethics schedules an evidentiary hearing and may request additional documentation documentary evidence or issue subpoenas to require individuals to testify the complainant must attend and testify at this hearing and may also present any additional evidence that they have gathered in addition the respondent may provide testimony and evidence for the board's consideration both the complainant and a respondent have a right to be represented by legal counsel at the evidentiary hearing and based on the evidentiary hearing the board will determine if a violation of the ordinance has occurred and if they determine that a violation has occurred they may issue a sanction once the board has decided on the ethics complaint the complainant and respondent both have five business days to submit any new evidence and request a reconsideration in writing with the city auditor the board of ethics chair will review the reconsideration request and will unilaterally determine if a new hearing is warranted based on what was submitted if during the evidentiary hearing the board of ethics finds that a violation of the ethics ordinance occurred and may issue one of four actions based on the city officials perceived intent and the seriousness of the violation this is a decision process is generally illustrated in the decision matrix on the slide but i'm not going to walk through each one if the board decides to impose a sanction the city official will be notified within 10 business days by the city auditor any questions about ethics complaint process i know it was a really brief quick run period but any questions it says it says legal counsel is that defined or is just you can be represented by anybody you pick basically not defined um it's not defined in like the definition section i believe that the intent of counsel is specifically like an attorney um because i know we did in the last ordinance we kind of clarified that it was intended to be legal counsel but i don't know like i don't it's not defined is here is the answer right working with district police who is beside city council members uh is this designed to address complaints uh it includes the city council appointees so me sarah mac and the judge it also includes uh the board of ethics themselves uh the planning and zoning committee or commission the board of adjustments um historic landmark commission the public utilities and the public utility board a couple of the bodies about all bodies the board of ethics would review their own if it was submitted against one of their members yes thank you any other questions and that's happened to them before a long time ago and then you touched on it on the other slide but if there's if an application is complete but violates the quote unquote rules or statute that's not evaluated until the hearing process so for example if it says you shouldn't whatever you shouldn't impugn someone's integrity and someone writes something about someone's integrity uh and the in the in their response there's not an avenue to say hey this goes outside of what you're allowed to do you just have to make that point in the hearing uh so in the initiation phase i determine if the policy i think that would you said yes that's true in your hypothetical yes then there's a preliminary assessment which is when they determine is that actually like i think this is where i would hit or what your hypothetical is as is even a violation of the ordinance what's alleged right like so it's not a violation of the ordinance to impugn somebody's integrity so if that was the entirety of the complaint on its face they the board of ethics preliminary assessment panel should at that point say this is a baseless complaint because there's nothing in the ethics ordinance that makes that a violation does that make sense it does but if that what and what i'm envisioning is if that um if you have both of those elements you have a viable question yeah and you have supplementing information that is not allowed i don't i don't understand it that that i my understanding is at that phase it's not evaluated say only this thing goes forward because it's viable these other things don't go forward because they're not they don't meet the elements like if there were two different types of complaints no one complaint that has both elements in it so there's some personal conjecture conjecture just personal comments and a substantive question that does need to go before the board i would think if that was the situation that's what they should basically do right they should say this part isn't part of the ordinance but the complaint itself because some of it is a violate wouldn't be a violation of the ordinance if there was evidence to support it is actionable right so they should basically forward that part to the hearing it does thank you congratulations i don't think it's a violation of the ordinance not in your training but i would appreciate it if you signed it but we'll have christian mcbain calling you tomorrow thank you christian shout out so um well while we're circling circulating that that's everything city manager have anything to conclude with or no um i would stay away from downtown area right now we've got a shooting at lsa parker cpr is in progress um the person who did the shooting is uh is with police i said defense so clown or anything else but i would not go downtown right now we've got our discovered didn't know a lot um uh well yeah thank you for that update and uh thank you and and so great day very productive thank you for organizing staff i'm putting it together um and uh great information we'll circle back and then uh you'll you'll disseminate that with that information i guess will you will that be a friday report thing or before then we'll do a friday report and you can touch on it during the session okay got it okay mr mayor which information the the answers to questions okay good good good okay well very good then at uh 12 28 look at that we'll uh include today's meeting thank you make sure you sign the sheet