See hello. Yeah. Okay. Good morning. We're going to get started here in just a minute or two. So if you want to get another cup of coffee or some breakfast. Council. Goal setting fashion. Of June 25, 2015. Councilmember Trevino. Councilmember Warwick. Councilmember Viegran. Councilmember Saldana. Councilmember Gonzalez. As you know, she won't be here. Councilmember Lopez. Councilmember Medina. Councilmember Nirenberg. Councilmember Cryer. Councilmember Gallagher. Here. And Mayor Taylor. Mayor, we do have a quorum. Thank you very much. Well, good morning, everyone. And welcome to our city council goal setting session for our upcoming budget. I know we're going to have a great and productive day. Welcome to all my colleagues. Nice to see everyone back at work this morning. Thank you to Cheryl and the staff for all the work they've done to prepare us for today. I wanted to also begin by welcome welcoming some special guests that we have at the session today. We have a government class from Central Catholic High School here today. I'll ask those gentlemen if they would stand. Okay. You've got to give them credit for spending part of their summer vacation learning about government and coming out to see how it works. So we appreciate you all being here today. And I know the councilman is excited. To host them. We hope that it will be stimulating for you. Oh, I can't make any promises on that. Well, our meeting today is of course an important, important first step in this process of preparing for upcoming budget. We all know that careful stewardship of our tax dollars is a key responsibility of the council. But that furthermore, the budget that we develop each year really is the most important policy document that we produce because it's a reflection of our collective priorities and the way in which we respond to the requests and concerns that citizens have as far as what they'd like to see for our city moving forward. It's definitely a balancing act in relation to the budget. Because I hope that folks, especially for the newer council members that you look at the budget not just as addressing projects and programs that the community needs, but also thinking about how we have to operate within constraints that might be outside of our control as a city council and also make decisions that will ensure the fiscal sustainability for our city. So it's not just about the things that we want to accomplish in this new council term of 2015 to 2017. But the way in which we manage the resources to ensure that future councils have the opportunity to have the resources to provide needs of our citizens as well. So I hope everyone will keep that in mind as we have our discussion today. Now, I'm sure the facilitator will talk a little bit about furthermore that balancing between big priorities and projects. And that always ends up being kind of a tension in this particular discussion. And that's not to say that we shouldn't address specific projects. But our goal today really is to get to the big policy issues so that we can provide direction to the city manager and her staff that they will need in the weeks to come so that they can develop a draft budget. So I'm looking forward to us having a robust discussion today. I ask that everyone to participate in the conversation because everyone's perspective is obviously valuable and important. So we want to hear from everyone what you're thinking. And of course we want to respect each other's viewpoints as we always do. So well usually when I teach a class, I start out by telling the students that participation is important. We all know that there's always someone who talks a little bit too much and there's always someone who never says anything. Try not to be either of those people. So that's a good guide pose. All right. So I am going to turn things over to the manager to make some opening remarks and then introduce our facilitator. Thank you, Mayor. Good morning. Just a couple of logistical matters as we begin and before I introduce Patrick Ibarra, our facilitator for today. First you have an updated agenda that is a single sheet at each of your place settings here this morning. And so that is our agenda for today. We can be here as long as you would like to be here to work with you on the budget policy issues. So there isn't a set time frame that we have to be here until 5 o'clock or 3 o'clock if we finish our conversation by 1.30. That's fine. We just want to make sure that we get through the policy issues that we need to discuss today. We've provided two packets of material to you. The first is dated June 23rd. It's this bound booklet. And it includes the agenda, our schedule for budget meetings through budget adoption, which is scheduled for September 10th. And the work sessions from the budget presentation. I'm required by charter to present the budget in early August. That will be August 6th. We have budget work sessions usually on Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays in the afternoons, 2 to 5 p.m. Through the month of August. And then budget adoption is tentatively scheduled for September 10th. But by charter it must be adopted by mid September. Our fiscal year of course begins on October 1. Included within this packet are one page summaries that our staff have prepared on about 30 different policy issues that the council will be asked to consider over the upcoming months. In the next fiscal year and through the end of this calendar year, some of them are that time sensitive. The second booklet, and this was provided to you this morning. This is a summary of the budget community input meetings. We hosted 32 meetings throughout the community over the past 30 days. And Maria and her staff worked through the night to have this published for you today because our last meeting was the night before last. And we wanted to make sure that those final comments were incorporated into this packet. A little bit later this morning Maria will provide a summary to you and discuss what we heard from the community in those 32 meetings. Okay. Let me also mention that this meeting is being now cast. I know that they are here. Thank you for being here so that the public can watch this meeting and also our TV SA staff are here taping the meeting and we will re-broadcast this meeting also on our government channel. Okay. Let me introduce our facilitator, Patrick Ibarra. Patrick and I have known each other for a long time. We haven't actually worked together in a facilitation situation, but we're really happy to have you here. Council members, I know each one of you had a chance to meet with Patrick in advance of this meeting one-on-one. Patrick is co-founder and partner and Miharanda group. And we're just very excited that you're here to facilitate. He has lots of experience facilitating and working with city councils and in organizations. He has a master's degree in organizational development. He also many years ago was a city manager. So he's worked in a number of different roles in public administration and with city council. So we're delighted that he was able to help us with this goal setting session today. So with that Patrick, I'd like to turn it over to you. Thanks Cheryl. Well good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Oh boy. Where's the warm Texas welcome? Well I'm delighted to be here. As Cheryl said, first time I've had a chance to work with you. I just want to have some opening remarks to kind of set the table for the day. So I'm going to refer to these. First of all, my role. My role is to really kind of keep the process moving. My approach, as I think I shared with many of you during our one-on-one meetings, is on these topics I really try to make sure we don't drain the swamp, which is we talk about things to the nth degree and then we lose the group. I'm serving your fitness trainer today, so as I asked you to do, I assume all of you wore your sneakers because we're trying to get you. Now I'm in shape if round is a shape. Some people, that was a joke. Some people have a six pack, I have a two liter. I'm really good at joining the gym. Anybody else really good at joining the gym? Like me? Anybody really good at driving by the gym? Like me. According to my lovely wife, Kristen, we always need new outfits to work out, so what's the hardest part about getting in shape? Going to the gym, ladies and gentlemen, going to the gym, right? So I understood this and I recently ran in my first 5K and I passed some people. They were walking their dogs, but I passed some people. That's what you all are really here doing today, is trying to get in better shape. Organizations that are successful are for so many reasons, one of the first reasons is they invest time working together, trying to clarify priorities, trying to stay toned, trying to stay fit, and that's what the exercise is for today. What we hope to try to achieve on those agenda items is some level of cohesion and clarity. One of the most important, and as a former city manager, and I spent 15 years in the business, I was 6'2", and I was a city manager. I'm also a recovering HR director, but one of the most important ingredients between a council and a city manager is a shared understanding about priorities, that alignment. And this is a chance today to reaffirm some of those priorities, as well as clarify maybe those that are emerging that you're going to be discussing. So I just want to make sure that that's all set. Now in council, there's always different types of thinking. There's the people that think in a very macro way, lofty, big picture, and then there are people who think in sort of an operational way. And sometimes those operational thinkers frustrate, the big thinkers and the big thinkers frustrate the operation. I would just offer to you what I've seen in my experience in almost 30 years in this business, the last 13 as a consultant, is councils that are effective blend those types of thinking. It's good that there are people that are talking about the tactical side, operational side, trying to understand how this is going to work. Then there, it's a good blend to have with those people that are understanding at a conceptual, at an aspect, at a basis of that, a foundation. So I understand that, and I'm sure you see that just in your daily workings as a governing body trying to find that healthy fit, if you will. As the mayor said also, just a final remark. You know, in elected local government, there's real pressure, and I know I talked with each of you about this, and you all had wonderful insight to share with me. There's always the challenge of dealing with the present. And historically, government tends to be, I wouldn't even say reactive. Sometimes it reflexes about pressures. Something comes up, there's a reflex, there's a reaction. Today is sort of trying to balance the notion between reacting to issues that are immediate of concern to the residents of this community, as well as the long term. Trying to find that balance. And my conversations with each of you, you all seem to have a healthy balance understanding how to strike that natural tension to work well, individually and collectively looking at things on the short term and addressing those, as well as balancing that with the long term. They're not mutually exclusive, in other words. It's trying to find that balance. Now staff, what we ask a favor of you, staff is going to make presentations very concise, clear, and compelling to you on these agenda items here, as I handed off to Cheryl, who would then do the initial one. I would ask your indulgence during the staff presentations just for the efficiency of the time spent to hold your questions. We're going to get into your questions that you have about those agenda items starting at 10.30, if you will. So we just thought that would be more productive, a better use of everyone's time, because if not, we may sort of stop and stall and start and fit and all that. So I would ask that maybe if you have your questions, you would write them down about those topics. Staff will obviously be here through the balance of the day. When you have questions of staff, we're going to ask them to come up to the dais and address those. But if you would just hold those questions until we get to 10.30. Will that work well for everyone? Any other questions before we get started? We'll take a break at about 10.30 this morning. I call it the donut time. That's when the glazed look comes over. We'll take a break. There's beverages in the back. Obviously, help yourself. We have lunch in the room next door. Come back this afternoon. So have a very highly engaged, productive discussion. I look forward to working with all of you. I'm going to hand it now back to the city manager who's going to do the first few topics. Thanks, Patrick. Good morning again. And we're going to begin with a discussion about several high-profile policy issues related to the budget, and I'm going to get your feedback on whether or not you continue to agree that the direction that was discussed with the council this spring and at the mid-year budget review are still the direction you want to give staff in preparing the budget this summer. As you know, we'll be working on the budget preparation from now until it's presented on August 6th. So I'm going to review just three major policy issues and then I'm going to turn it over to Maria who's going to give a recap and an update on our revenue and expense since we talked with you at the mid-year budget review in May and also review with you some additional policy issues. Okay. So the three that I'd like to talk with you about this morning are three that you thought were highly important. First, the property tax rate. And so we know that the assessments have been mailed by the county out to our residents in the community that our portion of the city property tax rate represents 22% of the total tax bill. So we know half of that revenue that's paid by residents for their property taxes goes to the public schools. A quarter goes to the county, to the river authority, Alamo Colleges, and then in the university hospital system, 22%, the remaining 22% comes to the city of San Antonio. Preliminary property values are up 9.5%. There are two components to the property tax. First, the existing value and then secondly, new growth. So the rollback rate applies to existing values and how much they can grow when you know the rollback rate is 8%. We're expecting an increase. However, the appeal process has not been completed. And so each year in the third or fourth week of July, we actually receive the tax roll from the county. They tell us, okay, here is the tax roll for the upcoming year. And then we do the calculation to know how much we will receive in property taxes for that budget year. So we wait till that final moment to put or plug that final number into our revenue for the general fund. That certified roll will tell us what the revenue is. In May, we talked about and some of you worked, we worked together. Councilman Trevino, we, since you serve on the bare appraisal district board, we did extensive information out to the community explaining who does the appraisals and then how to and information about that. But at that time, you talked about perhaps reducing the city property tax rate as part of this budget. And that was what most of you said you would like to see included within the budget. So we'd like to reaffirm today or have a conversation about is that still your position that you would like to see some type of reduction or keep the rate the same or really what your direction is with regard to the city property tax rate. The second item that we would like to talk with you about today and not to spend an extensive amount of time on this because we've had so much conversation nonetheless. We're asking you whether or not you want to reaffirm the position on the collective bargaining agreement for police and fire unions that we maintain a budget that is 66% or less devoted to total public safety expenses. We do have negotiating sessions set up for July 10th, 15th and the 17th. A copy of the mayor's letter is also included in the packet that we gave you this week. We are hopeful and that we can resolve the contract by the end of July. That is our goal. And we just want to reaffirm today the policies that you have set consistently over the past two years. That is to try to keep public safety expenses to 66% or less of the general fund budget. Secondly, that employees are asked to contribute toward the cost of healthcare premiums. And thirdly, and Maria will talk about this a little bit more, our financial policies related to maintaining our AAA general obligation bond rating. As you know, we're rated each year. This is not something you achieve and you just hold on to, but we have to present to the rating agency sometimes twice a year. As we issue debt, we make our financial presentation about the economies of the community, the city's budget situation. But that we maintain those policies related to our AAA bond rating and that includes an ending balance that is in the 15% range. 10% in our general fund reserves and an ending balance sufficient to get us to that 15% level. The third policy item that is major is preparation for the 2017 bond program and the timeline associated with that. As you know, we do some preliminary work for you. We sit down with each one of you to understand your highest priorities for the districts. We talk about citywide projects and our city engineer Mike Frisbee and his team put together preliminary estimates for those kinds of projects to be considered by the citizen bond committees. To achieve or to get to a May of 2017 election, we would need to start the preliminary scopes and cost estimating by the end of this calendar year and have that work done by early spring of 2016. We would ask that you appoint the citizen committees in the summer of 2016, that they do their work and that the staff, as you know, works with those committees because many of the committee members bring projects to the table as well. And that the committees be asked to make a presentation to council in January of 2017. Council then would set the election if it were to be in the spring of 2017. The council would set that election in February of 2017 for that May 2017 bond election. One or two of you have talked about is their interest in moving up that date. Not having the election in May of 17, but perhaps sooner than that. It is not by law that it is in May of 17. It has been our practice and what we've put into place over the past decade is to have a bond election every five years and our financial model is built on that. So the council could decide to do it sooner. If you chose to do that, that is your decision, we would just need to start the process right after this budget process to get going if you were to choose, for example, a date sooner like the November of 16 election. So I just mentioned that because I've been asked about that by a couple of people and it's tentatively our work plan is for May of 17. But if anyone or you all collectively wanted to do it sooner, then we'd need to have that conversation and get going sooner. So those are the three major policy issues I just wanted to mention as we kick this off that we need your feedback on. Our city property tax rate, the collective bargaining policies financially for the city that you have put in place just to reaffirm those today. And then the bond program timeline because that does affect our 2016 budget because we'll need to incorporate in the recommendation some of that preliminary scoping and estimating from the engineering perspective. So with that, I've concluded my initial remarks on those policy issues and I'm going to ask Maria Villagomez. I'm just going to come forward and give an update on our forecast and what's happened with regard to our general fund revenues since we met just about two months ago. Maria. Thank you, Cheryl. Good morning, Mayor and Council. The following slides is just to provide you some background regarding the city's budget, our financial position that we presented to the Mayor and Council on May 13 when we did our five-year financial forecast. And where are we today since we have received two months of additional revenue since that presentation? So the total city budget is $2.4 billion for the fiscal year that began October 1 and will end September 30. The general fund is the largest operating fund of the city, which is over $1 billion. The city has a series of restricted funds, the total $732 million. And finally, the third component is our capital budget, which is over $600 million. In terms of our general fund, the resources that we collect to fund the operations within the general fund include our property tax, which represents about 26% of the $1 billion resources that we allocate to this services. Sales tax is roughly 24%. CPS revenues is 30% of our revenues, and other resources such as user fees, license, and permits are 20%. These dollars are allocated to most of the core city services, including public safety, that consumes 66.7% of these resources today. The balance of the general fund, roughly about 33%, is allocated to 24 different departments, including streets and infrastructure, parks and recreation, human services, a library, municipal court, code enforcement, animal care, health, planning, history of preservation, and the administration of the city. Just a summary on the financial forecast for the general fund that was presented to the council in early May. We are reported to the council that based on actual performance of the general fund through the month of March and projections based on a set of economic assumptions, we were anticipating to have a manageable challenge of less than $1 million for 2016. Our forecast reflects public safety spending at the city's March collective bargaining level proposal. Our expenditures for public safety are maintained within 66% of the general fund. We are able to maintain our general fund ending balance at 15% every year of the forecast. I will remind the council that our rating agencies expect a 16% ending balance this year, so we are on track to achieve that goal. And we are reported as well that we were structurally about a year of the forecast, meaning that we had sufficient resources to cover the operating expenses within the general fund. The financial forecast also reflects the city financial policies that were adopted by the city council as part of the 2015 adopted budget. Just to highlight some of them, that includes to maintain public safety within 66% of the general fund, to maintain an ending balance of 15%, to manage the structural balance in the general fund in terms of having sufficient resources to pay for our revenues, to maintain moderately conservative revenue projections, and to address any internal fund deficits within three to five years, which is the case of our employee benefits fund that currently has a deficit of $22 million. Now, since we presented to the council, we have received two additional checks for CPS and sales tax. So just as a way of background when we presented our financial position to the council in May, we had indicated that we were anticipating to end the fiscal year for 2015 $24 million better than when we adopted the budget. However, since May we have received two payments from CPS that are $3.4 million below our projections and sales tax $1.6 million below projections. So total revenues are down $5 million since May. This is primarily due to the rains that we have experienced and our temperatures being below normal and that also impacts our tourism industry and those outdoor facilities that we have where people typically come and spend their monies, those are being impacted as well. So our sales tax are down. So again, revenues are down $5 million. We did look at our general fund expenditures for all the departments and we are anticipating additional savings of $2.5 million. So the net impact is $2.5 million below our projections. So as I said earlier, we were estimating that we would have $24 million more at the end of the fiscal year compared to the adopted budget. With this revised projection, we're anticipating to be $21.5 million. Now, as I mentioned earlier, when we presented the forecast for fiscal year 2016, we had anticipated a deficit of $700,000. With this updated number, our deficit would be $3.3 million based on the actual collections that we have received through the month of May and assuming that our projections will hold for the balance of the fiscal year. So we'll continue to watch this very closely and we will be updating our projections as we prepare the fiscal year 2016 proposed budget. Now in terms of our community engagement, as the city manager mentioned, we held over 30 meetings across the city. This is a new approach to our community engagement to try to invite more residents to participate in the budget process. We had community-wide meetings. We went to eight of our senior centers. We made with several neighborhood associations. We went to several universities, and we also made with different stakeholder groups. So in total, we had over 1,100 attendees at all these meetings and 300 participants through our social media. In total, we received over 1,900 comments, and that is the report that we provided to you today. Now, we asked the community two questions as we went through this process. One of them, what were their top three priorities in terms of services and the general fund? And what we heard was the street sidewalks and drainage was the top priority. Social and senior services and parks and recreation. These three city services comprised more than 50% of all the comments that we received in terms of priorities for our residents. Now, we also asked a question, what would be the areas that they would consider perhaps reprioritizing funding from to add to those areas that are our top priorities or perhaps reducing? And the number one category that was identified by our residents was support for the city's collective bargaining position in terms of maintaining public safety at 66% of the budget or below and also to have our police and fire uniform employees to contribute to the cost of health care. Now, in terms of the next steps in the budget process, in the month of July, we will be developing the proposed budget for 2016, taking into account the comments that we have received from the community, the policy direction that we'll receive from council today, and the city manager will present the proposed budget on August 6. From August 10 to September 9, we'll have several city council work sessions and we'll continue with community input. We will be providing some recommendations to the city council in the next few weeks to a revised approach to our community engagement after we propose the budget. And then finally, the budget is set for city council adoption on September 10. So this concludes my update on our financial position and I'm going to turn it over to Eric Walsh, our deputy city manager, to talk about public safety policy issues. Thank you, Maria. Good morning, mayor and council. So I'm going to cover a number of public safety priority, budget priority issues, primarily in the police department. And just in terms of orientation, we have 2,375 authorized uniformed officers in the police department. We have 152 park police and 568 civilians that support the police department through a number of divisions in dispatch, administrative, ground transportation, evidence collection. The FY 2015 budget included the proposal to hold 40 vacancies during the current year. And many of you will recall that in November of 2014, as a result of no closure to the collective bargaining agreement with the police officers, we needed to make a $14 million adjustment to keep the general fund balanced and adjust for additional health care expenses for the year. That $14 million, $9 million was paid for by deferring street maintenance projects and the remaining $5 million was pulled from both the police and fire departments. In the police department, we added 35 additional vacancies that we would hold for the year. In the fire department, it was the delay of a paramedic training class that did not affect their positions. Since then, we have seen 66 retirements and separations year to date. And what we've done is we have, we started a class in March earlier this year of 28 officers. And we are targeted to begin an August, by the end of August, a class of 38 cadets to account for the 66 retirements and separations we've seen here today. In our budget planning sessions in advance of our meetings with Sheryl in July, the police department is currently planning on running three academy classes for FY16. Some of that will be dictated by some of the other policy issues that you'll hear about later on this morning, annexation. And I'm going to talk about a COPS grant that we have submitted. If we get additional positions, then the police department will undoubtedly have to add a fourth academy class for next year. The other thing that has been a priority during the course of the year to the chief and the command staff is to make sure that the patrol division has the resources and positions needed to be able to effectively respond to 911 calls and keep our response times low. In March or earlier this year, the chief reassigned 13 officers from special units back to patrol to make sure positions were filled. And he and his command staff are currently looking at additional reassignments later on this summer. Additionally, as part of the mid-year budget, there was overtime money allocated to the police department to ensure that as they go through the summer months, call loads are generally higher during the summer months, that they have the flexibility to utilize additional make sure that those patrol districts are filled consistently going forward. Overall, crime is down, and I'll cover that in a second, and our emergency response times are down. Through the end of May, our violent crime, compared to the same time last year, is down 0.3%, and property crime is down 9.7%. Our proactive activity, things like drug arrests and weapons arrests are up, drug arrests are up, 8.1%, weapons arrests are up, 18.8%. The use of force cases that the police department has dealt with is down, and complaints, both formal and informal complaints against officers is also down. Our emergency response times, let me explain this slide a little bit. So the way we measure our emergency response times is from the moment we receive the 911 call to the arrival of the officer. So the complete time from the customer standpoint. And we have seen a decrease, a continued decrease in our emergency response times. I think it goes back to making sure that our patrol districts are filled, and we've got the resources in that patrol division. Part of it also deals with the management of how we're organized. In 2013, some of you will remember, we redrew the patrol district lines that had not been done in over 15 years, in order to balance both the call load and the workload from the individual patrol officer standpoint. That occurred in January of 2013, and it's something that the police department looks at continuously going forward. And you can see that we saw a pretty dramatic decrease from 2012 to 2013. This is also the first time in 2015 we have broken the 7 minute mark to emergency response times. Here's how we compare to a couple of other cities here in Texas. And certainly we are favorable as compared to these cities. The first budget policy issue I wanted to talk to you about this morning is body cameras. And we've had a couple of discussions with the council going back to the conclusion of our pilot program, where we tested eight different camera systems through both our bike patrol unit and a west side substation. We did release a solicitation. We received 12 proposals, and we have narrowed it down to four finalists over the last week and a half. Myself, the police department and our IT department have spent time interviewing the finalists. It was important that we did include the Bear County Sheriff's Office and the DA's office, and opened it up for their questions from a criminal justice continuum video that may be obtained by a camera from our police officer eventually lands in the hands of a potential prosecutor. So we wanted to make sure that they had an opportunity to be a part of the process. And the Sheriff's Office, as they consider what they do going forward because of an existing cooperative purchasing agreement between the city and the county, they might be able to leverage our purchasing power and buy off of our contract. So I thought it was a good, complete discussion that we've had over the last week and a half. Our plan is to implement over three years, just under 2,200 cameras. The phase one, the 251 cameras would go to downtown foot and bike patrol, and the park police, the airport police are already outfitted with body cameras. Phase two, a little over 1,200 cameras would be primarily focused on our patrol units and citywide. And phase three are specialized units in our traffic unit. One of the things that we've seen just in the time that we've spoken to the Council last December when Chief McMannus was still here is the change in technology enhancements. And some of you will recall that we have an in-car video system in every patrol car, all 655 vehicles. And we asked the firms that were finalists when they came in to talk to us about not what the technology is today, but what's it going to be six months from now and one month and one year from now and what technology do they have in terms of automating the body camera system? Right now, the body camera system that was tested, the systems that were tested, require officers to manually turn on and off the camera. We did see during the course of the interviews that there is technology rolling out this fall with at least two of the vendors that automates that camera when it's either the lights in the police car are turned on or as the officer exits the vehicle. So that technology is coming. We want to make sure that as we make a selection in the month of July and prepare for public safety in August that we take advantage and build in the ability and the latitude and the contract to take advantage of that technology enhancements. The other thing that the two other issues that we found was that two companies are also starting to incorporate in-car video systems. So it's the best of both worlds. You have the in-car system working, but as the officer exits the vehicle, the body camera automatically turns on. The estimated cost for phase one is up to a million dollars. What drives the cost is the cost of the data storage and how you manage it. The cost of the actual cameras has come down since December since Chief McManus made that presentation to you last year. There's certainly a wide range of options that we're looking at. You can store this data and video in the cloud. You can store it locally or you can approach it from a hybrid standpoint. Keep some data locally, push more of it up into the cloud. We'll be ferreting that out as we go through the month of July and the committee in making a selection. Some of you will recall that we did submit a grant application to the Department of Justice for a $1.2 million body camera grant. That grant has a $1.2 million cash or in-kind match. The mid-year budget did allocate $320,000 towards this effort and that's an eligible expense. As we go through the summer, we will be looking at what additional civilian staff we need to put in place to manage the tremendous amount of information and data that we're going to start collecting from these cameras. Also to process frankly open records requests, many of that video is going to have to be reviewed and redacted before released. The second item is shot detection technology. This was an item or technology that Councilman Warwick brought to us earlier this year. We did have a briefing of public safety in April and the staff's recommendation at the time was to go through a solicitation process to identify the cost of a one-year pilot program in two areas of town identified by the police department in time for council consideration with the mid-year budget. This technology, the two areas of town that the police department identified, one on the west side in the Prospect Hill neighborhood and one on the east side in the Wheatley Promise Zone area. Those areas were identified because they had the highest concentration of gun violence and if we were going to enact a pilot program, that was the police department's recommendation. The technology does exactly what you think it does. It detects the location of gunfire through an array of audio devices that are established within the target area and then automatically notifies police dispatch. And so the benefits of the system, the benefits that other cities have seen, the city of Washington D.C. has utilized this technology for a number of years. New York began utilizing it in Brooklyn earlier this year. Memphis has parts of their city covered, Kansas City. There are a number of Army and Navy installations in the country that also utilize this technology, also uses this technology. But the benefit that departments have seen is that generally there's an underreporting by citizens of gunfire, general gunfire. And whether that's a hesitancy to call the police or the assumption that my neighbor's going to call the police, the police aren't notified. And in this case, the once detected, the police are notified and are given a location of the actual sound. The second benefit of the technology is that it helps the officers determine where gunfire occurs. And many times the officers cannot determine with any certainty if they hear gunfire where that has occurred. We have two proposals to our pilot program. And it's a pretty wide range and costs 280,000 to 1.7 million. I'll tell you that the differences are in one pilot program we buy and own the equipment. And in the second pilot program, it's more of a subscription type of service. We don't own the equipment. This technology certainly may be effective for us and for the police department. We are only recommending a one year pilot program. In terms of the two equipments that I've talked about, the body camera systems are certainly a higher priority for the police department, but we'd like to get some feedback from the council on this issue and going into the budget. Two weeks ago, the council approved a grant application to submit to the Department of Justice for 25 police officers through the COPS program. It's a three year grant of $3.1 million. The city would be committed to $7.8 million over the course of the four years. So the grant pays for 25% of the cost for a three year period, but it requires the municipality or the county or whoever the recipient of the grant is to fund four years. The balance going forward. There is not as much money in the COPS program as there has been in prior years. The last time the city received an award to this program was in 2009 when we were awarded 50 officers through the COPS program. The grant application and the grant stipulations this year are geared certainly toward evaluating programs to improve the relationships with the community. Given what's happened across the country in many cities, they are narrowly focusing the grant program on improving relationships between police and communities. As our proposal was submitted to the Department of Justice, our proposal is to use the officers in a newly created directed patrol unit in support of patrol operations. Again, the priority of the department and their secondary responsibility would be to strengthen community relations throughout the city. We will know whether or not we get this grant and the body camera Department of Justice grant by September of this year. The final issue is the Public Safety Radio and some of you have heard discussions on this issue twice through Public Safety Committee and High Profile Contract Committee this past Tuesday. So just as an overview and direction in terms of the policy issues, in FY 2013 the city set aside $45 million in the capital budget to replace our radio system. That was driven by a mandate in the federal level regarding interoperability. That mandate was removed last fall and we reassessed staff, police, fire, IT, reassessed what the recommendation was and our recommendation that we've shared with both public safety and high profile is that we use our current radio system until 2022. That system went live and was final in 2014, I'm sorry 2004, that we solicit for a replacement radio system in 2018. We had the 36 month implementation process from solicitation, selection, engineering, design, implementation and testing of the system. So about three years that system would go live in 2021 that we make necessary radio infrastructure maintenance upgrades now and replace all of our police and fire handsets. Those handsets, those radio handsets would be able to be utilized on any future radio system regardless of vendor. And so we certainly think we would get the value. We would solicit those radios through either a cooperative purchase agreement or a bid that we would release and then we would release $23 million back in the capital budget to make available for neighborhood or infrastructure needs. There has been concern at both committees about a lack of transparency and process and the high profile committee on Tuesday sent the item back to public safety in August. And if it is the council's direction to release an RFP for new radio system, then we'll certainly proceed in that manner and we'll make a recommendation on how we maybe have a cache of radios in back for police and fire to get us through that 30 to 36 months. But that's certainly doable and something that we can do. With that, I'm going to turn over to Laura Stewart. She has the next area of the presentation. Thank you. Good morning, Mayor and Council. I'm happy to be here to talk about our civilian living wage. I'd like to start off this morning by reviewing some of our employee demographics. In our authorized position count in the budget currently we have almost, we have about 11,700 employees. About one third of that or over 4,000 are sworn uniform positions. The other two thirds are our civilian employees and that includes our step pay plan and our managers and professionals and also our executives. So it's interesting to see that two thirds of our workforce is civilian and one third uniform. And then within that civilian group, two thirds being in the step plan and the other third being between our managers, professionals and executives. I'm going to go to this next slide first and then come back to that one for a few remarks. I just wanted to review some history on our compensation principles for our civilian workforce. Looking at prior to 2006, the city's civilian wages were paid below market and yet the benefit package was rich and exceeded what was typically found in the community. And over the last nine years, the city has developed a step pay plan and implemented that to provide civilian employees with market competitive wages and also ensure equity within the system and health care benefits then were allowed to be modified which provided for employee cost sharing. And then I just want to go back to our demographic slide at this point and mention that some of the benefits that an organization receives when making changes like that, making sure that we're market competitive, making sure that there are competitive benefits being an employer of choice is that we see less unrest among our employees. So at the peak, when these changes were made at the peak of our employee union membership in the civilian sector, we had about 1100 employees that were members of a union. And now today that number is in the 400s. It's been about a 58% decline in union membership. Only 6% of those eligible are currently in an employee union. So a lot of that is due to having a stable financial system, having the due process in place for employees, having consistent policies. And with that being said, I just want to assure the mayor and council because I see some of my employee organization friends in the room that we do continue to work with them. They're facing the challenges of declining membership, but we continue to work with them and we do value their partnership in helping us communicate with our employees and review policies. But it's just interesting to note that you can see some of those differences just by having those consistent practices and competitive wages. So now let me advance to the next slide, and this is just to show you a little bit about what that compensation and benefit package for our civilian employees looks like. You can see it's very comprehensive. You will see a variety of benefits, everything from retirement benefits to medical benefits, paid leave, professional development opportunities, and even help with transportation with the bus passes being provided. And then of course on the compensation side, we've talked about our step pay plan, which helps provide competitive salaries. We have our living wage, which we'll talk more about. Periodic cost of living adjustments, their special pays for certification and language skills. Let's talk a little bit about the living wage. Our living wage history goes back quite a while. In 2005, the city analyzed where we were with the living wage and found that more than 900 employees had fallen below that. And the city's living wage right now is based on the federal government, the Department of Health and Human Services, poverty guidelines for a family of four. And in 2005, when that was analyzed, the city had fallen behind that. And so the city manager mid-year immediately moved more than 900 employees to that living wage, which was from 875 to 975. And we have done an ongoing consistent analysis of that policy to where we find ourselves now at our current rate of $11.47 an hour. The next thing I want to review with you is a little bit more information about the step pay plan. The step pay plan was developed in 2008. It was developed with input from our employee management committee. Those employee organization partners that I mentioned earlier worked with us on that. This impacts over 5,000 positions on our step pay plan. Again, if you remember the demographic slide looking at that, it's of our civilian workforce. We're talking about two-thirds of our workforce falling in this step pay plan. This took six years to implement with a total cost cumulatively of over $80 million. And what the step pay plan allows is a 10-step system with increases that range from 4% down to 2% over time. And keep in mind that this increase is exclusive of any cost of living adjustments that might be made in any year. So cost of living would be on top of what you see in the step pay plan. This slide will provide a little bit more information about that period of time when we were looking at the step pay plan being adopted. You will notice the first column is talking about any cost of living adjustments that were made during these fiscal years, starting at 2008 up until last year. So you can see there has been fairly regular cost of living adjustments with a few years that one was not offered. You can see in that next column the average step plan increases. During that period of time between 2008 and 2013 when it was fully implemented, the percentage increases that were happening there during that implementation. So that's where that $80 million comes in through the full implementation of the step pay plan. And now we're in maintenance mode. So we see between a 2% and a 4% increase for people that are eligible for steps now in the step pay plan. You'll also see on this slide the history of our living wage, how that's been increased over time based on those DHHS guidelines. And you'll also see any performance pay that was approved for our professional and manager category. And keep in mind with this category, that's an aggregate dollar amount, and the actual increases are based on performance. So it could be zero or it could be as high as 5%, but that's an aggregate cost for budgeting purposes. Sometimes you'll see it's a one-time amount, other times it's a base increase. Let's talk a little bit about where we stand in comparison to other large Texas cities looking at either living wage or just what the lowest wage that's being paid in those cities are. You'll see that San Antonio currently has the highest living wage or highest minimum wage in the state of Texas among the large cities. Fort Worth and Dallas, while they have no policy that sets a minimum, these are the lowest that they actually are paying right now in their organizations. Austin does have an established living wage. It's based on different criteria than we use. It's based more on a housing-based policy. If we were to adopt that, we would be paying less now. So we have a more rich formula than they're using there. And Houston says they negotiate theirs with their employee groups and it's currently at $10. Looking at those agencies that are near us here in the San Antonio area, you can see that there's quite a bit of consistency in that mid-$11 area. We're at the $11.47. CPS uses the exact same formula that we do. Bear County is now where we will be moving using our consistent formula with the DHS guidelines for poverty. We would move to the $11.67 an hour for the next fiscal year. So they've already made that move, but that's where we would be going next. And SAWS, they don't have an established policy that sets a minimum. However, this is the lowest that they haven't someone paid there now. So it's pretty consistent in our area. Now I'd like to take a little bit of time to look at what we're seeing. You may be seeing some of these cities in the news, some of these larger cities that are making changes in their areas and city ordinances. So you can see the first column will talk about the city and where they currently are. This is where the wage currently sits and then the next column will show you what their target is. So they have an ordinance in place where they're moving to this target. It's being phased by the amount of years in the next column. So ranging between three and six years is where you'll see these other cities working towards making this move to a higher minimum wage. What I wanted to show you was if you made a geographic adjustment to that rate, what that buying equivalency in San Antonio dollars is. So we use an adjustment that's provided by the Council for Community and Economic Research. They're a firm that's been doing this work since 1968. What they will compare are six major categories including groceries, housing, utilities, transportation, health care, and then other goods and services. And what this allows us to do is compare the cost of living across geographic regions but at the same point in time. And so what this tells us, what I wanted to show you was that, you know, at our current living wage at $11.47, that already compares higher when you geographically adjust this to all of those other cities. Our employees have higher buying power here in San Antonio with their current living wage than these cities will get to even when they reach their target. And what I'm showing on the right at the bottom is where we would be next year, whereas these other cities would continue to be working toward their target. You'll hear us talk a little bit about salary compression. If we were to make a move in our living wage and move that up, that could cause some salary compression between an employee and the person that they report to. So I'd like to show you a couple of examples of that just to be aware of. The first one would be a maintenance worker. Currently they are starting at our living wage of $11.47 an hour. Next year, if we follow our current policy, that would increase to $11.67. And then there's two hypotheticals shown here, an increase to either $13 or $15. And so you'll see they're reporting to, for their day-to-day direction, a maintenance crew leader too. They currently make $13.15 an hour. And then if we do, that is a 15% differential between those two job classifications, the worker and the crew leader they're reporting to. When we move to our $11.67 since next year, that will go down a little bit to 13%, but it's still manageable. It's still a reasonable spread between the two job classes. But it's when you make the move to $13 that all of a sudden we've only got about a 1% spread. And so when we talk about compression, we would have to take a look at this. We would have to make some adjustments in that salary, or the maintenance workers would never have any motivation to move to a crew leader. So when you hear us talk about salary compression, this is the type of analysis we would need to do and make other adjustments. So you'll hear us talk about the cost of making a move in the living wage, not including salary compression issues. This is the type of salary compression issue we're talking about. You'll notice that the move to $15, then they would be paid exactly the same, and that wouldn't be tenable. We would have to make some changes. Second example, parking enforcement officer. Right now there's a 20% spread, which would go to $18 at our current policy. It would go down to 6% at a $13, which would be something we would need to evaluate. And then again, they would both be making the same if we went to $15. So that's what salary compression means and something we would have to address. Now here we want to look at the potential impact. A couple of different examples for you to consider. If we were to take a two-year phased approach and go to a $13 an hour living wage. And again, I just want to reiterate that these numbers do not include any of that salary compression we just talked about. This is just a straight movement of the staff. So we could move to a $12.25 an hour wage in 2016. That would cost $1.3 million, which would continue into the second year. Second year would have to add an additional $1.6 million. And then over the course of the two years, we'd have a cumulative total of $4.2 million. The next row down shows you the three-year approach to reach a $15 living wage. We would look at a $13 an hour in year one that would be $2.9 million. That would continue into the next year and we'd add an additional $2.8 million. And in the third year, we would add an additional $3.9 million. So at the end of the three years, we will have spent $18 million to make that phase. So it's just a little bit of information for you when you're considering the policy on what the cost would be. And again, keeping in mind that there would be additional costs when we adjust the compression issues that we would have to address. So just to summarize what we've talked about today. City of San Antonio is committed to a compensation philosophy that balances market competitive wages with employee participation and the cost of health care. And it's through our commitment to the competitive salary. We should demonstrate that by our current living wage already being higher than any other Texas city. Our implementation of the step pay plan to become more competitive, address our market issues, have pay equity, spending $80 million and implementing that over a six year period. And then just keeping in mind considering the geographic adjustments, we can be proud that the city's living wage already is resulting in greater buying power for our employees. When you compare it to the wages of some of those cities that you've been reading about in the news lately. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Good morning, Mayor and City Council. I'm going to be talking about the City South annexation and the fiscal impacts of that. Maybe call and bring up the next slide. There we go. In 2014, the council dissolved the City South Management Authority and annexed the most economically significant strategic areas there south of 410 along Highway Interstate 37, 35 and down by 1604. During this period, we were looking at the detailed fiscal and service issues there. Right now there's no city services. Also no city taxes extended, just zoning and development code and health codes during this three year period that we have to annex by state law. We're going to annex it by in 36 months, which would be by December 2016. And there we'll consider the full services to the city and the full cost of those services. Now this slide shows what those costs will be. The net operating cost in 216, which we have to look into in terms of our current budget, would be about a million and a half dollars. This is basically the cadet program to begin training the police and firemen we need for the several different fire stations and police services in this annexation area, which covers about 19 square miles. In 2017, the cost then jumps up to 7.2 million with full employment for those people plus other city services in 2018, 5.6 million. There's a one-time capital cost in 2017 for the interim two fire stations and two engine trucks and an ambulance unit. In 2018 then when it's fully annexed, the city property tax revenues and sales tax revenues were coming in to start covering and paying for these costs. So that's a very brief summary we can talk about later. Thank you. Good morning, Mayor and Council. I want to talk with you a little bit about our current status on our municipal broadband. I'm going a little bit out of order so you guys may want to flip that over so it'll be the next one. Just a quick history. I started working on this back in 2005 with CPS Energy. In 2007, we took to Council an agreement with CPS Energy to establish a joint network that leverages the CPS Energy fiber that's spanned throughout the city and then connect several city sites to that fiber. And the initial tenant on that was for our traffic management project of which included both fiber and wireless and several other things to connect over a thousand streetlights. As we have been building this out, we've added two external tenants to the network which includes Bear County and Alamo Colleges for some of their sites. Back in I believe October of 2014, we took another agreement to Council and this one was actually a very critical agreement because in the initial agreement we had with CPS Energy, we were allocated four strands of fiber throughout their network to then light up and build our network. This next agreement was important because it actually gave us rights to four to eight strands of fiber in perpetuity. So as we look to the future and we want to add other tenants onto the network, it was very important that when we talked with them that they understood that no matter what happened to CPS Energy, we would always have these strands of fiber based on that agreement. So we also included in there some finish out of some sites that we needed to have done to actually complete our fiber rings through the city and then help that begin to propose to outside agencies, outside government agencies to help join in on the network for them to advance their services. The county has recently come to us with an interest in investing into this fiber network and a couple days ago they did a resolution at the commissioner's court to approve being involved with us and so we've met with Councilman Nirenberg and a couple of the county staff yesterday to kind of give an overview of what the network looks like, kind of where it would be useful for them to be involved in the network and they have a lot of interest in that and so we plan on advancing that communication. One of the things that we need to finish is the last few sites are due to be completed in November. Once those are done, we then feel that we'll be ready to add outside agencies in a bigger fashion to that network. Potential partners currently in discussion are UT systems. They have an interest for UTSA and the Health Science Center and then we've had some discussions with A&M. Initially they were interested and they wanted to get their campus a little bit more stable because it was pretty new. So we'll open up those communications also again and that's it for this and I'll be open later for questions. Good morning Mayor and Council. I'm going to present to you two items that are not related to the general fund. Up to this point we've been focusing on the general fund but we do have two everyday life programs that we provide to the customers in a solid waste collection in stormwater and the customer pays fees unrelated to property tax and sales tax as an example. So I'm going to talk to you about two policy issues for solid waste and then stormwater. The first one is solid waste as some council members may know. Many years ago the City Council approved a 10-year then it was changed to a 15-year plan to get the city to a 60% residential recycling rate. Many years actually not too long ago about 10, 15 years ago the city's residential recycling rate was about 3% and abysmal 3%. And over the past 10 years with the council's leadership and City Manager Scully's leadership the city has moved to a 30% recycling rate. So we've gone from 3% to 30% in about 10 years and those are from three primary causes. One is we converted our manual collection system to an automated collection system that is commonplace today in our community with the two or three carts that we see out there, the blue, the brown and the green. Secondly we improved our brush collection services to include separating brush from bulky and our 4-time a year brush bulky pickup cycles. And we also made improvements at our brush recycling centers and actually added the second one on the south side in City Council District 4 to encourage residents to have the brush recycled instead of thrown into the landfill. A key note is that it does cost us, it costs you and me money to throw stuff into the landfill. However in recycling we actually make money. So we make money to place stuff in the blue carts and when we recycle our brush the city makes dollars, it costs less to the customer. When we place stuff in the landfill that's when it costs money. And so the goal is to bring down our financial burden to the customer or to the resident but also improve our quality of life, our environment. And so while we're at the 30% mark as you can see in this graph today by doing what we have done so far to take us to that next level all the way up to the 60% we know and the industry knows that the only way you're going to move the consumer is by financial incentive. And so the proposal that we showed the City Council last year and that was approved as part of this year's budget was to change the cost for throwing away garbage with a pay-as-you-throw system. And so you can see in the right of that graph we will be introducing three cart, three brown cart sizes to the customer. The current 96 gallon, the biggest cart that we have today, a medium sized cart of 64 gallons and then a smaller cart of 48 gallons. And over time as you can see in the bottom of that graph by having a greater price differential between the smallest cart and the largest cart, that will incentivize the customer to source, separate more at the home, put more stuff in the blue cart and place more stuff in the green cart. If they want to continue to have the larger cart and not source, separate, not recycling then they would pay more per month for that larger cart. This fee of this utility, if you will, the solid waste utility is we're trying to move it towards a typical or traditional utility to where the more you use, the more you pay. So in our water utilities or in our electric utility, the more the customer use is today, the more they pay. Similarly in garbage, the more they throw away, the more they would pay in the future. Just to remind you, Council did approve in this current year budget dollars to begin this program. And so we're underway, we're underway from a staff perspective and developing materials that will be shared with our customers beginning in October 1. They're actually sooner. And we're on our way with buying carts. The City Council approved in the recent City Council agenda the purchase of additional cart sizes. We also have to buy additional trucks as there'll be another route to pick up the green cans. So that has been underway. We know that we have some new Council members. We wanted to make sure you're aware of that today. Our rollout begins on October, this coming October with the first 30,000 customers and I'll show you a map in a moment. But what that does mean is that in July, 30,000 of our customers will begin to receive literature in the mail and begin to have communication with our solid waste staff about the transition to this page you throw system. 30,000 customers, I'll show you the map. It's primarily in our northern districts as that is where the highest green recycling rate is taking place today. But it touches every City Council district here in that fiscal year. All residential customers will be converted to this page you throw system over a two year period then beginning this October through the fiscal year 2016. And then the remaining 170,000 would be in 2017. A total of 190,000 will be in this first fiscal year coming up. This table here does show you that while we talk as you throw for many customers if they choose in this next coming fiscal year, the bill could actually go down by 50 cents. And if they choose a medium sized cart, the bill would remain exactly the same. And so for those families, for the 190 families that will be converted to the page you throw, if they choose to not so separate, not use the green can or the provided blue can, then their bill would go up by $1.25 by design. And so the goal in this page you throw system is to have a price differential between the smallest cart and the largest cart that encourages the customer to change their mind, change their habits and recycle more. And so the price difference between the smallest cart as you can see under the 2016 column and the largest cart is $1.25 and that is specifically by design to encourage and incentivize more recycling. And you'll note in 2017 for those remaining 170,000 customers, the bill before they convert would be 2093. If they choose to have a smaller cart, the bill would actually go down. And so for our senior population over the years, this is great news. We know that seniors don't throw a lot of material away, either in the blue or the green or the brown carts. They may be by themselves at this point. So that big 96 gallon can is probably only a 10% full at any given week. And they're praying though for everybody else to throw away a lot. And so their bills will actually go down. The price differential in 2017 between the smallest cart and the largest cart by design is growing. That would be a $3.50 difference. And so the goal of doing this is a city council approved policy, which is to get our recycling rate to 60%. And we see across the nation and our industry experts tell us the only way you can really do that after you reach the point we're at is through financial incentive. This map shows you two colors, the green there on the top of the chart. A city map, I should say. You may see some inner city neighborhoods as well, though you can see there in the south west area. All those green areas will be converted beginning October with the first 30,000 customers and then through the fiscal year the rest will be converted. And then the orange color is the remaining 170,000 approximately customers that will be converted to pay as you throw. Okay, so that is our first utility. The second utility I'm going to talk to you about also funded through a fee and our monthly bill to the customer is our stormwater utility. And we know that with all the rain we have had over recent months. This is a very important utility. What this utility does for the city is it manages the quality of our stormwater that runs off from our driveways and our rooftops. It manages the quality of that through several different ways. One, through street sweeping in our neighborhoods, having clean streets in our neighborhoods and communities means less debris and material running off into important stormwater. It's also a critical program to manage our infrastructure system that we have, both our concrete drainage systems and our earthen channels. It is a $41 million program, our stormwater utility. It does have about six citywide programs, some of which I've mentioned already. And we also use these dollars to improve water quality that we are mandated to do so by state and federal permits that we hold. And so one of the things that we have worked with the council on in the community is moving this utility to a true utility. Today, the fee is just based on lot size and land use. So it's not based on how much runoff is caused from a particular property. And in the budget last year we developed, actually I should go back a couple of years ago, in 2012 we were recommending a rate increase in this fee to improve our systems that we have. Our stormwater systems, both earthen channel maintenance and concrete channels. We know that we build a lot of these in the bond programs, but over time the concrete breaks. The earthen channel fills in with debris and it needs to be cleared. And so at this point, this fund has not had a rate increase in many years. And the effect is that our system, our stormwater system of concrete and earthen channels is deteriorating. And so we did recommend a rate increase using the old methodology. But then in 2012 the council said, don't do that. Let's figure out a different methodology to build customers because we're getting a lot of feedback that the current rate structure is not fair. It's not set up fairly. And through doing that analysis, we did realize what we knew then, but we realized more so that most major cities in Texas have gone to this impervious cover billing method. And in fact, most cities across the country are now using this method. And so we developed that. We began to talk to the council about it last year, but a lot of stakeholders wanted more time to evaluate it. They had concerns about some of the rate shock and some of the largest landowners. And so we have spent the last year re-evaluating that rate model. And we have worked with our stakeholders to achieve some consensus with them to include, as an example, the greater chamber. Richard Pérez and his team. There's a subcommittee that are supportive of the new methodology that we have come up with, as well as you may have heard at the north chamber luncheon with the mayor a few weeks ago. They are very supportive of the new fee structure that has been developed. It's not new, but it's been modified slightly. And I'll show you what that means. Some key takeaways, though, for this fee is that most residential accounts, your customers and our customers, their bill will remain about the same as they're paying today for what, all is in 25 cents. For commercial accounts, there will be a tiered fee as there was a year ago, but all commercial accounts will pay a base fee. And then they'll have an additional fee based on the amount of impervious cover. And then a third thing we have done to reach consensus with the stakeholders and the school districts. We have agreed with all 17 or so school districts in the city that we will freeze their rates to their current rate that they're paying today. And that's to help them get on board with the program. We'll give them time to budget additional funds. And so this shows us a snapshot of the current fee structure and the proposed. We'll be talking to you more about this in the budget as well. But today, if you look at the current fee structure and we look at the two different types of rate payers as the residential and there's the commercial account. There's two tiers in our residential account and that bill is from $3.20 to 4.25. The majority today, 90% of our customers are paying the 4.25. What the new fee would show us moving to the right is that there'll be three tiers based on impervious, the amount of impervious cover that a homeowner has. And so for about 25% of our residential customers out there, they have larger homes, larger rooftops, more driveway. So more impervious cover, which causes more runoff into the system. And so they would pay more. They would pay that 8.85. However, 75% would pay $4.25 or less. And so we should not hear too much from our residential accounts about price shock or major increases. Only 25% of our customers will pay that 8.85. On the commercial side, this is where the city council really a couple of years ago had great consternation. There's many tiers. There's 13 tiers today. And there was a ceiling of a maximum of $342. And that has been revised now to have four classes of four tiers of billing with a fee of $50 a month to a maximum of $1,000 for most of the accounts. There are, as you can note in the chart, about 19 accounts that'll pay more than that $1,000. And these are the ones that we have heard a lot from over the past year. And so what we're doing here, you have as well maybe to include USAA, SeaWorld as an example, but we've worked with them on this modification to have a base fee that everybody pays, and then an additional fee based on your size of lot. And our stakeholders are in agreement that this is a much better rate methodology than we have had before. So with that, that concludes my portion of the presentation. We're going to have Lori Houston finish up with some Alamo discussion. Good morning. The county has been working on a comprehensive master plan for the Alamo since June of 2014. City Council created an Alamo Plaza Advisory Committee to oversee the redevelopment of the area to include the creation of a vision and guiding principle. The vision and guiding principles were approved by Council in December of 2014. And then city staff, since that has been working with the State of Texas on a partnership, we'll be issuing, we already issued an RFQ that will create a joint master plan for the redevelopment of the Alamo complex, the Alamo Plaza and the surrounding area. The State of Texas owns that 4.2 acre area, which is the Alamo complex area behind the low barracks to include the chapel and the ground. The City of San Antonio owns the 1.1 acre area, which is known as the Alamo Plaza. And then there's about 30 acres surrounding that area that are really important to the redevelopment of the Alamo Plaza and the surrounding area. So the boundary of the master plan is 37 acres. As you can see, it includes the Alamo and then the Alamo Plaza and then the area around it. So the City of San Antonio issued a joint request for qualifications that will result in a joint master planning effort that will master plan that entire area. The master plan must follow the vision and guiding principles that the Alamo Plaza Advisory Committee created, which really focuses on creating a place for both locals and tourists, and also telling all the stories that occurred at the Alamo to include the Battle of the Alamo, which happened in 1836, but also the establishment of our city and also interpret all of the cultures that have taken place in that area. The guiding principles for the area focus on first, you know, using the Battle of 1836 as the portal to tell the story of the entire area and also work on creation of a unified leadership that manages the Alamo Plaza and the complex, preservation and interpretation of the area and all the stories, embracing the intellectual, experiential and physical accessibility of the area, and then provide balance, making sure that we're telling all the story and looking at both the historical context, the folklore and the myth to provide a great experience for our visitors and then embrace the continuum of history. You know, the Alamo was a mission and it was established in the early 1700s, and so we have the mission area, we have the Battle of the Alamo that occurred in 1836, and then the urbanization of the city which occurred around the Alamo. We need to tell all of those stories and make sure that we interpret it and connect it so people can understand what happened. We can actually memorialize the area and also find the area. So we want to make sure that we are connecting the Alamo complex through great wayfinding and connectivity to our river, our neighborhoods, the cathedral and other areas in the downtown. The comprehensive master plan will, one, include a physical master plan of the area, what improvements need to take place in the Alamo and the surrounding area, two, an interpretation master plan. So how do we interpret the history and what are the means and methods we use to interpret the history? So we can do it through tours, social media and then also the signage that you typically see in these sites. And then the implementation plan, what tools do we need to implement the master plan?  So the comprehensive master plan will address all of these issues. And as I mentioned earlier, this is a partnership with the state of Texas. And so the next steps include city staff bringing forward new city council in August and interlocal agreement between the city and the general land office that identifies the roles and responsibilities of each party as we go through this master planning effort. And at that same meeting we'll be bringing forward a professional services contract for the master plan team. That will occur in August and then immediately after that action, the master plan team will begin their master planning effort which will be a very public and transparent process and we'll bring that back to city council for adoption in June as well as bring it forward to the state for their adoption. And that concludes my presentation. Well that's that. We're just a few minutes behind schedule. That concludes the staff presentations. Hopefully that was helpful. A lot to digest, a lot to process. I'm sure you made a lot, took a lot of notes to ask a lot of questions. So we're just running a few minutes behind but wanted to go ahead and see if the group wants to take a quick break. A bio break. Right. Alright, let's do that. Let's take 10 minutes. Is that good? Be back in 10 minutes. Thank you.


So welcome to my presentation, Fire, Water, Mountain, on Ritual Sides on High Alpine Lakeshores. I will start with the results of excavations from the years 2016 to 2018 at Lake Alcus, where black charcoal-rich layers indicate a ritual site for burnt offering. Based on these examples and other similar sites on lakeshores in the Alpine region, I want to discuss the small part of the general phenomenon of Alpine brandopfer bletze. After this, I will finish with food for thought about natural places as ritual sites. The area under study is in the region of the Hohendauern mountain range in the eastern part of the Alcs. Lake Alcus is a high Alpine lake at 2,400 meters altitude. It is surrounded by mountain peaks over topping the lake, the highest of them above 3,000 meters altitude. Excess is possible from the Isle Valley or above mountain reaches. It is part of a high mountainous landscape, also including plateaus and another lake. Archaeological work has been carried out in this area since 2006. The project led by Harald Stadler of the Department of Archaeologies at the University of Innsbruck investigates the use of high Alpine sites from Alpine grazing to aspects of ritual covering a time span of 4,000 years. I'm writing my master thesis on the results of the excavation work. On the timeline, some findings of surveys using metal detectors are pictured ranging from a Bronze Age dagger blade and a pin with a spherical head to Roman imperial age fibula and beer heads to medieval horseshoes and modern small finds. The sacrificial site is located on the southern shore of the lake on a small hill. The view is directed to the water as the lake is surrounded by mountains on three sides and facing the valley. There is a large rounded up boulder locking the view and closing in the site. Two hills and their flanks reaching to the shore of the lake were examined in more detail. While on the eastern one named Structure 6 only a few pieces of pottery could be found the western one named as Structure 5 seems to be the main ritual site. Two trenches on the top of the hill brought to light layers of stones and charcoal. In the cross section a shallow pit is visible I've marked it on the presentation. Here the mass of coal and stones are piled up. In this area small pieces of cultivated bones are scattered. Calcinating is a process happening when the collagen inside the bone is burned out in great heat and only the white calcium is left. This kind of find appears regularly at similar sites and is interpreted as indicator for bloody sacrifices. The red and yellow points in the layout plan indicate Roman period finds in this area but more of them later. The green dots indicate pieces of ceramic. The only diagnostic pieces found from this trench are pictured on the left hand side three pieces of a reddish pottery with a nub. On the northern side of the hill facing Lake Alkus a single layer of stone slabs surrounded by soil mixed with charcoal could be indicated. Here different phases can be traced. The first phase is constituted by charcoal rich soil mixed with shirts of chucks and pots. The burnt residue seemed to be washed downwards the hillside coming from the top of the hill. This is implied by the pattern of the shirts that follow a depression in the hillside as the red dots illustrate. Also rounded up fractures and slurred decoration indicate a secondary relocation of the shirts I've pictured some of them on the presentation. The area had been covered up with stones as it is visible in the picture. Above this layer single pieces of ceramic could be found. The stones are partially altered through heat so similar fires, smaller fires can be assumed also on the hillside in the later phase. The ceramic found on this side consists of shirt of Lauging pottery dating to the late Bronze Age from 1200 to 1000 BC. Most prominent are pieces from richly decorated chucks and pots as you can see. A second activity phase is visible through simple Polish bowls. They find parallels to early Iron Age sites dating to the 8th century BC. Surveys using metal detectors showed 16 free bullets from late Latin to Roman period together with shoe nails. Shirts of a single pot seem to be buried at the top of the hill. The fibula range from middle Latin type a widespread type which was in use between the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD to Roman period types of fibula which are quite common in the area and the large soldiers fibula you can see the large one on the top. Two fibula from the crusader type reached to the 4th century AD. The wider area is embedded in a cultural landscape used from the Bronze Age onwards. The Plato-Bocce Bowl is approached on a path to Lake Alcus. Here a second votive site had been excavated. I have marched it with a star. A dating to late Bronze Age or early Iron Age time is suggested here for the older phase. In the second phase from latest Latin to Roman period from the 1st century BC to the 2nd century AD the site is visited again. The rites include activities for fire as also here root charcoal and pieces of lint and quartite indicate they were used for fire striking. In the second phase the still visible stone structure of the earlier sacrificial site might have been appreciated by the people visiting the area. These people came as shepherds as a hut connected to bends in the central area of the high plateau indicates. It could be identified as a late Latin to early Roman period shepherds hut with is dated through dendrodating in a period of 80 to 40 BC. Similar sites can be found in the eastern central region of the Alps as well as one at Lac des Sarniers in the western Alps. Well, the sites at Lakeshores in the central Alps have a focus on the late Bronze Age period Lauguen A from 1,000 to 200 to 1,000 BC at Lac des Sarniers see 14 dates indicate human presence at the top of an artificial mound between 800 to 500 BC. Well, the main focus is here in the late Latin period. At Lac des Sarniers pits contain charcoal rich material and pottery shirt. One of them is covered up with stones. A mapping of late Bronze Age burnt sacrificial sites beginning in the last quarter of the second millennial BC shows a concentration of sites in the central Alps from the southern Alps to the Alpine foothills. These sites of roti fires are characterized by residues from fire. Objects interpreted as offerings and calcinated bones creating the phenomenon of brandopfer bletze.  Additional offering like field crops, offering of fluids, fruits and incenses can also be assumed. Brandopfer bletze occur from later early Bronze Age around 1,700 BC onwards to Iron Age. Some even going past Roman occupation to the 3rd century AD with small finds like coins. Many of the sites interpreted as a brandopfer bletze are topographical outstanding positions. One possibility is on the shore of high Alpine lakes and five such lakes matching finds are known. At the Schwarzsee in Philandus, three smaller lakes lay on a high mountain plain. At the shore of one of them, a layer with charcoal as well as paving made from stones with phrases of heat could be documented. Calcinated bones deriving mostly from sheep and goats, body parts with little meat are represented over proportionally. Pieces of pottery were spread in the area. Partially, they could be reassembled to hold pots and jars. The most common type of pottery also are these pots and jars from the Laun type and one needle and pieces of slag complete the votives. The site has been visited with interruptions from the 13th century BC to the 8th or 7th century BC. In an area with rich ore deposits, a Bronze Age smelting site is nearby. The pieces of slag might indicate a connection. The Grubensee is on a high plateau on 2,400 meters altitude. It is surrounded by mountain peaks that limit the view. A layer of burnt residues is covered by stone slabs, which is dated by pieces of late Bronze Age pottery of the Laugen Age type, mostly pots, jugs, and bowls. Marks of calcinated bones are found in the younger Iron Age phase. A needle dating to the 12th century BC had be found deposited one meter away from the lake. A single Chateau Saphibula dates to the second half of the 5th to the start of the 4th century BC. Stray metal finds around the ring of stone. Maybe an Iron Age burning altar started the 2nd century BC. From a high plateau nearby, structures from the 9th century onwards indicate alpine pasturing. The site at Schölberg-Göger is notable for the preserved wooden shovels. More than hundreds of those were detected in a boggy ground. They date to the 9th to 6th century BC, a still visible mound in the area would have overlooked the now-sealeded up lake. On this mound, oval pits are filled up with charcoal-rich material and covered up with stones. Here, pieces of pottery from the type Laugen Age and a needle had been found. Activities in the area date from 1200 to 500 BC. From Lake Anwas, only stray finds are known. On the southeast shore of the lake, a tip with strewn ceramic had been discovered. Some pieces show characteristics of Laugen-Mellon type pottery. You can see them. Without further excavations, a sacrificial site can't be stated with any certainty as not all characteristics of a brand-of-a-blood are matched. But the location of this type of pottery in 2500 meters altitude is quite suspicious. At Lake Sand, the holy lake, a small mound at the southern shore of the lake or traces of charcoal, the ceramic points also to Lake Bronze Age here. Some pieces may also have an early Iron Age date. One needle can only be dated to Bronze Age. The other one is Lake Bronze Age. Lake Sand lays on a pathway to a mountain top called Peak where ceramics from Lake Bronze Age to early Iron Age had been found.  All share the appearance of ceramic of the type Laugen-A with an emphasis on chucks and pots. Those delicately decorated Laugen-Chucks are sometimes interpreted as sacred due to their characteristic knobs also as feminine, a topic that demands further discussion. In the valley, they are also found in settlements while transport of the delicate vessels in high-altitudinal sites for practical use is at least an economic. The ritual is taking place at an outstanding location at the margins of the cultivated land. All lakes mentioned are only accessible through our limited time of the year. As the pictures of Lake Alcos demonstrate, they have changing expressions. Maybe I'll go back so you'll see them better. With different weather and seasons, the sites themselves are simple, often only small mounds archeologically. The rights taking place can be proved only by the remains of activity as the charcoal layers and the shirts of pottery. The sites at high alpine lakeshores bring together the aspect of water, often connected to the idea of a doorway to an underworld and mountainous sites seen as their ways to heaven. In the combination of both aspects, they express a double liminality with a filter enforced by the effect of fire and the burial of remains under stones. Central actions of the cult seems to be the actions that take place during the ritual, like the burning fire, the objects and animals that are brought from the valley and above all the place itself. Thank you for your attention and I'm looking forward to the discussion panel and further questions.