All the October 4th City Council Work Session to order. David Cook, it's all over to you. All right. Good afternoon, everybody. Let's see, we have one announcement about upcoming events and that is there is no public comment tonight and observance of National Night Out. As for organizational updates, I'm going to call on council member Firestone to recognize one of our employees. Yeah. Thanks so much, David. I'd like to ask Kelly Picard, Kenneth Nally and Michael Perez to come up if they would. Why you all do that, just share a brief story, an incredible story with everyone. So I want to recognize Kenneth Nally, if you can raise your hand if you would please. For receiving the Parks and Recreation Molly of the Month from the Recreation Division, Kenneth is a naturalist at Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge. So on August 30th, Kenneth was on his way home after teaching a session for the cross-timbers chapter of the master naturalists when he came across an accident along Silver Creek Road. Kenneth pulled over to assist where he could. He soon learned that someone had been doing this incredible, had been driving down Silver Creek Road, tossing anti-freeze gallons at vehicles, and struck a woman's vehicle and shattered her windshield, hitting her in the face, just unbelievable. So the victim happened to be one of the participants who had just left the cross-timbers chapter meeting that night. So Kenneth drove her to the emergency room after a long evening at work and waited with her until her husband could get there. We just want to thank you and Kelly, certainly thank you for what you did and Kelly thank you for bringing this to my attention. I wanted to recognize you specifically for going above and beyond in helping the victim through this traumatic experience. So Kenneth, you're a tremendous asset to the city, and we just want to all thank you for what you did. Thanks for doing that, Leonard. That was great. Thanks, everybody. Next up, I'm going to call on Anthony Elliott, who is our Acting Chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Employee Committee, and he's going to talk about Hispanic Heritage Celebration. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Anthony. September 15th through October 15th is National Hispanic Heritage Month, and it's a time to discover and honor the cultural richness we enjoy in our city today from Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Several Latin American countries also commemorate their independence during this time, including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Chile. Here in Fort Worth, several city departments have planned programs and activities for residents of all ages and entries that explore the rich culture of Hispanic people. This week, the Diversity and Inclusion Employee Committee is hosting Viva el Vaquero. The evolution of the cowboy, it's an hour-long program that can be viewed from 11.45 a.m. to 12.45 p.m. Thursday, October 6th on Fort Worth's TV, which can be accessed through the city's website or on the city's YouTube channel. It will include an employee-prepared presentation on the history of the Vaquero and its significance to Fort Worth. A discussion with Marciela Fuentes, an author and professor of Latino studies and creative writing, who will share excerpts from her recently published essay, A Single Silver Spur, which weaves the history of Charo and her reflection as a female learning, the skills of the male-dominated Charo. A Floria de Rodeo, or a trick-of-rope demonstration from Charo with the Fort Worth herd. Also, this program will include music by Leo, Sinez, and the front porch, Conjuncto. In addition, the city's sponsored activities, there are still a number of programs and activities being offered through October 15th by local museums and community organizations. An extensive list of all of these programs and activities can be found on the Fort Worth city's website. Thank you for your time. Thank you for that. And now we have informal reports, the first informal report is the 2021 year-end results for incentive agreements, and Robert Stearns is available if there are any questions. All right, the next informal report is on fiscal year 22 tax increment financing annual report, and Robert Stearns is available if there are any questions. Robert's getting off easy. The third informal report is... I do want to make a comment though. Robert, this was really, really good, and this would have been great for us to have when we first took office. So I would say this should be a priority document for new members, et cetera, because it really lays out all the pieces of the TIF, where the money goes, what's been spent, et cetera. So thanks for doing that, Robert. Good point. The third informal report is TechSTAR's physical health accelerator, and Robert is available if there are any questions. All right. The fourth informal report is Cumulative Impacts of Development on Flood Risk, and Jennifer Dyke is available if there are any questions. I don't have any questions, David, but I would just like, Jennifer, when we put together that stakeholder group, there you are, I was looking for you, when we put together that stakeholder group, if you could make sure you consult with council so that we can ensure that some of us that we know have residents that would be particularly useful in that, and I appreciate it, thank you. The next informal report is on Green Stormwater Infrastructure, and once again, Jennifer Dyke is available if there's any questions. I have one really quick one. Jennifer, would you mind describing for those who may be interested how the credits work for developing green infrastructure and briefly share what some exemplar cities are doing from an incentive and policy perspective to maximize the benefits of GI in their city? Definitely. So yeah, so Stormwater Utility, we have a credit policy, and so that is available for pretty much non-residential properties just based off our resources. So really the bigger properties, commercial, industrial, school districts, and as a part of that credit policy, the property owners can get a credit on their stormwater utility fee, and so one of the ways that they can get a credit is by having water quality treatment or green infrastructure treatment. Those are one of the options. They could also do other things that don't have to do with that, but in terms of water quality, they can get up to a 25% credit. It really depends on how much water they're treating. So looking at things where the stormwater runoff goes across their impervious surfaces and it goes through something like a bioswale that filters out that water and cleans that they can get credit for that. So the way that we advertise about that is through our pre-development conferences is we let developers know of the different types of credits available through the credit policy. One of the things though is that we don't get a lot of developers that take advantage of the credit policy because the developer is typically not the end user of the property. So maybe a school district or something would be more likely because they're gonna own and maintain, but the initial developer, they don't have that incentive to go and do something above and beyond. That's not gonna benefit them. And when the stormwater utility program was put together in 2006, there was a discussion at that point in time on whether or not the city would require water quality treatment. And at that point in time, it was discussed, I'm sure it was discussed many times over the years, at that point in time, it was discussed not to. And so we put together our stormwater criteria manual and it talks about water quality treatment is encouraged, of course, but it's not required in the city of Fort Worth. And just a little bit more background on that. The Tarrant Regional Water District does require water quality treatment for outfalls draining directly into the Trinity River. And so they do have that, but the city of Fort Worth doesn't. In terms of the DFW Metroplex, I'm aware of the city of Mansfield. They have pretty high water quality treatment standards that I think all new development has to follow, but I'm not aware of any other cities in the Dallas, Fort Worth area that do that. So in terms of exemplary cities, we've done a little bit of benchmarking. And so really one thing I'll mention is there's a lot of cities kind of in the Northeast that have the combined wastewater and stormwater systems and they have those overflows. And so then lots of times there's an EPA mandate of, hey, you got to clean up this and green infrastructure is a way to do that. So Philadelphia is one city up in the Northeast, of course, that they provide grants to public entities like school that implement GSI. New private development is required to mitigate impervious cover with green infrastructure. And there's also financial incentives offered for private redevelopment projects. So that's a lot. And so kind of bringing it back into the Texas area, the city of Houston is looking at expedited review permitting in exchange for green infrastructure programs. San Antonio is not the city of San Antonio, but through the actual San Antonio River Authority. They are offering a rebate for green infrastructure. Austin, Texas has green infrastructure and efficiency standards required in city capital projects and for city buildings. So that's kind of, there's also some non-green infrastructure requirements that other cities like Dallas and Seattle do, but it's not just focused on green infrastructure. It's more focused on environmentally friendly building codes and so forth. Perfect, that's all. Thank you so much for the work that you do and appreciate the IR. Thank you. All right, next up is July 2022 sales tax update and Richard Zavala is available if there are any questions. You want me to bring him up, really? Okay, Richard, you're safe. It just didn't feel right now putting you on the hot seat. No. The next informal report is open access at the Fort Worth Public Library and Mind You Shore is available if there are any questions. All right, and then finally, the final informal report is refugee services in Fort Worth and Christina Brooks is available if there are any questions. All right, Mayor, that concludes my report. Well, I'll just close out of our legislature in a second. As we're moving on, I'm going to thank Christina Brooks and Neighborhood Services, the refugee services in Fort Worth. That was really thorough. I have a few follow up items that are really tiny, so I'm just going to follow up with her directly just for, I've got, I've had some great meetings with some of our refugee resettlement communities and just had some positive questions for community centers in particular. So any that are pertaining your districts, I'll let you know directly. Any questions regarding significant zoning cases upcoming for October 11th next week? Any more questions regarding MNC log that's upcoming for next week? If not, we'll move to our presentation. Tarrant County's 901 district's proposed fiscal year 2023 budget. And I think Chief Davis is going to kick us off. Good afternoon, Mayor, Members, Council. Mr. Cook, it is my pleasure this afternoon to welcome Sherry Decker, the executive director of the Tarrant County 9-1-1 offices. Sherry's here with a couple of her staff member I'll let her introduce. Sherry's been with the district for a little bit, just shy of a year. And as you all know, the city of Fort Worth has two representatives on the Tarrant County 9-1-1 district board that includes myself, as well as Chief Swearingen from the police department who's here as well. Last year in Tarrant County, just over 2 million people accessed the 9-1-1 system throughout Tarrant County. And the purpose and the goal, the mission of the Tarrant County 9-1-1 offices and board are to make sure that that service is conducted reliably and advances with technology and the growth of our community. And so that is what today, Sherry's here to talk about in a short period of time with you. So with that, I'll turn it over to Sherry. Thank you, Chief Davis. As you know, we come before the city every year to have our budget approved by not just the city of Fort Worth, but Arlington Grand Prairie Irving, the mayor's council and the commissioner's court that is in our legislation. So we are here today asking for just that, but we also wanted to give you an update on where we're at with Tarrant County's 9-1-1 system. I think I've got this down. So for those of you that don't know, I'm just gonna run through this. Some of y'all know us that we've been there for a very long time, but the district was created in 84 and since then we have been very innovative and updating and always moving forward with any 9-1-1 solutions, making sure that our citizens can always reach someone whenever they're in their crisis day or their crisis moment. And that is our ultimate goal is to make sure we have a three-digit number for any citizen in our county to get help when needed. What's wrong with us today is our poor little infrastructure is just tired. We've been putting band-aids on it, there's new stuff that's coming up, there's the digital, there's a cloud, and we have got to start making a transition to the next generation of 9-1-1. So we've been preparing for this. Some agencies started in 17 building this 9-1 infrastructure. We are at the beginning and we have approximately 24 months to get this done. And when I say we're hitting the ground running, we are doing just that. We have been approved for $12 million for ARPA money and of course we want to spend that first. It is a reimbursement grant. So whenever we contract with a vendor, we have to pay for it at front and then we get reimbursement from them. That grant ends December the 24th of December 2024. So we have to spend those ARPA funds by then or we have to return them. So that is our goal. Our total price for our funding for next generation 9-1-1 is built off of the state grant funding program done by population and they're estimating that it's gonna cost us 30 million to implement next generation 9-1-1 for Tarrant County. The goal of next generation 9-1-1, and I'm just gonna call it NG9-1 because it's easier, is any device anywhere, any time that our citizens believe that anything they can do with their phone, they should be able to get to emergency services. And that is our goal, is to make sure we can provide that. And this is some of the things that the next Gen 9-1 project will be able to do. Some of the most important things is we want that transfer reliability that when we get a call in Fort Worth and it needs to go to Arlington that all that information is gonna go with the call that we can cut down on that time, making sure that our first responders can get to the people they need to get to. Some of the things that will come with next Gen 9-1-1 is video, emails, real-time texts, social media, instant messaging. These are not things that we necessarily need to have but they are things that are possibly nice to have. And that doesn't mean that we have to implement all of these things. Our main goal is to make sure that we're tolerant all the way through and we have a resilient platform for our citizens. There again, just a little bit more about what next Gen is gonna do, the fault tolerant. Right now we can't transfer calls to Dallas. We have to have them call a 10-digit number or we have to transfer. Or they're transferring to us on a 10-digit number and all the call history is not coming. And for us to be this far in technology, we ought to be able to be sharing information together and next Gen will make that happen. Most of the stuff that is gonna be happening from the backside, our telecommunicators will never even know this is happening. We'll be able to support, update, upgrade, move forward and make any transition behind the scenes so we're not adding more stress to their already hectic job. These are just some of the versus, old ways, new ways, the kinds of calls that we get today, all of our calls today are voice. With next Gen, they don't have to be voice. They can be what we want them to be. Most of the information is transferred by voice and we can be sharing data. Some of the best things that'll come in the future is we can be able to share incident management that is happening today with our field responders, making sure that they get there safer and that they know what's going on when they get there. Our backups options are limited today and the ability to handle the overflow of calls. We know that we have a queue, that we have calls that get backed up and in the future, we'll be able to manage those individually. There again, these are our costs for what it's gonna take us to get to where we wanna go. And of course, the grant funding mandates. And I have my CFO here that can answer any budget questions and then if you're on the technical side, I've got my deputy director, Kevin here, that can answer those. There again, I've already talked to you about the cost and how much we're gonna have to pay out of pocket and we do have the reserves in place. We're not gonna be going in the hall. We've been putting money back for just this project. So our assistance funds, we have been so proud that since 2010, we have been able to give back to our agencies. In 2010, the board of managers implemented the PSAP assistance funds where we could go in and help our agencies with things like recorders, headsets, things at the 911 Center. In 2014, we were able to put money aside for interoperability, which is one of the biggest success stories for our district and helping maintain that level of service across the district, where equal service, equal radio experiences by all of our field responders and those dispatching to them. Both of those programs are and we're dependent on the availability of funds and we've been very fortunate that we've had those and they were actually set to end in 2017, but we were able to keep them going year after year. So I think we've done a lot to accomplish that. Our next Gen 91 project may hamper that. We're hoping not, we haven't canceled it at all. We've got it on a moratorium for six months just to see where we're gonna be in that six months. Can we continue to help our agencies? Or are we gonna be asking our agencies to help us? This is our jurisdiction for Tarrant County. As you can see, we not only just take care of our county, we also have Grand Prairie and Irving that depend on us for service. This is some of the things that we've done with the radio assistance program, some of the availability of funds that have helped Fort Worth. And you can see these go back to 2019. And this is the Peace Assistance Program for the same years. So what are we asking? We're asking for a resolution approving the Tarrant County 91 District's 2223 budget. And like I said, we've gotta go before six of you to ask to be approved for this budget so that we can move forward with the next Gen 91 project and make sure that our citizens are taken care of and our public safety answering points. And I have any questions that you might have? Questions, Council? No, okay. Thank you very much for your presentation. We appreciate it. Next up, Council, is our update on Heritage Park and Park Improvements. I know Andy Taft is here with Donald Fort Worth, Inc. To dazzle us, right, Andy? That's right. There's dazzling afoot. All right, thank you very much. It's been a few years since I've stood before the city council to talk about Heritage Park. I know we've met with a few of you to bring you up to speed as we've gone through the preliminary design process. But this brings you up to speed on conversations that we've been having over the last couple of years, working with our design consultants. And I hope that you all got this presentation. And if you haven't, then you will. But there's a very elaborate timeline that starts 173 years ago with Major Ripley Arnold establishing a fort in the location of Heritage Park. But if you look at the blue line, this is really where this conversation starts about 15 years ago with the closing of Heritage Park largely because of the water garden's tragedy and some review that the city did of its parks for life safety issues. But 14 years ago, Ruth Carter Stephenson picked up the banner of Heritage Park and inspired a lot of people to get together, including the city and the county and Fernando Costa and Downtown Fort Worth, Bank and others to work on the reopening of Heritage Plaza, which led to a series of design surets and bringing consultants into town and ultimately agreement from the Downtown Tax Increment Financing District to help fund the reopening of Heritage Plaza. And as we were getting close to being ready for construction, the question, a very poignant question was asked, which is why are we gonna invest all this money? And at that time, it was about three and a half million dollars to reopen a park that has and will have the same shortcomings in its environment and will probably lead to an underperforming park. Why would we do that rather than taking a step back and addressing all the issues that have kept Heritage Plaza from being successful? That led to quite a few years of evaluation of the environment of Downtown. And ultimately, to a year ago when the citizens of Fort Worth approved a $13.5 million portion of the bond program for Heritage and Paddock Park. And so we've been working thanks to the large S of the Amon G. Carter Foundation and a number of other partners on the solutions to those problems that have kept Heritage Park from being successful. I'm just gonna flip through a couple of slides here that list the long list of partners and team members who have been a part of this. I need to point out that Louise Appelman and Randy Gideon are fundraising chairs going forward. I've got a distinguished technical committee. We need to thank the city and the county staff and our project managers, Randy Hutchison and Melissa Kanor with a special thanks to Fernando Costa for being the chair of this effort for quite a few years. This all goes back to Lawrence Halperin's plan where he identified the problems or what Heritage Park could do for Downtown. But he identified some things, some issues that needed to be addressed to make it successful. The courthouse isolates the bluff from the rest of Downtown. Weatherford and Belknap are two big one-way pairs that are very large and are intimidating to the pedestrian. So the park itself and Downtown are separated because of the courthouse on those streets. Panic Park serves as a major barrier and of course the bluff itself is an issue. And as you can see here on the bottom right-hand corner or bottom left, develop riverfront potential, which as you know, we're about to do as a community with the entire Panther Island project. So we're gonna address all of these things that were identified over, well, in 1970. But the bigger issue and the more immediate one is the reopening of Heritage Plaza and thanks to the TIF and the Amon Carter Foundation and others, we've completely redesigned that and we've identified all of the shortcomings which are the pedestrian access, Panic Park as a barrier, the isolation of the park, the river access and Heritage Park being the middle of something rather than being on the trailing edge of Downtown. These are all things that were identified in 1970 that we're about to address. So very quickly, these pictures, I'm gonna flip through them quickly, illustrate kind of the obstacles that we've got to overcome. Weatherford and Bellnapa's one-way pairs, a counter-flow bus lane, the traffic on and off of the North Main Street Bridge. Panic Park which is a dry, uninspired green space in Downtown, it's actually a very large, rare green space in Downtown, but it's unprogrammed and it's unimproved. Heritage Plaza itself has the fence around it, we're gonna fix that. Heritage Park, the forecourt, this larger picture up here, that's the arrival scene that you get. This is, when you go to Heritage Plaza, this is what you see, needless to say, less than inspiring or inviting, we're gonna clean that up and you'll see some imagery of what that's gonna look like. The promenade, the walk-to, the bluff itself, again uninspired and it just kind of ends and kind of peters out, it just turns into dirt. Hardly the sort of environment that we wanna invite people to. And then Franklin Street which is a meandering brick path, we wanna improve that and make it more accessible and usable especially for bicyclists coming up the bluff. Then you get to the bluff itself, actually using the physical bluff, it's about an 80-foot drop from Franklin Street down to the river and we wanna program the bluff so that people can move from Heritage Plaza and street level all the way down to the riverfront. Again, went through partners, big multidisciplinary team led by MIG in partnership with Bennett Partners who were doing Heritage Park Plaza itself and then a very elaborate steering committee. So this entire project is gonna create a nexus where Heritage Plaza, Heritage Park and Paddock Park acts as a gateway to the rest of downtown along Houston Street which is our primary shopping street but ultimately to the Panther Island development and we're gonna seamlessly integrate Heritage Plaza itself into all of these improvements that you're about to see. The plans by the way for Heritage Plaza are done. They were funded by the Amon Carter Foundation. We just have a little tweaking to do to update them especially with regard to LED lighting but those plans are completely funded and finished and we are now working on the streetscape improvements that Lawrence Halpern identified that we need to cure. The idea and I think we've mentioned this to everybody is that we're gonna narrow Wetherford and Belknap by two lanes each so it won't be any harder than crossing Houston Street in downtown. We'll do that, we'll accomplish that by removing a couple of parking spaces at the four corners of the courthouse and we'll be replacing those parking spaces just west of the courthouse. We are not gonna be reducing any of the travel lanes around Paddock Park. The number of lanes will stay the same. We can maximize the park itself by taking a little bit of the land especially the big concrete triangle at the top which we will integrate into the park. This is one thing everybody needs to understand. Right now if you head north on North Main and you've made a mistake you can bail out and take a left and turn back around and come to Houston Street. We're gonna sacrifice that ability so this will be like Lancaster. If you turn onto Lancaster you're going across the Lancaster Bridge. That will happen in this scenario on Main Street as well. We will make provisions for emergency vehicles to do U-turns and come back around. So this is a good illustration of what the traffic conditions will be. Again, no loss of lanes or access. Part of this includes a crossing from Paddock Park across the southbound lane coming from the Main Street Bridge into Heritage Plaza. Needless to say the cars there are coming up a long stretch. We're gonna make sure the sight lines are good, the speeds are reduced, some warning signals are put in.  We're gonna make sure the pedestrians can see the cars and the cars can see the pedestrians and everyone's safe. This is a plan view, a relatively simple plan view of all of the elements associated with Paddock Park and I'm gonna just swiftly go through them. We wanna celebrate the moments of entry at the two corners of Paddock Park with color and kind of gateway statements talking about using red buds. So during the season, they'll be colorful and beautiful. And then lush native plantings that'll prevent people from getting too close to the roadway. A fountain element of some kind will be in there. We've priced this out. But also decorative lighting. Right now Paddock Park is virtually completely dark at night at the foot of the Tarrant County Courthouse. We're gonna change that. We're gonna create a beautiful civic space right in front of the courthouse both day and night. This picture had to be taken three days after we had a huge rain because there is no irrigation at Paddock Park that's working and the grass really looks great but we're gonna go from something like this that doesn't have much in the way of amenities to something like this. A very thin splash pad. Probably not jets or bubblers or anything like that like you see in Sundance Plaza. But a water wall, a thin pool, handicapped accessible sidewalks, decks around the trees. I'm sorry about that. Decks around the trees, some softer materials and seating. And then these little beautiful rooms that'll be created that people will be able to use. And again, it'll be connected with a crosswalk to Paddock Park. So you go across or to Heritage Park. So you go across and there are four new civic spaces that are gonna be created under this plan. The forecourt, the arrival moment, the promenade which is the walkway to the bluff, a new foyer that's kind of a reception area that ties into Heritage Park itself and then a significant new public amenity that we're calling the balcony.  And it'll be this amazing viewing platform of the entire Panther Island area. Again, about 80 feet above the river. So I'm gonna take you through them very quickly. The forecourt, this is kind of the arrival moment. This is the sense that we want you to get when you arrive. Right now, this is the view of when you arrive and we wanna go from something like this to something like this. Much more open, get rid of the trees that have had better days, get rid of the heavy concrete furniture, soften it up, open it up, make the park very, very visible. Heritage Park is very visible. The foyer is this seating area. We're gonna decorate the big encore vault that's got the utilities running into it with some sort of metal screening with backlighting, hopefully creating this new unique space in downtown above the river that connects to Heritage Plaza. And then the balcony, which again, ties into the canopy walk and the stairs, but is this larger public space, unlike anything else we've got in Fort Worth, that has these big commanding views of the river and Panther Island and takes advantage of the topography of the bluff. So right now, when you walk down toward Heritage Plaza and that's the encore vault that you can see there, you can see that downtown just kind of stops and it turns into dirt and we've kind of given it up, right? I mean, that's all we've got. We're gonna go from something like this, well no, we're gonna go from what this is right here to what we hope looks something like this. Hold the anticipation. I click the button, here we go. Right, so this is a new grand civic space that sits at the top of the bluff and provides people an opportunity to mix and mingle and get together and have receptions and people who are having weddings in Heritage Park and rent this thing out. And when the fireworks are on, you'll be able to look out over the bluff. So this is a new grand civic space that belongs to everybody and we're very excited about this component. Franklin Street, again, kind of this meandering dark path that just kind of fall into digital repair. I can tell you the bicyclists like the grade but they hate the slippery bricks. So we're gonna repave that and hopefully do some light touches that more formalize that path, including lighting, decorative lighting and potentially some very ambitious works of art that Arts Fort Worth is working on and I'll touch on the art plan in just a moment. And then we get to what could be the signature piece of tying Heritage Plaza into the river itself and that's the canopy walk and the river stairs. And again, we want to be able to use the bluff itself. Right now, you can't use it, it's overgrown, it's very steep and dangerous and we're going to transform an unusable piece of city park land into a facility that people can use and enjoy and love, which is saying a lot. And this is what we're talking about. An elevated walkway that meanders its way down the bluff at ADA grade so people with mobility challenges can get down there that weaves its way through the tree tops and creates at its turns big opportunities to tell stories where we bring back the heritage in Heritage Park. And we talked not only about the founding of the fort, but we talk about the fact that the land that we are sitting on right now used to be a low sea south of the equator and this land has moved up and the fossils that we see in the ground and the dinosaur footprints and all of the oil and gas that has been created under us in the Barnett Shale. We can tell all those stories using the topography and the geology where people are standing right there and they can see it. We can tell the river story and how the Trinity River was formed and where our water comes from. And we can talk about the American Indians who used to live here and we can talk about the fort that was created through treaties and we can talk about the African-American community who used to live on the flats down at the bottom of the river and we can talk about the Hispanic community that lived down there and you can still see the remnants of the homes that were demolished in the 70s where a Hispanic community still live there up until that time. We can tell the heritage of Fort Worth in this place where Fort Worth was founded and we can do all of that through interpretive signage and displays and even the artwork that's being proposed and we can do it in this beautiful canopy walk that takes advantage of the topography unlike any other way we do that here in Fort Worth. And at night, we're going to create a place of beauty using LED lighting and benches and the other amenities that are going to come through the next phases of design. But I think these last two pictures give you a sense of how we traverse that verticality of the bluff. Then you get to the very bottom and the idea is to create another civic space that people can use and enjoy independent of the canopy walk itself. And those are the river stairs and we envision that they could look something like this this is what the design team has come up with. These are as much stairs as they are in amphitheater and as you can imagine a musical actor some sort of entertainment can happen at the bottom and those stairs can turn into seating. I would submit to you that when the fireworks happen this will be a very popular place to be. And so this like the Spanish Steps in Rome or other grand stairways that you've seen cities around the world. I think this is going to be a gathering place on the north end of downtown adjacent to the river that people are going to enjoy. This is also hopefully going to be the landing spot of a new pedestrian bridge that connects the downtown side of the river to the Panther Island side. That is a, we'll put an asterisk next to that. There's a lot of talking that needs to happen but so far that idea seems to be appealing to a lot of folks. And just a few minutes to talk about Fort Worth Public Arts extensive work that they've done on integrating art into this program. They hired Leg Lewis Leg to do an entire art master plan and they've identified five different opportunities where public art could go. Most notably the one in Paddock Park and their recommendation is that a piece by an American Indian artist would be featured in that location at the point of the park. But there are other opportunities and this plan is extensive and ambitious and beautiful. And if I think it's downloadable or will be soon if you haven't had an opportunity to look at it we'd really advise that. There's a lot of inspirational work that's been done here and there are a lot of stories that can be told about Heritage Park and where we've been. We Fort Worth have been dating back about 57 million years ago. So one of the questions that a lot of people have asked is okay where's everybody in a park? And the answer to that question is that nearby there are 440 on street city-owned spaces. There are 1,900 spaces within three blocks in private garages and about 1,200 parking spaces or so in public garages, county garages mostly in TCC. There's some limited availability there but most of the visitation to this park we imagine at the beginning would be during the weekend when the pressure on downtown parking is the lowest because you don't have to compete with the office market. Very quickly the accessibility improvements have been funded by the COG, very generous grants from the COG and so a lot of the street where all of the street work has been funded as have bicycle improvements and Tarrant County has kicked in a pledge of $2 million for this project so far. When you put it all together you get something like this at the very top at the base of the courthouse is a new beautiful paddock park connecting to Heritage Plaza which will be reopened all the fountains and lights will be back on it will be cleaned up then to the promenade and the big deck and the foyer and then the canopy walk that weaves its way down the river to the river stairs ultimately down to the river itself and hopefully a pedestrian bridge across the way. So let's talk about cost. The last time we were here we talked about a $30 million project. This was well before COVID and before the big hikes and inflation that we've seen in recent years. Fortunately as we stand right now at the end of conceptual design and conceptual pricing, we're about 15% over that we're at about $34 million now. We know for certain it will be more than that but we also know that that increase in inflation and whatever else the increase is will be borne by private fundraising. So $13.5 million from the city bond program a little bit from a previous bond program as well. And then the rest is on our side and I'll go through that in just a second but about $1 million or so for Franklin Street the balcony itself the canopy walk and the river stairs total $14.5 million. Heritage Plaza itself about 4.3 so you can see inflation there was about 3 million last time. The forecourt and the promenade about 1.7 Patek Park about 8.6 and then the streetscape improvements about 4 million and we think those are largely funded. So that totals 34 million and this chart here kind of illustrates how this is all gonna come down. This is the city portion. We're at 2.75, we raised most of this depends on how the conversation with the con turns out. And then this number is this is the private fundraising piece. That number is a plug figure that we have to plug in to get to the 34.2 but at the bottom down here is $5 million for a maintenance endowment that we are going to raise in addition to whatever the construction dollars are that we need to raise. So that's how you get to 34.2. These numbers will continue to move as the design and the actual amenities are detailed and finalized. And so we all have to understand that these are moving parts but we're all gonna move with them but there's gonna be a commitment to raise whatever it is we all decide we're gonna build to raise that money. And this is what we are looking like going forward. There's a long list of activities that bring us to today but more important is where we go from here. And we've kind of broken it down into two big pieces, the streetscape and park improvements and they're gonna happen on parallel tracks. And as best we can tell right now and again, there's a lot that we don't control especially with TechStot and the Corps of Engineers and others, we are thinking that this park could potentially open in the November timeframe, November of 2026 timeframe with all the street work done, all the park work done, the canopy walk the stairs all that so we've got a late 2026 goal. So next steps, we finished schematic design, this presentation to the city council to give me a thumbs up that everybody's on board and we still like what we're looking at. Some community outreach, we'll put this on the internet and somebody got a hold of your agenda and so there's a TV station that wants to do a story on this park so there'll be more community outreach. Our big funding outreach immediately is gonna be to the cog to understand exactly what we're gonna be able to fund with those grants and then to launch the private fundraising efforts and then to immediately go into design development to get us to 30% design so that we can get much harder and tighter cost estimates for construction. And by the way, enter into all of these review processes that I described earlier which are rather extensive. So that's where we are on the project. I'm not sure if I took too much time or not but that's what we've gotten. I'm happy to answer any questions. Questions council or Andy. Go ahead Carlos. Yeah, I think you probably explained this sometime back and I don't remember the little parking in the back at the mouth of the entryway to Heritage Park. What's gonna happen with that? Let's see. Like the few spaces that are there now? Yeah, those handful of spaces. Yeah, good question. I don't have an answer for that one. Answer. Leonard. The question is who owns the parking garage immediately adjacent to Heritage Plaza? That's owned by Tarrant County and it's used by the sheriff's office. And so we've asked through the years casually whether or not that garage might be available for public parking and that that one's a little complicated because law enforcement's using the garage. We haven't been told no, but we haven't been told yes. So as we go through this, we'll pick up those conversations with the county. Is that the one that's coming in? Yes. The one that's right there? Yeah, the idea is to use some sort of applique on there that would create and the county kind of like that idea. Also the county. Anybody else, councilor questions, no? How do we help you go faster on your project schedule? That's a great question. I will give you the most sincere answer I can, which has already begun. And that is David Cook brought all of his senior staff together to dial in on where we are now, now that we really have a good sense of what we wanna do. He's coordinating internal city staff and departments to help us. I think that he's identified who is gonna be the point person after Randy leaves and that city is gonna take a larger role in driving it forward as we take care of design and fundraising. That's great. Thanks, David. David, I say that about right? Yeah. Okay, good. Very exciting. Thank you, Andy, for coming today. Thank you very much. And to the entire city council, the voters of Fort Worth, David, you and your staff have been great and looking forward to moving this forward. Thanks, Andy. Thank you. Very exciting. Okay, I'm out of order. Okay, our next presentation is on transportation impact fee study. Good afternoon, mayor, council, city manager Cook. Today we were before you to talk about transportation impact fees. We wanted to provide an update. One of the things that I'd like to focus on today is the two major actions you guys have ahead of you. The two major actions are one to accept the transportation impact fee study. We're charged with local government code 395 that says every five years, if we're gonna have a transportation impact fee program, we update the study every five years. And so it's gonna be mandatory that council acts on the study acceptance on October 25th meeting. The second action is to set a collection rate or put a collection rate in place going forward with the impact fee program. Today I have with me, Mary and Spencer, who will go through a couple slides. She's done, her and her team has done a Yeoman's job going through the community, talking to the neighborhood alliances, our development advisory committees, real estate councils, builders association, and all of the affected stakeholders. And so she'll go through the slides and be able to answer any questions you have. Good afternoon, mayor and council. Good to see you guys again. Mary and Spencer with Development Services. And so just kind of go through a quick rundown of where we're at. Just a reminder that we have, we're governed by local government code 395. And as DJ said, we have to do reauthorization, which is where we're at right now. And that we currently have 19 fee service areas and seven no fee service areas. And a couple of things to highlight is our current transportation improvement plan shows to fully build out our material network, it would take $3.15 billion, of which that 2.8 is recoverable through the program. And so our study also shows our tenure growth projections and our maximum accessible, which you'll hear me call schedule one throughout. And so just to show you an overall map of our current service areas. And so just a reminder how we've used the stool to show how we fund our arterial network. It's a three-legged stool. And just to show right now, we are currently leveraging 63% of our thoroughfare construction is coming through city funds, which is either bond programs or pay go or other funding sources through the city. We also have 24% of that is coming from developer construction and 13% of that is through impact fee contributions. And as you can see, this is a slide showing the projects that were completed of our TIP over the course of the last five years. So in 2017, we completed the last five years, we've completed a total of 15% of our TIP. And so this is showing how we calculate our schedule one, which is we take all of our growth units, which is the projected growth, which is coming through the preliminary plots and excations, pre-development conferences, zoning cases that come in and we divide it by the cost of the construction within each service area. And so our 2022 study has shown us that again, we need the 3.15 billion, but 2.85 is recoverable through the program. And so in 2017, it was 2.18 billion with 1.14 recoverable through the program. And so just to let you a reminder of what's eligible through the program, it's what roads are brand new roads, intersection improvements, if there's capital projects under construction and anything we've completed that we have excess capacity, but we have bond debt on it. Sorry, it went too fast. And just a reminder, we were proposing two new no-fee service areas. These are currently fee service areas, but based on the fact that we've completed the roadways in these service areas and the majority of the developments are served by adequate facilities and the amount of growth in these service areas, we are recommending these be no-fee service areas this five-time year. And so this is where you've probably gone in all the calls, the collection rate. And so when we started this study, we looked at some of the things that we're currently doing to figure out which things are working and things we need to look at through the process. And one of the things that came up consistently is our current practice of the smooth rate across the city and how that affects each service area. Also, there was a recommendation from the Blue Ribbon Task Force back in 2010 to do 50% of the maximum and do incremental increases throughout time and how we should look at what that would do to our collection rate. Also to look at service areas that have a maximum rate that's lower than or at our current collection schedule too. We're looking at maybe making those set at the maximum so we can work towards some additional no-fee service areas in the future. And that we wanna continue the two things that we've done through time that seems to be working which is separate our land uses from residential and non-residential and to have a reduced collection rate for non-residential uses compared to residential. And if you haven't, am I going too fast? So we kind of looked at- Should I have a question? If you go back to the other side. Sure. Would anybody, well, this is probably a dangerous question but of the constituency groups we've worked with so far and some of what we're hearing from now would they push back at any of those cholesterol considerations or do they agree that that's the right focus? We have consensus on this entire slide. Excellent. Okay. Is that the only slide you can say that for? Yes. Okay. That and schedule one. And so when we look at the collection rate over time right now, you know, based on our 63%, 24%. This kind of shows where we're at when you look at where we're at as far as city subsidy versus the collecting the maximum work growth is paying for growth. And so we're trying to move a little bit towards and so as we tried to move towards the Bloor part we made four recommendations for residential. We'll start with residential because that's where the biggest gap is. So we proposed using the Bloor ribbon task force recommendation as our base recommendation which was 50% of the maximum the maximum assessable rate schedule one. And then we kind of built from there. And the reason we started when we built our collection rate options we kind of looked at the cost of construction and at what point when we have development built roads do they zero out their project with what they've built? And when you look at the cost of building arterials around 65% is when you hit zero. So we've taken the Bloor ribbon task force where you hit zero of construction versus credit and then 80% is to kind of get ahead of our infrastructure need. And of course, 100% is the maximum. A non-residential same thing looking at the same amount of impact fee to get to where your construction matches and actually getting ahead of the current growth rate in the cost. So we did four, we took a 25% reduction and our four residential rates and used to come up with our non-residential rates. So staff is recommending options three for both residential and non-residential. And we said effective January 1st that's consistent with what we've said since we picked our consultant back in September of last year with service areas A, A, D and F being set at the maximum at schedule one. So as DJ said, I've been to most of these growths at least twice, if not more. And so we've gotten quite a bit of feedback which I know most of it's been also sent to you all. And this kind of shows where we're at on the recommendations. And so of course staff is at 80 for residential and 55 for non-residential. The capital improvement advisory committee agreed with that recommendation. The real estate council agreed with us for residential but recommended option two for non-residential going in April which is a six month delay. And they also wanted us to look at creating a small business discount. The builders association didn't like any of our options and recommended 40% of residential. They didn't make a recommendation for non-residential and they wanted to extend that out till June of next year. They also said to do an incremental increase of 5% a year but only go up to 50% of the maximum. DAC recommended 40% of the residential and 40% for commercial. They wanted us to evaluate potentially a lower collection rate for industrial projects. And they also said June of 2023 but they were okay with increments of 10% but continue doing it every year up to 80%. And they wanted us to look at including tech stock as a factor in our adequate facilities discount. The North Fort Worth neighborhood alliance sent a letter a couple last week and they concurred with staff recommendation and we've gotten several letters from individual residents that concurred with staff recommendation and we've gotten several letters from home builders as well as you heard in the public hearing last time that they concur with the builders recommendation. And so when we looked at the DAC recommendation compared to staff's recommendation we had a couple of things that we'd like to highlight is that North and North Fort Worth it's lower than the Blue Ribbon Task Force recommendation from 2010. And that North and Northwest Fort Worth a couple of additional service areas fall below the current smooth collection rate. It also extends the current collection rate nine months from today. And that a couple of things when I was listening to the public comment about the increase in the collection rate it didn't account for the amount of credit that they would get if they built it and how much extra credit would be left over after they built the routes if we had a lower collection rate. And essentially with going with 40% for residential you end up with 40% residential to 55 of non-residential which means you'd be collecting more for commercial than residential with their recommendation. And so when you look at this slide we looked at, because we knew we were going to hear about housing affordability as a part of the impact fee program. And so we looked at where housing prices have been for the last five years and in relation to our flat impact fee rate over the last five years. And as you can see our rate has been flat but housing prices have not been flat. And so the impact of the actual impact fee and the price of the home is not really shown today in the cost of housing prices. And so this is the slide that shows the different service areas, the ones in red are the ones that would then be below the current 3750 a lot. Do you have any questions? So I'll take a break there to talk about residential. Yes. Okay. And so this is multi-family what those rates look like and with the two comparison of the DAC and the builders recommendation and staffs recommendation. And so I pulled a project out of thin air and looked at what that project looks like today and what they've done and what it would look like with the two proposed rates. And so today, so this project had to build a four lane divided thoroughfare and they have credit, they got construction credit for right away dedication and construction of three point just over 3.4 million dollars. So today they were able to build 1100 units and they paid $139,500 in transportation impact fees. How do we have the two options today? Staffs recommendation, they would have paid $7,000,000, $7.2 million in impact fees compared to the builders which would have been $1.9 million. So what does that mean? There is a city bond project that was completed that's directly adjacent to this single family development this residential development. The project costs $13.7 million. They paid 139,500 of impact fees. We contributed 2.9 million in impact fees to that project. So that's where the city participated and spent 10.8 million in bond funds on that project. Had we had staff recommendation at this time there would have been 7.2 million that could have been either added to the impact fee contribution to that project which could have brought the bond component down to 3.6 million. And if we look at the DAC builder option it would have brought it to 8.8 million of city participation. And so when we look at our non-residential comparison we're a difference of 15% between us and the real estate council recommendation that we have and DAC. And so I'm showing the two comparison. It's roughly about $200,000 difference between the two collection rates proposed. And so with the discussion on the industrial development they had asked that we look at utilizing text dot on system roads to count for a component of the adequate facilities discount. And so our adequate facilities discount is if you're taking 75% of your traffic on our fully built network you get a 50% discount on the impact fees that we collect for your development. And so they were asking for maybe for industrial projects and projects in general that we add text dot facilities towards that calculation of the 75%. And so we did look at that and have what we think is fair for that and a further slide. But when we look at how we treat tenant finish outs we're not proposing any changes to that. And all of our definitions for industrial land uses are coming straight from the ITE trip generation manual. And so this is just to kind of compare the multipliers for industrial today versus 2017 versus the new study. And you can see the change in usage is not very different from today as it was in 2017. And so when you look at the percentages the difference is we currently collect our schedule two is a set rate that's smoothed across service areas. And so what we collect is quite a bit lower but when you look at the schedule ones from 17 and today you can see there isn't very much difference between the two numbers. And this is looking at a project in service area S which is in Chapel Creek, district three. And so in both scenarios of 2017 and today for their shell buildings they would oh no impact fees. The difference is the amount of credit they have available for tenant finish outs. And so I'm gonna go through our quick ordinance changes. We've added a couple of definitions. We wanna look at making sure we've defined what our non-residential shell buildings are because it's not in our ordinance today and how we're looking at annexations because we are looking at annexations as a part of this study. One thing we're doing in our collection is we have a codified grace period that's two years that was a carryover from the original adoption of the impact fee ordinance. And so local government 395 when you very first implement the program you have to wait two years. And so as we've done the updates we haven't taken that out even though it was only required the first time. And so with our five year updates by keeping that in there it takes us two years to actually start really collecting what the new rates are. And so we have language in there that we haven't done for several years which was to do like a payment agreement and a repayment plan. We haven't done that as a practice for several years now and so we're just also updating our ordinance language to coincide with that. And so as I mentioned with the adequate facilities discount we're being more specific on what we're counting as adequate to make sure we're not accidentally catching collectors for adequate facilities but we did add that you can use a textile facility for one of the three arterials. That way the focus is still on our network and not the state network. And so this is a couple of examples of projects that would be eligible for adequate facilities but as you can see the blue square and the pink would be eligible because you can see the four thoroughfares are all that show the established conditions and so that project would be eligible for the adequate facilities. And so when you look on the one in the yellow this project is on and established their affair but they still have credit for their credit agreement. So we're trying to utilize that credit first before it would be eligible for the adequate facilities. And so this is to show the textile example. The one on the left would qualify because you see 820 but three of the roads have the established condition versus this one here still has quite a few projects plus they would need to do some construction. And so we're changing our land use transportation discount to actually be what people would recognize so more people will apply for it. And we're calling it a mixed use multimodal development discount because that's the type of development that would qualify for that discount. And we're also increasing the discount to 20%. And we also done some work on our extraordinary investment discount because as we said we're trying to focus on the non-residential development. And so with our proposed increase we were looking at areas that we could better leverage our discount programs that already exist. And so we've increased this discount to 25% from 15 today and we've actually made our requirements mirror the 380 agreement requirements. And so as you if your project would qualify for 380 agreement through the economic development policy would qualify for the extraordinary investment discount. And then we've added a section on annexations and so as a part of the annexation when they go through the annexation exercise that we would bring forward amendments to individual service areas that would come forth as a part of the annexation adoption. So they would get incorporated into a service area quicker. And so that those annexation areas would be based on our mapping out of the city's plan service area. And so those would be the service areas that would get updated with annexations. And so I'm here today with the briefing. The next time you'll see me is the 25th where we hopefully we'll get adoption and anything we don't do on the 25th we can postpone it to the 11th. And that's the end of my presentation. Thank you, Maryam. Okay, council questions, comments, concerns. Yeah, thank you. I heard 11th, but you may postpone to November 8th, correct? Yes. And is there, this might be a question for Leanne. Is there on the impact fee study calendar? Is this our own internal goal as a calendar? There's nothing legally that we have to adhere to. I'm gonna defer to Doug Black. Doug, hi Doug. So the study and the maximum assessable rate which is schedule one, because we had the public hearing on the 27th, local government code 395 says we have to take action on those two items within 30 days. But as far as setting the amount that we collect you can do that. I think it gives you time after that to adopt a collection rate. I've taught her well. Perfect. The collection rate is adjustable by the council and it's independent of the, it's intricate and integral to the program, but it is not something that is required for adoption within the five years. It's something that y'all can do. Five years ago when we did this, it was delayed for three months. Thank you. And is there anything else, because we're all getting requests for meetings and having meetings, that those individual groups will be concerned about other than the collection rate itself? The rest of the presentation is pretty cut and dry. They understand the changes we're making. Yes. Okay. It's the collection rate and effective date. Okay. Which is whatever slide that was that you did a great job going through. Yes. Okay. Questions, go ahead Carlos. This one. I may have asked you this, but I probably forgot. Okay. So I'll ask again. We talked about the MTP and that was updated last in 2020. Is there anything that might be missing or would be in need of an update to that plan that would tie into what we're gonna ultimately propose and support for impact fees? Not at this time, but I do know there's some corridor work being done inside the loop. And so we've already, as Kelly Porter's team works on that update, we will monitor it and see how that affects the service areas inside the loop 820 to see if any of those would be impacted. Depending on if they add additional roadways in the inside the loop, then yes, we may have to activate some of those service areas that are no fee today, if we would like to recoup some of that through the impact fee program. Got it. Thank you. Other questions, Council. Jared. I've had a couple of meetings with developments who've been approved through zoning. And one of the questions I commonly hear is when will the effective date be for developers who were building under the assumption of the current fees and because of the timing of the way we are making our decisions potentially affects their assumptions and their business planning? So for- Is there an option to grandfather anything that's already in the pipe? Yes. So a couple of things is when we selected our consultant last year, we began kind of our own internal clock and kind of backdated every pre-development conference we've been to, every preliminary plot case we've had, every final plot case, we've said, hey, we're in the middle of updating our study and our proposed council date is October of 2022. So you, in order, we can't guarantee anything after October of 2022. So if you're doing any planning that's beyond that date, we recommend you do your budgeting based off of the current maximum rate so that you're not surprised depending on what it looks like after October. That being said, also these are recommendations, councils, the policy makers, right? So if your decision is to delay six months as the real estate council has suggested that we'll give some folks who have already worked their performer and things like that time to develop those projects under the current conditions and the current costs, again, that's just a policy decision that you guys will have to make. Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know how, how do you, when you all look at that schedule, react to that, because I know I've got several meetings coming up, each of you probably do too. You think it's possible? Okay. Yeah. 25th, you mean? Yeah, or the eighth of November, okay. I'm sure we'll be talking all with more questions, we appreciate it. To me, this is an important decision, it's a kind of mixture of affordability, what is the economy gonna do, but also as a fast growing city, how do you keep up with that and keep the burden off of, we just can't keep up the way we're doing it right now, we all know that. So I appreciate how much engagement you've gotten from the community, thank you for all your hard work to get us to this place. So we'll all be communicating with you individually into DJ and we'll go from there. Sound good? Thank you. Council, we're gonna move the Permanent Support of Housing agenda item to the 17th, 18th of October. So I think we can move to future agenda items. Go ahead, Jared. I have one. I'm gonna be a little more prescriptive than normal on this one and Deanna and Victor know it's coming, so bear with me. Deanna and the HR team are conducting their regular buying on benchmark study, which I'm excited we were able to prove in the budget. And I also like to gain a better understanding on the kinds of wages our city employees will need in order to live a reasonable life here in Fort Worth, especially in light of the rising cost of living. And so I have two requests within the same IR for their departments to work together on. One is a summary for neighborhood services based on the data that's available to them on what the basic cost of living is in Fort Worth and how much our employees would need in order to reasonably cover those costs. And I like that on an hourly basis and then include any pertinent details such as median household income, average costs for rent, average monthly mortgage payments, as well as other vital basic necessities. And then the second thing is from HR, I like recommendations from HR on what would be needed to conduct a compensation and classification review so that we can ensure a competitive compensation and that Fort Worth remains for our employees a place where they can live, work, and thrive. Any other featured items? Elizabeth? Oh, sorry. Yeah, I'd like an IR on what our city policy is on the use of CBD for both general employees and then how that maybe pertains differently to our civil service. I'd also like to know in that same IR what our drug testing policy is, particularly around THC and to the extent CBD and how that compares with Department of Labor, Department of Transportation, OSHA, any of those other type of governing bodies that we look to for guidance. Any other items, Council? Go ahead and let it. Yeah, one, thanks. Last week I met with the NPOs in the Northwest Division and they brought to my attention their concern over enforcement of the ordinance regulating trailers in neighborhoods. The officers said there are, they think, many loopholes and they also wanted to see if we could require that if a trailer is parked on a neighborhood street, it must be attached to a pickup or a truck or some vehicle. And they also would like to include that no food trucks be allowed to park on neighborhood streets overnight. So would we be able to review this ordinance and to enable the officers to provide better enforcement? Thanks, Leonard. Yes, and mine is one I had on Tuesday about parking for the 10 a.m. meetings. We know that our last meeting was three hours long on the Tuesday morning, so I don't know, we can get an hour on garage space that we have or vouchers or anything if they can print something out online once they sign up to speak. People who actually sign up to speak maybe can print something offline to validate their parking. Because a lot of people was getting up to go feed the meat and they weren't using rush meals, feed the meat. So the two at the 10 o'clock meetings. Okay, anybody else? Okay, perfect, meeting adjourned.


We're getting there folks. Hi, I'm Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com with our second to last filler box for That NT number block. We finally got it done. Look to the schedule We're gonna be doing NT football a little bit later tonight But first this break right here 2016 Panini absolute football retail edition number three one Right over here Three different dice rolls just like the last time Eight spots being given away for free in the absolute break Second dice will be the break itself third dice roll given away those number block spots big thanks to Joshua Raymond and Han forgetting in Let's gather all these names First dice roll will be for the top eight little buy one get one possibilities eight after eight one Two and eighth and final time top eight after eight. No doubt about it. Joshua Thank you. Congrats little buy one get one scenario for you This little rooftops next to your name Now second dice roll is going to be the break itself and put all the results of the randomizer in there Let's roll it randomize it Full 12 times six and six one two 11 and 12th and final time and 12 times for the teams two and 12th and final time. All right, there's the first half of the list right there And There's the second half of the list right over here and let's just print and Rookie force Wendell Smallwood Joshua with the evils at a 499 Malcolm Mitchell rookie card Patriots Joshua and Rook Inc Glenn Gronkowski Remember Glenn Gronkowski Buffalo will go to Joshua and the Buffalo bills and there that is there is that that is that there we go All right now. Let's see who's gonna win those Those number block spots it's gather everybody's names again third and final dice roll top two after eight five and a three eight times one two Three it's three. There's three four five six seven and eighth and final time after eight And we know that Joshua has the odds Joshua get spot two and Han was spot one. Wow Han sneaks in After eight times well, there you go Han you're in that Patriots number block and Joshua will see you in that Houston Number block right there big group of teams there. We'll do those randomizer a little bit later tonight. Jasper's case breaks.com


ThinkTek Hawaii. Civil engagement lives here. Aloha. Welcome to Kondo Insider, Hawaii's show about living in an association, both for homeowners and board members. We talk about interesting talk weeks every week that affect associations and its owners. I would remind you if you have any questions or feel free to call in on<PHONE_NUMBER>. Over the last couple weeks we've talked about insurance and thinking back in history and even recent history in Hawaii, I've seen and read where people think they have insurance and they buy insurance only to find out that the insurance company denies them coverage and there's a very prominent case in the paper recently here about the volcano and the Big Island and an owner who alleges that he and she have insurance and the insurance company refused to pay. So I thought it would be interesting to bring that topic up. There's a lot of changes going on in the industry and I invited a good friend of mine, Trent Ierle, local attorney who specializes in this field, to come on the show. Welcome. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Tell us a little about yourself, your background and the company you work for. Well, I'm originally from California. I've been here in Hawaii for about 17 years. I work for Damon Keleon, Cupchuck Hastert and I specialize in insurance coverage issues. I represent mostly policyholders but also represent some insurance companies. So it sounds to me since that's kind of your field, this happens often or more than once a year. That's true. There's lots of people that have insurance coverage disputes with their insurance company and vice versa. Sometimes the insurance company is suing other insurance companies think they're responsible for the coverage. If you're just a basic person and you're looking at issues, do they go to a lawyer? Do they go to an agent? Where do they begin to look at their insurance needs? Well, I think if you purchase a business or purchase a home, you probably don't go to a lawyer initially. You go to an insurance broker who is familiar with what's available, who sits down and interviews you and asks what your business is like or what your home is like. And they are familiar with what products are out there and should be able to help you get adequate coverage. And in that case, I don't know of any, quote, policy holder that's ever read the policy. Now, am I alone at that thinking or do you find that people kind of have a general, I need insurance, I buy insurance, what's the limits I'm covered for and they don't read all the nitty gritty inside of that? Yeah, unfortunately, insurance policies are very, very complex to read. And even for lawyers, they can be very difficult to read. Typically, you have boilerplate provisions. Maybe it's like a 15 page policy. And then there might be endorsements or things that are added on or taken away from the policy. So it really takes a lot of study and a lot of understanding to really know what's in that policy. What seems to me it'd be extremely important for the person who the policyholder or future policyholder when talking to his broker to put time into this and really explain their business or their home and what they're trying to ensure so that the broker is carefully aware so that nothing is slipped through the cracks for lack of a better word. That's right. That's the way it should work. I think some brokers maybe aren't fully aware or knowledgeable about what's out there and maybe don't have the time or the patience to really delve into what's needed. But I think if you're a policyholder or a homeowner or a business owner, it really will help you if you find a good broker and sit down and take the time to really explain what your business or your home is like and what kind of coverage you need, what sort of risks you anticipate so that you're adequately covered. And I say may a culpa because after this big high rise fire we had on Coppola and Boulevard. We ran about the issues where tenants didn't realize they didn't have coverage for another place to live. They didn't have coverage for their personal belongings. We had owners who were renting the property didn't realize that they didn't buy sufficient coverage for lost income. And I was looking at my own policies after that and I realized that I had two properties I used for vacation rentals. And my policy covered loss of rental income of long term rentals but it excluded vacation rentals. So I thought I had coverage but the truth be told I didn't have coverage. And of course this all inspired me to go back and review in detail on my policies and find a company that would also ensure me for the lost rental income of a vacation rental. So I don't think enough emphasis can be made to make sure you put time and not just look at the limits of liability and think everything is covered really scope out what you are with included what may not be included. Yeah I think it might be really hard to anticipate exactly what what the risk might be who would have thought that you might need coverage for for the vacation rentals. Right. I assume that that'll never come up so I don't have to worry about that or it's just something you don't think about when you're thinking about insurance coverage. Well if you had a successful income from a vacation of $5,000 a month let's say and you're paying your mortgage and your maintenance fees and other costs taxes insurance and you lost that income. Well you may not have the taxes anymore because you have no income but the reality of it is you still got to pay your maintenance fees you still got to pay your mortgage you still got to pay these costs. So you probably need to look at what your exposure is when working with your broker to make sure theoretically covered. So what do you see the most common misunderstandings are with insurance companies and policy elders. Is there a common misunderstanding?  But like we said the insurance policy can be very complex. There's usually two parts one part gives you coverage it says we're going to ensure you for your loss or ensure you if you're sued for property damage or bodily injury but then on the backside of the policy there's lots of exclusions which take away coverage under specific instances. So to really understand what's covered and you know you really need to read the entire policy and understand the entire policy so I think there's a lot of misunderstanding on the part of policy holders if they're not familiar with all all the terms in the policy. So if you had a traditional homeowner policy and you lived in the volcano risk zone and the big island what do you say if someone said to you I know we don't have a policy or example in the technical but in general terms what do you say if someone says why don't you're not covered you're in a you're in a volcano risk zone you should have been smarter. Well if the Paul if the homeowner has told that by the insurance company I would ask the insurer to let me look at that policy and read through it and find out exactly what's covered and also get an understanding as to what a loss is what's happened because there might be there might be an argument for coverage. The insurance company might be looking at one exclusion and just automatically saying there's no coverage but you know there might be an argument for coverage if there's an ambiguity in the policy where there's a reasonable interpretation for coverage yet the insurance company is saying well we're reading this provision that says there's no coverage that's an ambiguity there's two reasonable interpretations and under Hawaii law the ambiguity has to be construed in favor of the policy holder. So a lawyer might be able to help help you figure out an argument to persuade the insurance company that there's coverage. Yeah I know typically in that particular area of the I'm going to call it the volcano risk zone that may not be the correct technical term but that the state put together a program of insurer to provide coverage for those some of those people but it was expensive of high deductibles and and probably wasn't going to fully restore them to the value but surely insurance company would think twice about ensuring those areas but they may have bought now one example on television was that the people had bought a policy from a company and they believe they have coverage and they believe that the insurer is denying coverage and I guess your recommendation is have a lawyer look at the policy itself before you just accept the insurance company's word. Right I think that that's always a smart choice. You know so give you an example of another issue that comes up with I think commonly misunderstood is I'll try to describe this. Assume you have one of our association clients have the policy as required by their contract they have to name the management company as a digital insurance. And so then they get into a dispute with the management company and threaten legal action or file a claim against the management company through a lawsuit. Is that management company insured what is this kind of like you're suing yourself kind of mentality or may not be covered. How does that all shake up. Right. So if the management company is an additional insured under the association's policy there's probably a separation of insured's provision in the policy which means if one insured is suing another insured then there's no coverage but probably the managing company is going to have their own policy so they will probably step in and defend and and indemnify if the managing company is is found to be liable. I think you mentioned something else earlier which frankly I see all the time in the paper is that sometimes you end up in these insurance coverage issues in a sense you may cross claim and sue someone because they have insurance or there's some other insurance it's almost like a protection mechanism to make sure all the potential bodies all their insurances and play on the claim. Does that make any sense. So a good plaintiff's lawyer is going to know that an entity a business or even a homeowner is covered because there's only going to be more in the pot that's available should the plaintiff be successful. There's a problem if they're colluding like you know the plaintiff is colluding with the party that it's suing and the party is saying well I have this insurance coverage so I'm not worried about this. The defendant who's being sued who's insured can't work with the plaintiff you know to to construe an argument so that there's coverage but a good plaintiff's lawyer you know in discovery is going to find out what sort of coverage there is they can ask for the insurance policy and get an understanding as to what sort of coverage the defendant has. And probably the defendant is looking at other sources that may be insured that may be maybe parties to and haven't been named yet. Right. So they'd be cross claims I guess. Sure. Or third party complaints. Third party complaints to try to bring in everybody as possible. Right. It gets pretty complex. So in the end the insurance company pays the lawyers get rich and poor management management company people are stuck with the work of fixing the building or fixing the problem. Well hopefully you have a good defense lawyer and you can get out of the claim I can prevail. So is there a duty to defend by the insurance companies versus sometimes you get this comment about well I have I'm going to defend you by my reserve my rights as far as the any damage is kind of a thing. I'm not a lawyer so I may not express this accurately to you. But right. So in a liability policy or what we call third party policy which protects you if you are sued such as a commercial general liability policy there is a duty to defend. So under Hawaii law it's a very broad duty. You only look at the language of the policy and compare it with the allegations in the complaint. You don't look at anything else to see if there's a duty to defend. And the Hawaii Supreme Court has said if there is any possibility of coverage based upon the allegations then the insurance company has a duty to defend and they must defend that claim all the way through an appeal. So it can be very expensive. It might be the defense costs might exceed you know what the indemnity the payment on any damages the defense cost might exceed that amount. That is the assured have any rights over whether or not the insurance company can settle the matter. Typically the insurance company wants to be a party or work with the insured to make sure that they both agree on the settlement. The insurance company doesn't want to be in bad faith and make a poor decision. But typically under the language of the policy the insurance company has not only a duty to investigate and to defend but it also has the right to participate and really take control of a settlement. And I want to ask some more questions about that but we want to take a short break here. We'll take a one minute break be right back with you. I'm enjoying our conversation with Tread Ireland and we'll talk more about insurance defense and insurance matters that may be questionable. Be right back. 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We're back talking with Tread Ireland about insurance and whether what to do if someone says your claim is not covered and we mentioned briefly that we saw that recently on Hawaii News with an owner that lives in the volcano area and believes that their insurance company covered the policy. And if you go nationally there's been issues with Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, where there was all sorts of national claims that insurance companies intentionally tried to avoid paying claims. I think that's an issue. I mean, do insurance companies try to avoid paying claims? You think they honestly look at them? Well, yeah, we discussed some examples. I know in Hurricane Katrina, the insurance companies tried to argue that the damage was not caused by wind but caused by flood because flood is a national policy funded by Congress and the insurance company administers the flood policies but they don't have to pay the indemnity if there's coverage. So they tried to funnel a lot of these cases to argue that the damage was caused by flood and not by wind. And we discussed in Hurricane Sandy a lot of the investigations that were going on of property. There were a lot of false affidavits and whatnot. So there are some pretty terrible stories about actions of some adjusters or it's not always the insurance company at IEP and adjusting agency that they've hired on the scene to go and investigate the claim. Well, in the world of condos, anyway, you've mentioned for some the magic word flood insurance. Well, what does flood insurance cover versus a regular property policy, for example? Well, homeowners need to be aware that their typical homeowner's policy does not cover flood. A lot of people think well, I'm covered, but flood is a separate policy. The insurance companies don't want to assume the risk of flood because it can be so expensive if there's flood damage. So you need to talk to your broker about a separate policy. They're usually administered by the insurance company, but they are controlled by federal law and federal regulation. You know, one interesting thing I just read a study that's been done like after Hurricane Harvey in Houston, a lot of people purchase policies right away after the hurricane. Of course, it's too late for coverage. And they said this is a pattern that was done after Hurricane Katrina. But then in two or three years, it's going to fall off because people, you know, there's no catastrophic storm. They don't, they figured they don't need the coverage. And they assume they're going to be safe for the next so many years.  If you live in a flood zone, you know, you really, you really need that coverage. Well, I understand that the flood insurance is done to the federal government national flood. But didn't that probably, is either expiring July 31 of this year or August 31? Right. It's coming up very close to, if it hasn't already expired, it's going to expire very soon unless Congress takes some action too. And so what does that mean? Let's just say it was July 31. Does that mean there is no flood insurance for all these people? Well, there would be insurance, but they wouldn't write any new policies, which is kind of a terrible thing. They would still be responsible for existing policies, but they wouldn't, you know, in the next year or two when these policies expire, there wouldn't be any new policies that are written. So the fact that owners out there, associations out there have flood insurance today, and we have a hurricane heading towards the central Pacific, hopefully it doesn't hit us. But the fact that the Congress hasn't done anything wouldn't affect existing policyholders, in regard to whether or not they have flood insurance. Right. The insurance company and the federal government would still have to honor the existing policy. But they may not write any new policies for the future when the current policies expire. So if a current policy expired, you're saying they wouldn't be able to get flood insurance because the program had ended. Right. Yeah. So it's a, have you heard what's going on with the Congress on that? I mean, I haven't, which is kind of surprising. Of course, there's so many things going on in Washington, D.C., but you know, it's really, really important to renew that program and to get funding for it, because so many people are exposed to very dangerous conditions. Is this the Russian's fault? I don't know. No, I think it's something that everybody should be aware about there, because I know that C.A.I. Community Association Institute, our representatives in Congress were all fighting or lobbying or working on getting the National Flood Program bill, so it's reestablished. But we should all be aware that it's theoretically possible because Congress seems to move slow on these things. It's theoretically possible. People could get harmed out of this. If we had a hurricane and nothing is done in the short term, and we had a hurricane in the short term, it's theoretically possible people could be really hurt. Right. Yeah. I think it's time to write your congressmen or your senators and ask for their help in getting this program. I know the industry is working very hard on trying to get that done, because, you know, the other area is with FEMA. You know, those people don't realize that if you're insured and you had a hurricane in a home in our association, like Mililani, Princeville, places like that, that the cleaning of the roads wouldn't be covered by FEMA. You would need to pay for it out of your own pocket, and they mean we're all paying tax dollars. And so private roads are not covered by FEMA. And having been in Hurricane Ike in 1992 and being there on Kauai at that exact moment, I can tell you the devastation and the blockages that are roads and trees was humongous and the cost would have been huge to clear those roads. And that's another bill before the federal government today that are trying to do to get these private associations roads covered for they're covered by FEMA. What about cyber insurance? That seems to be the big bug these days. Right. So, you know, a lot of there's quite a body of case law on cyber issues under traditional policies, such as crime policies or property policies. But, you know, some courts have found there's no coverage under those policies. Typically, there has to be a direct physical loss of property to be covered under a crime policy or a property policy. And if you lose your data, is that is that a property law? Some courts have said no. So, the industry is working on developing specific cyber policies that only address cyber coverage. I've heard good things and bad things about such policies. It's still sort of an experimental area, you know, where the insurance companies aren't sure exactly what the risk might be. And maybe the coverage isn't is inadequate yet. So, I'm sure it's going to be several years before there's really adequate coverage that is going to protect potential cyber loss. The two examples I've been told and I'll try to describe them as best I can about cyber insurance that is I'm going to call the gray area may not be covered or twofold. Number one, someone accesses my database and gets your personal account information and gets your personal checking account and steals from you. And the only reason they did that is they were able to get information through my database saying I'm exposed to some liability. What's your thoughts on that? Well, you really need to know what the facts are and you need to know what the policy language is. If you intentionally pushed a button and transferred those funds to someone else, that's probably not an accident or an occurrence under a liability policy. And there's probably an argument that there's no coverage. You might be liable, but you may not have insurance coverage. The other one I've heard is they do the same thing. And then they get information that's derogatory about me. They posted all over Facebook or this Twitter social media type stuff, defaming me in a way because they were able to access my database and get information about me that I use it in some of the public forum. But the causation was all because they had access to my database. Right. What about that? Well, if there's if you sue them, they might have coverage. You know, defamation is something that's usually covered under a liability policy. As far as you're being defamed, I think your remedy would be to sue them. And then hopefully their insurance company would stand behind them and pay any damages. My thoughts are the Russians that we don't know where they are. We can't find them to sue them. But yeah, but I think it's an interesting point because the cyber insurance here is kind of a new area. And there really is no rules to speak of. I think some real basic things probably which we know, but this is expanded beyond one's imagination, but the types of potential problems, liabilities you might have through the cyber world for lack of other choice. And like I said, there are some new policies that are coming out, but there's a little to no case law interpreting what those policies mean. So that's that's going to be a developing area. So in general, how do you see the insurance industry changing? Well, I think it's it's a difficult business. You know, there's a lot at stake and the insurance companies have to be very careful about what risk they're willing to ensure, you know, what the proper premiums should be, what the limits should be on the policy. They may want to they may be a need to revise the policy, you know, based on case law, there may be a surprise that a court finds coverage and they didn't intend to be coverage. So they have to write a whole new exclusion, you know, to prevent that. So it's really a moving target at all times. Well, we've had a tremendous conversation. We're out of time. I guess the magic words for the summary for today's show is have a real conversation with your insurance broker about what your needs are and make sure you have the proper coverage endorsements to make sure you're protected because it's a complex world of insurance. We don't know everything. But if you don't look at it seriously and responsibly, you could find yourself not covered under the event of a claim. Right. And then I think if you're not covered, you need a good coverage lawyer to delve into it and see if you think you've been harmed by this and you should be covered. Talk to a lawyer and I can tell you from experience I've had claims that I was denied coverage by talking with a lawyer. I ended up getting coverage that's a worthwhile endeavor. So thank you so much for being here today. We thank all of you for watching Kondo Insider. See you next Thursday, 3 30. Aloha.