City Council Strategic Planning Workshop 6-17-25

[0:00:01] Just kicking off the workshop. Uh just want to make sure I cover a few items. Uh this is a very informal workshop. As you can tell, I went and changed into my cabana shirt. Um I want everybody to be really relaxed. This is an opportunity for us to really go through some of the uh items that we'd really like to improve upon uh in this coming fiscal year and actually three or five years down the way. So again, today we have this workshop. Tomorrow again we have a continuation of this workshop followed by Wednesday I mean Monday of next week. So tomorrow when you show up come in casually come in uh kind of really ready to relax and really cover a lot of the items that you want to cover. But again uh I just want to welcome everybody here. The workshop as I mentioned um very informal. Uh the what we want to accomplish today as far as the workshop goes is to let city council members hear from the directors. give you an opportunity to come up here and talk about what's most important for you and your department and what you'd like to see accomplished. It's important that you relay what uh it is that you'd like to get done because this is the the group up here that can determine uh the funding uh for some of the items that you're going to share with them. Council members, on the director's presentations, uh you'll get a uh initially a startup with a mission for that department. What is it that why is it that they exist and what they do? So they'll cover that initially followed by SWAT analysis. Of course the SWAT analysis is a review your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. We always want to make sure that do we do an analysis to kind of get of a a bit of an idea of where we are currently and some of the things that we want to work on. What are our strengths? Our strengths are things that um that we're really good at and how can we use those strengths to make our department better. What are our weaknesses? areas that we are falling short. Are there ways that we can shore that up to make that situation better? Typically, your strengths and weaknesses are the ones that are easiest to work on because they're internal to the organization. They're internal to the department. Now,

[0:02:04] the opportunities and threats are external uh to us, right? Uh there's certain things that come up on on as far as an opportunity that you realize that perhaps you feel you can take advantage of that can make your department better. maybe a trend that you see out there that quite frankly you know uh would benefit your department. You'd like to really implement that. But what would it take to get that implement? And of course the threats, you want to look at your threats uh to ensure that uh you can overcome what may be coming. One of the issues that we face every two years is our legislators, Texas legislators going into session and we get uh new changes right in law and we have to adapt to that. uh and we see a lot of that right now with uh the reduction in revenues that we used to have just a few years back. So that's a a threat that we constantly face and that's something that we want to make sure we take a look at. But of course we want to make sure that we look at it from the perspective of how can we overcome that, right? Uh then the the directors will talk about their oneyear, threeyear and fiveyear goals based on what that SWAT analysis shows. Uh we uh they'll come up here and give their goal and uh talk about the resources they would need to accomplish those goals. and some of the some of the goals that you've set don't require really resources coming from city council or city management offices. It's something that's within, right? So, you'll talk about that and the three-year and 5-year goals. Council members, one thing that I want to point out that we're we're presenting these four items up here, but the the staff has done extra work to ensure that they actually develop the strategies for each one of the goals that you see up here. they already have the strategies and the action steps necessary to accomplish those goals as well. But again, as they come up here and talk about those, some of that in order for them to to complete those action steps will require resources. And that's what uh they'll talk to you about. These are the resources necessary. And this is where you'll hear some of the items that uh are are needed by the departments,

[0:04:06] especially capital equipment items. And that'll help you uh to really have an idea of what you want to want to prioritize. I do recommend y'all to get a copy of the actual presentation. As the city staff is going up, the director is doing the presentations. If there's a goal that really stands out for you, highlight it, circle it, and make sure that that's a topic that we can touch on, especially come Monday when we start talking about the strategic priorities and what it is that's most important for us. Right? So, uh, again, there's some really good stuff in here. I've had an opportunity to really go through this and these guys did a lot of work on it and I'm proud of the staff for the the work they put in and we do have um 17 directors presenting and the chief of police as well. So it's going to be 18 presentations. So what we try to do is squeeze in nine today, nine tomorrow and then uh Wednesday we'll do kind of a a recap and then do a lot of other things we want to work on. We're going to kick this off with our city clerk. Uh this is the smallest department, but this department does a lot with what it has. So, uh I will be using a timer. Each director will have 30 minutes uh to get their presentation in. And if they finish a little bit earlier before the 30 minutes, you don't have to use all 30, but it's better. Well, I'm actually stealing some of Heather's time right now. we agreed that we would share time to get us back on track, but um again, she's got a really good presentation and we'll go ahead and kick it off with our first director, Heather. It's yours. Okay. Um so, in the city clerk's office, um we serve as a um hub for transparency, compliance, accessibility in the local government. Um when the public calls or wants to get information, if they're not sure what department to call or even if they do know what department to call, when you Google City of St. Angelo city clerk's office is what comes up. So, um we support the city council and the uh public by maintaining the official records, recording ordinances and

[0:06:09] resolutions that um council passes each year. Um we manage the public information requests that come in uh or PS as I'll refer to them moving forward. Um and we coordinate local election functions in partnership with Tom Green County Elections Administration. Um which is huge for us. Um, and then we also uh facilitate um city council agendas as far as um what y'all receive each day. The departments do a great deal of work putting in that background information, but what my office does is um put those together, get them organized, and make sure that they're published um accordingly. Um we ensure the integrity of government processes, promote public trust through accurate records, timely disclosures, and compliance with state law. Um, two other things that um I did not put in there, but I just want to just briefly so y'all know um that we also um do in our department are TABC applications. So, a lot of new businesses, new bars, turnover, things like that, they will come to our office to start that TABC um process to get approved by the city for that. Um and then the other thing it uh is very um it only comes around every 10 years and of course that is redistricting. Um, I was a very tiny baby deputy city clerk when I did the redistricting back in 2021. Uh, I fully intend to be here for the next redistricting in 31 and probably 412. Um, but that is a a huge piece that we do. We we do work closely with um planning and um development services with that, but um we do spear that whenever that comes around every decade or okay, any questions on that? Okay. Um, so just to go through our SWAT analysis, um, strengths in the city clerk's office is we do have a very high compliance record with no audits or legal issues in handling our PIRs. Um, if anybody does have a complaint um, with our PRs, of course, our first line of defense would be our internal legal team um, that helps us with those. Um,

[0:08:12] but if the public wanted to escalate any of those, those would go to the attorney general of Texas. and we have not had um we're very high compliance record as I said um also a very high compliance record with our Texas Open Meetings Act. Um we uh have to monitor um the city council meetings um but also we work with all of the other um department uh and board liaison um to make sure that planning commission and tiers and um all of those other boards that the city runs um are in compliance with Texas meet open meetings act. So that um encompasses all of our boards um for that compliance um strengths. As far as software, we have um some we have a very good foundation for the software that we have. We use GovQa for our public information request and that is um a portal where citizens can go in and submit their public information request. We receive them, we send um them to the appropriate departments where the departments upload records requested and then that is the same way that we return those records um to uh citizens. Um when we get public information requests via email or uh in office written um which is completely acceptable uh we still generate them through that portal so that it is a central hub to keep those records and and timing and all of that in line. So that's a great resource. Um I'm going to skip to civic clerk. Um next that is the platform that we use to uh build the agendas and stuff and and manage those and that is excellent. We use um the civic um we use civic w civic optimize. It's a it's a very good uh resource that that the city has and civic clerk is just that piece that our office uses to uh generate those um agendas. And then laser fish is something um is we just started that um we used with ARPA funds when um back in COVID um they scanned a great deal of our boxes mainly

[0:10:14] planning um I'm sorry not planning permits and inspections records um and then they host the cloud um to store those and where that comes in helpful is a lot of those records are over at the Keys building um there's a probably a 40 50 page page Excel index where we keep up with what row, what box is in and that kind of, you know, so um having a lot of those records on laser fish certainly expedites us finding those records for citizens rather than us having to go over there and just you know thumb through boxes until we find the record. So um it we do have laser fish but right now we are using it in a very small capacity. Um and then a huge strength for us right now is also coordinating those elections with um Tongran County Elections Administration. Um we handle um filings for the local um election, all of the campaign finance reports, things like that. But um the big hunk of meat is really done through the county and it it is a a huge um asset for us to be able to do that because they carry um the the burden. I can't even imagine if we didn't have that, it would be a huge expense to the city. Um, so those are our strengths that I just kind of threw together. Uh, weaknesses. Um, we are a twoerson office. Um, so that does come into play. It's only two people um, handling a high volume of um, responsibilities and critical responsibilities. Um most of what we do is very um has a lot of legal parameters that we have to follow and it's a pass or fail. There's really no in between. Um so that does get um quite cumbersome. Um inconsistent citywide records practices. Um, so our records management program, um, from what I can tell, digging through city clerk files, things like that, the last time that we had a a real, uh, full all-encompassing

[0:12:16] records management program was um, three city clerks ago, and I've kind of thumbmed through that and um, but just working, you know, moving from HR to city clerk, I know that, you know, the way, not that HR does it wrong in any any way, but I'm just saying each department handles it a little bit differently and I would really like to see a more uniform practice of that. And then lack of centralized or digitized records. A lot of um departments have started scanning their records and keeping them on their departmental drives which is fine. Um and then some of the records are on laserfish. And I I think that it would really help the city if we could have one centralized location for um our records. I I know that that sounds like a huge undertaking and it would be, but I think that having all of our records, especially those permanent ones in one central location, um would be helpful. Is there software that does that for you? Um so I I haven't looked into it a lot. Laserfish um that I kind of, you know, did they, you know, that would be a a cloud uh based program. Um we share that right now with city clerk and because the documents that we had them scan back in um 2021 were permits Charlie's group has access to log in and look through that those records as well. So um you know if we were able to expand our lensure or cloud storage with them then that could potentially be um an avenue and laserfish is widely known uh or widely used with municipalities from from what I've been able to see so far in my research. Um and then lastly, lack of um an online portal for frequent requested records. Um I know that previously we had health records and um financial records online that citizens could go through and and for reasons that are probably above my pay grade and and that kind of things. We took some of those down. I do think that it would be worth a conversation to

[0:14:18] um get with the departments um analyze the information we have from govqa to see what those most requested records are and see what we can do to get those back on the website. We have a few um requesters that are frequent flyers um that you know they usually start their PS with. I used to be able to get this information off the website but since I can't anymore I'm requesting it. Yes. Heather, just a real quick question. Isn't that something that we could have done when we redid the city's website? Um, I cannot speak to that. I was not involved in that process. Um, so, um, I mean, from my perspective, the citizens are accessing the website for a myriad of of of information. Maybe it's something we can add to it. I' I'd be a question that I would simply say, "Hey, what's the cost to add this particular thing?" So, it goes directly in and you don't have people coming into your office and writing out those. Right. Right. So, um you know, that is something a discussion that I I would love to have and I I mention it a little bit further in my presentation as well. Um next, our opportunities um are the uh standardized records training across departments. Um that's something that you know can certainly be done um is you know trying to come up with one uh policy or procedure SOP that we can give to all the departments to follow and and that you know would be helpful. Um seek records digitization grants. Um I briefly kind of looked into this um last week in preparing for this. Um I know that there are some out there. It's just a matter of putting together those proposals and and submitting it, you know, those kind of things. And and that's certainly something that I think that we could um take advantage of. uh implementing dashboards or portals for PS and transparency. Um which is

[0:16:22] kind of um what council member Thomas was talking about and and I was explaining is you know as much as we could possibly put on the website um to kind of alleviate the staff time to look for those records and deliver them to the public um would be extremely helpful. And then another opportunity that um we could certainly do and I and I have started talking to um some staff and planning about this is expand civic clerk use across all boards. Right now um not including city council, we have 17 boards and commissions and right now only three boards are utilizing um civic clerk. So that is something that we could um certainly expand on. Um some of our threats are the rising PI volume reduction uh and which will could lead to reduction of compliance and transparency. Um I'm very proud of our staff as far as you know getting those records back in 10 days. Um it's you know some departments obviously get more PI requests than others. Um but it you know it is a process and you know other than my office I don't think anybody any other department has a designated person for PI. So we have our regular jobs to do so to speak. And then P is right now is just kind of a another thing that pops up and it's you know just another thing and thing we have to put on our list. We're happy to give that transparency but when it's not built into staff time it you know it makes it hard. uh legal risk from inconsistent records management practices and storage. Um that would be us not being able to locate a record that we should have um for a citizen if they ask. Um so you know potent that it hasn't been as far as I know um up to this point. Um but you know certainly something that we could potentially avoid if we you know look into that more. Uh and then vulnerable to operational disruption and staff burnout turnover. Um operational disruption is

[0:18:29] what I would put the most emphasis on. Um you know, no one wants tragedy to happen, but you know, if one of us had to go out on some sort of um FMLA and we're out for 12 weeks and battling something ter, you know what I mean, something terrible, and then that leaves one person in the office. something were to happen to that one person, you know, then, you know, there could really be um a collapse there. Um so that is certainly something to think about. And then also public expectations versus um funding realities um which kind of touches on all of those those threats that I just listed there. So any questions on those SWATs? So we're going to have a time at the end to come back and ask. Um, so as I go through I I I have a hunch just on based on other conversations that we have. I have some numbers that I I'm probably going to give you throughout the rest of my presentation, but certainly um you can come back and ask questions. I will say Okay. Anybody else? Yeah, I did got one more question. I mean, you talked a little bit about the inconsistent citywide records practices. Yeah, I've been a councilman a little over nine years. Uh, I guess it's the first time I've ever heard that particular portion of it. What do we need to do regardless of of how efficient that may make your your particular deb it's good business practice? Sure. Absolutely. Um, luckily for that one, it's really just staff time is, you know, giving myself, Connie, you know, the opportunity to just really sit down and put together a, you know, very comprehensive um, policy for all departments um, to do. Um, I do have, like I said, three clerks ago had a a pretty good um, system in place. Like I said, I've gone

[0:20:32] through it. There are some things that are just outdated, just wouldn't work anymore. Um, so I have a good starting point. I think it's it's just a matter of the staff time. Oh, Daniel wants me to wrap it up. No, no, keep going. So, I'll just um like I said, Harriet, it's really just it's just time. Um, you know, so Conniey's done an excellent job, but this is her first year. And as we all know, first year into a job is a lot. Guess what I'm trying guess what I'm trying to say is I've got one more budget next year. I don't want to see that on on that. I'd like to get it done before next year. Certainly. Um, well, that leads me to my first year plan. Let me turn the slide here. Um, may I ask interrupt you for a minute and ask a question? Sorry. Yes, Jesus. I'm in I'm in a ten can over here. How much or what is a percentage do you think it of your day or time that it takes on this P and and all? Uh I would say it takes up about 80% of my deputies day. Really? Yes. And probably about 20% of my day. And then how long do you think it would take to get all of these records using laser fish or whichever program, but to get it to where it's accessible either via website or a link? We don't necessarily want to put all records all of our records available online. Um, so that's kind of a a two-part question. As far as getting things um scanned and put into laser fish for staff access to find for PS, um, that's probably a depending on funding from council. Um, a three, fiveyear um, that's a very long-term goal. The Keys building is absolutely stuffed full in our storage. Um, and then I know that, um, I've kind of been mean to the departments about taking stuff over there because it's kind of a a mess over there as far as, you know, you know, I'd like to separate it

[0:22:34] between permanent records, records, you know, there's a lot of records over there that can be destroy destroyed that are past their destruction. The problem with taking items over to the Keys building is out of sight, out of mind, right? So, there's a lot of records over there that can be destroyed and we just haven't um departments, you know, because we don't have anything in place as far as following up with your records, getting them destroyed in a timely manner, things like that. They've really just they're kind of rotting over there, honestly. Um, so that, like I said, that part of getting everything digitized, scanned into some sort of resource like laser fish, five years, good lord, to give you a time frame. That's how many records. I think we all have municipal court has a ton of records. Um, you know, it's it's a it's a lot of paper over there. Um, well, every day it's going to take longer. Yeah, certainly. You know, how many and then as far as putting together a portal to make um, you know, documents more accessible to the public that that we feel are safe to put out there for immediate um, response to the the public, you know, probably looking closer to a year, which is is what I have here. in our one-year goal. So, um well, if that that answers my question, I was for our one-year goal, we would like to create a citywide records liaison network and identify five high demand record types to publish online. Um I, you know, I think that that's a good starting point. uh permits gets a ton of requests for you know they want all of this month's um uh permits that have been issued and uh the health department you know they get requests for you know the entire month's records and you know things like that. So I think you know sitting down with department heads to look and see um you know what is something that we feel comfortable and safe putting out there for immediate um access for the public. And then um that would of course help result in internal record consistency and reduction in PI volume. And then additionally identifying top priority

[0:24:36] boards um and commissions to convert to civic clerk. Um most recently I've been in talks with Austin Reed who's the board liaison for a ZBA. Um he sent me some of their agenda so we can start building um those. Um, so I hope that we can certainly at least probably by end of calendar year get three boards on civic clerk. Um, and the main resource for that is staff time. You know, that's our hottest for for my department hottest commodity is just the time because it's just the two of us in there. um support from department heads for implementation which I'm confident that we would have and um you know possibly um additional FTEES for departments that receive high volume number of PS. So quickly I just want to touch on the numbers of PS that we get um right now um for fiscal year 25 that we are in we have already received 538 PIRS since October 1st. uh we are pacing for that to be a 20% increase over last year. Um so that is huge. And then um as far as FTEES for departments that receive high volume um if you want to ask my opinion that would certainly be permits. Um I did pull their numbers. Um they have received um 138 this year and that is a 25% increase over last year. They certainly receive by far the most PS um that we get. So, let me ask a question there. Of the PIs that come to permits and planning, Mhm. have any of those ever made it to council for any type of legislation or or to come up that did something other with city government. None. No, no. Ps are the single most abused thing at city hall that we have. I'm disgraced by

[0:26:40] the number of people in that call and and have a PR. We're all about transparency, but we're not about wastefulness. All right. 500. How many hours do you like I said you know of my you know we work 280 hours a year and I'm going to say 80% of those is people are using works on our clerk department and Ps as their own employees. Yes. How many permits did I request for this? I'm going to charge that. Those are things that I just think are very redundant. It's wasteful. It's the biggest waste of time. I think if somebody had to publicize and here's just my thoughts about Ps. If you made them public and you could literally see who requested what, you could see the most wasteful requests that are ever done. It just it floores me. So whatever way we can do, I know at one time, how many years ago, Tommy Harry, was it three years ago, we put a cost to ours? Yeah. So the the problem thing apparently it didn't slow it down. No. Um so uh the problem with that is um what we have found is we are getting a lot some Ps are coming from Joe public and um average Joe and San Angelo citizen where they're just making up new names, new email addresses um to avoid um maybe not but you know we we've considered that that could be what is happening. you know, because we keep track of those hours by user and, you know, and so I I think that that may be a little bit of what's happening. Um, and then, um, you know, it the 36 hours for, you know, if someone just once a month says, I need a report, you know, I don't know how long it would take Charlie's group to put that together, but if, you know, a lot of times that's what they're doing is, well, I need a copy of all the permits pulled this month on this address. Yeah, you well unfortunately

[0:28:43] normally they do of citywide. They want to know all of the you know sometimes plumbing solar panels is a huge one that we're getting right now and it's a lot of companies just wanting to use our data to set up their own websites to set up their own you know information and things like that. So it's it's you know it's frustrating for staff but um we do have that payment uh policy in place and and that is helpful. It did help in some areas. Um but it it did not help as far as um you're right the numbers that have come in. I think people are either putting all their PS together or they're just being a lot more strategic in in when and what they're asking for. You know, some of this Tom is is controlled by what what the state says we can and can't do. Maybe what we need to do is approach our two elected officials for this area about strengthening the vexacious requests of PIRS to put more teeth in that. Whether that make any headway or not, who knows? But at least make it known to to our representative and our senator. This is this we can't be the only city that's experiencing this unless everybody else has far more staffing. Now, that could be the case. Well, we're not going to solve it today. No, we're not. But I will say there needs to be concentrated effort whether we're talking to Darby or whoever that may be to work it back upill that we have problems with that. It it wastes two or three people's time. I personally think you need to make them public and anybody can look on there and see who made a personal P request. I think that would slow a lot of stuff down because you could look at it and know who's wasting your time. That's exactly what I was going to amplify on Tom's comment. I don't know the legalities of whether you have to identify yourself. You can't, you know, be Joe Blow's, you know, hot potato today asking for something and then one one potato two asking the same thing the next day. If the

[0:30:46] they want transparency from us, can we get transparency from the public legally? In most cases, no. Unless they have like a special right of access to the record, which an example would be if they're a parent asking for their minor children's information, they have to prove up that they're the parent, but um beyond that, they're not really. Well, I think a lot of the way to solve this is to get it where it's easy accessible so y'all don't have to go physically do all those for most of the public records that are refined with getting out there permits. I don't see why that would be a big issue. But on those, do you have a rough estimate of how many are individual citizens versus say news organizations or companies or something like that? Um, that is not an analytics I have today and I could certainly get them. Um it would it there's not a report that I could run. So it would be a manual count which I'm not sure we can certainly get for you. I'm not sure that it No. I was just curious if you just kind of knew just as you're filling them out if you realize it's like very rarely do I ever look at the name of who does because it's irrelevant. I have to get the record out and so I'm just trying to you know if you know sometimes I'm nosy but you know for the most part I'm just pump them out. So go ahead. Okay. Um, if it's okay, I'm going to go ahead and pop to that three-year goal. Um, this is where I would like to see implementation of a c centralized digital records program to reduce PS. Um, something that would be very helpful in that would be an additional full-time records analyst or clerk in our department. Um, that could um really spearhead getting this together. Um, our records analysts working with the departments, helping the departments each month keep up with what records are, um, scheduled to be destroyed. um you know make answering any questions for departments as far as what records um they're required to keep um you know sometimes there's a lot of confusion and um does HR keep track of uh time sheets or the do the departments have to keep track of time sheets well it's HR that's their record it's not you know but we have a lot of departments that are holding on to their time sheets

[0:32:47] for you know five six years past and they don't have to but unfortunately we just haven't had the time to go out and really educate departments on um those kind of things. Um, of course, funding for the laserfish licenses and cloud storage. Um, I know because it just came up in budget reviews, um, the little bit of cloud storage that we have right now with laserfish, which just holds um, a partial amount of permits, um, that's about a $7,000 license fee um, annually um, for what we have right now. Um I have not had the opportunity to talk to laserfish to talk about um you know what funding would be required for additional licenses and cloud storage but it is something that I certainly intend to um explore especially with this being a goal over the next um three years and um then just that cross departmental buyin and policy update for recordkeeping standards which again I know that um department heads would you know be in full support of doing something like that. Okay. And then very quickly, the five-year goal is to finalize implementation of a centralized digital records program and compliance, create business um continuity plan um and establish internal capacity to independently manage elections if needed. Um the reason I put this in here is that, you know, we have a 10-year um contract with uh Tom Green County. Um there are provisions in there where they could cancel that, right? Um you know, we don't see that happening. We've maintained a very good um relationship with them. Uh one thing that I think really is more likely to change is that they may request that we uh carry a little bit more of that burden. There's a lot of legislation coming down as far as um changing early voting hours. In fact, there technically would be no early voting hours. are talking about having just straight 12 days of voting, which would be a lot more uh locations, election judges, counters, you know, just a lot more um responsibility. So, I think that um you know, them asking us to kind of possibly burden a little bit more of that is not um out of the realm of possibility. Um and then um creating

[0:34:53] some sort of continuity plan. One thing that I've talked to um several directors um about is possible additional FTE for administrative support or possible cross departmental use. For example, we work a lot with legal on these PIs. So, if we were even able to get an FTE that was split between legal and um city clerk's office that you know could kind of help shoulder some of our burden, help shoulder some of legal's burden. Um, that's one FTE, but also helping two different departments. Um, I've also been in communications with the communications department about something similar because they also attend all of the board meetings for recording and and that kind of stuff. So, we've, you know, have talked about possible um uses of of us sharing an FTE with with them. Um, so I think that that's um a possibility. And then just the increased uh training budget for public information, records management, and elections. Unfortunately, another piece that goes along with that is a lot of training, especially now that we are solidly out of COVID, is back to in person. So, do you, you know, if you send one of us to training, two of us to training, that leaves one person, no persons in the office. It's it's it's a burden that could essentially, you know, hinder, you know, our education and resources. So, that's all. You thought you couldn't do 30 minutes? My goodness, that more than covered that. So, uh, next up is finance department. Heather, thank you. Nice presentation. All right. [Music] I can see the board at least. All right. So the mission of the finance department is to ensure the city's financial resources are optimally utilized, that financial performance is achieved and assets are properly

[0:36:56] safeguarded, that financial reporting and transparency are accomplished, and internal and external stakeholder expectations are met. Um, as an admin department, we're here to serve the public, the city council, and city departments to support their missions and goals. So for our strengths, we have a knowledgeable and skilled professional staff that fulfills budgeting, accounting, purchasing, and billing and receipts. I would say right now we have the strongest group of managers that we've had in a long time. Um, and so we're very happy with that. Um, we have a proven and effective systems and tools to deliver top quality services to employees such as payroll, to vendors such as account payable, and customers such as utility billing and payment receipts. Um, we use our tools very effectively and efficiently and we try to do what's in the best interest for the city at all times. And we have long-standing professional relationships with key firms such as um, uh, specialized public finance which is our debt financial advisors, um, MH, which is our bond legal support, our investing advisor meter, our external auditors, M uh, Hill and Brown. Yeah, Matello Hill and Brown. They're new. Um, but we've built a very good relationship with them as well. And then we have our partnership with Zacttax, which helps us with our sales tax sales tax analytics. Uh, our department's internally respected by city departments for overseeing the preparation of the annual operating budget um, and ensuring financial goals are accomplished for their departments. We facilitate the purchasing division which supports city departments by ensuring purchasing activity meets state and federal purchasing laws and that we're yielding the best value for the city and for the citizens. And we're we uh produce transparent and financial or trustworthy financial documents such as the annual comprehensive financial report, the budget book and the capital improvement plan amongst others. Um, our weaknesses include limited

[0:39:01] resources on long-term financial planning. Um, I think that we could help develop that by collaboration with other departments um with the CIP by making it more of a a funded or funding document rather than just a planning or awareness document. Um, another weakness is attracting and retaining professional employees due to salary disparity. Of course, that's a city-wide issue. We all know that um there's disparities throughout all levels of the city. Um but especially in our billing and receipts department, we have a lot of turnover because our starting salary I think is 33,000 in that division and so it's it's hard to retain good employees that are trustworthy um and that can do the job at that level. Um we have a lack of a centralized Let me stop you right there. Is there a way of mitigating that with online to pay? I mean, we we have um I think five different ways to pay. Is that right, Shaneie? Um and one of those is online and we do try to promote that and educate the public as much as we can on the utility billing statements, on social media, on our website, things like that. Um we do have one of our goals for next year that will be coming up later. That would be to implement a kiosk system. Okay. Um Okay. So, the next weakness is the lack of a centralized repository for contracts and agreements. Um, one of our goals would be to create a centralized position that could handle all contracts for the city. A big problem that we have, um, is departments are responsible for their own contracts and not don't necessarily because they're doing what their operational mission is, not necessarily looking at their contracts a lot or, you know, to see when they expire, to see when they may need to be renewed or updated, that kind of a thing. Um this that position could also act as a liaison between purchasing and the city attorney's office. Um it would be a really a really strong position and I think that departments would also appreciate it very much to have someone that they could reach out to for questions about contracts um for help

[0:41:04] with moving through the contract process for alerting them to let them know when contracts are coming due and things like that. So Tina, I'm all for trying to make sure that we're as efficient as we can. If we had something like that, what would the cost be? And cost, how much time would we be be saving every year because of that? [Music] you know, the cost for that kind of a position in that in creating the repository for all those contracts is probably about 75,000 a year. U the the savings I think would be more in line with the departments having to spend less time trying to queue up those agreements and uh go through the bidding process. If we could get ahead of the curve of that, I think it would be much more efficient. And so the departmental savings, I think, would far exceed the the $75,000. So let me let me clarify that bullet point says lack of central alliance repository for contracts and agreements. Isn't that more or less a software or cloud or something like that? and then everybody has access to it or those appropriate people have access to it. You're not necessarily talking about one particular uh FTA are you? Yeah, I think we are talking about one just one uh individual within the purchasing department to as those contracts and of course that position would be working very close with the city attorney's office because they're both involved in once you know to craft the agreement and get the doc get the appropriate signatures and so forth. So, it would I guess what I'm trying to say is and we do have software as well, Harry. We have software already called

[0:43:07] legal files, but I think that we would um supplement that and this position would be in charge of that software and making sure that all departments are aware of what they have coming up and that kind of a thing. Okay, Tina, not to beat this to death, but I'm sure you're aware of it after being in public accounting. anytime you enter anything, you'll set up a tickler file and it would that I'm not trying to deny you a person, but is that a just being a little more diligent when the contracts are written and all to set up? I mean, because once you you know, you put it on a calendar, I mean, everything you can do it from your phone and I'm not trying to minimize the effort on this. Uh but is there could we just internally have a better segregation of maybe some duties without possibly uh getting another person and if that person say to put in the the documents and all with city clerk's office and try to get that is that one of those kind of floating deals that we could I'm just trying to maximize uh the employee as Yeah. Right. And and I would say it would essentially kind of be a floating employee because it would be a liaison between purchasing city attorney's office and the rest of all of our city departments. And this person would not just be reminding people when their contracts are expiring. They would be kind of holding their hand walking them through the entire contract process, especially new managers, new directors, new types of contracts, new types of, you know, bids and procurements and things like that. they would be able to help city departments through every aspect of the purchasing process. That would eliminate a lot of the falling through the cracks and and what have you because I understand that when due dates are are coming up just it may require a lot more than just a reminder because some of those things it's going to take a while to complete that and uh so I didn't mean to minimize it like a particular file. I'm just No, I understand. No problem. Thank you. Yes, ma'am.

[0:45:11] Um, another weakness, as I mentioned before, is the high turnover of cashiers in the billing and receipts division. And I really think the main thing there is is the pay. Um, and and the the lack of ability to get qual quality applicants at that pay level, at that starting pay level. Opportunities um include maximizing property tax um as sales tax, franchise, hotel tax, and fee based revenue streams. Um, as far as property tax, we're trying to mitigate and address, you know, state law, and they're doing everything they can to try to tie our hands when it comes to that. You know, they've implemented the three and a half% cap on on um property tax revenue. Um, they've uh included a circuit breaker now for any property that's over under $5 million gets a 20% exemption. Um this year they voted to give a $125,000 exemption on business personal property. So any anywhere they can try to minimize our ability to generate property tax revenue, they're doing it. Um which also hinders our ability to pro provide services for the public. Um you know, public safety, streets, roads, parks, all of those things. We count on our property tax to be able to do those things. Um and then we can also champion operational efficiencies to reduce costs. Um, of course we have lots of ideas how we could do that, but we can get into more details with those at a later date. Um, and then threats, um, our flat to declining population growth. Ryan and I had a call yesterday with our debt rating, um, agencies for the upcoming bond issue for the coliseum. And those rating agencies give us a rating and that get tells the buyers of those bonds whether we're trustworthy, you know, reliable, that kind of a thing. Um I think they said we had 0.02%. 2% that we're based on their criteria we were at a 0.2 two level and they typically which I guess based on what

[0:47:15] she said the standard is 0.5 and anytime you drop below that 0.5 they start monitoring that particular metric and u that rating agency even when we met with them in September had already expressed that you know a concern about our our population because at that time we were like at 99,000 and u the the current projection or the current estimate that the Census Bureau has provided is is slightly over 100,000. So that's that's that's a positive movement, but it's still not significant enough for for that particular rating agency. And of course, that how they rate us is how how what kind of an interest rate we can expect to get. So the lower the rating, obviously, the the higher the the interest cost is going to be with that issue. So, you know, we and and Tina and I try to talk around, you know, the fact that we're we're kind of the economic center for the county and I think or for the actually for the Concho Valley, which includes several counties. And so, we we've tried to to tell a good story, but I think they're not listening anymore. So, it's a it's a concern that we have and and they and they did reiterate that it's not something that's within our control and they understand that, but it is something that we have to be, you know, thinking about as far as threats for finance. So, um, of course, I already mentioned the state legislation that continues to be a challenge. Um, I've written several letters just this year for Daniel to sign and send to our legislators at the state level and he has done that. um we're doing everything we can on our part to try to help them understand how they're limiting us and what they're um hindering us from being able to do as far as services for our citizens. Um and then the ability to fund city department's resource needs with the property tax limitations. Our sales tax growth is kind of stabil stabilizing. Right now we're at a 3.3% growth year-over-year, which is which is healthy. We're happy about that. Um and

[0:49:19] then of course increasing costs for purchased goods due to inflation tariffs and things like that. And then finally the reduced grant funding. Um we're seeing some many of our grants have reduced funding. Some are going away and and so as those things happen and as we have FTEEs and employees that are funded by some of those grants, we just have to be careful to watch and and see how we move forward with with that loss of grant funding. How many do you have that are funded via grants? Do you have any employees right now that are funded only by grant money? Not well, I think all of our Wick employees, but I don't see that being a concern. Um, Morgan may feel differently if she's here. I don't know if she's even here, but um and then some of our CDBG and home like they're partial funded. Some of our health APMG Yeah, some of our health employees were completely funded by some grants. So, and as we monitor how if they're going to be continued to be funded, I mean, we have to be cognizant of how we handle those employees, but those are our primarily the ones that Tina mentioned. There are the primary employee centric grants. Okay. Oh, I went the wrong way. Sorry. Wait, I don't know what I'm doing here. Okay. So, our one-year goal is by June 2026 to improve customer service delivery and internal operational support by implementing three initiatives. Um, the self-service payment kiosk is kind of getting back to what you asked earlier, mayor. Um, a centralized contract repository, which we discussed earlier, and then a credit card fee recovery. This would result in a 12% increase in digital transactions. We project 100% contract record centralization and recovery of at least 80% of annual credit card processing costs. So the re the required resources for that would be the capital funding for the kiosk purchase. Um, I've discussed this at a high level with uh Shane and and I think John and uh we haven't gotten into any

[0:51:22] details or anything, but it's something that may be able to pro provide better service to the public, but also free up time for customer service and the billing and receipts divisions um to be doing other things. Um and then the next one would be uh oh of course we need to communicate resources to the public and educate them on the methods of payment which we do already but we would include of course this additional ability to and pay via kiosk and we could have kiosks in a number of locations such as by the dropbox we already have. Um even right inside the door of the annex might work just to keep people away from the counters or at other locations such as city hall or um other retail establishments. Um and then the next one would be dedicating a purchasing contract specialist for process development. Um and then legal and purchasing staff time for the development and training of that individual. Um and finally for the um the 80% annual credit card processing costs. Uh basically just data analytics to track payment usage and fee revenue and what what that would look like and what that would generate for the city. Tina, real quick on that on the kiosk part. Could that not be as simple as the computer with the interface of like they would do online from their home? I mean, could it be that simple? Right now, we already have the ability to go online from home and pay your bills. So, so why would we need like why would we need a separate kiosk? I mean, if anything, they come in to pay, it's like, well, there's the computer right there. Log in, fill your information out, and pay. Oh, you mean a computer set up for that purpose? Yeah. to be the kiosk if if it was going to be inside or something, that may be a possibility. But if we're going to put it outdoors or in another retail establishment, we might want to probably not have a computer. Um, but that's that's something we could look into for sure. Thank you. Uh, next three-year goal to strengthen St. Angelo's financial position by reducing costs, leveraging financial tools, and delivering timely,

[0:53:24] transparent financial reports. So, um, did you have something to say? No. Oh, okay. We, uh, consultants for cost of service and rate study structures, obviously. Um, department management teams for operational planning. We'd want to work with departments to make sure that we're working towards their goals and their missions because that's part of what we see our goal and our mission as is supporting those departments. Um finance staff for the budget tracking and reallocation of resources. Council support for any policy changes, for example, fee increases or operational shifts in manning or staffing or anything like that. Um, of course, our bond council and municipal financial advisor support and then staff capacity and finance and capital project management and the ability to track capital delivery and equipment life cycles. And then finally, our 5-year goal is to strengthen St. Angelo's financial position by pursuing increased revenue and identifying areas for operational efficiencies. Um so the resource would would be just basically you know staff time to collaborate and develop policies and strategies and present those to city council. Um we need legal or policy cons consultants for reviewing property tax reform opportunities which would be very helpful um if we had someone to kind of let us know when there are opportunities for reaching out to our legislation and tell them you know what we need and how we need it. Um and then structuring pilot programs or tiers amendments that might allow opportunities um for revenue sources and streams. Um we have project managers and department liaison to oversee the centralization efforts. Um organizational development and business process improvement consultants, staff participation in efficiency studies and business process redesign sessions. And then business and analytic tools to

[0:55:26] monitor financial per performance and revenue trends. We have some of those, but there are probably other opportunities that would help us develop a a longer term picture of what we're going to need instead of just 5 years, maybe 10, 20, 25 years, that kind of a thing. And then public information and communication um support to engage and educate the community on property tax and long-term planning. When you talk about rates, structure studies, how long does that take and what benefit do you get out of that? It's not only your department. I hear from several. We're like, uh, let's go do a rate structure study. Well, we're currently doing a rate study for water, sewer, and storm water, um, right now. And I think the process was expected to take 6 to9 months. Is that right? Um, so and that's with that's a lot of inputs and a lot of outputs. Um, but we've met with them regularly. Uh, I have met with public works and and the rate study folks and um, so I think that would be a good time frame. And Ryan, you've talked to some folks a little more on like just regular fees. Yeah, whenever we went to a conference, we talked to some u some consultants that do this full-time. Uh, and I think once they get a a good understanding of what how the city operates and the costs associated with providing services, they could they can turn around those rates, you know, within 6 months for probably our entire city. Um, so I mean, not for not for public not for public works, but for like permits and inspections and code code enforcement, code compliance, those kind of uh efforts. So, I mean there there are I mean today the budget staff performs all those fee reviews for those types of services and it it requires quite a bit of time particularly from the staff and then from the department to determine how long it takes to go out and do an

[0:57:30] inspection and the amount of cost that we need to recover. But so I mean it's it's a science that we're doing internally and uh I see Aaron back there agreeing with him. Yeah. Aaron loves them. Aaron and Charlie Char Charlie. I mean they they do a good job but it's a lot of work. It's a lot of time. So without I don't know pinging on anybody. Would that be of a more professional is not the right word. Objective. Well, objective. Okay. But but also a a just y'all are not rate analysts. Yes, you can figure out what the cost is and all that, but right. Would this help us increase our revenues and and help us recover the costs that we had? people, you know, everybody, h not everybody, people say, "Well, you know, I I pay my property taxes." Yeah. Well, 98% of us in this town pay our property taxes, but there's other things that we have to pay for that property taxes do not cover. And it's all these things that, you know, you you uh permits you you got. Okay. And I don't know what Tom's asking about specifically, but would a one big rate study of all these things really pay benefits or would it be just an expense just to say we did a rate study, right? So, you're kind of getting at whether it would pay for itself in the long run. Yeah. Um I we we could definitely look into that. Uh I would say off the top of my head, probably. Yeah, I would think so for sure because, you know, the fact that it's an independent uh consultant with that expertise as opposed to Charlie going up to the stand, you know, and trying to justify rate increases for permits and

[0:59:34] inspections. You'd have that individual, I think, and he would be able he he would have insight across more jurisdictions than just the St. Angelo jurisdiction. So he could he could probably base a lot of the rates on the market per se. So I mean I think there would be a lot of value in it. And I always the thing too Tommy I think that you made said the key word is cost recovery right. Uh and a lot of times a prophet has we see that in scripture prophet has to know I mean as far as honor in there his own hometown. So we try to do something internally the questions pop up. Wait a minute did you do that right? did you you know so when you have somebody come in uh one of the issues we've had especially in Aaron with the plan department as far as permitting is for the longest time we've been subsidizing a lot of those services and we just can't afford to do that any longer especially with what the legislators are are doing uh we need to make sure that we cover all our costs so it's important to do those studies to ensure that the costs that uh that we put out there where the fees are are enough to cover our costs and that's really what we're looking well at one time Daniel and it's not too many years ago And I don't know what it is today specifically, but not too many years ago, we were subsidizing the the that specific area half million dollars a year. That's correct. Yes, sir. I mean, you just that's real money. That is real money. And again, I think that uh politically a lot of times there's a a u you know, you have people that come to you and they say, "Hey, you know, this is too much money for us." But it may they may see it that way. I know that Aaron could probably argue that point that we compare very favorably to other cities, but uh they use that and say that, but at the same time, they're tying our hands with our ability to do our work. Uh when we're falling short, uh it's it's very problematic. You know, we just don't have the ability to provide the service that that we should be providing because the cost, I mean, we just don't have the ability to do that because we're just not receiving uh the fees that we should be receiving. That is a challenge and it may be something like I said we'll look into it may be something that we could do at least one time citywide

[1:01:38] and then maybe we could as a finance department build on that you know going forward. So they may have some kind of where you could update it on an annual basis but we can look into that for sure and get back with y'all on that. And we're definitely not trying to make money off people. We're just trying to cover our costs. That's all that comes down to. Yeah. Thank you, Tina. Thank you. Good job. Thank you, man. [Music] No fair. Well, good morning. As y'all can tell, I missed the memo. I'm being casual. I didn't bring a second. Maybe tomorrow. We'll see how that goes. So good morning. Uh Erin Vonoi, director of planning, development services. Um so we we have three divisions uh from planning, permits and inspections and then our development services division that kind of bridges the two. Um our mission of the planning development services department is to provide opportunities for community engagement on land use, land layout with connectivity to transportation and private development ventures to provide a safe, healthy, and fiscally sustainable community. And you've heard even just with the first two um presenters talk about u finances and costs and that is something that planning has really started looking at is what is our fiscal responsibility to sustain our community because as even Tina mentioned property taxes are challenged uh our growth rate currently uh is is flat or slow growth um and so what are we doing in development decisions private development decisions to make sure that we're not not making decisions today that in 30 years we're not going to be able to afford

[1:03:40] maintenance and and ongoing costs. And so that's that's one of our key things that we'll discuss today. So some of our strengths uh we feel very strongly about our staff team. We have a lot of in experience even though some of them may only have been with the city for a few years but they have experience in the trades uh in particular with our permits and inspections when they're out doing uh plumbing and mechanical and construction type things. Um we have team members in our development services that know how to do uh customer service and process applications and data entry and get things moving. uh we have a team uh of planners that are really working to say what is the betterment of our community? How are we making things available for our community to continue to move forward? Uh our our teammates are always willing to work with applicants. Um and the last thing I put on there that we are very resilient to high pressure. Uh, as many of y'all know, uh, over the years, if you've spent any time in any sector around the city, um, permits and inspections gets blamed for a lot of things or you get a lot of phone calls on permanent inspections, which we're we're okay with. We want to go and track down what is the issue, what's the problem. U, but they are very resilient to high pressure. They're going out on job sites saying, "Looks like you constructed something wrong." We're talking in pre-development meetings saying, "Well, there's a potential of a road here that you're going to have to spend $300 to $400,000 on." But they're very resilient to that high pressure. The other thing that we've been working very hard on and we believe is a strength in our in our area is solutionoriented. While yes, there are minimum codes, there are minimum standards uh that you should meet and ordinances, we know there are options to some of those barriers. We know that we have to work with folks to find what is the best option for that development. What works today? What works in 5 years? What works in 20 years. Um our staff, we're constantly working with staff to all what are we doing to balance the needs uh of adjacent property owners to property

[1:05:42] owner aid that wants to do something. All right. Thank you all and have a good day. Thank you, Daniel. Tina finished a little bit early, so do I get her two minutes? There you do have them actually. So the last thing that we do and we there's been some discussion today about software is transparency. Um our development process through uh software purchases is very transparent. We're going through a software upgrade right now and you'll see later on in the presentation that there are always challenges with upgrading software and trying to communicate across the development team with software. But it is open and out there. So, anytime somebody applies for a permit that has a plan review, there's an online portal that they get to see every single step, every single comment. They get to engage with every plan reviewer if they choose to. Now, we have several folks that choose not to, but it's there. It's available. Um, even in our pre-development meetings, we're there to communicate what's going on. Here's where it comes from our ordinances. We give them here's our typed out list of what your steps are. Um and so we we are very transparent. Planning uh in general based on state laws uh is very transparent. So any of those decisions go to boards, commissions, uh they are made by uh folks that you guys appoint and then if it needs to come to council level, it comes to council. So all of those are out in the open uh allow public engagement uh and things like that. Um so we're very we feel very strongly about a strength of of transparency. our weaknesses over time for various reasons. Uh we used to count ourselves as a one-stop shop. We have just become fragmented just because of different needs within the in our own organization. Um but it's it's become a little dislocated uh and not connected through space and structure meaning that if I walked into the permits building, I may have to go to another building to find another member of the development team or I may have to go somewhere else or and so it's just a little um disjointed. Uh at times there can be

[1:07:47] different competing philosophies and that just means that there's other people because we are stretched thin. They have other needs. Uh and they just have okay well the the important thing is hey we have this major um sewer project out at the lake. We've got to pull our engineers to doing that. So they may not be able to focus as much on development needs at times and it's just competing things that you have to get done. um at at times that can compromise some timelines and so that's something that we always try to gauge oursel with is how are we doing on our standard timelines um we have the fastest timelines of any city our size we have the fastest timelines of any city like Brownwood Sweetwater as far as plan reviews timelines I will put our team up against anybody and do a competition and we will we'll smoke them every day we we are that good what we need so I'm just interrupt right there. Coming off a campaign trail, the number one thing we get is how long the pains, the headwinds, the struggles out of that department. And I will give you credit. I will say seven out of 10 times when I research one, it's probably the applicants hold up rather than ours. Yeah. But we need to go down a path. I get that. But there have been tons of people that have held my feet to the fire and I get it. And they say I take seven 10 trips down there to get what I need completed. When I was in another town or another city, it was three. Yeah. So, I'm going to question that. Not good, bad. It's just I'm just calling balls and strikes here. There will be people watching that I I promise you are not going to agree with that and be extremely polar opposite and you're going to have to help us get through that. Yes. And I think that's data. I think that's our people accessessible and being attentive and all the philosophies for private

[1:09:50] development and our and where we prioritize private development as an organization. Are we all participating at the same level? Right. And that all is important. Uh, and that's kind of where some of these weaknesses come in is are are we all pulling together as a team for private development because private development is what creates new property taxes. And so we have to be very cognizant that that's important to how we do it. Now we still have again those minimum standards. We have those minimum codes. We we we have as a organization a city has adopted those things and so that's our role is to say okay you are meeting those or you're not. I think there's also an education component to our contractors and our general public who simply just don't know what the real rules are. They just simply don't have an online platform that tracks that that we've created and we do and through our our website upgrade. We think it's much more accessible. Um and then also through our pre-development meetings, it's really getting down to simplifying it in easy language instead of very technical language. So, let me let me piggyback on what Tom was saying. Aaron, are some of the reasons that permits gets blamed has nothing whatsoever to do with permits, but it's with an other department that they may have to work with. That is really the fly in the ointment. I will say it like this. It's it's rarely the actual building permit or the inspection process. It is some other development process whether a land use was not correct. There's not a water line, there's not a things that they didn't know weren't correct, but they turned in a permit ready to build a structure and they didn't know these other things have happened or should have happened in the past and may not have. And then they have to go to a board which only meets once every 30 days because then there's legal notice that you have to hit and so that drags the process out. So while they get dinged all the time for well

[1:11:54] it's hel it's held up in permits. Well we have as cities have design permits is the last step. That's the all right we stop you right here. Nobody else really has had a process that said wo we're at wo now. And so then it's okay. It's always permits and inspections that's holding me up. Rarely is it actually the permit itself. Tommy, I've told the council this numerous times and I'll say it again. If if you get someone who calls you, please please send them our way. We always look into it. And and I always say if if we're wrong, we will admit that and we will get it fixed. On the other hand, if we find that the process has been gone through and you know it's been sitting in the hopper for a month because their architect hasn't turned their stuff in or they haven't paid their fee or they haven't which is typically what we find then then we're going to say here's what you need to do. But please don't let it linger. I tell people if they have a problem come tell us. Don't don't sit there and then a year later say, "Oh, well, you know, when I went to Midland, I I will put our department up against anyone when it comes to speed and efficiency." But if they show us where we messed up, trust me, we will take ownership of that and we will get it fixed. But let us know if you hear something. Bring it to us as quick as you can. Tell them, "Bring it to us." Quick question before we leave this topic. um given Tina's context that we are flat to declining population growth and knowing that economic development generates sales tax revenues, how do you handle the the excuse me, the proposed uh economic developer, the project that's coming in um that has to work its way through this cumbersome more complicated process. Do they have someone that can shepherd them from start to finish? I would think that that would be a a a wonderful service um proactive to economic development.

[1:13:59] So we do have all these other things. Yeah, we do have our pre-development process. I do think that's a key element that we struggle with at times is making sure that there's somebody overseeing helping that private project through. And when we get to my uh year five, I'll I'll talk about that a little bit more. Um, but I I do see that as one of one of our areas of weaknesses is that because we should be competing very hardly or trying to help very hard our private development forward, but we also have to be cognizant of what does it cost us to do that. So, every time we add a staff member, that's an additional cost to the fee structure or something or something to the general u to the general fund and that's challenging. So we have to be very challenging and and consistent to who in our team is able to do that. Is it cost-effective? Do we get results that we want? Well, the supposition would not be that someone is standing there holding their hand until the project goes from start to finish every minute of every day. But that they would perhaps have have a singular contact that was who said ombbudsman that that would shepherd that. That's really our development services division that team that helps with those applications and moving them forward. They're also the leadership of the pre-development uh stages trying to get them to come in and sit down with the entire team and find out what the rules and regulations, here's the steps to go through with planning, engineering, whoever it may be. Um, and so we do have a high volume of requests for those. They're not required, but we do have a high volume. We do them every Thursday. Thursdays are set aside for pre-development meetings. We'll have anywhere from 3 to four, depending on the week, and and continue to work with them after that, saying, "Hey, we haven't seen something in three weeks from you. Are you still wanting to move forward with the development?" So, so the number one thing that we need in your department, whether we have to double down or whatever it is, is we need a can do attitude. I mean,

[1:16:02] yeah, I want I want to help you get a permit. I want to help you all the way through. Yes. I hear a lot is somebody will sit there and I'll start reading, they go, "Nope, can't do that. Don't can't do that. Can't do." We have dealt with that on on many occasions not only on small projects even from a carport to multi- you know residents and developments where it's no we can't do that no we can't do it we need somebody in there you know what let me help you work around that and a lot of the times that's with you and Charlie I get that as we go a little bit further down sometimes we don't get that but they they have a set of rules right so if there's a step in there where we can step up. I think Rick's probably already loaded on this one, but long story short, it's good to the front. I didn't know I had so many relief pictures. This is great. You got a lot. We're getting them up here. But anyway, it's it would be great to hear that. Say, you know what? I had a bunch of obstacles, but they helped me and showed me where my obstacles were, and here's how I got through that. Rick, we can both answer that. But the one thing I want to reiterate to you is this comp plan. I have said over and over to the city, if you don't like the rules, it's St. Angelo. Change your rules. They're they're charged with implementing and carrying those rules out. And it says you can't have a carport. So, you can have a carport, but if we want carports, then change the rules where you can have a carport, but don't saddle staff with, you know, here's your book of rules, but we want you to figure out a way around that. Well, you can't figure out way around that unless you change the rules. So, you know, that's that's I'll leave that at that. And I think y'all are already on to that. You're looking at the comp plan and and determining what we want to change and what we want to leave the same. But that's the main thing. And then as far as staffing goes, I think they do, we are challenged with a lot of turnover. I'll say that in planning, it is very difficult to keep a full staff there. And you're constantly training new people. And so, it does become difficult with them knowing all

[1:18:04] of the ins and outs of St. Angelo's ordinances and ways around things when you don't always have staff who've been there very long. So, it does fall back on it then making it to Charlie or Aaron to look at those creative ways to get around something. So, with that said, is there an area that you might be able to privatize a specific level of permitting to say somebody could bring in a group of people that do this? We contracted out one case that we took to the planning commission and what did that case cost? Tell them by the looks that didn't turn out too well. We We both disagree, but I'm going to let him respond to that. It costs It's extremely costly. It was $2,500 for one case that we normally do for 600. That's the wrong question, huh? Yeah. So, yes, it is possible. I don't think you're going to like the I I think you will start having fewer permits turned in. And and we always run against that. Is is the cost too high for a permit for a weekend warrior to go put up something compared to just a normal person? you know, we're going to get Shannon, we're gonna get SISD, we're going to get those projects. It's the ones that we also worry about that are the health and safety of those other structures. They call all of us weekly. I'm just going to build this. Hope the city doesn't see it and I'm going to hope and my answer is, you know what, we're enforcing that. When we find that, we can pretty much tell when you started, right? Just be prepared. It's going to happen. I I feel sorry for y'all, but there are times where I wish we had more of that. let's go. Let's figure out a way to do it. And when I have called y'all, y'all have done wonderful about getting those things resolved. I would say when they come to the the Thursday meetings that he was talking about that we encourage people really they need to do that. That is where you have all the team players in there from the variety of departments from engineering to fire marshall to whatever. And it's that sort of an approach where someone brings their case and maybe it's a complicated one. If it's a simple one, it's not a problem. But if they bring those knowing that it could be that's where that team really talks about how can we do this. I think

[1:20:06] that happens. It's just not as many people take advantage of that weekly opportunity as they should. I mean that's why we're doing it weekly. Let me let me be critical. It's all right. But but to Tom's point when it rises to the level of a council member Mhm. it gets solved. It should not be that way. So that may be a training and education issue with staff because Tom and I were involved in a deal not two weeks ago that we had a conversation. We met with a citizen and it was solved within I'm I am serious as a heart attack. It was solved within an hour while we were sitting there. So when it rises to the level of council, it gets worked on and solved. It should not have to be that way. So Tom's point being, yeah, we can help you do that. We're going to have to work within the rules, as you say, Rick, but we can help you do that if you'll if you'll follow us. And well said. I don't disagree with that at all. Yeah, I I agree with that. And I think that goes back to our all of our philosophies for private development need to be in alignment and all the team members have to work towards that goal as we have anywhere from 40 to 80 projects happening at any given day. Having folks at my level or even the manager level below attentive to what's going on with those projects is challenging. Doesn't mean it can't happen, but it's challenging. But we have to enforce that can do attitude and it really is important to make sure things are going along and we can't always while software is very helpful. We can't stand behind the software and let it communicate for us. We need to pick up the phone, talk to a person. Here's what's going on. Here's what we need. And I I I say that critical of our of our myself and my own team is that

[1:22:08] it's so easy to shoot off an email. Hey, do this, do that, do this. We really got to talk and make sure that things are going. And I do appreciate everyone that does communicate with us because the one thing I would ask for us and our our staff team is is trust us. Trust our staff team. We're doing what we believe is the right. Again, as Rick said, if we get it wrong, we will admit that right at right at the very beginning, and we will try to find a way to make it work. That's what we want to hear. Yeah. But the disconnect I see is when I'll call you, it'll be well, we're waiting on this other department get answer. I think a lot of times constituents will be probably playing departments against each other. Oh well, fire department said this and planning said this and permitting, you know. So I I think the point is if all of those people were in a centralized location under one roof when it comes to this, you can cut a lot of things down. I don't know if that's ever a possibility. So let's talk about that. And Aaron may bring it up. We used to have and that's when this department was put over here. We had a representative from the fire marshall in this in this building and we had a repres representative from engineering in this building. And the goal was you had all those people in place over the years because of increased responsibilities, more workload that has gone away. The person in the fire marshall's office has moved over with the fire marshall and in their defense they need they need them. Same thing with engineering. So this group has been left with we have to coordinate all this but we don't have those people in the building anymore. So you're exactly right that is ideal and we have I've never heard that before. Now getting that those people back in there is a challenge because now you have to fund more positions but that's what has happened over the years because of staffing levels and workloads. So yeah they are put in a little more of a predicament and trying to run all the rabbits. I would certainly say that would be something that would be certainly looked at very positively if it were brought forth the next budget. Putting that group of people back in an area. I I know that went away, but I've

[1:24:12] heard it. It helps a lot. Yes. To to have all of them in one spot. I couldn't tell you how much that would help a citizen coming in trying to do something if they can make three steps in one trip. People need the department. Well, I was going to say there is a key right there and that is communication. The departments need to communicate with one another in a more effective and efficient manner. Had that happened in this deal Tom and I were involved in. If if there had been communication, it never would have popped up. There was just no communication interdep departmentally. So, well, Erin, when when we met Friday, u you know, I I do appreciate the staff's can do attitude and and they they try. They're they're they really are, but the can do attitude is not the only element without having the right knowledge. Mhm. And like we were talking about Friday, if we could say somebody comes in and they want to do spot zoning. Um well, that's illegal in Texas, but if they don't know that, they get go down the road long enough and then it gets into committee and stuff, then they realize, oh, we can't do that. So, if we knew, I say we the the staff, if they know, have a better training, raise their knowledge hopefully up to the level of yours. that will stop a lot of that getting down the road and having to start over. And I think that training would be and I don't know what that training would be, but it for at least one day we're all on the same page. Yes, ma'am. You know, but I I think uh that that's going to communication and then having the correct training is is imperative. Yes, sir. From my perspective, I think Tom and Tommy have said it well, but I do agree with them. When the council person picks up that phone, get results right away. We need to get that attitude

[1:26:16] to the people that work for you, for Charlie, for Billy, for engineering. Those individuals need to understand that this they're working for the citizens. Mhm. may have somebody they report to, but they're truly working for the citizens. And we've got to get that mindset to everyone. I don't care if it's a permit person, uh if it's a planner, whoever it is. And and and I wish that we could make these contractors understand that the process would be a lot simpler if they came in for a premeating. I don't care who it is. Somebody has a conversation with me. Do you have a preme? Uh, no. Got to have a pre meeting. That way you don't have Well, fire department said this, engineering said this. Everybody's in the room. Anyway, that's my two cents. You're about to address all this. We just Right. That's okay. I I would like to end with one thing and I think Harry you stated that well and I think we all agree with that but keep in mind if you look at the overall number of cases they handle in a year and the number of items that make it to city council I bet it is 1% or less that actually comes to you and we want to solve that don't get me wrong but I do think sometimes we forget the overall load they take and what percentage actually rises to the and I agree zero should keep coming to you. But at the end of the day, um they're doing pretty good and we are always open for improvements and ways to make that happen. So Rick, I'm going to do something a little bit followup. I was going to shut up, but I can't do this. You know that one or 2% are the loudest people. They're the ones that call Tommy and Tom and Harry to say, "You're funny people or you're privileged people."

[1:28:19] We've got to make sure that we do is correct. Great. You do a great job. Don't get me wrong. We've got to do a better job of of communicating. And I think Mary and and Karen said we've got to do that. And we got to do it at all levels. Yes. and and you know I think the I think the people the at the director's levels in in that level do a very good job of communicating and communicating with the council but I'm not so sure that some of those people at that next step down do that same good job of communicating within themselves in a department with the uh with the citizen all of speak and I think we Yeah, we make great steps. We've t since I've been on council for 9 years, we've taken great steps forward on this, but we're not where we need to be yet, I guess. All right. So, to finish out a couple of the weaknesses is just our technology. There's some mismatches in there. We've been working through those things. We we don't necessarily have the technical expertise within our department. We're working on that. Uh, and some of that has to do with even as as Heather mentioned about PS or GIS data. We're working on finding a way to utilize a position to do those things to help us streamline that access in our area so that we're able to do that. The biggest thing as Rick had mentioned about the land development subdivision ordinance and the comprehensive plan. They are getting more and more dated. They are not as flexible as we need them to be for our community to provide opportunities for even big developers to small developers. And some of the items in there at times may cause some long-term maintenance costs that maybe we don't want to take on. Maybe we do, but those are things that we need to evaluate very very soon. Uh opportunities. Um we do have a grant

[1:30:23] submitt that is getting ready to be sent off for a comprehensive plan update. Uh we are going to be looking for supplemental funding from the general fund. Uh an opportunity is update our master theafare plan. Uh it does not currently really uh anticipate the interstate while we have the corridor labeled. We really have to decide all right do we need all the other large road development because large road development is the is the one affordable thing that we can control on the city level. We can't control the size of the water line or the sewer line. Those are all designed by engineers that says here's the capacity and here's what we need. The road the roads depending on if we want wide roads or narrow roads deals with what we can afford in the future. Wide roads it means you have on street parking. You actually can nice drive. You're not constricted anyway. Narrower roads, okay, you might be constricted. You may not have as much on street parking, but there's an ongoing maintenance cost to that once that's turned over from the developer. And those are things we have to balance. um unity and I think that's one of the biggest things that we're doing is working together is unity. Uh I think there's some opportunities in the upcoming year uh years to how do we do our field inspections team instead of maybe sending three different folks out to one property for some type of violation? Are there some uh efficiencies of crossraining inspectors to do multiple things when they're on a property? That can be challenging, but I think there's an opportunity there. Um the other thing is talking about certification and pay for certification for our inspection teams and planners and things. We know that's an opportunity for a morale boost. We know that's an opportunity for retainment as well as educational growth and personal growth. And so we think that's an opportunity here in the future. Some threats as others have mentioned state legislature. Um they're really a lot of those laws are really targeting the metro areas but they have impacts in our community. Um, one of them being like on the uh land development subdivision ordinance. If that street is not in the

[1:32:26] CIP program and funded, we may not be able to make the developer build it and pay for it, which means we have to pay for it down the road somewhere. Well, that really impacts our connectivity. Uh, annexation and disanexation. There's annexation is how we gain some land to maybe bring in some additional taxpayers. Well, there's really no way to do that anymore. where you have to voluntarily and people can voluntarily they call it deanexation from the ETJ the extr territorial jurisdiction but that means we don't use our subdivision ordinance there so they won't build the city standards so if they ever want to come in we're going to take on substandard infrastructure that's challenging um we know that based on affordability uh private development significantly impacts the delay of quality of life because we're trying to find ways to be affordable so we've said okay we'll Sidewalks cost too much. Well, that's a quality of life amenity for whether it's our neighborhoods or downtown or wherever. Same with bike lanes, same with parks, same with trees and open spaces. We really have to make that as a decision as a community. And that's part of the comprehensive plan. What do we want our community to be, but we know that it can be impacted significantly with private development. Uh continued expansion of the city limits, knowing that each time usually is a net loss due to service costs. I mean y'all all know that for every property that comes in that property tax we use so much of it uh basically all police and fire takes up all that and then sales tax starts supplementing those. We have to really get more educated and data driven to say does accepting this into our community make sense because our water fund is supplemented by it. Our property taxes those people are going to spend sales taxes. They're bringing in new jobs. Does it make financial sense? because we know in the state of Texas, our property taxes are are essentially capped. They're not going to grow significantly. So, can we do it? And that's all part of the comprehensive plan of trying to do that fiscal analysis to make sure that we're making sound decisions to accept some property into our city limits.

[1:34:30] So, that's our our one-year goal is to look at our comprehensive plan, have a request coming through the budget cycle to help fund that plan as well as the grant uh that would help supplement that plan to look at what is our comprehensive plan. The comprehensive plan is our overall city goal. It's not planning's plan. It's not operations plans. It's not the fire department. Everybody's plan is how is the fire department going to staff if we grow in certain ways? How are we going to grow to the northeast if we have an interstate while we're also growing to the southwest where homes and other developments are being built towards the lake? Can we afford to do that and provide the infrastructure there? We know that we have different needs. And so that's really the thing um comes down to funding, comes down to leadership staff uh pulling together, comes down to marketing and listening to our community uh putting together champions at the elected level to say this is really important to us as a community and moving it forward. Commitment from the planning division, GIS and other teams to work together to bring the project home to say here's what the real impacts are for the community. three-year goal is to then springboard from that comprehensive planning up update and then all right, we need to we know we need housing. We did a study in 2019. We have an ongoing study this year that's probably going to tell us you still need housing and rooftops bring commercial. So, we need a zoning ordinance that is much more flexible that helps target some infill areas to allow for a little more density. Um, we've got to find ways to make sure that things are still affordable and but it's still producing the types of things that we need on a per lot basis to help pay the to help pay the bills. Um, the required uh resources are is our planners and zoning professionals to help draft language, GIS analysts for map mapping strategic growth areas, um experts to shift from traditional uh

[1:36:32] usebased zoning to form based. So, if the form of the neighborhood is a certain form, why don't why don't we use that instead of saying you've got to be this specific classification. Um, some contextsensitive infill regulations. What are things to help lower some regulations there to allow infill to continue to develop? Uh, continue to allow the the missing middle um zoning incentives uh based on real market conditions. engineers and utility planners to evaluate capacity for water, sewer, roads, those things that we need to provide. Uh finance, trains and life cycle costs. You know, kind of echoing what Tina had said and analysis of infrastructure. We if we put in this line, how long is it going to last and when do we have to pay for it again? And then the cooperation between the the different groups. And then the five-year goal is that reestablish that one-stop shop for private development. um really continue to centralize and streamline the development review process. Um you know, when you're always on the inside, you think you have the best process, but you need to have somebody from the outside to evaluate that process to say, is that really the best process? So, I can sit here and I think I could fight for it all day, but we obviously there there's some things we can tweak. um you know staffing I think talking about what is a project manager and crossraining staff and so that if staff has a certain quote case load that they're taking those projects forward and interacting with engineering interacting with fire prevention interacting with other people and making sure that the project is moving forward that it's not getting stagnated somewhere and if there is an issue do we need to meet about it as a group do we need an individual consultation whatever it may be and again better outreach uh to the community uh on how the process really works. Here's our development book. Here's how you go through and develop things. We hear from our outside developers, we have a really good process, very simple, very straightforward. We have very low regulations, but our internal our our local folks struggle at times to

[1:38:35] understand, well, what really is a drainage study? What am I supposed to do? And if they've not through the process before, we really need to help them get to the right person to find out what that means. So I think I'm done. You are done. I think thank you sir. You know what I will say actually president I would love if your fiveyear goal was your one-ear goal but regardless of that nice job. So the forward recap is comp plan and communication enhance communication. Yes. Inter departmental separating questions. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Yes, Aaron. Thank you, ma'am. All right. Thank you. Good job there. Appreciate it. Thanks, Rick. I know you. We are at the point of a lunch break. Uh we have food in the back. Uh please feel free to go back there and get that food. Let's take a little break. Um we can either choose 30 minutes to sit here and eat and talk or allow the staff to continue the presentations. It's up to y'all. Why don't we just take 15 minutes and then Sounds good. Okay, we're going to go ahead and continue with the workshop. So, Brandon, you're up next, sir. All right. Thank you. All right. So, legal's mission is to provide professional, effective, and ethical legal counsel to the city council, city manager, uh, boards and city staff. Uh, we basically have three core functions. one is on the the city side representing all those boards, staff and council preparing legal documents, but then we also have a prosecutor that's dedicated just to municipal court prosecution. But then we also handle some other court related activities in that regard. And then our third function is the real estate division who handles all the real estate transactions for the city. So the strengths number one would be our legal team. We have um a legal team that's well verssed in all aspects of

[1:40:37] municipal law. Um we are heavy on attorneys uh with experience in prosecution right now. Uh we've got one attorney that was the former prosecutor and is now on the city side learning that role. So um she's doing great in that. And then of course we have that dedicated real estate uh manager that uh that is her whole function. And then another strength inter agency connections. Uh two of our attorneys they've also been attorneys for the uh attorney general's office. And then one of those was actually a county attorney. So we have a lot of connections with those agencies and different perspectives that I think add value to our department. strong interdep departmental collaboration legal involved in pretty much every department within the city. I think we're we have a good reputation and um we do our best to align you know our advice with uh city priorities and those departments and then technology. So it got brought up a little earlier about legal files. We have implemented that which has taken all our paper files to uh electronic format and helped us better track and manage those case files. Uh and then you know Heather mentioned GovQa. We used to have a separate paper file for each P we used to have and now that's all through GV QA. Um, one point that, you know, Tina made about the contract management. I mean, we we do have all the contracts, but as far as like, um, you know, helping the departments or setting those reminders, I think it has the capability to do that, but we have historically relied on the departments to manage their own contracts. And I think that would, you know, take some time away from the legal part if we were doing that function. But just throwing it out there, I think it does have that

[1:42:40] capability to to do uh reminders. And so our purchasing division and planning department are both on legal files and that really helps me to be able to go into their systems when I'm reviewing a purchasing contract or reviewing a planning ordinance. That helps, but the whole city isn't on that system. So I I don't know what it cost-wise take to do that. and maybe that would be a benefit um having departments that do have those contracts. Um maybe it could help them. So just throwing that out there. So weaknesses, um biggest one, recent turnover. Obviously everyone knows our former city attorney who was here for 9 years. She's no longer with us. But what you may not know is we also lost a longtime parallegal who had been with the city for 18 years. So lost a lot of that institutional knowledge. I mean, she was the go-to. If there was something I couldn't find, uh, she'd always track it down. So, we're just having to build back up from that. And then, uh, limited capacity for complex litigation. Uh, mayor, I think we've talked about this. Um we're just our office isn't specialized to do litigation day in day out. I mean there is some small litigation that we could do. Um but that is a specialty and it even gets more specialized on depending on the case type. Like if you've got a construction law uh case, I mean a personal injury attorney isn't going to go try that construction law case. So, I will say uh our office adds value even when you hire outside counsel because we speak their language. We help track down, compile records. We know what they're going to need. We help coordinate witnesses, all that kind of stuff that they would otherwise be billing, you

[1:44:43] know, their normal clients for. We are providing that. So, um that is some value to the city there. uh limited cross specialization. Uh this is something I'm really going to try and work on within the department, but we've tended to kind of siphon ourselves off into different silos of uh you know specialty and like I did a lot of the planning and economic development and real estate but I didn't do a lot of the civil service or employment side. I mean Teresa traditionally handled that and I got a crash course in civil service recently. So um that is something we need to work on and especially for succession planning and when there's vacancies other attorneys need to be handle able to handle a wide variety of things. Citizen complaints uh this kind of twofold. We we do spend a lot of time talking to to citizens which we're absolutely happy to do and I I think that is part of our role but a lot of time citizens are seeking legal advice and they don't understand that we represent the city. Um so we're limited on what we can do there. I mean even you know someone goes through ZBA and they want to appeal well how do you appeal? Well, if I'm answering how you appeal, I'm answering, you know, how you sue the city to, you know, go proceed your claim. So, there's that aspect of it, but there's also, I think, some confusion about our role in decision-m. Um, a lot of times if the question is, is this legal or not? It's black and white. No, it's not legal. Well, we can tell you that and that's a clear answer, but there's a lot of discretion in some decisions, especially we get a lot of complaints on leases. Um, one neighbor, you know, we we manage leases along the lake and river properties and we'll have one neighbor that doesn't like the way another neighbor is cutting their grass

[1:46:46] or something. And so we will get that complaint and technically, yeah, we can enforce the terms of the lease and uh make you go cut the grass. But if the department or city council or city management saying, "Hey, we think the grass is okay. It's just this neighbor is not really happy with it," um those are the decision makers and we're not necessarily making a legal call in that aspect. So, uh, we can do better about, you know, informing staff, informing citizens what our role is, but that does lead to a lot of, um, time and effort handling those complaints. So, opportunities, I I think we're at a great place now with recent new council members, also turn over in the legal department to start training initiatives. Um, we've done this some with some of our boards. I know Costa DC just recently did a training. I've done some training with ZBA and I think for the most part that's well received and um that'll be a big component of the goals that I have coming up. And then modernize our technology. Uh, we're always looking for ways to do that. AI is going to be huge. I get tons of articles on that and how that plays into the legal field. Obviously, it's not developed to the point yet where you can just totally rely on it. I mean, it does make up cases every once in a while. So, you have to really uh be double-checking that. Uh we also have a opportunity to analyze our risk and our you know litigation concerns. Um and I think we have to work with risk management. We may have to work with outside consultants uh to look at the claim types of claims we're getting and can we reduce those by doing things like training or um some type of mitigation strategy for those risks and our threats. So, you've heard it

[1:48:53] several times through other presentations. The legal landscape is changing and it's becoming more hostile towards cities, especially with uh like Aaron talked about land development. I mean, the level of notices and publications and just the procedural aspects that we have to go through to do those cases is um just getting out of control. And I mean even you know the joint meetings we do city council and planning commission we do those so that we don't have to notify large swasts of the city which I mean there was cases on this and I think in one case it was going to be upwards of like 50,000 notices that they were going to have to send out. So um we're doing our best to stay on track of that but that's always going to be a threat as time goes on. And then the next one's kind of the the same deal. Um, you know, those statutes I read more and more, you know, they're waving governmental immunity. Um, used to governmental immunity was only waved in certain cases and um the biggest of those where were uh the Texas TOR Claims Act and operation of motor vehicles, personnel injury, those types of things. And so that that used to be um most of our liability, but now especially in this planning and development stuff. Um they're opening the door to that and um creating new opportunities for people to appeal and get their attorneys fees, court costs, all that kind of stuff. But even beyond that, we handle a lot of third party subpoenas. So cases we're not even involved in, we'll get records requests that don't fall on because there is active litigation. So we may not necessarily be able to withhold some of those uh records like we would under public information, but uh especially with EMS records, those are under HIPPA. And so we're trying to protect those,

[1:50:56] but that means going to court, uh, filing motions, taking a lot of time out of what we do, uh, to go fight battles in third party cases, which I mean, I think we have a duty, especially in those EMS cases, to do that. Um, but it's something that might be overlooked sometimes. Can you give me an example of one of those, a third party request? Just walk. Yeah, I mean we so we'll get served with a sub subpoena or one of our departments will and it'll ask for uh I want all records in such and such case this uh instant report for a crash that occurred. And so there's a Texas statute that protects EMS records. And so when we respond to that, I mean, there's some basic information we can provide them, but we'll have to go redact um medication. Um if there was any kind of diagnosis, um you can have like the general injury, but you can't go into super detail about what the injuries were. And so we'll either have to file a motion to quash with the court where that's at and set a hearing, go to the go to a hearing and argue it before the judge or um a lot of times we try and work it out with the attorneys and say, you know, this is a personal injury case. Uh they're probably these probably are relevant records to the claim. Uh, so will your client sign a release to allow us to give those records over? Um, sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. And then when it doesn't, we go to court to to argue those. So, um, I hate subpoenas. they take up a lot of time and it it doesn't feel like I'm being productive uh for the city because I'm and those are also on short timelines a lot of times. Um there's no I could be wrong about this but uh you

[1:52:59] have to have a reasonable time to respond but there's not like a set 30 days. It's like we have a hearing next week. We need to get this information and uh so we need it in the next few days. And I know there's been cases where they asked for all the security footage at PD and we quashed that one and didn't have to turn it over, but I mean it for the time period they wanted, I mean it was like 36 hours or 50 something hours of footage they wanted us to get on a short time frame. So we're handling those uh public information. You've heard that time and time again and I'll echo it. Um I asked our attorney that is handling public information right now. You know what percentage do you think you work on public information? And easily 40% to 50% of her job is public information. And when I came to the city that's the first thing I worked on and I I agree. Um and then we have a parallegal dedicated to assisting that attorney with the public information. So, I am totally in favor of having a shared employee or whatever it is we need to do because I don't think public information is going to it's not going to decrease. Um, I've talked to Chief Griffith. I mean, PD uh, you know, city clerks presented, I'm sure PD will have a a presentation on that, too. But, I mean, they get hammered with public information requests and a lot of theirs are um, body cam footage. And so if we decide to send something to the AG to withhold it for body cam, um, you know, their office may be having to redact things that come up in that footage, personal information, and then we're having to review that footage to make sure it meets the exceptions to withhold it. And then we're having to get in on USBs or whatever we can. And you have to send that all that footage to the attorney

[1:55:01] general. So the cost of just complying is also increasing. And then the last item, the budget pressures. I mean, I I think everyone can relate to that. Um, and this kind of goes back with the litigation. I mean, I think we we don't necessarily have problem finding attorneys, but if you're going to find specialized attorneys for either municipal law or litigation, whatever you want to do, that's going to be harder. Um, I think they're going to tend to go towards the big cities and and things like that. So, our goals are tied around doing better training. I mean, we think if we have better informed decision makers, they're going to make better decisions and those decisions are going to lead to better outcomes. So in the first year, I'd like to develop a uh needs assessment survey that goes to all the different departments, boards, uh city leadership and determine what our priority legal issues are to conduct training on. Also analyze our biggest risks. Um I mean we get a fair number of claims and not all those claims are nec necessarily paid out. A lot of them probably most of them are uh denied. Um, but the ones that do result in payouts or litigation, I mean, that takes a lot of time and money away from the city. So, I think we need to review that and see how we can be better to mitigate those risks. Um, I I think that survey would have to be field specific. I mean, there's there's questions I get constantly. Open meetings, public information, uh, conflicts of interest, um, gifting, accepting gifts, can employees get gifts. Uh, all those things. I mean, I think those are core trainings that we could do with HR when employees come in,

[1:57:04] when board members come in that I think will help a lot. Um, but then more specialized uh, trainings for ZBA. I mean I know they struggle with on variances, finding hardships and meeting all the requirements for hardships. So um I think having surveys, you know, where are knowledge gaps and where can we do better to prepare board members for their task because it's especially important for boards like ZBA because they are quasi judicial boards. So that is another risk. their decisions can be appealed to court and city council doesn't get a say in in that. Um I mean they will defending the litigation but they don't necessarily in the actual decision-m so it's but you will have to indemnify anything that's done by ZBA correct as a city attorney. So the city will if there's a lawsuit, yes, it could be against the city and ZBA board members. And so yeah, the city is going to hire an attorney to represent ZBA at that uh litigation. So one of the thing in in the year one goals we may consider is um getting a risk management consultant. I know our risk management department does a great job. We work very closely with them, but I intended a continuing education specifically on this. I mean, there's consultants that will come in from an objective point of view and look at where your risk lie, where the knowledge gaps are and assist you in developing these things I'm talking about with the survey and um where you need to do better at. So, that may be something we consider. So the required resources obviously city manager support um for helping with this

[1:59:10] enforce participation in the survey coordination with other city departments uh city clerk human resources risk management uh it all vital to that and then if we did look at getting outside consult consultants uh funding would be necessary for that. So by year three you would like to actually uh develop and implement the training program and I think that would be again we'd have different training modules depending on what uh those boards or staff are focused on. um es especially like planning staff procedural aspects that are coming down the pipe. I think part of it is reviewing our codes and maybe in the comprehensive plan um that part would be covered but I look back at ordinances all the time and like man I really wish we changed this one little part to clarify something or make something easier. So, I think we should have periodic reviews and cleanups of our city ordinances, policies, um, and making sure those align with council priorities and, uh, public policy. So, are you saying you think we should do that or you do do that? No, we definitely I mean, we definitely do it with Cuz I think you should do that. Any chance you get to clean it up? I mean, John James did that with planning and Aaron will do that. We we clean it up as we move forward. But I would never let waiting for permission to hinder you. Yeah. Yeah. No, obviously we're working closely with all the departments to clean up city ordinances, but I'm talking about I mean having a set schedule even if there isn't an item. I mean we're reviewing those on a regular basis and saying, "Okay, this year we're going to focus on whatever you want to do on your Saturday is up to you." Yeah. Thank you. Absolutely. Well, that's the

[2:01:12] thing there, time. I mean, finding the time, too. But uh so to this I mean developing the training content obviously again IT uh public information will need their help in how we develop these things whether it's videos uh inerson trainings orientation of new employees board members things like that um engaging outside experts TML attorneys I know we've done I think some employment law discrimination seminars here. We've done some civil service uh attorneys have been here and also the continuing education I do I've try and invite departments that may you know there may be a relevant topic so I'll invite them over or invite a couple board members um to watch those every once in a while. Do you get a lot of I mean is that very getting an invite from legal? It's kind of weird. Yeah. I mean, no, we have done it. I mean, we've done big screen. I mean, we've done with city clerk on public information and I don't know, in a group format. I think I don't know if I speak for everybody here. That's one I've passed. Obviously, I'm in trouble for that. And Brandon thinks I need to be here. That's not the movie you want to watch. Exactly. And the 5-year goal is still refining this training program. Uh obviously we want to put some hard numbers to it and see if training is affecting the actual number of claims we're getting. So um you know I've put a percentage up here 20% to reduce those but we'd also want to see 90% um participation in this whole process. So um we'd also like to compare ourselves to other cities. you know, how many we'll send them some public information requests and, you know, see how many CLA claims they're fielding and litigation they're involved in. Um, keeping track

[2:03:16] of legislative updates. We'll always be doing that and making sure we're updating our departments. TML just put out their legislative update, I think this last Friday, so I'm working through that and going to be contacting the departments about things they need to know about. And um also uh I remember when I first came to work here uh some of our in orientation involved uh fire fire prevention. I remember I think it was Ross Coleman bringing in different things they had found over the years in you know people's apartments or whatever. So I'd like to have real world scenarios, actual claims that we've handled and use those to kind of reinforce training with our city staff. But um other than that, I think that's kind of our goals. Again, same coordination with city departments, department heads, and council. So, when you get the TML update, do you go ahead and devest that to the appropriate departments that need it? Say if you see something, and I I think you probably send 80% of that to Aaron and Charlie. Yeah. Well, this morning I sent something to Aaron um that I saw on that. So, absolutely, we're sending those to departments depending on the topic. Is that sole responsibility on your shoulders to get it to the other departments? So, if something happens, they go, "Oh, I didn't know." Did they point a finger back to you? Well, I mean, I would say the departments I mean, they're doing this day in and day out. And I I think they're good about tracking these. I mean Tina constantly miss me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me mentioning uh the changes in her department. I know Aaron keeps tabs on it. So I think it's a joint effort. Absolutely. I'll be sending it, but I think they're pretty much on top of it as well. Brandon on the Ps. Do you all have much overlap between the two departments? Yes. So yeah, we have

[2:05:20] some of those numbers. Um I think the majority of the PS um that they do are mostly with PD, but we end up sending um about 6 to 7% of our Ps to legal for further review. And so what that means is I mean when we're getting them, that's the hard ones that we're not just automatically releasing. So the work it takes in that is like on the body cam stuff. We're reviewing the actual records themselves, seeing what exceptions to disclosure apply. And then if there are legal exceptions, we're preparing a letter to the AG and the AG determines whether we can actually withhold them. And then once we get the AG opinion back, we're reviewing those and determining, you know, sending out to PD or clerk, you know, this is what you should or shouldn't release. So, and do y'all use the government QA2? We do. And what about PD? Does PD have their own person QA2? Yeah, they have a record supervisor that we coordinate with. And then um I think there's a new I don't know if it's an officer or civilian employee, but uh doing the video stuff. So, and I think this may be a change that I've been looking at on license plates. before they had to redact all the license plates like in those videos which takes tons of time. I think that is a change that um the legislature made. So, I'll be sending them something about that. But even when an officer puts, you know, driver's license up to their body cam, we got to get that driver's license number redacted. Um if there's minors, things like that. So, it's a lot of work for them, too. Hey Brandon, thank you. Good presentation. We have water utilities up next. Shane Kelton. [Music]

[2:07:27] Okay. Um, John wanted to be here, but since his apologies, he already had scheduled vacation and plane tickets and all kinds of stuff. So, I told him to not cancel and go ahead and go and I would fill in for him. So, um, but going through here, um, starting off with the the mission of water utilities. water utilities provides drinking water from municipal use and wastewater collections and treatment services for residential, commercial, institutional and industrial customers in the city. Um and of course everything is uh pursuant to provisions in the clean water act and and and the PCQ from the state uh as well uh on that as we uh look at our at our mission and make sure that we are providing clean safe water for uh for our customers. uh going into the into the SWAT analysis, uh looking at our strengths, again, knowledgeable, experienced staff, um through all of our through all of our areas uh throughout the municipality. of course uh well established you know well established in the corers with the knowledgeable experienced staff when when we're talking about not only our administration knowing water rights all the regulatory and legislative uh issues that come down um in our conservation efforts water treatment wastewater treatment uh of course we run our own lab services as well uh and then our distribution collections uh utility maintenance metering uh and then uh going all the way through budgeting, accounting and communications and working with our communications group here in the city as well. Uh we we do see strong interdep departmental cooperation amongst engineering, operations, planning, public safety and all the really all the other groups within the city. Um, and I will mention, you know, I I've been here uh for couple years and uh or so and I have noticed

[2:09:33] over the years that we have um our our cooperation and our collaboration with other departments has has just immensely become better and better and better over time. And so it's something that uh cuz we did operate in pretty hard silos when I first when I first came to work here. And that's something through city management and through um through the the leadership through the rest of the city that has really really improved. So I just kind of wanted to bring that kind of everybody's attentions as we go along. Other strengths, you know, positive working relationships with neighboring municipalities. Um we have good working relationships with the TCQ and Texas Water Development Board. And I also wanted to add on here the CRMWD uh as we work with them on our water delivery from Lake Ivy uh and as we look to divers diversify continue to diversify our water portfolio. Uh looking forward to working with them in the future as well. Um you know we we do have a diverse uh raw water supply. You know looking at our different lakes in the contro river that we pull our water from. Um and again those uh from a surface water supply existing groundwater uh now that we have the hickory online uh that really uh from a water utilities perspective that does give us uh great comfort having that supply and having that online and being able to use that uh because as we know uh living on the edge of a desert drought is something that we live with on a pretty regular basis and uh we have been known to uh our surface water has been known to become quite scarce from year to year and time to time. So, um ex our existing treatment capacities uh we do um thanks to our conservation efforts that we did especially after the 11 12th drought, our citizens did have done a great job uh in the conservation area and so from our treatment capacity at our existing treatment plant. Um we do have plenty of extra extra capacity at our treatment plant for the city to continue to grow. um with our wastewater treatment plant, we uh again um the we

[2:11:38] do and things that we will be working on in the future are to expand some capacity there and look at upgrades to to that as part of as part of one of our goals uh coming up in the near future. But again, we do have um from the reclamation aspect of what we are treating or going to be able to treat at our wastewater treatment plant, it's a lot of added capacity to our water portfolio. And so that is a strength. Weaknesses um of course uh we along with the rest of the country uh have an aging and deteriorating infrastructure system. Um and and we do have deferred maintenance uh and a lot you know and a lot of that is and you know I think we'll see this and and I think we've and we've seen it uh uh in other places as well too not only in public works but through the rest of the city. A lot of that, you know, is is is due to sta staffing issues that we have. Not only one uh maintaining um staff, existing staff, but uh you know, when we when we look at the growth of the city and the lack of growth within our staffing patterns, I think you see see some of that that comes along with this um inconsistent inadequate utility asset management system. uh we are currently working on this uh but again it we're just in the infancy of it and so as we move forward this we will see this getting better but again it is it is an issue that we currently have uh again here we are limited staffing capacity for growing service demands uh again I think as we uh as we continue to not only uh look at the growth of the city and and how many more miles of pipelines we're putting in uh both you know on the water and the sewer side as well but also when we're also you know trying uh compete with the oil field services and and some of those guys that really take a lot of the skilled trades folks uh away from us. Those are those are things that that we have to look at as as we move forward and and and kind of work to work to continue to be able to attract those folks and keep those folks uh with the city instead of

[2:13:41] a constant turnover uh to where we're having to retrain uh constantly. So again, reactive maintenance practices uh a lot of times and and that's due to resource constraints. You know, we've I briefly touched on that. Um limited public education on conservation service efforts, long-term planning. Again, I think the more we can get our citizens involved in what we do, uh not only from, you know, our conservation, which are they have been great, uh again, but I think the more we can get involved moving forward, I think that's better. We need to do a better job of that. um yield of surf surface water, you know, from year to year. Again, we talked about the native weather patterns living on the edge of a desert. So, I think from that standpoint, uh again, that that is one of our weaknesses. uh current rate structures that we have now uh as we look into the future are not are not sufficient uh for us to continue an aggressive um uh replacement or uh rehabilitation uh in certain cases um of that infrastructure. Um and then source quality uh source water quality uh when we look at our surface water a lot of times multiple different factors go into it uh the level of the lakes the the heat things like that um as we start looking at that the amount of biologicals in the in the source water itself I mean can can cause a lot of issues whether that's taste and odor um h having issues for us maintaining chlorine residuals and also uh increased disinfection byproducts that we can see in our system u that we did actually this past year have an issue with. So if you all remember that back this last summer. So, uh, opportunities, um, uh, looking forward, looking out, uh, you know, at our future additional water supplies that are going to be available to the city, uh, that that we believe will help help our portfolio as we're moving forward, which is the Concho River reuse project and and of course

[2:15:44] the water that we have with Fort Stockton Holdings as we start to look at to develop that moving forward. Uh, of course, you know, as we're moving forward, federal and state funding, uh, this last legislative se session, we're talking about all the bills passed. Uh, there were about 40 bills that were that were actually submitted that kind of affected the water world. And so, um, you know, we were watching that, but one of one of those uh, Senator Perry's uh, a couple of his big initiatives were, uh, boosting the water fund. And so, um, I I believe, you know, all of that's going has gone through the legislature. not quite as big a big impact as he wanted to make, but again still looking at adding in another billion dollars per year to the water development fund. And so, uh, our ability to access and tap that, uh, tap those funds is there, um, accurately, you know, modeling our distribution system and our wastewater system. Uh, you kind of look at both of those. um as we move forward uh working with our uh you know starting to work with our GIS division and as we moving forward with that um we're we're kind of working with GIS in our IT department right now looking at um kind of a gap assessment or needs assessment in that area because there is a whole lot of things coming down the world with GIS and the ability to model our system um hopefully internally instead of having to always contract that out. And so as we look at that and getting those basically digital twins of our system, being able to model that, being able to forecast for our CIP what we really need instead of it being institutional knowledge uh wrapped up in somebody's head, whether it's mine or our guys that are out in the field, we'll actually have a good way to to proactively um go out and and model and and find where we our needs really truly are. um a fog ordinance, uh fats, oils, and grease. Um we we do have issues with sanitary sewer overflows. Um, if I say SSO, that's what I mean. Uh, as we move forward, but

[2:17:49] again, with with that, with senators or overflows, having a good fog ordinance in place, which I know may not be popular, um, with a lot of our folks uh, here in town, especially in the restaurant industry, being able to go out and actually inspect, enforce, and make sure that they are taking care of, um, their grease traps and all of those type things will help us greatly reduce our SSOs as we as we move forward. uh technology. Uh we go back, we're talking about the GIS and some of those things and we're looking at AI and how AI can inter interact with even GIS and some of our other programs that we're looking at uh some of our water modeling and wastewater modeling softwares, those type things as we're moving forward. those are out there and I think they can really help uh move us forward as as and move us forward quickly and more efficiently as we're moving uh moving forward in this uh and then as we're looking um reuse of of our water um when we look at the reuse project and and start looking at that for the Control River project. Not only I mean we looking at you know enhancing our surface water quality as we're bringing it back in. So it's going to make it hope hopefully easier to treat. We're going to be treating it on the front side. Hopefully, this will help us treat it faster, easier, more efficiently on the back side as well, too. Um, and I'll get into that here in a little bit. Uh, and then innovative water conservation measures. Um, as as we move forward, there's there's a lot of things out there that can help us with our with our public and as we move forward trying to educate and help uh help conserve our water. And again, when we live on the edge of a desert, that is that is highly important. So, uh, and then workforce development initiatives with, uh, with Howard and and and even, uh, now that, uh, ASU has an engineering program, again, getting those interns in, working with them, trying to help, um, help promote our our own kids and our own u our, own people here and get them in, get them into the city and help help us uh, work through guess our backup.

[2:19:53] When you talk about an accurate digital model, Yes sir. How unaccurate are I mean what are you looking for? What do you want versus what we see when we pull up on the GP GIS? GIS GIS is a general location. We would love to have it to the tenth of an inch. Okay. I mean or or or even more accurate. And again, it is going back through the system. It is going back in data collection and it's going to take it's going to take years and years to get there. But as we're replacing valves, as we're replacing pipes, as we're doing all that, making sure that we are out there collecting all of that data as we going going along and making sure all of that data is input into our system. Does that also include electrical underground? Cuz we all felt the experience of going through. No, I wish I w I wish it did. uh and and we can to some degree if we run across it and we find it and and when we're doing our um our franchise utility coordination meetings if we're working with them on a project we're going out and replacing well in Glenna when we were working with that I mean we did we had to we ran into an atmas line that we were in conflict with and had to wait for them to come out and move their line. If we did have all that information it would make it would make all of our lives so much easier. So, but as we find those, we were definitely wanting we want to capture that when we find it. But, um, currently I do not know of anything. We we haven't worked closely enough with our franchise utilities to to I think you answered it. We're years away from having some of the accuracy that you would like to have. Correct. We are. But I say we're no different than other cities. We're not. But, but again, uh, we again, it's a place to start and move forward. I think that uh again we're we're definitely needing to get there in the how and the predictive modeling that would it will allow us to do to have that information in in in the system and not only that over time it will help us reduce engineering costs and all of those uh having to use so many consultants or even if we do being able to ship that data to them and it be accurate it it will it will save us lots of dollars and

[2:21:57] as we move forward where you're doing repairs and new lines like the new trunk man and all those things cross future water man are Are you updating them? We we we have been we've been working with GIS and and they do have one data collection specialist over there that will come out when our guys are doing repairs. We're replacing valves or we're doing that. He's coming out and shooting that as it's going in. New developments, he's out there shooting that as that goes in. And so we are collecting that. Um we would even like to we would even like to take the data collection that he's doing a little bit further even uh from the engineering side of things. And so we would like to even collect more data than what he's currently collecting. But what he's doing right now is light years ahead of what what we have in our system. Apologize for the interruption. As far as like on the conservation side and these I was trying to look it up here on my phone. The these zebra muscles that have been discovered here in the lake. Is that to the point are they so prolific that it's already started to affect our water supply or have we had any damage infrastructure damage because of those things? We have not uh if you but CRMWD that is Colorado municipal water district uh they they have uh seen quite a bit of damage in their IV pipeline system that brings water to us. Um however of course recently just being in Lake Nazworthy found this year uh and it was only one specimen and some larve is all they found. So um one adult specimen and some larve. So we haven't been affected here at at this point yet and in our any of our system. Uh but again we do make sure that our our intake uh at the we have been pre-treating our intake uh to ensure that larve do not get into our system and do not get into our um uh water treatment facility. So So at this time we're not in need of any kind of additional I mean I don't know what you do with those things you spray. I don't

[2:24:00] know what you do with how do you combat there are there are there are some things that you can do and CRMWD has implemented that with with their last renovations they are working on their pipeline system yeah I can I can I can show you some pictures where at the Miles tank that it was probably a third full of zebra muscles when they cleaned it over 12t tall so in that tank in that source tank so of zebra muscles um uh threats uh of course uh haven't talked a whole lot about our wastewater collection system uh but one of the things heavy rain events we we have been because of our aged infrastructure and aged sewer infrastructure we do see uh quite high flows in our from INI u uh inflow and infiltration uh into our uh existing collection system and so when that runs through the plant uh that does have a tendency and we have had sanitary sewer overflows uh two times into the river because of that and so again uh concerns there uh issues there. So um again want to make sure that uh that we are looking at ways to to try to u correct those situations. Surface water supplies uh are vulnerable uh whether that's accidental or intentional uh contamination. And so they again those are just threats that are out there looming that we always have to uh keep an eye on and make sure that we're that we're monitoring for. Uh of course rising construction and material cost uh definitely in impacting everything that we do every day. Um, and when when we look at it and I'll talk about it a little bit uh further down, but again uh with as much work as we have looking ahead uh with us very concerning uh the the cost of of of of what we're doing uh extreme weather um here lately it's um more intense rains you know we go back to the INI but

[2:26:05] not only that u you have bouts of wet spells like we are now. We're fixing to go into July. We're we're probably going to see, you know, peak peak temperatures. You look at the forecast outlook, it's supposed to be hotter than normal. So, as we look forward into that, um we start seeing higher numbers. All of a sudden, you have wet clay soils that go to dry clay soils are going to see a lot of cracking splitting. We're going to see a lot more um uh disruptions in our distribution system. So, we're going to see a lot more pipe breaks. Uh again going back to workforce attraction and retention um challenges in a competitive labor market again um talked about that a little bit earlier but again that is a threat and as as long as oil is uh primary source and the perian basins is producing it's going to continue to be a threat. uh regulatory uh changes, challenges, um unfunded mandates, uh we uh the water um and uh storm water and sewer, we see a lot of those um unfortunately come down from starts at the EPA, it starts at the federal government, comes down to the state and it's eventually passed on to us. things that we are watching right now. Poss um is one of the major ones that's out there. The forever chemicals as we're looking at that u those are coming down the pipe along with the lead and copper rule um uh changes that the EPA um has has sent down to the states and to the local governments as we're going through that doing all the testing currently uh with our meter meter replacement program. Again, those are unfunded mandates and we don't know what those are going to look like coming down and how that's going to affect us. Um and then again, public um expectations versus funding realities. Uh everybody wants everything right now and they want it overnight. So um and again, of course, that's just not a reality. um a as we as we start going into our first year goal and and that's kind of where uh kind of leading off to of we have we talked about all of our infrastructure

[2:28:08] and our needs, but uh the water utility department will complete the design of and begin construction on plan infrastructure replacement improvements. And this isn't just the first year of the goal. This is an every year goal. Um, as we're going through this and we're and we're looking at this, this is something that we we can't just do one time and quit. Um, we we currently have within our distribution. This is just distribution alone. This is not sewer. So, uh, we're just talking about the water side of things only. Uh, we have approximately 300 miles of pipe that need to be replaced currently in the ground. Um, you start looking at that at the cost. I mean, we're we're that's easily $500 million if you told me to go replace it all today. And we and we couldn't even fathom doing that in in a short time frame. So, this is a multi-year multi-year issue that that we're going to have to deal with over time. And so, as but we and we also not only that, we have to do it realistically. What what what can our citizens afford for us to do and how do we do that? And so we talked about how critical that modeling is and the predictive modeling in our CIP plan, making sure that we are addressing the critical infrastructure needs um as as we can afford to do them moving forward. Um and again that was just the water side. We hadn't even talked about the sewer side yet. So um and again um don't want to you know didn't want to depress everybody all in the same meeting. So um uh but again and and as we go through this in required resources um and you'll see in basically all of our utility uh goals here required resources um it's they're they're going to look the same and and it's basically we're going to need city council and city management support uh for the for the utility rate adjustments that are going to be necessary for us to achieve these goals moving forward. Again, um while again year the things some of the things that

[2:30:12] we're looking at in year one when we're looking at that of course continuing our meter replacement program which all again earlier today y'all approved us another round of meters. Sherwood way line replacement. Y'all saw that the other day where um about a month ago where we just it looked like a war zone going down Sherwood Way for a little while cuz that line just kept popping one after the other. Soon as we get one fixed, the next one would go. uh getting that done. Um as as we're looking at growth out at the airport, our looking at fire suppression for out at the airport and trying to get us get us some uh uh things going out there so we can uh continue that economic growth that we're seeing out at the airport in those areas. Uh and then of course uh Randolph water line um it's an 18inch main that runs from the loop all the way back up to behind Mayfield paper up there. Um, and then the North Koncho River wastewater line improvements, which basically will allow us to take shallow lift station offline and gravity flow everything from there back to the plant. So again, that's kind of our year one goals and and so as we move forward with that, again, uh, we're we're working through these things and continue to go, but of course we'll also need, you know, coordination with our other departments. Um and then you know and and then not only not only you know for the for the adjustments in rates is necessary but also need council and management support you know to help us go through the engineering design and procurement processes as we do because not only does does it take money to replace the utility. It takes it takes money to design not only with and again with our outside consultants to get all of this taken care of in in an timely manner. Uh and then we move into our three-year goal. We start looking at our three-year goal. Uh and especially the water utilities will department will develop additional water production and distribution capabilities. Um and this is where it gets really expensive folks.

[2:32:16] Um this is uh as we as we start moving forward, we start looking at expanding our water portfolio and making sure that we are ready to take on those next challenges. And I'm not sure where Tina's folks got their numbers as far as growth rate. Uh but you know, anything. Yeah. Okay. We're good. Yeah. But you know you know you know but we're but you know I know how many I know how many meters that you know that we used to have and we have now and it's a substantial difference. So again I'm not really sure where their growth numbers are coming from. Uh but again we are we are seeing growth and so as we and then we are so if you start looking at some of the things coming we start looking at I27 we start looking at I-14 you know the potential for growth is is exponential out there and we don't know what that's going to look like. So us finding and getting and start securing these additional water resources for our citizens is crucial and so that's what we want to do as we move forward. So uh and again that's uh and and these projects are is the concho river reuse project when we start talking about that uh you know that's an extra 7 12 million you know guaranteed 7 12 to 8 million gallons a day right now. Uh but with that that that's going to come a pretty large price tag as we're doing that. You know, we're in the $200 million range. Uh currently, as we sit today, and that's doing nothing but going up as as we keep as we keep going along. Uh again, we're we're expecting a TCQ permit by mid July. So, and hopefully that will really be the impetus to get us going. Confidence in that date projection on on the TCEQ permit permit. Uh, I felt good when we left the meeting, Daniel. I I think that um we we definitely pressed upon them, Brenda, myself, and uh and Shane, and of course, we had our our see our our attorney out there as well, Jason. Um they they seemed a little bit embarrassed by some of the I guess the delay. We talked about how quickly they

[2:34:20] should have gotten it done based on their policies and they committed to us that by mid July that's when we have our first water master meeting and by that time they would bring uh they would have the draft permit prepared and ready to go then. So I I think it'll be egg on their face if they show up and they say we still don't have it because we we we used a lot of resources to get up there and a lot of people up there just to meet with them. So, I do believe that uh call me naive, but I believe they may have this one ready this time around. Well, there's that one. Then, you know, there was discussion we've had about a temporary one out of Nazwsworthy for future use just to subsidize other supplies. I mean, those timelines with TCEQ, is there ways to improve them or we just we're stuck with what we have? A lot of times it they have staffing issues as well. Well, I mean, they have a high turnover rate as well, and staffing issues become an issue with them as far as permit review and getting those out. Um, this one has been a bit longer than than what we would have ever thought it would have been, but again, I think uh years. Yeah, it's a little bit long, but I I've seen I've seen some sit out there and of course it was for completely different projects, but in different um political regions of the state, but um I' I've seen them out there for, you know, 15, 17 years waiting on permits. So, but again, and we hear a lot about, of course, CO where people were supposedly working from home. I guess you don't get much done at home, but um we're we're hopeful that we're hopeful they could have been further along, especially if they weren't working at home. So, I better be careful because we are alive. But um we're just very hopeful that we get that. No, I I you know, again, I I think um don't have any reason not to believe them that they that they were about to wrap things up and get us deliver us that permit. So, but again that moving forward again uh as part of this strategy like Nazwsworthy transmission line and elevated storage uh as as we're starting to see not as we talked about

[2:36:22] the the fire suppression at the airport for additional growth. We're also you know as we're looking at new hopefully new economic growth south of Lake Nazworthy in that area. You're looking at I27 coming up and hopefully some speculative things and ventures will go on down there as well too. needing that extra capacity um not only for hopefully future growth in that area, but also as we're starting as we are looking at firefighting uh capacity and issues. We are limited on the pipe size and the volume of water we can push into that area of town. Uh so this is something that's going to be critical infrastructure moving forward on that end of town. one, it'll help us uh clean up some pressure issues that we see regularly, and it'll also help us clean up uh some other things uh that we're doing as far as uh chlorine residuals, other issues that we do see from time to time down there uh with that basically one 12-in pipe that feeds that entire area of town. So, uh, and then also the northeast transmission line and elevated storage as we are looking at possible development, uh, moving up into the northeast part of town again, uh, around the the Red Creek um, substation and some of those projects, potential projects up there that we are looking um, at needing that as well. Also, this would allow us uh, to help um, resiliency efforts uh, to support Goodfellow Air Force Base as well. uh and allow us to get a secondary feed access into the Goodfellow Air Force Base area. So again, two two different things there, but that's that's why we're kind of looking at it again in year three and again as we look at this uh having all support um uh council management support for again finding the funding to to address these uh deals. And of course we are we're looking at multiple different things. Not only uh we can look at DEIPP grants, we can look at Texas Water Development Board grants, we can look at a lot of different things as we're moving forward to help offset this, some public private partnerships possibly uh in some of this area to to help offset some of these

[2:38:26] costs. So the all of these costs don't have to be borne by the citizens and the rates that we're and that we're setting for them. And so we are looking at multiple multiple things through that. But as Tina mentioned earlier, we are currently going through a rate study uh currently right now for the utilities and these projects are going to be built into that. So we know what rates will be necessary to accommodate these projects as we move forward. Uh and then kind of moving into the last one, um water utilities department will continue to work on long long-term water supply solutions. And and again, uh we don't know again we surface water supply is is great. It's renewable because if it rains, we get water. It's great. But again, uh we want to make sure that we are planning for the future growth of St. Angelo because we want to be growing, not dying. And that's the only two ways communities are. Um, and so as long as we're growing, we need to plan for that. Make sure we continue to plan for that. Not knowing what potential growth may happen. I mean, we're we're projected to have water supply out to 2050 to 2070 somewhere in there based on normal growth trends. uh if we see additional growth trends, you know, from I27 or I-14, as those corridors develop and we see things move along faster, uh then then again, we need to ensure that we're always out there looking forward. Uh, of course with this, we are looking at also developing the Port Stockton holdings, working with Midland, working with the city of Abene to get those in here, but also looking at updating our our uh water uh our water uh master plan, basically our water supply master plan uh to to create or to find those additional water opportunities for us to explore. Uh because again, finding new opportunities. the Fort Stockton Holdings was a 12 12 to 15 year project before we got that before we actually got that deal done. So again, as we're looking for those future opportunities,

[2:40:28] we need to be doing that now. Um we need to be working through those processes now and not waiting till 2030 or 2040 uh when it when the when the end of that water capacity is staring us in the face. So again, that's kind of our longer term goals. And again, you know, and again, again, you know, support from city council and and city management is critical as we move forward with those processes. And with that, that's kind of the end of the water utilities. So, so Shane, I love that somebody duplicated slide threeear goal to five year goal. I thought that was great. I wanted to see that before. But anyway, I I don't think any of us here would argue with the fact that water is the single most important element to the success of our city. It's the number one question to ask. Do I remember two or three years ago being the only person that said we need to go up on our water utility bill prices? I mean, we incur cost every year as a city that we don't like to bear as a citizen, but we have to accept that these things are going to come forward. And for us to turn that dial and get water out of our faucet and have it come out at the right pressure, we need to make an investment back in our city, back into the water utility department. I want to say I would think with your rate study these things especially on some minimal things an incremental adjustment every year is by far better than a heavy adjustment every three or four years. I think you should look at things like that. Nobody's going to worry about a dollar. I take that back. Trust me, they will. But long story short, you know, exactly. But when you base these things based upon consumption and it's a consumptionbased adjustment to that with the people that use more water versus those that don't use very much, we can tolerate and I can defend those. All

[2:42:30] right? I we have your back on that to defend what it takes to make sure we have water not only for now but 5 10 12 years. I would say bring those things to council council. There's not a thing here that we wouldn't support. We just need to be able to defend it. And the minimum need you need 500 million over the next six, seven, eight years. If if you really threw the numbers out is what you need with the wastewater, you know, water treatment pipelines that I don't think anybody's given enough thought to what the demand on water going forward. You know, we need to also carry that down to our development. You know, as far as planning, can we go with zeroscaping? Can we start? You know, not everybody's going to need to have a yard. Is there ways we can incentive maybe our our home builders and other people to get away from the mass consumption of water that we require? None of these things we're going to solve today, but I just want you to know that, and I'll go out on limb, I'll speak for this council, we're behind y'all 100% on trying to find ways to mitigate our demand for water. It's the single most important thing we have. And of all the things to neglect, this should be the last one. Mayor, mayor, thank you for that. I do want to point out that um every year electricity, gas, we're fighting that. We see that come before the city council because they've done their rate study and they're asking for an ungodly amount of monies and all of it is based on infrastructure that's needed to to really provide those services. Yet, we we have one of the most precious resources that we have as far as water and we need to address it from that perspective as well. We have infrastructure needs to be replaced. And I appreciate the fact that you're saying that absolutely. I mean, these prices will have to go up to make sure that we address those needs. As as Shane said though, we'll be looking for grants. We'll be looking for anything and everything out there that can help us reduce the cost to our citizens, but it needs to happen though. Thank you. I'm sorry. Is there a way to You said consumptionbased and to me that would be like a a almost like a sliding scale. The more you use, the more you

[2:44:33] pay. Would that protect the like my water bill is the same every month. I mean it's I got my basic stuff. I hardly water my yard. I'm zero escaped everything. So it wouldn't affect me as much. But the higher um consume consumption. So could we we don't have that right now. We don't have to to some degree and I'll let Shane go. Yeah. Through our Yeah. and and through our conservation plan as well too is especially if we do enact our drought stages and things like that. We do have a tiered approach for what for what how much if you use this much we charge this much you use from here to here we charge this much we do have a tiered approach to some of that and we do have a and we do have you know our larger users I mean we it is a very well it's not a complicated rate structure but it is it's a multi-tiered in there so if we increase that part could we save that that that money that is that we receive on the higher consumption uh homes or businesses. Can do we have it in in our well wheelhouse right now to put that money start a scing fund with that in preparation or do we need that money to live on? You follow me? Yeah, we do. currently how our rate structure has been set in the past. We do have currently a fairly healthy fund balance in the water in the water utility and again that's that that was in anticipation for this contro river reuse project. uh we were starting to try you know we were been building to try to be able to start this and of course now we also have Fort Stockton holdings uh that we're also going to start developing with Midland and Abling which again wasn't necessarily in that original rate study and so uh but again as we move forward we do have some fund balance that we can start working with but we are again

[2:46:36] low interest loans and and on the water side bond certificates on the on the on the wastewater side. Those type things are going to definitely be necessary moving forward and to to pay for. But also when we look at annual and again and again this is part of the rate studies will too but we look at just annual expenses I need just to keep up even with road rehabilitation those projects plus some of these major lines that we know need to be replaced. I need at least 6 to 10 million a year just in annual replacement funds. And so everything that we have or that that we have out there right now is going that direction. And then we also have rising chemical costs we have it chlorine after CO just and wintertorm Yuri and all of that quadrupled in price. Uh and we can't we can't we can't live without chlorine. So, it's one of those things that that we're stuck paying paying what we're pay for it. And we've and we've seen that across the board with all of our chemicals, coagulants, everything that we use in the water treatment and sewer treatment facilities. I was just hoping there might be a way that we could start saving now because 500 million that you can't save that kind of milk money and get it done in six or eight years. Yeah. No. And there's uh and again we do again have a fairly healthy fund balance now but there are plans for that fund balance and that and it will and it will not cover it's not and the fund balance is not going to cover everything that I just talked about in this 5-year plan. In a quick elevator speech, what would it take to get softer, better tasting water? Um a membrane system, RO system. We are and we are and again that that is going to be part of our assessment as we're looking at this contro reuse project. Uh one of the things and it wasn't listed

[2:48:39] on here and it it it should have actually been as a weakness. Um and and it wasn't is that we we only for our size community we only have a water util uh water uh treatment facility. We only have one um and it sits right on the edge of the river. And so, uh, when we look at that, anything happens to that one facility, we're out of water in the city. So, one of those, one of the things that we need to look at and as part of this river use project and and the assessment moving into it, facility assessment is looking at the feasibility of adding that secondary treatment plant for that reuse facility. Uh and not only that, bringing um um maybe also tying in a secondary um system into the Lake Aby water um so we can treat that, but looking at a membrane system there and if we start running membrane water and we can blend that, that will increase or help with odor and taste issues that we have now as often. So again, those those are those are things and part of what we're going to be looking at moving forward as we go on. So, and uh cool. Thank you, Shane. You're over Shane. Thank you, man. Appreciate Appreciate that. It's just Patrick next. And we have operations next. Patrick. All right. Good afternoon. Um, first off, at the risk of taking away from what might be available for our needs, I do want to throw my weight behind um some of what y'all heard today. Brandon's needs for legal, Heather's needs, and and so and the clerk's office for records retention, Tina and purchasing and and finance and them. We all feel those those struggles as well um as departments that use those services. So any any consideration you can give to those is will absolutely have a trickle down effect as well. So

[2:50:42] now we said don't take away from me to do that but are you running for office? I mean we're not voting today Patrick but keep going like we're here. No, but I do want to say that this was very difficult for us in operations this little this process because if you all remember we aren't just operations. We are con we are made up of six individual divisions that have their own unique processes, goals, agendas, um struggles as well as we oversee the capital improvement projects that that are found on our streets and and our rideways. So tried to pair this down as generic as I possibly could. Um, but when you're when you're looking at that, please remember we're talking about a lot of people and a lot of things that we touch as we go through this. So, our mission to plan, build, operate, and maintain the city of St. Angelo's infrastructure with integrity, innovation, and efficiency while ensuring safe, sustainable, and highquality public services that support our community's growth and quality of life. Now remember when you say infrastructure, everyone kind of cues in on streets that we got we have streets, but infrastructure is more than streets. It's streets, it's drainage, it's storm water facilities, it's alleyways, it's signs, striping, signals, it's pedestrian and ADA infrastructure. It's our fleet and our equipment. It's our lake and our lake parks. It's our solid waste department. So when I say infrastructure, I mean all of that, okay? Please keep that in mind that we're talking about a big big picture here and a lot of stuff that happens in the city. So going through our SWAT analysis, um our strengths, our biggest strength that we have the way and this is going to sound very braggatory, but the reason we are as good as we are in operations is because of our people. We have an experienced workforce with strong leaderships across our division. Without those people, we couldn't do what we do.

[2:52:44] We couldn't handle the jobs, the responsibilities, and the burdens that we're asked to do every every day. Not only our core services, but also our non-core services that we're asked to help out with every day. So, our well-established service delivery in our core areas, but also our willingness to help and serve the community. We take care of what we have to do, but we are also asked to help daily with everybody else. Whether that's the fire department, the police department, fire marshall's office, code enforcement, animal shelter, parks and recreation, um abatements, and we talked a lot about the homeless stuff today, too. I mean, that was a lot of help that you guys provided last year. So, that is correct. Um you know, and those things all impact our individuals. they're pulled away from their core services to go do this. They love doing that. They understand it's the big picture, but they also feel the burden that I'm not getting my job done to go help do these other things. So, keep in mind, too, it's not just what we do, but it's also who we help while we do what we do. The proven ability to overcome limited resources and increase demand. We haven't increased our staff. We haven't increased our funding. The city has grown substantially just in street and bridge alone. If you look at our streets over the last 8 years, we've added 20 mi of roadway and I've gotten that many more people and that much more funding to do it. That's a lot. Um, our strong interdep departmental relationships though with utilities, engineering, planning, we work handinand with water utilities, water distribution, sewer collection, as well as all these other departments that we that we use. They we have a direct line to all of our divisions from these guys. They don't have to go through me necessarily. Um, I like to be informed, but they know that our goal is to help and to do what needs to be done whenever it needs to be done. Um, we have a reliable fleet services division that takes care of all of our fleet, keeps everybody moving, keeps everything happening. That's one of our major strengths of our of our operation.

[2:54:48] And we also have pretty good established um inspections, maintenance schedules, repair processes that we've established over the years and to kind of help us do what we do. Some of our weaknesses though, our work environment and our safety aspect of for our individuals. We work in a high-risk um area. It's hot, it's cold, we're in the middle of the road, people aren't paying attention while they drive. Um, it's, you know, it it is a uh the physicality of what we do, the just the the risk from a workman's comp type standpoint. Um, a lot of that can't be avoided. I mean, we work outside, our streets are outside. It's what we have to do. But it's also a weakness in that it does affect our people and it affects our individuality and affects our our morale. Um, the budget constraints like I talked about, we we haven't really seen an increase in some of that. Tina's been very good about finding us onetime monies on some of this stuff to help us keep going, but um holistically we've asked for $800,000 a year just to keep up with our our goal that council gave us on seal coding. Um we haven't seen any of that. I understand why though, but you know, it's an ask and and so we're we're starting to feel that stress and that burden overextending um our inability to say no to to growing requests. Um, the citizens have desires, they have wants, they have expectations. And our goal as operations is to meet that expectation and exceed that expectation. Our goal is to keep you guys from hearing anything from your citizens. And when y'all do, we take care of it and we handle it as fast, as efficiently, with quality as we can. So, we don't say no. But that does again put that stress on our department. our lack of personnel training and our succession planning. Um, we'll go into that a little bit later. Um, aging infrastructure that requires costly repair, strained resources, just

[2:56:52] like you heard from Shane, our streets aren't any different. Deferred maintenance is catching up with us trying to proactively handle that. But, um, it does put a strain on us. And then while we try to be we're trying to shift our mentality to a proactive mentality, we are still reactive in a lot of cases um especially on the urgent repairs and and stuff, but we are trying to switch that mindset over to a proactive um maintenance activity instead of a reactive maintenance. some of the opportunities that we have. Um we do have a lot of of opportunity to adjust our competitive compensation to align with our our our employment um competitors out there, the oil field, etc., etc. Um we also have an opportunity of increasing our funding for infrastructure. I've assumed that there's an opportunity there. I hope there's an opportunity there. the creation of a new division to accommodate requested expans expansion of services. We've kind of had this conversation internally. We've kind of been kind of vetting this out. Um I just got a ask today from Billy and Fire Marshall's office to go and and help him knock down a building that's caught fire twice has some issues with it. If you don't know, the weeds are growing and and we're busy. We have things to do. So, I'm going to have to try to figure out how to help Billy get that done. But, we're going to, but it's going to be tough. So, we want to create a new division to kind of help with those honeydew list. Make that a trade. All right. I wouldn't do that just freebie. I'd make that a trade. Oh, it's it's an IOU for sure. So, the problem is it never comes back. A boy. Um, the smart infrastructure and technology advancements. I mean, technolog is advancing all the day. I think there's some opportunity in AI as well. Um Jeremy, my assistant director, and and some of our groups are actually in Ohio right now looking at some new technology that should help us out in the field. So we'll need there's some opportunity there to start leveraging some of that stuff as well as some workforce development development initiatives. I know that's a very

[2:58:54] general statement, but like I said, trying to keep this generic and sense. The threats rising costs just like you've heard from Shane. um our key leadership roles are retirement eligible and we don't have any succession plans in place. We just don't have the capacity for those opportunities uh are those to do that right now. Um our environ environmental risk and our natural disasters that damage infrastructures whether that's a tornado, a freeze, a flood, whatever the case may be. Um those natural disasters can pop up at any time and they put a stress on us. Um, in fact, we're still feeling the repercussions of the of the wintertorm Yuri and the and the contamination disaster that we had. Um, our next natural disaster scares me a lot. I just don't think that we're going to have the same buyin from our individuals who made that um who who responded to that. I don't know that we're going to have that same level of response. So, that scares me. Um, you're You don't know that we have that label, but is it because lack of personnel in the other departments or it it's not that some of it is generational. Some of that is you don't have that mindset of we just suck it up and do it. Um you know, I'm going to take care of my family first and then I'm going to then I'm going to go help. Um, again, Wintertorm Euro, we were out there for hours and hours and hours and days and days and weeks and weeks um, delivering and we got no no feedback except for negative feedback from the citizens. Where's my water? Why won't you give me more? Let's do this. And and they didn't understand that our guys are out there letting their families, you know, do without their help and got their guidance at the same time. And so there's there's a lot of negative feedback and fallout from that. um during tornadoes, you know, our guys were the ones that were um they left their home that was also tornado damaged to go take care of the Bradford area and then after work they went home and took

[3:00:56] care of their stuff that was damaged. So, it's that commitment that these city employees are giving and it's that feedback that um you know that they do it because they love it and they know that that that it is a good thing, but it also does wear on them a little bit. Doing the right thing doesn't always get you a pat on the back, right? But we still do. But you do, you and they deserve credit for it. A lot of it. They do. Um workforce retention like like there's there's constant pull from us. Um wanting our good employees. Um so we're constantly fighting that battle. The public perception of delays again. Um my pothole wasn't fixed. You turned it in, you know, yesterday. Why didn't you get out here and fix it today? That type of situation. It takes time. Um the aging infrastructure again is a threat, something we can't control. It's deterioration curve. It is what it is. Reactive planning for the growth of the city and the future interstates. So this is going to be a big one moving forward. That's a threat for us. So really talking and working with planning and some of that on those development standards to make sure that the future us doesn't have the burdens that the that the present us are dealing with. Patrick, let let me let me say a couple of things. Let me say a couple of things. This is for really for the benefit of the of the new council members. You will find every single department do exactly what Patrick has has he has verbalized it. Um they all have come close and touched on it maybe, but Patrick verbalized it and that is when you when you call our city employees, they respond. They do. They do. Um, they need credit for that. Um, to Patrick's point, I have witnessed personally citizens walk up one side and down the other of a city employee because they didn't get the response either they wanted or in the time that they wanted it. In my opinion, it's our job to stand up for

[3:03:00] them. Um Patrick's worked on something for me over the past couple of weeks and there's not really anything to be done. Um but we're going to figure out he and I have already talked about we're going to figure out, you know, how to communicate that um in the appropriate way to the citizens. So, I want to say out loud to everybody sitting in the room, to everybody that may be watching on their screen, to all the directors, all the employees that may be watching this or who may watch this, thank you. Thank you for what all you do every single day and for the the stuff you put up with from the citizens. Thanks. Appreciate that, Tommy. Thank you. So, that is a tremendous segue into my year one goal. My year one goal has everything to do with our employees and how to make their lives better, how to make their jobs more pleasurable, more rewarding, and more efficient. So strategic goal, our year one goal to enhance the operations department's operational efficiency and employee satisfaction by upgrading our facilities, by improving our compensation packages, and by improving our working environments. This has everything to do with making our employees happy when they come to work, making them want to come to work, and making them want to be an employee of the city of St. Angelo for the operations department. That's my year one goal. It's hard. It's very hard. It's going to be the hardest goal that I'm going to ask of you guys today. It's the other two are much much easier compared to this one, but it's so important to me that I wanted to make sure that y'all understood that it's my priority one goal. How many employees are in your department? We have about 120 employees that that work underneath

[3:05:04] operations. What's the longevity of lot a lot of them? Have they been here been in that role a long time? No. Um some of them have. You've seen some of them that are, you know, 20 years employees, 15 year employees, some of those, but um more and more so we're seeing 2year, three year, 5 year employees, 6 month employees. Some of them don't even make it a day. Some of them don't even show up. I mean, yeah. I mean, I'm shocked. But again, I talked about that generational thing and that and we're going to talk about that a little bit. I'll I'll reiterate that here in just a little bit. That was one of my threats I didn't mention was that new generation of worker. Um it's the me now. It's the I want it now. And unfortunately, the way we're set up is you work yourself through the ranks. You have a there's it takes time um to get there. Our low-level employee is starting at $33,000 a year and that's our shovel worker in the middle of the street throwing stuff and working hard um for 33k a year. So um the new generation worker what we're finding is they don't want to do they don't want to show up to work. They'll they would rather go hang out with their buddies and just take leave without pay than come in and do that. So that's a great gig. I' I'd like to know how I can do that. We have openings every day. No, no, no. Don't not go hang out with my friends. That's not what you meant. Sorry. No, that's what I want to do. No. So, Patrick. Yes, sir. How many openings do you have in operations? Yeah. I mean, traditionally, we I've seen them over the last nine years. How many do you have today? So, today in Street and Bridge, we have four vacancies in Street and Bridge. We have three in storm water. We have one in fleet services, traffic operations. just recently got full up and lake operations. I've got one vacancy. So, and those are standard. I mean, those are standing. When we hire one, another one will rotate out. So, um again, when it doesn't sound like a lot, four, but

[3:07:07] when you're talking about the number of street and bridge employees, we have 28 on boots on the ground street and bridge employees. So, you know, that's that's a fair percentage of of what they do. I mean, it's entire crew. So everyone else is picking up that burden on that. So yeah, you got a 10% vacancy rate right now. Mhm. Roughly correct. Is that standard? It is. Well, is that traditional for us? Yes. Is it standard for the industry? I I don't know that it's not acceptable. Let's put it that way. No. Nine in parks. Nine in parks. So yeah, park struggles with the same thing that we do. So, um, so we have some strategic, um, you know, that's that's our year one goal. Um, we have some key strategies to try to help take care of that. Again, number one is going to be compensation. Um, increase the average employee compensation through raises, through advancement opportunities, and through benefit enhancements. We found we've been able to implement in some of our divisions a tiered structure of advancement to where it doesn't necessarily have to have a vacancy above you in order to promote. You have an opportunity to kind of take your put your your destiny in your own hands. Take trainings, advance yourself and advance through a tier one, tier 2, tier three within your individual department or in your individual position. That has been phenomenal for us in as far as motivating our our employees, growing them. and I want to do that throughout the rest of our division. It's going to take a little bit of commitment, a little bit of time working with HR to get all that done in a comprehensive manner that works over the decades, but I think we can get it done. Um compensation um again, our $33,000 a year guys are it's we're just not finding them. We're not finding the quality of employee. We're not finding the quality of employee that I talked about through succession planning that we can bring up through the ranks, really show them what we do, have them stick around long enough. Um, our top uh our midlevel um crew leaders, you know,

[3:09:13] they're barely making $40,000 a year and we're asking them to to oversee and manage four to six people, you know, every day, make decisions in in those environments. So, it the compensation levels just need to be looked at. Um, one of the strategies, you know, for doing that working with or one of the action plans to help do that, I want to work with HR, get a good class and comp study gone going on for public works. Look at our industry, not necessarily compared to your Midlands and Abalines. And our guys aren't leaving here to go work in Midland as a as a maintenance worker. They're leaving here to go work for Reese Albert. They're leaving here to go work for the oil field. They're leaving here to go work for Darnell Construction. I need to be competitive to my industry here and that's those are the groups that I need to be comparing do a class and comp study against and and find out how do we make ourselves competitive against those groups here. Um and then again work with the work through HR to set up those class you know those those employee families um advancement families so that we can we can uh provide those advancement opportunities without somebody having to wait for somebody to quit or retire to advance. Um secondly um we are in a desperate need for facilities. Um, most of our facilities that our guys are operating out of, again, parks is in this same boat. Um, they were built in the '7s, if not older than that. Some of them we don't even have records of. Maybe 50s, 60s,7s from the 50s. I went best case scenario and called it the 70s. That's a 50y year. That's 50 years ago. If you can imagine how St. Angelo's grown over the 50 years, how our operations have changed over 50 years, how our needs have changed over the 50 years, our facilities aren't cutting it anymore. Not only are they just operationally inefficient, but they are deteriorated to the point where they're a hazard for employees. Um, Fleet Services, when it

[3:11:17] rains, you could literally take a shower in the middle of the shop. Um, Street and Bridge has a for real tarp over their roof because we can't even fix it anymore. um traffic operations has water dripping through an electric heater that keeps the shop warm. I mean, those are the type of things that we're dealing with. Every 3 or 4 months they're having to redo their septic system because it's clogged up again and broken and collapsed again. So, our facilities are in need of help. Um that's a big ask. That's multi multi-tens of millions of dollars of ask, but we need to get started on that and we need to make it happy. What I want to see, what my vision for our facilities are, is a place where when we hire somebody, they can take their family, load them up in the car, drive by and say, "That's where dad works. Daddy works there every day." Somewhere where their kids are proud to say, "My daddy works there." We don't have that today. When you pull into our yards, it's a question of quality. We ask our our employees to go out there and do quality work every day, but we ask them to pull into a facility that is subpar. It's a conflicting message and we need to start addressing that. We need to start addressing that very very soon. Um the and then again employee morale um improve our working environments. We need to find ways that make the job easier, make the job better for people, for our people. Um, we're looking at a technology that does that. We're looking at, we just bought a spray patcher that takes two six-man crews that's extremely labor intensive. You know, we invested 300,000 into this thing, but now it's a twoman crew that they're literally just standing there with a supported wand fixing potholes and patching potholes, doing edges instead of running a shovel, throwing asphalt, running a saw. Those are the type of things that we need to do. It's going to cost a little bit of money, but in the long run, from a risk

[3:13:20] perspective, a workman's comp perspective, from a morale perspective, those things are going to go make huge huge strides into giving us a better working environment for our people. Again, I don't I didn't lie to you when I said this is hard. This is a hard one, but it's also a priority for me. It's a very important one for me and I hopefully will have the opportunity to have further this conversation with y'all as we move forward and and discuss these things. How long have you been here, Luke? Um, I have been here 16 years. I started over at Fleet Services and then Shane brought me on board into operations and my world went from focusing here to focusing here and it's been amazing. you've been around the block a time or two on that. You can believe what you're saying. Um, going back to our our individuals again, every one of my superintendents, we don't have any succession plan um in place. We don't have that opportunity. Every one of my superintendents that run my six divisions can retire today. That's my leadership over there. That's the guys that are making sure that plans are getting done, employees are happening, they're dealing with issues, they're coming up with ideas. Um, I need to develop some type of a success succession plan. It's just very hard to do when you're talking about garnering good talent that can take over those responsibilities, keeping them on board, training them up, and and keeping them long enough to fill that role eventually. So, um, I think HR can help us with that. We just need that commitment then and that and that help to do that. Year three goal, this is easy, this is fun, this is this is a lot better conversation. Um, so year three, develop a revolving debt and funding service for street and related infrastructure rehabilitation. council in 2015 did uh an amazing job giving us $80 million of um of money to do some infrastructure

[3:15:23] upgrades and repairs that needed to be done as well as giving us some ongoing money for uh street maintenance. Um we're at the end of that 10-year cycle and we need to continue going on um to finish the first round of projects. So, to get Sunset done, to finish up Johnson Street, and to get Avenue in done, I'm going to need one more bond um allocation of about $20 million from you guys. So, that's going to be the first ask is in the next 3 years, if I can get another $20 million bond from you, I can get those three streets finished up and and then we can start talking about how do we keep this thing going. Talked a little bit of finance about it. What I would like to see is just a 20-year role of bond issuance that taking out a 20-year bond at the year 20. One falls off, we pick another one up, and we get to keep going. Um, I think you can all agree that what we've done with the money that y'all allocated have been has been amazing on College Hills, on on Howard, on Bell Street, on everything that we've been able to work with. I want to keep that momentum going and and uh keep making our roadways better like the citizens are asking. Um, and then we're absolutely going to try to diversify that through grants. I know Tina alluded earlier that some of the grant opportunities are are questionable right now. I don't care. We're still going for it as long as we can and we're still plugging away. I've got three applications that are going to go in in the next two weeks. Um, summing up to almost $50 million of ask. So, we're still going. We're still going to try for that and we're going to leverage those dollars as best we can. Patrick, do you write those grants? Who writes those grants? We actually have a grant writer that does that for us. Um, between that and we also subcontract out some of that some of the more advanced ones, the higherend ones that need a little bit of design that goes along with them. We'll subcontract those out. But, um, you know, my again, we have a

[3:17:28] grant writer. She's submitting two of them um, herself that she put together. And so we're kind of balancing those two out. Thank you. You had a lot of success with a set aside program, huh? We have. That was a lot of money that that the city got that quite frankly uh was very competitive. What? Dallas was the only city that beat us out. Dallas was the only city. We were the second highest awarded um entity in the 2023 call for uh set aside monies. We got $18.7 million. Dallas beat us out at 22. though. Um, but that's pretty amazing given that we were competing against everybody from Houston to Abalene or not Abalene to Austin, San Antonio, across the state and we were number two. We got awarded 18.7 and it's going to be an amazing project for us. And I point that out for the tenacity and, you know, the the uh we don't care, you know, we may not be competitive because of all the big cities, but what the heck, we're going to give it a shot. And that's what happened though. So, we really appreciate Yeah, we really shot for the moon and we were we were surprised and we got it. Yep. Yep. Um, so again, it's not all funding out of out of pocket. We're going to try to leverage that grant money. We also, you know, try to leverage some of uh Aaron stuff too with development that's happening along our roadways. They're required to put in commercially, you know, sidewalks and stuff like that. if we can talk them into into paying instead of them putting in a sidewalk, go ahead and give us the money. I can leverage that that cash and, you know, for 20 cents on the dollar, I can get them a sidewalk plus four more blocks of sidewalk, that type of thing. Um, for their obligation, we're also working with them. So, that interdep departmental cooper cooperation and communication is big for us in in this regard as well. And then our five-year goal um to enhance the resiliency and longevity of streets, drainage, and rideway infrastructures by implementing a comprehensive preventative maintenance program and prioritizing in infrastructure repairs and upgrades.

[3:19:30] Again, they're an asterisk. We're not just talking about streets. We're talking about streets and traffic infrastructure, sidewalks, ADA, pedestrian facilities, um alleyways, lake lake amenities, um bicycle, multimmoal facilities, storm water drainage facilities. It's a lot. Um but what I want to do is make sure that as we're investing in this infrastructure that we have a plan to come back and maintain that investment now and maximize the investment of what we're doing in there. You'll see um MLK is a good example. That was the first roadway that we redid. We've already came back over the top of it and and added HA5 over the top of it to lock in that investment and preserve it for longer. If we, you know, we got some kickback from that that said, why are you doing something on the street? You just redid it. There's other roads that need to be taken care of. Same reason you change your oil in your car. It's so that you can get more miles out of that car than if you didn't. So, we're doing that. Um hopefully we can educate everyone and and under and they understand why. But even if we can't, we're going to continue make making sure that we preserve that investment moving forward. Patrick, how close are we to starting the phase B on Chadburn? We are hoping to bid that in mid July is what we're hoping for. Um, Texot has it in their letting schedule for August. So, we're kind of hoping that they'll let us go ahead and put it out in July so it's received by August so that we can get that rolling. Um [Music] again that some of the strategies that we want to be looking at you know for that 5-year goal is we want to start making data driven decisions on this. We want to start we have our our enterprise asset management software in place that's going to help us track the work that we're doing on our infrastructure so that we can start pulling that that information down start seeing what our seal coat program is actually doing. Do

[3:21:33] I need to be back in there in 8 years? Can I push it to nine years? Do I need to be doing something different on there? Um, we're going to start collecting that data, managing that data, mining that data um to really give us some good information to hopefully maximize our dollars and and maximize the the work processes that we're doing. Um, we want to find those funding solutions for our respective infrastructures. again working with Tina and and the council to figure out how do we keep our our uh seal coat and and HA5 cycle going on how do we how do we find the money to keep that going as well as how do we start taking care of our drainage and our storm water infrastructures improve our enhance our drainage projects um those type of things and then perform the planning the PSN the planning survey and engineering our construction activities and our maintenance activities on on all those infra infrastructures that you see up there on your screen. So, it's not only building them, it's designing them. It's making sure that it's designed for the long term, that it's going to handle our growth, that it's going to improve our current our conditions that we have today. Looking at future plans of development, how do we work with developers and the development community to make sure that they're putting in infrastructure that's not going to have a negative impact moving forward that can be easily maintained, easily um expanded upon if we need to. um those public partner private you know partnerships if we're looking at regional detention those type of things are what we're looking at really working with Aaron and in the comprehensive plan is going to be huge for us to make sure that we're putting in the infrastructure that council's vision has in place. Do y'all want to continue investing in bicycle structures or multimodal activities? Do you want to continue what kind of streets do you want to put in? Do you want streetscape? Do you want um you know what kind of drainage facilities do you want? Do you want them really pretty? Do you want them functional? Do you want How do y'all want that? Those are all things that we need to know as we look at these development standards, put in from Aaron's perspective, look at our design

[3:23:36] and engineering plans and update those plans. Um, those are all the the type of things that this 5-year goal is going to be looking at and helping us get toward probably more than 30 minutes, but there it is. But I do want to thank you though. Um, you put it all out there. you definitely asked for the things that you felt like you needed and we appreciate that and then and directors the rest of y'all are doing presentations put it out there. I mean let's talk about the uh the urgency that you feel for your departments and the things that need to be accomplished. So Shane, you did an incredible job doing that. Shane, Patrick, you did an incredible job doing that. So I appreciate that. Thank you'all. Patrick, nice job. Thank you. We appreciate y'all. Next up we have engineering. Huh? Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Patrick always follow. Let's see here. Yeah. Okay. So, I'll read through this uh mission statement and I'll add a little bit add lib a little bit on top of it. The engineering services mission is to deliver comprehensive in infrastructure solutions providing expert planning, design and construction management for capital improvement projects including streets, traffic, portable water, wastewater collection, storm water management and flood plane management while supporting private developers of residential and commercial projects to ensure sustainable, resilient and efficient public works that enhance community connectivity and quality of life. Try to unpack that a little bit for you guys. What we at at the big 50,000 ft level generally on new and significant improvements that Shane and Patrick and everybody else in the city wants to

[3:25:39] build, they're going to engage us. And if the devil is in the details, we're the devils because we're the ones that are going to do the minute minutia, the predictive analysis, the modeling, the engineering plans and and development. We're also going to do construction management and inspection and make sure that we get a quality product in our infra infrastructure. So when when they talk about predictive analysis and modeling and software, we're the guys that run that. We turn the crank on that software. Some of our strengths, I think we have a strong interdep departmental uh collaboration with operations, utilities and planning. I I strive to make sure that we have an also an intraep departmental uh cooperation with everybody. Uh we are engineering services and support. That means if if there is a need for engineering, we want to be able to provide that. We are generally broken into two our our day-to-day operations are broken into two divisions if you will or two separates. There's uh the uh operations and utilities and capital improvement projects generally are handled by my assistant city engineer Zephrino Mendoza. I generally guide the uh planning and development aspect of support for for uh engineering and public works. When you see engineering in in terms of development and planning, engineers, the engineering department or division supplies a person representing public works. And so we coordinate, if you will, the public works and we bring that to the planning and development side of the house. We have a proven ability to to deliver capital improvement projects. Howard Street, Bell Street, uh, College Hills, all all of that. We managed that construction and we we ensured that we

[3:27:44] stayed on as much as we could on schedule and uh hopefully under budget. We have on staff we have licensed professional engineers experienced across multiple infrastructure areas areas. We actually have five engineers, three three of which are licensed, two of which are on their way to being licensed. And we we uh um part of that is state driven, if you will. A municipality must have uh licensed professional engineers to design and manage the construction of any project that's more than $8,000, [Music] which means just about everything, right? So, If you forget your air conditioner and and electrical, we can do up to $20,000. But construction inspectors, we also have a staff of five construction inspectors experienced in construction field management. U so we've got what do we five of those and so that's probably represents about 150 years of of uh experience. Two of my guys are ready to retire, but but they are, if you will, when you look at a road and it drives well, these are the guys you thank. These are the ones that make it happen out there in the field. They're the ones who who when you run across a gas line was not supposed to be there, they get it done, right? It's not so much us. Construction inspector are uh design technicians proficient in leading design and geospatial software. uh these these fellows are necessary in the again the analysis the modeling and the predict predictive modeling or predictive analyses associated with the various softwares that are just getting more and more expensive. Software is just going more and more expensive. The good part of that is the more the software incorporates artificial intelligence the more we can do with fewer people.

[3:29:46] And so that's that's hopefully something we can look at in the future. U part of what we do is we maintain records of design, construction, quality control and testing of infrastructure construction projects. When Patrick talks about datadriven decisions, a lot of our data comes from our records, our archival records that we have to shove into hopefully a database that provides cross cross departmental uh access to everybody. We want everybody to have access to everything that they want to have access to. So currently one of the one of the weaknesses that we have that we suffer is that we have limited access to physical and operating data and infrastructure due to information siloing. That's that's a a big target for me is silo busting. I I want information shared freely across all departments, all platforms. Again the more we can share the the better product we can produce. Uh right now we have some people have touched on it. We have some fragmented software that that is not communicating well with one another that hopefully we can address in in the near future. Um I think AI is going to help us with that a little bit. I'm I'm really looking forward to AI, but maybe not everybody is. H my favorite rock is my man. Yes. Stranger in a strange land is it was inconsistent data conventions related to interoperability of design and analysis analysis and management of assets. This goes to that cross departmental cross citywide collection of data that data needs to be collected in a structured disciplined way so that it can be employed by all all across the departments all the software that all that software has to talk and I got to call each piece of

[3:31:48] data has got to be named something and each one needs to know what that name is. uh currently we have like low confidence in the accuracy of our archived infrastructure data that has to do with the disconnected data collection and archiving of that. Uh I think we're on the move to really make a difference there through our our GIS gap analysis which will which will really help uh give us better confidence. We uh we have not been able to or we have not to this point uh procured and become expert in use of analytical software related to municipal infrastructure. There's a lot of it out there that is very specifically designed for municipal AR uh infrastructure incorporating AI tools. So that's one of the things we want to uh want to explore in the near future. Which leads to that sec that second point that we have a limited application currently of AI in the engineering environment but it's out there. We want to procure it. We want to bring it to bear on the problems that city of St. Angelo has. Our design standards and details need to be reviewed and updated relative to current practices, best practices, best economical practices. We also want those I think we want those standards to be more u less less rigid in that we want our developers to be able to take advantage of new technologies different technologies uh different ways of doing things. So we want to be we want to make those standards if you will breathe be flexible incorporate new new ideas. So that's all those all of those weaknesses of course represent opportunities for improvement. Um so what what can we do in the future and and to address some of those those

[3:33:50] weaknesses is to collaborate strongly across departments to establish processes and workflows by which information silos are busted up. Uh that that's very much part of it is you need to be able to a new guy comes on board you got to be able to give him a map how do I talk to everybody how do I make sure that I know where the information is so s busting those silos is part of that cross cross departmental collaboration uh actively participate proactively participate in developing standards and conventions for the collection and archiving of data For example, in the geospatial database, establishing the workflows resulting in high quality data being archived. The quality of our decisions is based on the quality of the data that we have. The amount of data that we have, high quality data gives us the ability to make timely decisions. An untimely decision is a decision unmade. And so in today's world, we have to have that data to drive those timely decisions. And again, I think I'm hopeful. I think that we're on a great path to get there in the near future. Um technology upgrades. We're going to be asking for what to us seems like a significant amount of money. In the grand scheme of things, it may not be, but we need update in software and uh training for analysis and assessment of the current water, wastewater utilities, storm water, traffic, and flood plane management. I want to know if it rains, where are we going to flood? I want to know if we lose a water man, where where is the water going to come from? Uh and I can't do that if I don't have a digital twin model in my computer. I cannot do predictive analysis without a digital twin. Uh again

[3:35:53] great opportunity I think in the near future uh is the develop developing an awareness and expertise in the use of AI in infrastructure engineering design. It's coming. We need to get ready for it. Um some of the threats that we we uh are facing This is a short list for for a lot of threats, but workforce retention challenges and a competitive labor market. Obviously, what we do requires a certain amount of expertise and a a lot of cities are looking for it and we have to compete with the big cities. And so when we look at when we reach out and try to find the best individuals, the best minds that can utilize the software, do the predictive analysis, come up with scenarios, how to handle whatif scenarios, we need to be looking towards providing them not only the salary they want, but the quality of life that they want. And I think San Angelo has a big selling point in the quality of life. uh I escaped the big cities 20 years ago. I think there's a whole cadre of people looking to do the same in 2025. Um the infrastructure needs related to the future interstates, we really need to be focusing on that today. Uh Erin touched upon it and and def defining what type of road structure we want to be able to service to bring that into our community without destroying it. Have to be careful on on how much traffic you divert into your downtown if you want to keep a good downtown. Uh another threat that we're going to experience, I think, is increased regulation and a requirement for treatment of storm water due to population growth. notwithstanding uh Tina's predictions and we're going to be moved into this

[3:37:55] federal tier placement where we're going to have to start treating our storm water, collecting trash out of our storm water. Right now, we're not in that tier. We're just managing quantity, not quality. Uh there's a whole host of other threats that we could maybe attack, but um I'll stop here. Any questions for me concerning SWAT review there? I have some questions for you. Yes, ma'am. Uh Kevin, you've mentioned several times the need for breaking through the silos and that that's good news. So, can you share with us the frequency with which or how you collaborate with other departments that are closely linked with yours? For example, planning and development services. And I would cite a particular example that council heard a couple of months ago where um a big project was it pull that was completed and I think it's Bill Bell Street Bell Street. Thank you. And we could see when the diagram went up on the page that as this as that work was being done engineering maybe it wasn't engineering's job but but there were not connections made for sewers I believe is what it was. We had a citizen come forward that required a grant from the city to remediate a problem. They had gone properly through the process correctly. Um, and yet when the road was done and uh torn up, it seemed like that would have been the the fiscally responsible moment to connect all of those things that were left unconnected. That particular instance first, I'll answer your first question. Yes, I meet with planning and development on on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Okay, that's when I meet with them face to face. So I

[3:39:58] sit with him on Wednesday mornings. We discuss all the uh incoming projects plat and review those on a staff basis. On Thursday my department meets with the individuals that are interested in constructing something, opening a business, something like that. That particular instance was one one house on Bill Street and uh off of Bill Street actually. and h one lot one one lot and it it uh to answer your question yes we try to provide within constrained budgets extensions on all all of that we did it for all the water we did it for a great number of the sewer connections however we don't we can't we don't do it for every place because every place may not have available uh properties inf infrastructure in that particular street, if I recall correctly, it's very shallow and to get sewer to go to drain was problematic. So, incorporating that into the Bell Street project would have been problematic, but the intent is there. Yes, we want to try to provide for all future development without tearing up the road again. So, uh, GIS, that's another one that you would share with planning and development services. Can you expand on that a little bit for us and how we can make that work better? Because we've had multiple situations where there's a delay. Uh, and maybe I just don't understand the point of origin and the point of resolution, but they are trying to process a permit. There is a delay, for example, with short-term rentals in pinpointing active properties or pending properties on a map and it leads to information that is contentious for the public because of that timeline. Yes, ma'am. After me, please. Geospatial

[3:42:03] information systems is the heartbeat of the modern municipality. period. If we have good quality data, because it's it's not just maps and pictures, guys, it's everything that's behind it. Okay? You click on an icon, you get all the data. There it is. I can pull that out of a database, put it into an engineering analysis package, and then I can I can produce answers for Shane. What if we do this? What if we do that? Planning and planning and development. They can determine if we have high quality data in the in the geospatial database then we can we can answer that question. Is there a sewer line there? Where do we come from? Is it going to work? Do we have the right the right elevations, the right u right pipe size? You know, so yes ma'am. Any money you can throw at geospatial information systems is going to be taken and used to great effect. great effect all of the decision making that we have in 2025. We do not need to be going to file cabinets looking for paper. Yeah, we need to be going to a database and pulling that out. So that's that's my and I let that's good data in, good data out, bad data in, bad data out. Yes, sir. So So I mean it's a very useful tool. I use it with my company to look at water lights, but it depends on whether the data is there. It's been put in there and that's just sorry. So, it takes a whole citywide approach towards data collection, data data archiving and and a commitment to data quality from from from the top down, not from the bottom up. So, yes, sir, I agree. So that seems like a good opportunity for busting through the silos to have conversations about how to make that more efficient so that if another department or your department needs to access the information is is correct per

[3:44:06] Joe's model information in information out so that it's accurate and it's fast not a week behind or something like that. We and to to kind of go along with that, you know, we've I've talked about it and and and Kevin's also mentioned it, the the GIS gap assessment, needs assessment that we're currently working through. I'm I'm the one kind of spearheading that on behalf because we are from public works, we are probably the greatest user of GIS uh on a daily basis. And so, I should stop picking on Kevin. No, I mean we we are we are that user and and we do interact with them very well. And so part of part of this assessment is is we are looking at what every how everybody in the city uses GIS and and what we currently have. Um, and I'll I'll just go ahead and throw it out there that that I think a lot of a lot of the issues that we're seeing from from that standpoint exactly about uh these work orders for inputting all of this data into the system is because we GIS did not have enough staff to accommodate the amount and volume of work orders that we as the rest of the staff and the rest of the city are placing on them. And so part of this assessment is looking looking at that. And so and I will be bringing and and again um working with Bucky and his group since Buckyy's over the GIS division and working with them and bringing back a plan to city council moving forward that will help us. I mean we're looking at multiple things but and it and it will and it will be we're going to be asking for people um and so to help with this and embed these people into the different areas and different divisions. So, not only are these GIS techs uh under they understand what's going on GIS, but they also know who they're working for. So, if they're working for water utilities or PD or fire or planning or whoever these whoever needs this uh expert, this uh

[3:46:09] GIS expert working for them in their field to make sure all of that data is entered and entered correctly and they know what they're talking about. So I don't um so the the GIS tech that's fresh out of school that we hire you know they may know every everything about EZRI the EZRI product itself but they have no idea what we do in public works and so we need to make sure that those people are not only experts in the EZRI product but also experts in what we do as a living and so we are going through that process now um again we are hoping to have this kind of wrapped up before the end of budget season So we can kind of start bringing y'all some preliminary numbers and data to look at. Um and we know you know I know from an enterprise fund from the water from the utilities side of things and also uh from the storm water side of things and those type of things that you know we will bring we will bring funding solutions from our perspective. But again there's also going to need to be those funding solutions that are also on the general fund side as well. But again we're going to try to bring those solutions to you in a plan to implement this over time. So that situation is a whole lot better moving forward in the future because it it's not only frustrating for our citizens but it's also frustrating for staff uh because again we are huge users of that database and so that's why I've kind of spearheaded this this process and this project. So thanks for educating us. I have one last question for Kevin just because I don't know the answer. Um you mentioned that we have five engineers. Three are licensed, two are in process. How much of the design work, engineering design work is done in-house and how much is contracted out? Currently, the majority of the work is contracted out. Part of the answer to your question about GIS and our ability to archive quality data relates directly to that. I can do more with less. If I have good quality data, good software products, then we can start bringing a lot of that in. My assistant city

[3:48:11] engineer is going to present to you what we think are the ways to get there and he's got some information to share with you, I think, on that. Great. So, I'll let him take the seat. His name is Zephrino Mendoza. I if you haven't met him. So, thank you. Thank you. So, while Ze is going to take his seat, let me ask you a question. Let me put you on the hot seat, Daniel. I have a feeling we're going to hear some more of this type thing of of needs tomorrow. How can we do a better job at our level to getting this information sooner so that we can start working with you to work with the the the appropriate department directors? How can we start? I I'm a little amazed that we're just now hearing some of this now. Now, this can't be just something that's just popped up. So, it troubles me that we haven't heard about some of this before. So, that we could have been working on this all along. So, maybe there's not an answer right now, but I'd still like to know that before we exit this entire process. There's some of this that in me wants to say let's get this going. Okay, here's the deal. So, I want to I want to say this real quick. First of all, the first u the question the way you find out is through processes like this as well, right? But we have competing projects. We have competing resources. We have competing we have to take a look at which is the top priority as we move forward based on the monies that come in. And that's what we've been doing for years. very responsibly. Uh we've built up a a responsible fund balance. We've done everything we possibly can. We're still going to have we're not going to have all the answers uh today where it's just impossible. There's a lot of needs, a lot of requests. I can tell you just when the target increase requests, it was over $5 million. We have to whittle that down to decide, okay, which ones

[3:50:13] are the priorities for us? And that's what we put forth. So, you know, hearing Patrick up there talk about the facility, uh, I I hate that, you know, but we put money and continue to put money into our streets, our infrastructure. It's one thing I've always said that we're never going to pull money away from that. I want to make sure we stay on target with that. Never again will we kick the can down the road like we did years and years and years past. But right now, really this is a great opportunity for y'all to hear what those competing projects are, what those competing uh as far as the departments, what it is that their needs are, so that you can make a informed decision as far as these are our priorities. We need to make sure that we pay for this and this is what this whole process is for. And I appreciate the fact that you you guys gave us three days to do this and this is excellent because this is exactly what we needed and this is where all this information comes out. But yeah, thank you for that question. Hey, I want to piggy back. Mr. Heert and I must be must have spent so much time on this council the last 8 years. I was right in that particular almost not verbatim because Mr. Heert can wordsmith things a lot better than I can. I was going to be a lot more direct. But what we hear today, what we've heard today is very sim similar stuff in between departments. I mean this information siloing and I use zero words but we heard that earlier from Aaron in his particular group. Those are things that we can we can fix and it doesn't have to be individual departments fixing it. That's citywide. That's something we need to do. But to to Tommy's point, we can't make those decisions if we don't know about it. Daniel, I appreciate the fact is that that's you're looking at this stuff and you're trying to you're trying to shield the the council from some of those some

[3:52:17] of those things that we don't need to know possibly or because we don't we know we don't have that kind of money to do it. But we're ultimately the ones that makes that decision. And so just now hearing about some of these things that engineering is talking about or planning or the water department kind of frustrates me. I think the same thing Mr. Hebrew kid because those are things that we should know about early on. And even if we can't do anything about it because of constraints, funds or people or whatever that is, we should know those things because we're the ones that standing up in front of our constituents and citizens and having those conversations. So I'm frustrated kind of similar to what Tommy is right now and some of these things that we're hearing today we haven't haven't heard them for the last 12 months. If I could step just a little bit, the artificial intelligence and and geospatial environment is moving at a very fast pace and what's available today wasn't really available just a few years ago, even two years ago, even one year ago. and it's going to just it's going to exponentially increase its rate over the next few years. So, so that that speaks to part what your frustration might be. Silos, information silos have been trying to bust those up have been in industry for the last 50 years. But today we have tools that we can economically employ to actually spread that information around. So that's a little bit why it's just coming to the head, just coming to the forefront. Some of the silos have nothing to do

[3:54:20] with technology. Some of the silos have to do with day-to-day management. So, I would look to you, Daniel, to begin to work on the siloing issue with all your department of people. Um, I' I've written down every person that said silo and no, no, no, no. Because quite frankly, I mean, I need absolutely need clar clarification on that. Make sure that whatever that issue is that we do work for towards solutions for that. So, yeah, I get that. One word I've written down that has just been screaming at me is communication or the lack thereof. Just people with people peopleto people communication. And I'm going to reiterate what Kevin said. Um we have the technology uh to break a lot of the silos just because we're not going to a filing cabinet. We don't have blueprints. We still do, but we're getting rid of them. Um, and I saw it in planning through the short-term rental. We had to hire or get a special program for short-term rentals, but yet it had to be budgeted in because it cost money. We had to make sure it was But I think that's the process we need to work towards as uh well, some as easy as picking up the phone and talking to another human being. You're right. You're right. Yeah. But I think that when you talk about efficiencies, you talk about the technology as well. I mean that may be part of the solution. You know that's that's where those questions come in and again on my end um I did write down the three individuals that said silos and I definitely want to make sure we have a sit down discussion on what exactly is it that would fix that. You know what can we work toward making sure that that gets fixed. So again on my end I again I go back to competing projects. I want to make sure that there's certain things that be that can be fixed by by uh communication management you name it. But there's also things that are just competing and quite frankly there's the

[3:56:23] money is just not really there and we just have to come up with a way to make to plan for that to to phase in to do the different things we need to be doing on our end though. So but again I stand by a lot of what my staff has done over the years. Uh and as far as the the responsibility with the budget and what have you. Uh I know that there's things that need be to fix and I'm glad that we're having this conversation. I'm glad that we have three days to do this because quite frankly, these are the conversations that have to be had. Uh again, if it falls on me, which it does cuz I'm the city manager, uh to correct some of these issues. Uh then by all means, uh we'll do that. But I'm also enjoying the conversation and hearing from from the directors. And that's why I said earlier, just put it out there. I want to hear what it is. you know, if I'm missing something and I want to make sure that everybody feels confident in being able to come to me if they feel like uh they're short on something or or Mike or Rick. Uh and know that we're going to do what we can to help you, but just come to us. There's no reason why you would you would hold back to do that. But again, on our end, we're here for that process right now to go through the three days. And I'm glad we're doing this. I'm very happy we're doing this. And quite frankly, I look excited that we actually got the three days to get it done though. So, yes. Thank you. Uh yes, sir. to speak to jurors in Congress issue. It's a votes and men solution face to face communication. I think the staff, you know, jurisdo staff has a great communication level. But even though I'm communicating face to face, I need to know what questions to ask, which means I need to know what data is available. I need to be able to redo that data before I have that conversation sometimes so that I can ask the smart question and a lot of times a lot of communication goes on and the one piece of data is missing and and it all falls apart because of that one piece of data. So it's a both end solution. I agree very much face to face is important never will never will cease to be important. I want to stress this though, you know, because we're all new

[3:58:26] and this is probably be the first time in many years in many elections that there have been really four new people in a in a position and that's a majority of the city council. So, we're all in new territory right now. Uh, and not that this not that this is where we're going. Um, I don't want us to go negative and start saying, "Oh, we we blame this or blame that, you know, keep going in the past." Because now we're we're right here and I am I've been through a lot of financial wars and different things and I have never had a better experience since I took office. And just there seems to be just with the newness of the people it's almost like an adjustment has occurred uh just in people's attitudes that are outlook um we all see this as a great opportunity and I I love this this process that we're doing and I'm getting the idea that this hasn't happened in in several years but it's happening now and I want us to focus on how great this can be and not look at I mean it's important to know what we did wrong or where the problems lie but um I want us to also acknowledge just how solid this team is and how grateful we are to be able to work together and through the campaign trail you get to know people not in a good way sometimes And it's been it's been a process, but this process is jelling and it and it's a lot of things are getting baked in going forward. And I think these changes, these these ideas of, you know, stopping the siloing and and all of that have the best

[4:00:31] chance of making a 110% good outcome than we probably ever had before. and I'm 58 years old. So, I' I've seen a lot of a lot of different regimes, but I I wanted everyone here to know how committed that this council is and our staff in achieving your goals cuz your goals are the citizens goals. They really are. All they want is to have a good place to live, a good job, and be able to be with their families and not worry that the bridge is going to break. And thank God Luke's people, they see to it that that's not going to happen. But we've got a lot of things to address, but we are in the best position I think the city has ever been in to address those successfully, efficiently, and we will succeed with this. So, I want us to celebrate this this process right now. I appreciate it very much, Mary. I think those are words well put. We for the first time in many years we have an opportunity to sit down and do some open dialogue between everybody. Typically these discussions happen individually not as a group. I want to commend everybody for being there but I will go through. We need to stay on task. We're running about 30 40 minutes behind. There are people here that have some things to do. So we're going to flip it back and get started. Okay. I apologize but thank you. Thank you mayor. Assistant city engineer Zephrino Mendoza will be speaking to our one three and fiveyear goals. So uh our first year goal we're looking at providing infrastructure planning and project delivery to support resilient growth ensure efficient public services and enhance community well-being. So as part of that goal our first step in that is to seek the advanced modeling software. Uh with that we're looking at software that will integrate with our current design software we have in house um which is AutoCAD Sivil 3D. And then of

[4:02:33] course we're looking at the same integration of packages with a water surface uh water distribution modeling uh program a one another one that is for wastewater and of course for storm water infrastructure. Uh we're looking for within this first year by using that advanced modeling software to start developing three base models for each one of those scenarios. So that way we could run water distribution models to determine if we have a configuration we need to use in an emergency situation. Say we have a large water line breakdown, we can find rerouting to kind of reduce or minimize that outage. Uh second u to go ahead and look at uh predictive modeling to kind of show us and forecast uh down the road which ones are critical and which ones we need to start fixing within a certain time. So that way we can clearly convey uh to mayor and council and the public that uh we are assessing our infrastructure as it ages and these are the first ones we need to take care of uh in line. So that's part of that um uh that advanced model uh these this advanced modeling software that we're looking for and with that we'll start developing u and creating enforcing standardized d uh data management pro protocols to ensure consistency uh and then of course the biggest thing lately in the past 30 minutes is talking about data data driven data data. So that's what we're going to be seeking back and forth is of collecting that data uh obtaining that data implementing that data into the models per your your prior question when we were having discussion about water distribution. Mr. Uh, Mayor Thompson, uh, we're going to have that ability to with these programs integrate into GIS so that information, we're talking about digital twins, we can implement that information and then it could update continuously. So that way we have these live digital twins that mirror each other. And then once we kind of find these these little hiccups in the system, these repairs, these these different changes, uh even tracking breakages in system, potholes and so forth on the GIS and there we can start

[4:04:36] overlaying and start creating our capital improvements projects based off of those needs. So uh that's kind of what we're looking for with this advanced modeling software as part of this first year goal. Um of course with that we're introducing new software. So, we're looking at workforce development. Um, we're looking at building uh training programs for our staff to ensure that they're are advancing with the the new updates to this software, the the new programs. Um, you know, at least scheduling training commitments throughout the 12 years, uh, not the 12 years, sorry, the one-year process. And then within that one-year process looking intermediately on how training is progressing at the six month and the 10-month so we can go back and reassess how our training is going and seeing if we can produce a better product out of that. Um and then part of that of course we're still producing a lot of data. So uh our third strategy is based off of datadriven capital planning. So what we want to do is start when we start obtaining this data and start rewriting these these models and sharing this data across all these platforms is we want to start creating a full inventory of infrastructure assets. Um right now the infrastructure uh collection that GIS produces is basically a flat surface but of course pipes aren't just laid on the ground. We we'd have more complaints than just bumpy roads right now. Uh so we have to go ahead and assess those and see where we're at elevation wise, the locations that we can place them. But we're also competing in our own right away with other infrastructure there. Fiber, gas, telecom, power poles, you name it, we have to kind of configure and align that. So once we start obtaining that data, we can start using these digital twins to start creating and assessing more improved and accurate capital improvement plans, which brings down our cost and kind of reflects a little more accurate cost in those planning. So when we come in, it's just a not a generalized number or a number that's pulled from a city that's surrounding. We actually have that data implemented and we can actually pull from our own

[4:06:38] costs and project our own costs further down. Um, and that's kind of what we're moving towards and segueing in our three-year goals. Um, we're looking at focusing on uh, essentially enhancing the resilience, reliability, and performance of public infrastructure by implementing maintenance programs, strengthening workforce capacity, supporting coordinated improvements uh, and especially to the focus of the water distribution system. Uh so with that being said, our first goal and intent is of course uh we want to start implementing using that data that we've developed between years one and three uh into implemented targeted maintenance programs. We're showing that you know water lines need to be rehabbed. Uh wastewater re uh lines are going to re be rehabbed. We've identified areas that uh either need a storm water management or drainage infrastructure. Uh and of course uh roadways as well. We can start identifying those and uh we can start determining if it's a full-on construction project, we have to completely redo the road or if there's some preventative maintenance that we can do that we can move move that goalpost further down until it actually needs that full-on replacement. So with that, of course, we'll still continually perpetuate the implementing of that that data that we're receiving back into those digital twins so that we're consistently updating everything and everything stays accurate and it is it is in use for all the departments moving forward. But with that uh moving forward, we'll start looking at the water system resilience. Um, we'll start looking at we'll start creating a a systemwide vulnerability assessment to uncover weaknesses. Um, we'll start uh prioritizing resilience opportunities, looking at upgrades, u looking at dead-end mains, creating that redundancy um mitigation strategies. If we could, you know, replace a line while we're in an area that's adjacent during a capital improvements project and it's not that much of an issue, we'll add it in. Uh also what we'll take a look at also uh in support of the fire department uh fire protection with

[4:08:41] hydrants adding those in kind of creating that uh updating the ISO rating and so forth. Um of course with that we're we're looking at fee and rate fee and rate structures as part of the the water department but we're also seeking funding. uh we'll go outside and look at TWWDB, if there's any federal programs that will provide any more monies to upgrade the water system for some of those items. Um and especially uh moving forward, we start looking at long range planning as part of our year five goals and in support of the water department. But as we're progressing, we anticipate there'll be growing pains. So, as part of this, we're looking at uh you know, workforce uh capacity issues. So, um, we're advancing our software. There's only so much that we can do before we start, you know, uh, overfilling our bucket in design, overfilling our bucket in modeling, uh, capacities and then datadriven collecting that data and processing that we're going to have to look at those growing pains within the 3 years. So, we're looking at uh adding adding about at a minimum of four positions, two engineers and two key CAD GIS techs. uh the two engineers would help to support the uh more in-house design uh as part of those rehab programs and then of course the CAD GIS tax would help with the drawings of the plans implementing all that data ensuring there's fidelity moving across from when an engineer produces finalized data that it gets implemented into the GIS Azure program um and then so with that we're still continuing a lot of this data collection support and management. We have to maintain our upkeep on software. Like Kevin mentioned, software is not getting any cheaper. So, there's incremental increases that we're going to see just because um we don't we can't buy software. We're essentially renting it for a year. So, a rental fee increases every single time. Um so, that's what we're looking for

[4:10:43] support in that. Uh but part of our five years goals. Uh the first one with that is of course using that data that we've developed up to 5 years at this point. We want us to go ahead and start supporting the water utilities department in planning and securing sustainable future water supplies. So uh as Shane had mentioned prior for Stockton water holdings. Uh also looking at parts of indirect reuse the plant upgrades. Um possibly a future location for a new water treatment plant if that comes about. we want to start looking at that and assessing those ensuring that we have sustainability projected out for our growth that we're looking at. Um, of course, moving forward with that, uh, we'll still continue our pavement condition and maintenance optimization. We'll start shifting gears a little bit into roadways and supporting operations in that, uh, looking at new new technologies uh, to kind of get develop pavement conditions uh, and index. Essentially, we want to basically a master plan of which roads are starting to become deficient and starting to analyze that. Also includes bridge structures. Uh and with that, we're looking at implementing drone technology to start doing flyovers areas so we can start taking inventory of other things just besides roads. We have signs, um street lights, uh some of the current infrastru uh some of the private infrastructure that may be in our way. We want to look at that to see how we can guide that in and add that into our uh our future in-house design plans. Uh so moving forward that we're still data driven growth and infrastructure planning. We we going to start continuing to improve how we collect, refine and analyze data. Uh prioritizing those future utility needs. We want to use that predictive modeling with all this these models that we've obtained through year one years one refined through years three and years five because those interstates are coming through. We want to guide the large scale infrastructure that's going to

[4:12:45] take out and then of course eventually branch out into the smaller water lines, smaller collection mains uh identify possible uh storm water infrastructure if we start moving towards you know collective storm water management ponds or something of that nature. So, we want to start looking at those areas and kind of adding that in to help facilitate planning and other areas with the comprehensive plan showing these are the areas that we're looking at for guiding. This is how development is going to grow cuz development is not always going to be square blocks like Leach. They're going to be all these nice shapes and we're going to have to guide piping and so forth through those areas. uh acquisitioning easements potentially right away for our new roads and trying to determine how we funnel traffic through certain areas and you know kind of build on those standards that we're looking at moving forward. And uh a lot of our resources are similar. uh we kind of carry them over because we're trying to stay consistent with the improvements management and then just developing our foundation from year one through year three and year five. Uh but to kind of summarize it, we want to kind of ensure a sustainable future water supply. Uh we want to modernize our our our uh condition assessments uh kind of bring bring back those rehabilitation programs and start assessing those to start creating you know capital improvement projects projected out so that we can anticipate those moving forward and then just you know building a stronger data foundation for that long-term future growth and we can help uh development or even us kind of predict what's going to come out and kind of guide that into kind of St. Angelo's future plan based off of future compreh uh comp complaints. Sorry. That's it. Thank you, sir. I appreciate you. Okay, you're welcome. Uh we are at a point right now that we had scheduled a break. A quick break. Would y'all want to do that? You just want to keep I say

[4:14:46] we do a quick fivem minute break. Let's do that. Okay, we are back. Let's go ahead and get started again. We left off with human resources. So Veronica, you are on. Yes. Hello. Thank you very much. Um I'm going to be doing the the presentation, but obviously Kimberly's here if there's uh any questions and she can chime in anytime. Um so I'm very excited to get the opportunity to sit and present to you what um a lot of what you've already heard today. So, our mission is to deliver high-quality human resources services to attract, develop, and retain a diverse and capable workforce in support of the city's goals. And although it's not part of this presentation, I do want you to know that our strategic plan is designed around HR core services. So, I'm going to quickly read through those just so you have a background of our purpose. um classification and compensation, HR information system and records management, employee benefit administration, training and organizational development, labor compliance and policy development, performance management, recruitment and staffing, risk management, and workplace safety. So, we've got eight core services that we've identified. What you're going to see today is a SWAT analysis with a one to fiveyear goal um and a list of resources for those combined core services. So, first of all, let me let you know that training and development is not currently a strength. Um it we hope it can be at some point, but that was supposed to make it on the weakness slide. So, um, let's start off with strategic work for work workforce planning. One of our greatest strengths is the ability to align talent management strategies with organizational goals. This means that we have to have a clear picture for future workforce needs, identifying skill gaps, and implementing targeted recruitment

[4:16:50] and development initiatives to meet these long-term objectives. It helps to ensure that the right people are in the right roles at the right time. Employee relations expertise. We excel at navigating interpersonal dynamics and resolving conflicts. This expertise helps reduce grievances. It fosters collaboration which is critical um for organizational effectiveness. Policy and compliance knowledge. Our deep understanding of labor laws, workplace regulation, and compliance requirements is essential in today's highly regulated environment. I think you've heard that from several departments. This knowledge protects the organization from legal risks and ensures that policies are both equitable and up to date with current laws and best practices. And again, training and development um that is on the weaknesses um slide. So if there aren't any questions on the strengths, I can move to the to the next slide. Are we good there? Okay. So as far as weaknesses, we'll start with training and development. HR's investment in training and development is a major um can be a major strength. Um and we want to continue to improve on that. Now although it is a weakness currently, I can probably tell you that it has um come a long way. Um but there's definitely room for improvement there. Um programs that enhance employee skills, support leadership growth, and create internal mobility paths uh lead to higher engagement, retention, performance. I don't think that's news to all of you. Um resources, resource constraints. We operate with limited staff and tight budgets. This makes it difficult to scale initiatives, roll out comprehensive employee development programs, or implement long-term strategic plans. Slow adoption of technology. There can

[4:18:55] be resistance or delays in adopting modern HR tools like applicant tracking systems, performance management platforms, and HR analytics. Um what we like to call um human resource information systems, HRIS systems. Um, this can hinder efficiency and limit datadriven decision-making. I think that's a term that you've heard today as well. Reactive versus proactive approach. You heard that as well today. This prevents us from engaging in forward thinking activities like workforce planning, succession development, a culture building effort. Um as a result we risk being seen as operational support rather than a strategic partner which we are so capable of being. Um so I do want to expand. Oh so on your second bullet point there Veronica slow adoption of technology. Is that strictly because of funding? Yes. Okay. I mean if if you read that you make it sound like it's more of an attitude but I think for vision with y'all that's because of funding. It is because of funding and time. It takes a lot of time to implement that. So, um but primarily funding and we'll go over some of the funding pieces um under resources. All right. Thank you. I do want to talk a little bit about um we had a few departments talk about, you know, they they've got um a high level of staff that's ready to retire. Um succession planning and what the plan is there. Um, as of the end of this month, we have six out of 17 director levels that can retire today. That's 35%. How many%? 35%. Six of 17. Yes. In 5 years, we're going to have 10 of 17, so that's 41%. Um, so there's definitely a need a need there for succession planning for us to be able to um have somebody in place identify those top performers to be able

[4:20:58] to um not feel a hiccup when those um directors leave. Um, as far as the entire organization, I do want to let you know that fire currently has 23% of employees that can retire. PD has 11% and then the rest of the organization has 10% employees that can retire. Any questions on the weaknesses? Okay. Opportunities data driven decisions. HR analytics offer powerful insights that can inform everyone um I'm sorry, conform everything from recruitment to retention. By leveraging data, we can identify patterns in employee turnover, engagement, performance, enabling us to make proactive and strategic workforce decisions. Embracing digital transformation, implementing tools like his as I mentioned and automated technologies can streamline streamline workflows, reduce manual errors and increase operational efficiency. This shifts allows us to focus more on strategic initiatives and less on administrative tasks. So implementation of a succession plan um creating a training curriculum that allows us to to train that um up andcoming management. We would love to have more time to do that if we had um some more efficiencies in place in terms of administrative work that we do. Equity and inclusion. We need to continue to uh create equitable inclusive work environments to make the organization more attractive to diverse talent. Workforce strategy adopting it to changing adapting to changing workforce dynamics continues to present an opportunity to expand talent pools. HR can design policies that support flexibility when ma while maintaining performance and accountability.

[4:23:03] Employer branding. HR has the opportunity to showcase the organization's culture, values, and employee expertise, making it a destination for top talent and employee wellness programs. Um, finally, expanding wellness initiatives can directly influence employee engagement, reduce burnout, and improve retention. prioritizing wellness and a strategic is a strategic advantage particularly because we are self-funded and so we'll talk a little bit about that here in a minute as well. Um the point that I want to make with some of these opportunities is you know um several directors that that presented today are spoton. Um Patrick I agree with him wholeheartedly and I try to disagree with him at least once a week. I think he left. Um him and I have some great conversations about, you know, what um what our work environment needs to look like and he is spot on. There's so much opportunity there. Um and we'll talk about this a little bit too. One of the the biggest pieces um that every director has mentioned is a classification and compensation study that has not occurred since I believe 2007. um we need to have a starting point and so we'll we'll discuss that here in a minute under resources. So any questions on opportunities? Yes, I'm sitting here. I'm trying to I was trying to do a kind of a fact check it. It's going to be an unpopular statement, but I really don't care. Um this DEI, hasn't that been ruled illegal? I mean, aren't we back to a meritocracy and not that? Um, there's some politicized, I guess, ideas in terms of DEI. The

[4:25:07] purpose of this is not necessarily DEI. It's just making sure that our work environment um attracts talent from everywhere. Okay. Well, that it was just the language in that I'm like, oh boy. Um, I just want to make sure that we hire the best person that we can that is not race, not gender or whatever that is that that keeps ru ruling the media lately. But I don't want us to I don't want us to be counter opposite of what what has been accepted and I don't mean to be jumping on on you like this. I just I don't want to go down that road personally. Not with the DEI. I think our goal is the same to hire the most qualified candidate for the vacancies that we have available. Good deal. It was just the the just the language but in that that we tend to have to guard against against that kind of stuff. So thank you for clarifying that. Sure. Understood. Okay. Uh I think we're on threats. So while HR has many opportunities to lead and innovate, there are also several external and internal threats that require proactive attention. Um changing labor laws and regulations. You heard that from several directors today as well. Uh the regul regulatory landscape is constantly evolving. This um emphasizes the need for continuous training. Legal review of policies and practices. High turnover rates. Retaining skilled employees continue to be a challenge especially in the competitive labor labor market. This disrupts operations but also incurs significant recruitment and onboarding cost. I think you probably will will hear that from police and fire primarily. Uh understanding that what

[4:27:10] motivates employees and addressing those factors is key in staying ahead. Economic uncertainty, economic fluctuations can impact budgets across the board. We always struggle with the uncertainty in reducing funding for training, hiring, wellness programs, um technology upgrades. This makes it more critical than ever to demonstrate that return on investment um is a part of HR initiatives as well. Cyber security risks. Um I'm sure you'll hear this from it. Um as more HR functions move online, the threat to employee data security increases. A data breach can damage trust, invite legal repercussions, and disrupt operations. HR must collaborate with it to ensure that system handling sensitive data are secure and compliant. Generate generational workforce shifts. The modern workforce spans five generations. Um each with unique needs and expectations. Patrick talked about this as well. From communication preference preferences to career goals, we face the challenge of developing policies and engagement strategies that resonate across the employee segments. Veronica, yes, you don't mind talking about cyber security risk. There's probably not one of us here had hadn't got an email says, "Hey, your email and your password has been compromised. You've been in a data leak." So, do we have a level of protection for our employees and staff if the data is leaked as somebody we share it to? And I know this may be something with it, but let's say you have my social security number, somebody that we do business with on a health plan or something has a data breach. Somebody takes that and goes and with with my credit rating, they could go buy some, you know, a bag full of suckers. But anyway, long long story short, if it was to get out there and get abused, do

[4:29:12] we have a legal recourse and a process for assisting our employees in that situation? Um there Brandon can answer I think I can help. So um we've had leaks before and there are notice requirements that uh we send out to those individuals and we provide like some kind of um I forget what it's called. I mean it's a credit protection. It's like a credit reporting type thing where they can sign up for free and it goes and helps them with exactly what you're talking about. So that's within our system for our employees to utilize if they if they so see fit. Yeah. I I don't know that it's specific to employees. It's I think anyone's data who would be leaked through our system. So yeah, I believe that would include our employees. All I need. Correct. We used it when our water department got hacked several years back and so we provided that to our citizens as well because we do feel that we are responsible as the keepsake of their information. We do have a policy with Texas Municipal League that also protects the organization from the financial impact of a threat to cyber security. Cool. All right. Thank you. And the reason that this is in here um is if we were to have an HRIS system, we're obviously going to select somebody that um we feel comfortable has those measures in place as well. Okay. So, we'll go to our one-year goal. There's several core services that we've included in our one-year goal. By December of 2026, implement a comprehensive workforce modernization strategy that includes updated and market aligned job classification and pay structures. Implementation of an HR system allowing for 70% improvement data accuracy. Right now we do so many things manually. Um so much data entry is done manually. There is obviously a an

[4:31:15] inherent risk of uh errors. Three, expand employee benefit education and offerings. And four, a leadership development and succession planning program covering at least 80% of the key leadership roles that we have. The action steps that we would take to accomplish these things is to conduct a citywide compensation study. One hasn't been done since 2007 as I mentioned and much has changed with the organizational structure. So just to touch a little bit on this, internal studies have been done, I I want to say every year, possibly every other year since then, but you can't possibly capture everything in an internal study to include um comparing salaries to both industry and like one of the directors indicated um they're not losing employees to Midland or Abalene. um you know it's through to um other other private employers. This um study includes updated job descriptions. So a lot of our roles have evolved. That's definitely needed. Um integrated competencies into those classification standards. Our pay plan would be updated. Um, you heard a few directors talking about ad pays that could incentivize employees. This would also take a look at um an ad pay program as well. Um, in terms of an H system, upgrade or integrate um existing HR systems. So, right now we use I would say easily five systems. One's for benefits, one's for uh pay, um one's for applications. So, there's several. If we could have it all in one, like I said, it would be an extreme timesaver. Um, train HR staff and data management and reporting. Use dashboards for

[4:33:18] real-time workforce insights to be able to make those data-driven decisions. Sorry, that one's behind me. Um, in terms of benefits, launch benefit education campaigns, review v benefit plans for cost effectiveness and coverage, expand wellness and preventive care options. Um, at some point we're going to make a a council presentation about benefits. Um, typically uh we go out to bid in the summer and then we come to council and let you know what what could potentially change with both premiums and u benefit health plans for employees. Um truly in my opinion, the only way that we can make an impact or control some of these costs because we're self-funded um is through some sort of a wellness plan. Um you know, we can tell people every year um go do your biometric screenings. Um they get the information and then nothing happens from there. So, um, usually the biggest spend in terms of benefits are a few high claimments. Um, people that if we had the programs in place to say these are the resources available to you to impact your health, um, we could truly save some dollars there. Um, in terms of training, we want to develop a citywide leadership academy, provide hybrid and self-paced learning platforms, um, and identify those high potential employees for advance advancement. I think you've heard quite a bit of that, um, from different directors as well. Um I believe there in the last six months or so um Kimberly Brian who was the previous director and Christine the HR manager had an opportunity to go and um and I believe some council members to go um city of Fredericksburg and take a look at their succession plan. So um

[4:35:20] there's plenty out there that we can use. We don't necessarily have to reinvent the wheel. Um, and so we're hoping to be able to put something together and get that in place. Okay. For three-year goal, by 2028, standardize and publish 100% of HR policies in a digital handbook to ensure legal compliance and support a respectful workplace culture while simultaneously reducing time to hire by 20% and increasing workforce diversity through inclusive recruitment practices. Um, what do we need to do to to accomplish this? Review and update all HR policies. Um, that has to be a an ongoing process. Like I said, um, compliance laws are changing all the time. Digit digitize policy access and acknowledgement tracking. Involve departments in policy reviews to build buyin, strengthen documentation and uh, investigation processes. We need to expand outreach to underrepresented communities, streamline the application process through upgraded software, um meaning making it continue to make it to make it easier for applicants to to apply for our vacancies. Um and implement internship and apprenticeship pipelines as well. We have a huge opportunity with obviously our our young community through high school and and university here. So for five-year goals by 2030 implement a comprehensive safety and performance management system that reduces workplace incidents by 40% through training and updated protocols while ensuring 90% of employees complete goal setting and performance review aligned with organizational priorities. obviously supported by a fully integrated HRIS system. It's uh it would be capable of doing all of that. Um we accomplished that by implementing

[4:37:23] continuous feedback tools. Uh we recently did um a survey for training needs. So what does the department uh director level um believe they need? I think it was only the department director and supervisor level that we got feedback from. And we had great responses um in terms of what they believe they need for um to start the the training process. Train supervisors in coaching and evaluation and and evaluation of best practices. Connect evaluations to professional development plans. Um partner with departments on safety training. We have a huge opportunity there. Um, we're also self-funded for that liability. And, um, we're always looking for ways to make sure employees are trained on everything from driving, from spotting, from, um, all kinds of things that our crews are out there doing. Um, launching a proactive injury prevention campaign and improve return to work and accommodation processes. um in uh worker in our workers comp program. So what resources are required? We need funding. Who would have thought? Yes. Who would have thought? So for the classification and compensation study, we need funding in the amount not to exceed $150,000. This will be a one-time cost and updates will be necessary every 3 to 5 years. Now, what's necessary every 3 to 5 years will not be $150,000. It'll be um significantly less than that, but I'm sure there's module updates that that have to happen. How many compensation plans do you manage? How many compensation plans do I fire department? How many? Three. There's a PD pay plan, fire pay plan, and just the general employee. Yep. So, three. A lot of variation among those three. Quite a bit. How much of your

[4:39:27] time is spent doing payroll? Oh gosh. Just I mean we're not going to hold your feet to that due to turnover right now. It's about 90% of my That's what I was going to say. We're feeling it right now because we've had a a vacancy in that place. And that's where I'm going. So don't be ashamed to bring something up here like this because you're going to be asked to do more with less. Okay. Yes. This everybody here is going to be asked to do more with less. We're pursuing data. I have no problem with this $150,000 ask if it solves and we get rid of uh the the HR demand on y'all decreases. Okay. You're the single department that touches every employee. Okay. You need to be I would say the the brick the backbone of everybody here that knows that when they call HR this thing is handled and I'm talking to the right person. A lot of these things you talk about already available. I mean, there's bamboo. There's absolutely different types of programs out there. We're not reinventing the wheel here, but let's not be afraid to make sure we're driving the right car. Mhm. I'm sorry. I just had to throw that in. No, no, you're good. A little spongy. Yeah. No, and we hear that term all the time, right? We We do less with more, and that's okay, but not long term. It's not okay. Things We're going to drop things. Um, you know, I spent probably the majority of the morning back there entering manually entering um some pay adjustments. Um, so yeah, it it takes up a lot of time. If we could get a pay structure that our employees could understand too, that would be very beneficial to us on our time saving, but the morale boost of our employees getting a paycheck that they actually understand and don't have to question us and feel like they're being underpaid um because they simply don't understand their pay structure. Yeah. The and we've just talked about benefits for us, right, is as HR department employees. there's a significant benefit to the employee as well to have this information um readily available um

[4:41:31] would be huge for them as well if they want to go in and make changes to something if they want to um take a look at you know what their tax deductions are um right now we have a hand in that and we don't have to well if there's one thing everybody reads regardless of the quality of employee they are how hard they work is their paycheck you'd be surpris urprised. He would be really Well, I get that. But I have seen y'all deal with it. I deal with it in my existing company. We all have dealt with that. But to get to a program that would make that everybody would understand, you wouldn't have any headwinds with this group. Yes, 100%. Um, purchase and implement an HRIS system. Um this is sort of touching what we just discussed. Uh we're looking at approximately $160,000. A portion will be an implementation cost and the additional modules will be necessary to fund in subsequent phases. So we wouldn't implement something uh 100% in year 1. This would have to be phased in. And um that isn't just necessarily due to funding. It would also be because it takes time to do this. And we want to make sure that we train both our staff and employees appropriately to um have access to this information. Innovative and strategic input from both management, city council on sustainable approaches to funding our self- insurance funds. We talked about that a little bit that align with long-term financial stability and service goals. One time uh I'm sorry, one full-time equivalent to focus on civil service. We haven't touched much on CI the civil service piece. I know um Brandon did in his presentation, but our HR manager is currently um handling the the civil service piece. She's a civil service director. And although it does come and go, I

[4:43:36] guess in terms of the amount of time that's spent on it, it seems like in the last probably two years, they've experienced a lot of activity in the on the civil service side. um with multiple things. Um a lot of it with the meet and confer agreement, but um she doesn't have time to do a lot of the HR manager projects that we would like for her to do because of civil service. Um civil service involves the application review, recruitment, testing, promotional testing, which includes an assessment center that takes a lot of time. uh meet and confer agreements, um the civil service um board, uh scheduling meetings, um making sure that everybody's available. Um section 143, which is the civil service component, is a lot and it needs a lot of work currently. We haven't had a chance to even touch that. And I know Brandon can probably speak to that as well in his office when um there are civil service things happening. There's a lot of time that um I don't think he's has any I think it's him that really deals with Yeah. I mean, we've had some outside counsel, but um mostly it's been me. And I will say uh you know, Christine, she's the records custodian of that board. And so in the litigation that we're involved in, I mean, she's had to go through tons and tons of records to certify that all those are true and correct for that litigation. And I mean, it took her a lot of time. So, um, funding for safety related incentive programs. Um if we were able to incentivize again um good behavior in terms of safety that would be beneficial. A visible commitment from department heads to set the tone and hold teams accountable that's largely related to um safety as well

[4:45:41] and city council and management support just in general which we do get a lot of that already. So, any questions on resources? Uh, I have something just kind of curiosity. A lot of it is always talking about pay and I mean our piggy banks limited to the amount of money that comes in. So, not everybody can get that. There's no way. Has there been a look about changing work schedules, going to a 4-day work week, going to a hybrid, going to a flex schedule, something like that to help some of the turnover to um help bring in because some some of the people that go like you talked about earlier go to they'll go to Reese or something like that. Well, they're working 5, six, seven days a week, 10, 12 hours a day. Some people don't want to do that. So, they may take a little pay cut if they can come work a 410 schedule or something like that and get that more quality of work life balance. like what are the outside the box things that y'all have thought of to help fill all these vacancies? We we do think outside of the box consistently. Um anytime pay comes up during the the um budget process. Um we talk about complete compensation. What's the compensation package? And you're right, it's not all about money. Um I do think however um because there hasn't been a classification compensation study done in so long it probably is um pretty behind in terms of the positions. Um but we've had those discussions with Daniel probably annually. Um I don't know that Brian in the past has brought forward a flexible work schedule in terms of you know 4 days a week. We can definitely take a look at that. there are things out there that um that we can put together and bring to council to review. And I want to add to that, we do have some departments that are already doing that. We have our um operations crews like storm water, they're already working 4 days a week, 10-hour days. So, we kind of left it more on a departmental level for them to decide

[4:47:42] what was best for their mission. Yeah. And and that may be some of it. Like I say, I know y'all are on this part of it, but it just kind of it's kind of all-encompassing. It's because it was about the the cashiers and that earlier too. She was saying having a hard time keeping people, you know, maybe they could go to that hybrid work schedule, but since y'all are the HR, y'all are kind of in charge of it and would help pay. So, y'all would be probably the biggest logistical part to make sure everybody gets paid, right? Things like that. Yeah. Some of the feedback we heard from departments that tried um a a 4-day work schedule was that if if the office itself isn't closed um on that fifth day, whatever day of the week that happens to be, um they're still working. Um in terms of the supervisor level, the director, the assistant director, they're still working. So it ends up just being easier for them to come in and do you know their 8 hour days for 5 days a week than anything else. But um you know it you know we can we have looked at that. We can continue to take a look at that and see what would be feasible to bring to council for review. There was a various uh ideas that actually came out of the committee that work together to develop develop some of the thoughts and ideas of course of 4day work but um those are items that definitely it sounds like this council is willing to take a listen to those and see actually what could be implemented what they could actually support but uh on our end Patrick yeah there's been plenty of work done by committee to look at some of the other options available aside from just compensation what else can we do you know to really retain employees or even encourage others to come work for us based on some of those changes though. So, but we can we can put together a list of those things that we we our staff came up with and take you can take a look at that as well, send it to all the council members. But, um yeah, those thoughts are always in there. It's just a matter of openness to to that change. So, I just I'll open this up to the council. I don't know if we'll ever be able to reach the pay that compares us to other cities. Some we will, some we won't. But

[4:49:47] if we could come up with the city that had was a great place to work because it had the right benefits, I had the right time, I had the right schedule, you know, we discussed things that even discussed potential child care, you know, with other corporations and entities within town that we co-share. I think that's our easiest and quickest way to obtain that goal. Um, we'll be open to anything. I know sometimes y'all get out of that box. We're going to have to urge y'all back in, but we'll encourage you to go. Keep keep pushing it, but uh thank you all for y'all's presentation. I appreciate um if you're done. I'm sorry. I just have one more uh note to add if in terms of the compensation and class classification study. Um we want to make sure that council knows that we totally understand that there's a funding component. And so I would anticipate that the information we get back is not going to be a one-year implementation either. It has to be a phased approach. Um, I mean, we've seen we've seen that in the past. So, um, we understand that and we're, you know, it it's reasonable. We understand that it's not going to be a one-year. What do you think? Do y'all send out a survey every year to the employees and what you like, what you don't like, anything like that, or would that be part of that classification study? This is part of the classification study. Yeah. Um, typically it is part of a study. Um, I don't believe that. I don't know that a survey has been sent in the last couple of years to ask for feedback. So my the only scare I have is if we say yes to this, what are we saying no to? Right? So let's not leave something as an outlier here that y'all thought might be able to throw in. But it's sometimes I see that we agree to something and inadvertently we said no to something else. I don't want that to be an obstacle here. Yeah. No, I think we thought of everything if this can be accomplished. Engineering still had you beat. They had six pages. All right. Nice try though, Veronica. Kimberly, thank you all so much. Appreciate it. We just have one more department. That's

[4:51:49] airport. Believe you got about seven minutes. That's it. You can. Oh, I see what you did there. took me a little while back. Thank you. Hey, good afternoon everyone. Justin Fletcher, uh airport director, uh St. Angelo Regional Airport. I'll kick it off with the airport's mission. Uh the airport's core service is to ensure the safe and efficient movement of passengers and aircraft by developing and maintaining aeronautical infrastructure. Uh the airport is committed to fostering economic growth and supporting and supporting the community as a hub for aviation related development. Uh I like to tell everybody that the airport is the gateway to the city. We're a lot of the times the first facility. We're the first people uh that people encounter when they arrive in St. Angelo. Uh so we we have uh an important duty of establishing first impressions when people come into our city. Uh so that's that's something that we do take uh pretty serious uh with our staff. Uh I'll kick it off with our strengths. Uh the airport is completely self- sustaining. So our revenues that are generated uh do go back and cover our expenses. The city does participate as matching uh our federal grants, our FA grants. The the city matches the 10%. So our our FA AIP projects are typically a 9010 split. So the city participates in the 10% split. Additionally, the city commits to a lot of our capital projects. If we have a capital project, uh a large expenditure, the city will participate and uh we'll we'll work with finance to reimburse that amount back to the city. Uh we have a lot of land. We're fortunate that the airport is not landlocked. We have a lot of land that's available for development. Uh the problem that we have, and I'll dig into

[4:53:50] this, but we we we need infrastructure. We need infrastructure to support that land. Uh but for right now, we do have we we do have land and that's a huge asset for us. That's a huge strength for us. Uh another strength is the ability to facilitate essential aviation services. Whether that's our commercial service with with American Airlines, uh the military. Uh we've proven that that the airport can support uh a lot of the military detachments, the Canadian Air Force. Uh we've supported everything from C17 to big heavy air force aircraft all the way down to the small piston engine airplanes. So uh I St. Angelo airport is not the sleepy little airport. Uh we we conducted 117,000 operations last year. That's takeoffs, landings, and overflights. That's a busy airport. Uh in the realm of airports, 100,000 is typically the target. Like everybody wants to get to 100,000 operations, and we've exceeded that. Uh, a lot of that's flight training. With the collegiate program at ASU, uh, you know, they're operating almost 30 aircraft now, 212 students. Uh, that's that's a big contributor to a lot of the operations that we're having out at the airport. Uh, so we're busy. We got a lot going on. Uh, and strong support from local uh, federal and economic development. Uh, we can tell the story of city management, uh, city council supporting our project, supporting the airport, supporting development. Uh, federal government. We've got a great relationship with Congressman Fluger's office uh working with him on initiatives from air traffic uh to different projects and Costa DC. I'll dig into this in in in a in a few minutes, but economic development. Costa DC uh is a big supporter of the airport and some of the the initiatives that we're doing out there. Uh weaknesses uh one one of our weaknesses is the dependence upon one commercial carrier. Um, American Airlines has been great for St. Angelo. They've been a great supporter of the airport. Uh, but if the airline decides to contract or expand their service network, we're kind of at their whim. We're kind of at their whim. So, uh, if

[4:55:54] they want to take us down to two or three flights a day, you know, we want to push back, but we're kind of at the whim of what the airline does. They want to maintain profit, uh, in this in this station, uh, but we're kind of at the whim of what that carrier uh, does. a aging infrastructure. If you've been up to the airport, you've seen it. Uh our parking lots. Uh our parking lots are aging. You know, that asphalt's unraveling. It's aging. We've got weeds popping through our parking lots. It's just an eyesore. Uh airside pavement. Uh if you go out to the jet center, out by Ranger, uh out by the terminal, we've got a lot of pavement that's cracking. We've got concrete slabs that are cracking, shattered slabs. It actually produces debris that's hazardous to aircraft engines. So now that the jet center's moved up to the north side of the the airport, we've got these concrete slabs that are shattering and it's leaving rocks all over the all over the ramp. And if you have American taxing over that, you have these nice, beautiful corporate jets taxing over that. The last thing we want is for uh our pavement to contribute to an air aircraft ingesting a rock and damaging an engine. And these are multi-million dollar turbine engines. Uh so we're out there, we're we're sweeping, we're cleaning, uh we're actually putting down uh uh uh seal fill or sealant so to make sure that these these these cracks are sealed and they're not producing more debris uh onto the onto the apron space. Uh lack of tea hanger space. One of the biggest complaints that we get is, hey, there's not enough hanger space here in St. Angelo. Uh we have a wait list of 40 individuals that want to house their aircraft out at the airport. 40. We have 40 individuals on a wait list that want to house their aircraft here in St. Angelo and we just we don't have the hanger space uh to accommodate that demand. You have tea hangers. We have 40 tea hangers and they're all leased out. So we've reached our limit. Um but that's a good thing because we have the opportunity for development. So that there there's there's a flip side to that coin. There's there's opportunities

[4:57:55] to that weakness. Uh limited airport staff. Uh we have a staff of 12. So we have we have limited staff to to maintain our airside and our landside facilities. Uh our runways and taxiways, they take priority. We want to make sure that that uh that pavement is safe for aircraft to operate. But we also want to make a good impression landside. When you're driving in, you're approaching the airport. We want to make sure that the grounds are maintained, the grass is mowed it to make sure that hey, we're invested in this facility. We want to set a good first impression. Like I mentioned earlier, uh limited equipment resources. Uh we've been fortunate uh over the past couple of years. We've been able to procure a lot of equipment that's helped us be more efficient, but there's other equipment that we need. Uh we we want to maintain and clean our airport perimeter fence. There there's heavy equipment that we want to purchase to help us do that. We have a federal um regulation that requires us to maintain our perimeter fence. And if I took you around on our perimeter fence, you'd see mosquite growing through our perimeter fence. And so we need to clean that fence up to maintain our compliance with with federal and TSA regulations. Uh airside painting, a lot of this painting that we do, uh we have a paint machine, but I want to make sure that our staff is capable of of of operating that equipment. Uh that that paint machine is is valuable to us. It's an asset, and it's comparable to what contractors bring to the airport when they provide work for us. We've got the same type of equipment they're using, but we're not 100% familiar with how to operate it. And we'll spend a day fighting the equipment just because we're not 100% trained on how to operate it. And that just snowballs because now we're fighting the equipment. We're not being as efficient. We're not operating like we should. And it's not a it's just we should do better when we when we train our employees. We just want to do better so that we're more efficient when we're out there operating. Uh reactive maintenance uh can overwhelm us. Like I said, we're a small staff and so when something happens, it's all hands on deck. Myself, I'm out there. Keith, our our deputy, he's out there and we're we're assisting our maintenance staff, whether it's whether

[4:59:58] it's an airside project or if it's in the terminal. You know, we're out there trying to correct this issue. Last week, we had lightning strike our approach end of our runway, and it put eight holes right in the approach into the runway. So, we had to close our runway for 24 hours, and the entire staff was out there. We were bringing all our equipment out there and patching up the asphalt so we could get the runway back open. So in 24 hours, our small staff, we had eight patches in our runway and we had the runway back open and return to service. So just small things like that. But you got to think, your whole staff is out there working on this one thing. What else isn't getting done throughout the day? Uh because your whole staff is focused on this one issue. Justin, for example, how many of those buildings out there, including the terminal, Jet Center, and a couple other ones, leak when it rains? This year we had eight. This year, so uh yeah, we had eight. We had eight hangers because we've had so much rain this year. Uh and my phone has been off the hook uh this year with with roof leaks. So, we had eight total of hangers that leaked. And the severity is pretty significant. Uh, I would highlight the South Skyline hanger. Uh, the roof leaked into the parts room of, uh, where Skyline does all the maintenance for the ASU aircraft. So, their parts got wet. It fried computers that were in that parts room. Uh, and we have a lease obligation with these tenants to maintain the structure, and that roof is our responsibility. Uh, that's going to be one of our that's going to be one of our near-term goals. I'll I'll talk about in a couple of minutes. Uh moving ahead to the opportunities, uh we're very fortunate that we're we have federal funding uh through the FA's AIP program. Uh because we have passengers that in plane, they come through our terminal, they board an aircraft, that enables us to receive federal grant dollars to the airport improvement program from the FAA. And that totals about $2 million a year just in

[5:01:59] entitlements. That $2 million, it goes a long way towards our projects. Uh sometimes we'll have to bank those entitlement dollars year-over-year so that we can build up an account that we can contribute. Uh that's how we're going to fund our South Taxi Lane. Uh we just opened bids for the South Taxi Lane project and we've banked our AIP dollars for three or four years and we're going to use those three or four years of banked AIP dollars to fund that project. Uh the PFC, the passenger facility charge. Uh the PFC is collected every time you purchase an airline ticket. the airport receives $4.39. So that $4.39 that goes towards projects within the terminal, uh, airside, landside, we could use that as part of the match for the the 9010 portion I mentioned earlier. Uh, text dot text dot uh, they update they upped their annual uh, grant to 100,000. That 100,000 we invested that 100,000 this year into our terminal. We did roof repair to the terminal. We did uh we did an improvement on the arches. Uh we also did some drainage work on the side of the hanger to ensure that the storm water coming off the top of the hanger uh improves the storm water drainage down to our down to our storm water inlets. So that $100,000 went a long way this year. Uh and this just a benefit to us that we're we're eligible to receive that money. Uh public private partnerships. Uh I would I would highlight the uh the Jet Center hanger, the relationship with with Costa DC Skyline. Coast of DC invested those funds, Skyline invested funds, and now we've got a beautiful hanger out there supporting the uh the collegiate training program and the new FBO uh for Skyline and city management. They've been very communicative and very vocal that those coast of DC dollars are available to anyone who wants to submit uh an application. So, that's that that's great. Uh workforce development, you know, the jobs out at the airport are highly technical uh airframe and power plant mechanics. Uh so getting that relationship started with with Angelo State and Howard College as they start this initiative towards developing uh an AMP school that's huge for us

[5:04:03] because if we can cultivate a workforce here in St. Angelo to work on all these aircraft they can come to work at the airport and they can make a decent living. Uh there's a lot of good money in in in aircraft maintenance work. Uh so that that's just great for us to cultivate that workforce here locally so they can come out to the airport and get a great paying job. Uh, and like I mentioned earlier, the opportunity, we've got that extensive wait list for tea hangers. So, that's a customer base built in. If if if the city chooses to develop tea hangers, if a private investor wants to come in and develop tea hangers, we've got a customer base ready to support and they're ready to sign a lease so that we can house their aircraft out at the airport. Do the tea hangers require any type of fire suppression system? Are they from everything? No, sir. because of the door height. Because the door height and the hanger square footage, the NFPA codes do not require them to have fire suppression. So, those are cheaper and easier to build. I'm sorry, Mary. Go ahead. No, no, you refer. No, go ahead. I'm done. What is the rent? I mean, I don't know how much it would cost to build 40 hangers, but I mean that's a sunk cost, right? But then the Are they all basically the same size? And what is the rent per month on those? They're all the essentially the same size. We do have what we call executive hangers. They're a little larger and they've got a restroom facility, kind of an office space built into it. Uh but for us a typical tea hangers $25 a month. Can you go up? We can go up. That's That's pretty affordable. That's affordable. That's a very affordable hanger. So, we had that same conversation last week. We had that conversation on Thursday. Uh Ranger charges $400 a month for their bulk hanger. So a bulk hanger is where you put the aircraft in a very large hanger and you can store multiple aircraft in their their big hanger. So I say we do a a cost analysis and determine, hey, what can our market sustain? What cost, what price, what fee can our market sustain here locally in St. Angelo uh to lease these hangers? You know what a typical small T normal size T hanger would cost, give or take? Uh I would say $800,000.

[5:06:06] That's t that's 10 of them nested together. Yes, sir. With the biffold doors, the the concrete tying into our aeronautical infrastructure, there's a lot of asphalt that goes into it. The concrete floor, the steel structure, I think we're somewhere in the neighborhood of $800,000. I don't see many I mean, are there people out there that would invest in that? Cuz I That's the problem. Private investors, you know, they're going to want to recoup their costs over the term of the lease. And so a lot of the times it defaults to the municipality to construct the tea hangers because a private investor they're not they're going to want to recoup those funds. Yeah. Well, that's about to build one is 100 grand, right? I would say but and that to with that rent at the current deal at 205 time 40 time 12 I mean that's 98,000. So you're going to it take you 40 years to rec correct. We we would have to raise that rent and it's it's a new asset. It's brand new. It's brand new infrastructure they're going to be tying into. I think the amenity is there to bring it. I think it's attractive to have a a higher lease rate on that facility. Right. Uh threats uh passengers choosing to go to Abene, Austin, San Antonio, Dallas Fort Worth for commercial carrier, choosing to go to another airport or even driving to their destination. uh when they choose to go somewhere else, like I said, we don't get that passenger employment, that count goes away from our our AIP funds. So, anytime somebody boards a plane, that counts towards our AIP funds. We want that count. We want that high number of passenger employments. Uh we also miss out on that PFC charge I mentioned earlier. That's revenue that's coming to the airport. Uh this is a big topic of conversation for us at the airport right now is limited approach and departure control services. This is a problem that's at the federal level, but it's affecting us here locally. Uh we don't have enough air traffic controllers uh at Midland. Midland airport provides our approach

[5:08:08] and departure services. So Midland vectors aircraft in and out of the airport and there's not enough there's not enough bodies to staff the radars and so they're understaffed. And so what ends up happening is they close St. Angelo approach and that affects our civilian and it also affects our military flight training. Uh our student pilots are out there self- vectoring uh from Angelo State. They're self- vectoring themselves on instrument approaches. They're losing out that real world training ability. And our military, they won't even come. They won't even operate in that environment. They want that that coverage of air traffic. And what's happened is is it's affected our fuel flowage. It's affected our fuel sales. You know, our fuel sales are down drastically. Military used to account for probably 55% of our traffic. It's down to 5%. We've had a huge loss with our military traffic, and that's affects our fuel flowage on jet jet fuel sales. Uh so we're we're losing that fuel flowage revenue because our fuel sales are down. uh working with Midland, talking to Midland, they brought on eight additional employees and as they train and get staffed up, we should have more and more hours moving towards October and November when Midland says they'll be fully staffed. So, it's a federal problem. They're working on correcting it, but it affects us locally. You think Midland Odessa will retain those people or they'll get certified and go on? I think that's that's a topic of conversation is it's like a CDL driver. Yeah. You can go work another facility that's it's prettier. It's a better place to live. Probably make a lot more money at another FA facility. Is there any way to get away from being so dependent on Midland doing the the approach? Is there any other It's FAA. That's how it's staffed. That's how the system's designed. And we're just we're we're working through it. That that's that's the only way to put it. We're working through it. Uh as mayor mentioned, uh significant weather events. We've had significant uh weather intrusion. what water intrusion in our hangers. Uh this spring, like I mentioned, eight hangers overall. Um

[5:10:11] it's a big deal. And the tenants, they're holding me accountable. So, anytime it rains, I get the call and we go walk through. Uh we've had we've had roofers come out and inspect and they say, "Hey, you're at the point where you need to invest some money to get this fixed. We can't we can't keep putting band-aids on this. You've got to fix the roof." Uh so that that's where we're at. And uh is it insurance? Is it is it is it fund balance? Is it another fund that's allocated? We've got to figure that out. But we do need to invest uh in our in our roofs out of the airport. Uh public expectations and funding realities, especially related to airport development. Um the the conversation at the airport is, hey, we need hangers, we need taxiways, that costs money. Uh asphalt, taxi lanes, that costs money, especially with the FA spec for for subbase and asphalt mix. We have very tight specs we have to follow. And that's that's that's the world that we live in. And so that's that costs money. It costs money to bring in that material into St. Angelo. We're we're we're remotely located. And so some of that material has to be trucked in. And so it costs money to build hangers. It costs money to build taxiway infrastructure. And we have to make sure that we communicate that because our tenants think we're behind the curve. We should have developed hangers years ago. Well, we're working on it, but that's that's the that's the public expectation. Would it be wise to say that the development of the hangers depends upon the taxi ways first? 100%. We have to have the infrastructure before we can develop the hangar and the good news is we just opened bids on the south taxi and I think we're in a strong position to move forward getting that constructed. So can you risk I say do risk construction on the tea hangers if you have designated I think we have the conversation very strongly have have a strong conversation about what that path forward is. Thank you. Uh one of your goal uh ensure the long-term safety and efficiency and capacity of airport operations by

[5:12:12] investing in the development maintenance of aeronautical infrastructure. Um, so I would propose that we put together a roof assessment plan so that we can meet our obligations as part of the lease. How do we work to get these roofs corrected so that our tenants can can work without damage to their production? Uh, we want to keep our tenants operating. They're paying us lease revenue and we want to make sure that we're meeting our obligations in the lease by getting these roofs repaired. Uh, I'd like to implement a pavement management plan. I spoke to you guys about the pavement uh so that we can educate our consultants when the time comes for an FA project. When the time comes to get that concrete repaired, I want to be able to educate our consultants, hey, this is the pavement that's prioritized. We need to get this pavement corrected. And then I would like to invest in the workforce training. Have our have our employees be able to efficiently operate our equipment. Have our employees properly trained. And like we've also I'll discuss today is um properly paid, properly trained. Uh year three, this is where we talk about construction of uh airport infrastructure and facilities. Develop T- hanger and box hanger facilities to address the existing demand. Uh significantly reduce the T- hanger weight list and accommodate the anticipated growth uh in based aircraft and general aviation aircraft at the airport. uh start having the conversation like we discussed, start having the conversation about these tea hanger facilities. How do we how do we reduce that tea hanger weight list? What does that look like? How do we support uh the aircraft that that want to be housed here? We we have people that want to house their aircraft here at the airport. How do we accommodate that? How do we make that happen? And then working with the city, working with Costa DC, uh what funds are going to be allocated uh for that development? Moving on to our five-year. This is the big one. Uh so the FAA says that airports should strive to be self-sufficient and that means leveraging as many revenue streams as you can. Uh what I would propose is that

[5:14:16] we take a strong look at our terminal parking lot and we leverage the commercial air carrier terminals paid parking facilities and we capitalize on revenue that's currently untapped. So parking revenue is a significant revenue source for any airport. Those folks come into the airport, they'll park their car, they'll leave it there. You go to Dallas Fort Worth, you're going to pay $30 a day to park your car there. That's significant revenue that's generated towards the airport. Uh I say we start we we take a look at our parking lots. We do a beautifification project. We just improve that facade as you're driving in. What does it look like as you're approaching the terminal? Improve those parking lots. Rehabilitate them. uh and then find a source that we can capitalize and capture that revenue. Is it an automated parking kiosk? What is it? How do we how do we make that happen where it takes some of the workload off our staff or a small staff? Is it something that's automated that we can put out there uh that's functionable and that gets the job done? Uh we can do we can do parking studies. There's a whole lot of things that we can do to support us moving in this direction uh so that that we can generate revenue u for the airport. That's just an additional revenue stream. Just looking at ways to generate revenue for the airport. Parking I think is I get to travel to a lot of airports. This is the only one I ever go to. It doesn't charge fee. I get it. Whether it's a you talked how much would a $5 fee a day provide you in revenue? You know, we did a rough study in house. Uh we're starting $200,000 a year, right? There's two hangers. So, I mean, those those are based steps that we can take. I see. And I'm going to need Rick and Michael and Daniel on this one. We're talking venue tax. I mean, I I also see venue tax has to go to a specific location, a project, a venue. Would a venue tax for the airport actually come into play paid by people that are traveling in and out of the

[5:16:19] airport? I mean that to me that could be revenue. I'd have to you can fund your parking with it. If you would go to shaded parking, if you go to hangers, but there's been very few perch receipts and everything else that I paid that didn't have a venue tax for the airport on. Right. That's something I'd say you it'd probably be worth just taking a look at. Yes, sir. That's a limited time period, isn't it? Or is that indefinite as long as it's open? I don't want to. know the venue. As far as a venue tax and its use, um I know that we have to be very specific as far as how we want to use the venue tax. It's a it's a onetime deal. Brandon, correct me if I'm if I'm if I'm wrong on this one, but we can look into it and see how that could play out. Can someone leave something up? I get you got to get revenue, but I think it's a balancing act because part of revenue comes from all we talked about you're at Americans mercy. Well, and you already talked about part of your weaknesses are they go to other places. They go to other places cuz there's cheaper flights. Sure. So, if we start adding more fees, we're going to lose more people. We may lose flights. So, I think that's a big balancing act on trying to figure out how we can keep the same amount of people coming in and out and then just draw more revenue from those same people. So, I think that's something to watch out for because we don't want to drive people back to the other places either. Yeah. I see. That's why we start small. $5, $10. We don't we don't go straight to 20 or 30. I think we find an amenity that seems appealing. Covered parking. If I can travel and my truck is covered for for 3 or 4 days while I'm gone, that's a small price to pay to know that not going to get hail damage in the parking lot of the airport. I have driven to Abalene and flown out of Abene. Well, number one, cuz I couldn't get the flight here, but number two, you were able to be gone and not have to worry about a helltorm. Right. Now, the last thing here though, you have not brought up the one thing, the walker later. The what? A waiter. What? We don't have an escalator. We have a walk a cuz the damn thing doesn't move. Doesn't work. Right. I'm sorry. It It has it for

[5:18:22] years. Yes, sir. I want that on your one-year goal list. Understood. It It's a source of contention amongst the amongst us too, believe it or not. Um it's a very sore subject. If Keith and I are out in the terminal, we're talking to folks. We hear it every day. Hey, when's your when's your escalator going to get fixed? And we are addressing it. We we reached out this morning. Uh we're we're looking uh working with purchasing to see what our options are outside of our existing contractors because we need contractors that are responsive. We need contractors that are going to be responsive, that are going to work with us, be communicative, and give us real world expectations on what we're what we're anticipating to get this get this escalator correct, to get get it repaired. And I do if he's watching or listening, Alvin New sent me a email specific to that is to him it's one of the most embarrassing things we have. Yes. He said when you come in that just kind of shows how little you're getting done with one of your assets and for people to so I I agree with Alvin on that. I mean it's one of the things I would love to see repaired or just work on it. Understood. Justin, do do you have any idea on on the internal study y'all did, what percentage of uh those people that do park their cars, um what percentage would be local folks and what percentage would be folks that have rented cars or from out or are from outside St. Angela? We haven't done any parking study. No sir, I don't have any of that data available. If you know off the top of your head, how many parking spots do you have in your short term? I I counted 200 and something cars the other day in your short term. No, so that was that was short-term and longterm. Okay. So short term 100 80. That's a fair that's fair estimate. And say you're usually 70 to 80%. 70 to 80% capacity. All right. So there's 60 that we can say are there nearly all the time. Yes, sir. It's pretty good chunk of day. Yeah, that's it. Thank you, sir. Appreciate you. Thanks,

[5:20:24] Justin. That really everyone, that's really it. Y'all actually asked questions during the presentations and that was going to be part at the end, but y'all already asked all those questions, so we're good at this point. And uh we have another workshop tomorrow morning at 8:30. Can we leave some of our stuff here? Absolutely. Yeah, that's not an issue. We'll lock up the door. Wallet, your phone.

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=pdh0yNUQFGM