I will call Tuesday, October, February 6th, 2024 meeting to order. Before we head into our agenda, I'm going to ask Chief Jim Davis to join us at the podium and give us an update on our firefighters. Good afternoon, Mayor Parker, members, council, Mr. Cook, Jim Davis, the fire chief. It's been a long morning and with a heavy heart, I stand here to tell you that little after 2.30 this morning, there was a report of a house on fire in southeast Fort Worth. And the first arriving fire companies on the scene found fire coming from this home.  Four firefighters were transported to two hospitals, JPS and Harris, downtown. They, two of them have been discharged, two of them remain hospitalized. The families are with them, the four fire departments with them. There have been injuries that range from strains and sprains to fractures. And there is one firefighter who is in the intensive care unit, JPS, in critical condition. Our thoughts and prayers are with him, I have to tell you, I am so pleasantly pleased to tell you the love and support that we've received today throughout the Fort Worth community and I cannot thank the community enough for that. There's a lot of people to thank so far today too outside of the community. There's the police, the accident still under investigation, Chief Noakes and his team obviously are leading that. We will cooperate fully in that to figure out the events that happened and how this occurred. The police were incredibly helpful getting this member's family to JPS, they came from out of town and they were met at the city limits to make sure that they didn't get lost getting the hospital and I want to thank Chief Noakes for that and his team. The folks at MedStar, the folks from CareFlight, the amazing work and the amazing staff at JPS both in the emergency department and the intensive care unit, the trauma team there, the folks over at Harris. So there's a lot of people to thank, there's a lot of blessings to have today but I ask that you keep our department and these four folks and their families and your thoughts and prayers and as I say to you, one of them is really in a fight right now. So with that I will answer any questions that you have and I am prepared to give you the best of the information I have at the moment. Thank you Chief. Council, any questions for Chief Davis? Mayor Pratim? Yeah, I don't have any questions but Chief, when we heard this, the entire city was on alarm because the firefighters are the ones we call when there's a problem. Have you heard about the house in terms of the house? My question is to you Chief. Yes ma'am, I'm sorry. He's switching mics. Okay. Switching mics. That is a better one. What about the conditions of the people in the house that initiated the call in the first place? Yes, it's my understanding council member that there are no other injuries that were, no one else was transported and there are no other injuries. So it's my understanding that they are okay, they're fine. And what about family members who might need to stay overnight? Are we assisting, instructing in any kind of way? So two avenues are being dealt with as the situation in the morning transpired, we put together an incident management team, we put a small team together and met, put them in the emergency operation center so we could make sure that city leadership and police and fire and everybody was at the table figuring out what needed to be taken care of. And that included getting family here and making sure that arrangements were taken care of for them to be moved around the city and hotel accommodations if necessary. They have children, you know, they have animals that they had to bring because they're coming for several days from out of town. So we've had to manage that. So that's, that is one thing. And then, and then, you know, no good relationship. I can't stand in front of you without saying something positive about local 440 and their support of not just their member, but their, their appreciation and their support for the hospital staff and, you know, things that they're trying to do to show their appreciation through meals and things like that for the staff that are actually working hard to take care of our folks. So I do think we have those two things covered and we have them cover from two different angles to a very positive labor management relationship. Yes, ma'am. Council, any other questions? Chief, thank you very much. We know you have not slept yet. And so our blessings and prayers to your entire department and special thanks to JPS and THR Harris, of course, as well and that trauma team that responded. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you very much, chief. And council, I have a feeling our media friends may follow chief Davis out because we don't ask questions from you. Then they're all go. There's the queue. We'll let them move on to their next destination before we continue with the agenda. David, if you want to try to move into our agenda, turn it over to you. Thank you. All right. If you have one employee recognition, let me call on Mark McDaniel to recognize one of our department heads. Thank you, David. Good afternoon, mayor and council. So it's my pleasure to share with you some great news about one of our city executives here at the city of Fort Worth. So there's a group called Scoop News Group that they're a leading public sector tech company with over one million subscribers. And since 2023, they have listed what they call their Golden Gov awards for city executives of the year. There were over 200 leaders nominated nationwide and that narrowed down to 100 and then narrowed down just a very few. And so they recognized leaders and cities and counties from 16 states. And our own Kevin Gunn has been bestowed with this award and we want to just congratulate Kevin for this recognition. Thank you. I appreciate that, Mark. And I know we got a full agenda, so I'll keep my remarks brief. It is really an honor and humbling to be recognized in this way. And it's primarily from our work on neighborhood Wi-Fi and broadband access and affordability in our community. It is really hard for an individual to accomplish much in public policy and public work. There is a team, a huge team of individuals behind me, including my departmental staff, my executive team, city manager's office, including Valerie Washington, who helped me along the way. And of course, this body, mayor and council, you have supported me and the use and leverage of technology and our operations and in the governing process since I've been here, which is almost 10 years now. So I thank you and I look forward to doing more great work with you all. Congratulations, Kevin. Good job. Turning to informal reports, we have only five today. The first one is on the, I just jinxed it, I think, with that. We have five. The first one is the city's use of external consultants and auditors. Enjoying gun is available. 30 questions. Macy, I just have a comment. Thank you for pulling this together. I appreciate it, especially as a newbie on city council, it's helpful to understand where we spend our money and why we spend our money and especially when we are outside of our expertise. So thank you. Thank you. The next informal report is on the Fort Worth Employee Retirement Fund, the actual aerial impact of proposed assumptions and Linda Webb and Deanna Giordano available if there are any questions. There's also a presentation coming. The third informal report is on the mayor's community workshops and the 2023 neighborhood awards and Michelle Goote is available if there are any questions. I think for the sake of the public, we need to hear a presentation. This is a real big deal every year. Michelle. Thank you, mayor and council. We're really excited that after COVID came around, we didn't have the event one year and then we split it because attendance was smaller and we wanted to let people be distanced. So we're really excited to get back to having our large event with the workshops and the awards all in the same day. So far we have 70 people registered. It's only been open for about a week and a half. So we're going to hope that you share it with the neighborhood so that we can get more people to come and we're excited about the awards. We'll know who the finalists are tomorrow and I'll share that list with you. Are there any specific questions? Oh, for the workshops this year, what we did is we surveyed all of the neighborhood leaders and asked them what topics they were interested in. So that's how we came up with the list of workshops and we will be offering them in English and Spanish for every session. Mayor, I'll just add for those of you who have not attended this, people take these things real serious when they don't get first place. They're mad. But what we try to do is get them to come back with a better presentation. So it's a real fun event and neighborhood associations and HOAs are very important to the way the city operates. And so if you have a district and you don't have people who are involved in neighborhood associations or HOAs, I encourage you to try to get them together. So that we can. It's the best way to get your messages to the people. And Michelle, if you send those to Carlos and I in JPEG, we're the ones who always ask for that. We'll get it out right away. And I think the others would like it as well. So if you can do that, I'll get it out. And I would encourage you, if you know of an organization or a group of people who are thinking about starting a neighborhood association or an HOA, please have them come to this because it would be a really good opportunity for them to get a lot of information in one place about the things that they can do if they get organized in their neighborhoods. So thank you for helping to spread the word. I'll let Lilby know. Council member Nettles. Is nominations a nomination still going or has it already closed? They were closed and we had them opened longer this year than we ever have before to allow more people to to apply. And we also did our in it to win it workshops where we met with people who were interested in submitting awards and gave them tips on how to do their applications. And so we had a lot of people respond to that. And we know the finalists tomorrow. They're being judged by community engagement staff from other cities so that it's totally impartial. What is the normal time when the nominations are open? So for the public to know. In the past we've had them open for a month. And this year we actually had them opened about two and a half months because I think people had gotten out of the practice. Oh, the time of year. November, December. OK. And we do that because our neighborhood of the year actually goes to a national competition with Neighborhood USA. And we have to have that application in by the end of this week. Thank you, Michelle. Our next infomer report is on protesting a T ABC license or permit application. And Melinda Ramos is available if there are any questions. No questions for say, but Melinda, if you can just kind of step this through. I think that I forget who originally asked for this IR. I had dovetailed and asked also to include any other information. For example, considerations of limitations, you know, on near child care facilities. Yes, if you could. So I'm sorry, Councilman Flores, do you want me to just speak to the child care? Did you want me to to go through the protest process for a council?  So what this IR explains is the protest process that members of the public can go through to protest a permit or license, although they are limited to the four that are in the IR or what a council member as a government official. The city attorney is also a government official. The category of what they can protest is much broader. It's any original permit or license or renewal of a permit or license. And kind of there's elements that TABC sets out that have to be met in order to file, have a valid protest. One of the most important ones is that you have a jurisdictional item that TABC can address. And so examples of jurisdictional items under TABC are those that kind of are within their, within their purview and that they are able to address if somebody has violated a TABC permit prior to. There are other issues related to parking, related to noise, whether there's a argument that the public believes that it depresses economic values. Those are not within TABC's control. So those don't meet the requirements of a valid permit for TABC. So they wouldn't pursue that kind of an issue as a permit issue. They would transfer it over to their complaint division. So there's a certain timeline that both the public and government officials have in order to meet to file a protest. It's generally 60 days before that permit has been filed or once it's gets posted up on TABC's website, then you have 15 days after that time that it's posted on their website. You had a previous IR a couple of weeks ago that explained the process now when somebody comes in and gets certification from the city secretary's office as to the wet dry status, the zoning and the distance from a church, school or hospital. They have worked with development services to put a process in place through a cell that would then send out a notice to all of the council members and the mayor of where the location is and what's being requested to give you an opportunity to decide if that is something that you all want to protest. What I encourage you to do is get in touch with the city attorney's office and we will help you through that process. With regards to child care, the TBC does allow municipalities to also include child care facilities as a measurement of distance to. You had an IR related to that earlier last year and there are some considerations for the council to think about it is you would have to think of where you allow child care facilities and how you want to measure that distance to it would still be 300 feet, but you would tend to probably see more variances than you do now because it includes any kind of alcohol sales. So from a restaurant, from a pack of store, convenience store, anything, I think you might find those that are going to be in closer proximity. But if that's something you want us to bring back more information on, we can do that again. And again, at the time, you think that there's an anticipated increase in the amount of cases? I would anticipate based on where, just thinking about my own neighborhood where I know there are child care facilities and where there are grocery stores that sell alcohol, where there are restaurants in proximity to that you would see kind of more requests for variances on that basis. And probably maybe more prevalent where you have mixed use developments? It could be, depending on where the child care facilities are. OK. Thank you, Melinda. Thank you, Melinda. No, real question. Sorry, Mayor. The 300 is not linear. What's the terminology in the case law that when we went through this, I think it might be the council to understand that. Right. The measurement distance is from property line to property line across the straight line. So we can cross different properties. For a church, it is from a church and hospital, church it's door to door. And I can't remember hospital because we don't get that one too often. But for a church, it's door to door. And the door is where the public has access into the sanctuary or into the church itself. So it can't be like a back door of a church. That's where the public actually enters. Any other questions, council? Thanks, Melinda. Thank you. Thank you. The final informer report is on a Vision Zero update in Chelsea, St. Louis and Kelly Porter are available if there are any questions. I'd like to have staff the opportunity to kind of run that through because it's been a few years that have gone by before this council first heard about it. And we have several new members on council now that maybe for the first time I hear about Vision Zero. So if y'all can bring us up to date, maybe, you know, compare what has changed with the original Vision Zero and where we're at now. OK. Thank you, Mayor and Council. So the IR really documents our journey to where we are today. Back in 2019, City Council memorialized its support for Vision Zero as a concept. And within that resolution that was adopted, Council supported the idea of eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries as well as supported us moving forward developing a strategy. And so that's the point where we are right now is developing a strategy. Of course, with the timing of the pandemic, that complicated development of a full scale plan, especially since Vision Zero action plans typically have a very robust public outreach component to it. And but even with the pandemic occurring, we haven't rested on our laurels. We have focused on taking steps to address traffic safety within the city. And we've been listening to the public. We receive over 1,000 requests related to traffic safety every single year. As part of this Vision Zero action plan, part of what we're going to be doing is addressing these speeding concerns from a policy perspective. We always get requests from residents saying, we want our speeds reduced, but within our existing framework from state law as well as our policy, we aren't able to do that in the way that residents want us to at this point. So right now, we're going to be exploring what best practices are across different cities and determining what the appropriate methodology is for us to reach a real resolution for the city of Fort Worth. And again, also with truck traffic, we get lots of requests related to truck traffic, safety around schools, pedestrian safety specifically. We've had some pedestrian fatalities in the city that we've invested infrastructure to address and prevent fatalities from happening in the future in those areas. So really, in culmination, the table that you see in the back of the IR really documents what we've been doing since 2019 to address traffic safety in the city. And one thing that I will say about Vision Zero, it is a very aspirational goal, but I don't want the public to get as caught up in the name. Vision Zero is important, but it really just talks about refocusing work that we already do in the city. So we didn't just start addressing traffic safety, it's always been foremost a priority for us in transportation and public works and we'll continue to do so. Vision Zero just gives us additional tools to do that work and be more outcome oriented moving forward. And I think Kelly can address the long range plan. I mean, we do have some of the, so one thing that came along with this work to kind of formalize it is that transportation management developed a high-endury network. And so that high-endury network, which includes vehicles, pedestrians and bicycles, there's three different networks and the overall one that was used to help justify getting the federal grant for the Vision Zero Safety Action Plan. And so that's been one leap forward that'll help us make this more of a formalized coalesced effort and that'll feed into our actual like how we actually think about capital projects and programming for these things. That's gonna feed into a bigger effort that you see in here, which is that master transportation plan that we'll be working on. We really wanna make sure safety's first as part of that. And so we just look at Vision Zero as Chelsea said is really continuing a lot of the work that we've already done, but it gives it more of a brand and also gives it more of a formalized process to go through. Thank you, Kelly. Oh, not really a question, but just a comment. I believe in giving folks flowers while they're here. And so I just wanna say thank you. I've seen the fruits of y'all's labor in many ways from Rising Road to Summer Creek, McPherson, Columbus Trail, McCart, if I keep going, a resident's gonna want me to say their road, but I've truly seen y'all just invest a great amount of time and got a lot of great things done through this framework. And I know that there's much more to do. And so thank y'all for y'all's commitment to your work. Y'all are best in the business and I'm glad y'all are serving our residents. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So for us. Just to follow up with this, what triggered me to ask for the update was at the last NLC and in walking around the exhibit hall, I had a chat with some General Motors engineers and they were having a Vision Zero booth. And so that's why I stopped, talked to them, chatted with them and they talked about the technology that they're putting into their vehicles to try to minimize accidents, right? Not an entirely taking away the human factor because that's where a lot of the accidents come, but trying to minimize that. And so I know that you had said, well, this is an aspirational goal. Yes, it's a namesake. The idea behind it all is just trying to reduce the likelihood of accidents occurring. So are we doing, we being the city, any collaborations with General Motors or any other auto manufacturers in this regard? Are you getting at like the safety features on the cars?  I wouldn't say formally that Chelsea has done anything or I've done anything specifically with the manufacturers per se, but through some of like our federal grant efforts, some of our work through COG, it interfaces with different manufacturers of different types of vehicles, whether it's air or on ground. A lot of that really folds more to just how we, and I think to your point, how we're gonna deal with technology and especially start talking about autonomous technology and how that's actually gonna play into how effective that's gonna be at safeguarding folks on the roads and being able to read different users on the roads or whatnot. That's something that as we're engaging this work, we're gonna get more in depth. I think there'll be more opportunities to engage, we'll say subject matter experts on those particular topics with our fleet because there's still quite a bit of unknown specifically around autonomous vehicle technology and how that's gonna actually impact safety. We know it's gonna make the road safer, but to your point, how foolproof will it be? And I think our approach is gonna not only be to look at the behavioral change of the human driving the vehicle and then also the technology of the vehicle itself and incorporating it into what we're doing, but also thinking about the design of our network. And that's a lot of what we wanna play into because it's not just the vehicle they're in, it's also the signal that it's communicating with and other things. Okay, and then a couple of other questions. I know in 2023 initiated the development of the dashboard. What's the ETA on that? Which I'll see to give that one. So we actually initiated that effort in partnership with the IT department. So that's another not IT. They finished the first phase of developing that dashboard for us. Right now we're working on an agreement with TTI to help us on the data integrity piece of it. So as we're moving forward with developing our new high-endury network with new crash data, we'll be working with TTI to make sure that the quality of the data that we're feeding into that dashboard is accurate and the public as well as our policy makers and stakeholders have real information that they can use to educate them on our projects. Not putting words in your mouth, but next year, next couple of years? Over the next year. So we will be kicking off the action plan as well as the comprehensive master transportation plan within the next month. We envision that the draft high-endury network should be finished within maybe three months of starting that process. And so probably within the next six months, I think we'd have an opportunity to actually go live with the dashboard once we've worked through the data piece. Okay, then my final question. I don't know if this even applies, but could Vision Zero at all help us expedite the process of inclusion of certain roads into the MTP? Kelly, I know you're reading me right now because we've had that discussion before. I'm just looking for ways that maybe we can expedite it on roadways to continue to present their challenges, especially when it comes to development. I can't use the term expedite council member, but I can't say prioritize. Safety would be a very high priority for us, and that ties back not only to probably city priorities, but also to our federal and state priority. Safety is always the number one goal, so absolutely. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Mayor, that concludes my report. Thank you, David. Okay, council, anything regarding changes in membership to boards of commissions, significant zoning cases, or the MNC log that's in your agenda? No? And we'll move straight to our first presentation on Alliance Texas Economic Impact, and Mike Berry, President of Philwood, is here to present. Hi, Mike. Mayor, how are you? Great, thank you. Council, thanks again for having me. Patricia was here earlier, she had to leave, but we were talking about this presentation, which I've worked with her on for a long time. We couldn't really remember how many years it's been, but she's been with the city for 33 years. I've been with Philwood for 35. Those early years of Alliance were a little slow, so I probably wasn't here that long ago, but I think we've been doing this now for well over 20 years, and it's become my favorite day of the year because fortunately it's been good news, certainly for the last decade or so. Thanks again for allowing me the opportunity, just for background for some of the council members who might not know the history. The original public-private partnership that was formed back in 1988 between the FAA, the city of Fort Worth, and Hillwood to build Alliance Airport involved public investment from both local, state, and federal governments, Fort Worth being the lead local agency because through your zoning and annexation of Alliance and the several thousand acres that became sort of the anchor of the platform, we really were able to do what we've done and had it not been for the Fort Worth vision going all the way back to Marabolan and the willingness to annex and zone all of that land, which by the way was the largest zoning annexation case in the history of the state of Texas at that time. May have been jumped over since then, but it was a big one. And so those sort of visionary moves by the city have allowed things to happen like they have, and so I'm pleased to share them with you here today. I'm gonna touch on the economic impact numbers. What we do every year is we have an economic consultant who updates the impact numbers every year. So this is a building program and it basically brings the 35 years from the beginning of the airport up to the present and gives you some cumulative numbers to look at. I'm gonna touch then quickly on some highlights from last year and then mention just our continued commitment to wanna grow our Hillwood platform and Fort Worth. So the big number is $120 billion of cumulative economic impact, which once again is the rollup of all those years. Last year alone, the economic impact number was almost $10 billion of that 120. So if you look at the growth that's occurred over the last six years, we're running, our economic impact growth is running at about an average of 10% a year, which you don't wanna hear inflation at 10% a year, but you would like to hear that number 10% a year. And if you look at the vector of that graph, it's only continuing to grow, thankfully. And I hope we can keep that up. Once you hit it's kind of a point it begins to grow organically. And we're starting to see real signs of that. With respect to just Fort Worth specific, we also measure property taxes that flow off of all of the properties that have been developed within the entire 27,000 acres, but within Fort Worth municipal boundaries, we've generated a total of $752 million cumulatively of abnormal taxes.  That's why those gross numbers are higher in the school districts. But here's a chart that I really have enjoyed looking at over the last few years. You can see that spike that's beginning to occur. And it's good news, bad news, because if you're paying property taxes, it's driven by a lot of things. But from the city standpoint, you wanna see that number continue to grow, and it is. There are a lot of other things growing as well. We're now up to 574 total companies inside the Alliance Texas platform, 66,198 direct jobs, and that doesn't include all the indirects that get generated off of those direct jobs. And almost 50 million square feet of space and Reed Getz is from Hillwood is sitting over there. He's responsible for growing that number and he's got a couple million square feet that he'll add to that this year. A few highlights from last year. The biggest one for me was the ribbon cutting for 35W3C, which was the section, as many of you know, from the 287 split on 35 all the way up to essentially the 114, but really to Eagle Parkway. We completed the construction of the express lanes and the improvement of all the free lanes. And if you drive out there, or if you have recently, hopefully you can feel the difference. It's still, you know, we've still got a lot of work to do. We're not through by any means 170. We're almost ready to open 170 up and then Hazlet Parkway is being built back to the West from 35 back all the way to 156 through Hazlet and there's some other major things still to be done but it's made a huge impact. Southwire was one of our, this wasn't the only deal we did last year, but it was certainly one of the bigger ones and it's a unique deal because they kept growing during the process. Started a million square feet, ended up at 1.2 million square feet and their state-of-the-art electric components for all things going on in the world of electrification and power. So we're excited about them and McMaster car out of Chicago, 100-year-old privately owned company and you all helped on that project. They are making a $360 million investment and they're just the greatest people. I know that many of you on the council had a chance to meet some of their principles and to have a true family, privately held business that's been around that long to put their regional headquarters here is just, it's great and it's a big project. The airport itself, Perot Field, which we renamed Perot Field, Fort Worth Alliance Airport last year. We had an unbelievable year. We reached the number 19th ranking in U.S. cargo operations, so we're the 19th in volume of cargo and we're the only non-passenger airport in the country that's in the top 20. So that's really a positive trend. We also, skipping over the far right, we did, and partly as a result or directly related to that, we had a record year in fuel sales. We sold over 5.2 million gallons of fuel last year and then in terms of a major corporate announcement on the airport, MTU, one of the largest engine manufacturing companies in the world, located a major presence there on Alliance in the old American maintenance base which the city actually owns, by the way. So we managed that facility for the city of Fort Worth and if you went out there and looked at it today, I mean it was quiet for a while but if you go look at it today, it is, the whole place is hopping. There's wide body jets all over the place. This engine facility is really creating more activity and it's finally, it took us a while to get it retooled, but it looks good now. Back to infrastructure, we're also working on sort of next generation infrastructure for Alliance. We call this the Alliance, Texas Smart Port Program and I mentioned 170, it's a big piece of it but then connecting the Burlington Northern Santa Fe and a modal hub and a lot of the freight that's moving through Alliance, connecting it more efficiently to the interstate and state highway system and using technology to manage that freight and then putting infrastructure in the ground to allow us to grow the freight that does move through Alliance is all part of this program and it's, I think this year you'll see some new activity around the Smart Port idea. A couple of key meetings that we've initiated over the years and have now become sort of staples of our whole effort to bring Fort Worth in the spotlight as a transportation and mobility innovation hub. The UPS Summit, which we hosted this fall brought leaders in really aviation and aviation innovation from around the world to the Circle T Ranch at Alliance and the exposure that we were able to get from that group of people was phenomenal and hopefully we get some business growth out of that and then next month we'll be hosting for the third year at the Drover and the Stockyards, the Supply Chain and Mobility Innovation Summit which is a select group of targeted founders, entrepreneurs and CEOs who are involved in mobility innovation and there's a lot of surface emphasis in that conference but we've done that for three years now and it's continuing to bring more and more visibility to Fort Worth as a transportation and mobility innovation hub and it plays into a lot of things that are going on throughout the city, not just what we're doing at Alliance but our goal is to really help put the whole region on the map as a major mobility innovation center. And then lastly, I just wanted to mention that we acquired in our effort to, our goal is to, we've been developing in Fort Worth for 35 years but we've been doing it in one area town. We're involved in a number of things all over the city, we watch what's going on, we're supportive of everything that's going on, whether it be downtown, whether it be west, whether it be south, whether it be east, Fort Worth. And we felt like, now is the time to really become more engaged in other parts of the city. So we love what's going on in downtown. We particularly like that southern quarter of activity with the Texas A&M project, the convention center expansion, the Omni Hotel, the Deco 969 project. There's $1.3 billion if you just add those projects up of investment currently underway in downtown Fort Worth. And so we wanted to be part of that and we don't really know exactly what we're gonna do but there's a huge amount of interest. I mean, just since we announced that acquisition, there's been incredible incoming. So I'm pretty encouraged and we're gonna continue to look for more, for more ways to expand our footprint and our flag in the city. So with that, I am happy to take questions but once again, I wanna thank all of you and all the staff in the entire city for 35 years of partnership. I think you can put this project up against any project in the, not the country, the world. There's really nothing like it anywhere else where all of these pieces have been brought together in one place and you've got this sort of economic machine running. So thank you for your continued support and hopefully we can keep going. Thank you, Mike. Councilor Blalock, can you get a question? So first, Mike, thank you very much for the presentation today. Hillwood's been a fantastic partner to the city of Fort Worth, to District 10, to Keller ISD and Northwest ISD and can't say how much the company's appreciated and you're appreciated. Did wanna ask one question or you mentioned 170, I think there's some news about 170 today, are you aware? I hope they pulled the barricades today because I'm dying to drive on those main lanes. So the plan was that they come down today but I haven't, I've been here so I haven't. Right, no I haven't but now you've gotten me, you've piqued my interest, I might drive all the way out there just to drive them. Thank you very much. Yes sir, thanks for all your help too and appreciate your service. Thank you Mike, Councilor Larsson. Thanks so much for that presentation. I think all the big picture stuff is amazing especially with what's going on Fort Worth, alleviating what I feel will be property taxes down the road and putting that back on the corporate side but I also wanna say thank you to you and your team for what you all are doing in North Fort Worth for the families of fallen servicemen and women by graciously giving some land for the Gold Star Families Memorial Monument that hopefully we'll be announcing more details on but Eric, Elrod and the rest of your team they're just knocking out of the park with taking Gold Star Family members out there looking at the different options. So I just wanna thank you and your team for that. Well, Charlie thank you for bringing it to us. Yeah, I think it's a perfect fit. It's a great location for it. We wouldn't have known about it if you hadn't brought it to us. So thank you very much. Thank you for Tim Evans. Mike, I just wanna say thank you. I think it was 2000 or 2001 when we first met and because of your company we have what is now known as the TCC Opportunity Center. So you and DFW airport are the two presentations we always love to hear because you bring nothing but great news. Now I don't know if you know it or not but I dropped that CVS report off to your headquarters one day. I don't know if you can play it because I don't have a recorder anymore but it's there. Debra, we're trying to figure out how to play it so we can digitize it and bring it back to real time. Thank you very much. Appreciate you. Any other questions or comments from council? I'll just say thank you Mike. Thank you. We work together in a lot of ways and so I'm always privileged to be able to sit and listen to you give updates on the amazing work that you're doing and just thank you for your service to our community. Thank you. At all, council? Mike, you're holding out. Did you know that Mike's a really great singer? I learned this. Yeah. That's the one video we definitely do not want to bring it out. Yeah, he and David Parker did a great duet but in all sincerity, thank you very much. Well, I will tell you David Parker is a much more talented musician than Mike Barry is. Yeah, y'all had a little liquid courage, I think, but thank you so much. I really appreciate you. One thing you glossed over that I think is important to mention is on the transportation corridor of I-35, you mentioned 170, those two projects in particular would have never happened but for the leadership of Mike Russell Laughlin and your entire team TRTC exists because of Hillwood and it shows because there are communities across North Texas and really across Texas that are struggling with major infrastructure projects and how best to partner with Textot. Because of your leadership, you're about to finish 3C, which is monumental and I'm sure places like Austin are in an enviable position, we're in an enviable position. I appreciate you making that point because it gives me an opportunity to A, point out Russell Laughlin's leadership because you're right, that would not have happened, had really he not sort of grabbed the bull by the horns but it also beyond that it points to the fact that without the private sector taking leadership of these big regional transportation initiatives, you're gonna be waiting around for years. If you just wait on the federal and state Textot funding cycle, you'll never get it done. You'll never get it done so the private sector's got to push it. You finished a larger project, three corridors of 35 and the time Austin hasn't even started on I-35 in downtown Austin so and we just know what a gridlock can create so congratulations and thank y'all for pushing so hard. Thank you and thanks for, I mean, that was another Fort Worth partnership. So, appreciate it. Thank you, Mike. Okay, y'all have a good day. Thanks. Council, we'll move to our next presentation which I believe will be Deanna Giordano. We'll kick us off on an employee's retirement fund in the city of Fort Worth. Yep, so Deanna Giordano, Human Resources Director. I wanna provide some quick context and background of why we're here today and so basically the Texas government code chapter 802 requires a government entity, the city in this case, to perform every five years an independent audit of the actuarial evaluation studies and reports of a public retirement system. The last actuarial review that was conducted by the city by an independent auditor was initiated in 2018 and completed in 2019. At that time, we enlisted the services of Gallagher Consulting Firm. We've since again enlisted Gallagher Consulting Firm to conduct the audit for this year and they're here today to present their findings. I do wanna share the findings were presented to the employee retirement fund in draft form, allowed them to respond to those findings which are included in the summary that you're here today. A summary of the final audit report can be found for those interested in the public on the back table. If additional copies are warranted, they can reach out to me directly and we can make those funds that report available as well. But please allow me to introduce Mike Ribble from Gallagher Consulting Firm who will lead today's presentation. Mike. Good afternoon, mayor and council. Thanks for having me today. If I need to share my screen, what are you gonna follow on? Mike, I think we're following along. So if you just wanna queue slides, we'll keep progressing. Walk slides, okay. Well, thank you. So my name's Mike Ribble. I've been with Gallagher Company for over 30 years my entire career and I'm a school credentialed actuary. Sorry I couldn't be here today. Sitting stuck at my home in Frisco, Texas. But I focus on large statewide and large municipal retirement system, valuations, experience studies. And in this case, the actuarial audit that Deanna mentioned. We did not it for the employee's retirement fund for the city performed by the retained actuary, Gabriel Roversmith or GRS that they completed on the December 31st, 2022, 2022 actuarial valuation of the fund. They completed that in April of 2023. And then Gallagher began the audit in of the GRS valuation in July 2023. We did deliver a final report, January 26th of this year. And I'm gonna briefly walk through the findings. So if you jump ahead to the fourth slide, there's executive summary. The process for the actuarial valuation audit is it's conducted in two main steps. First is the full replication of all the financial results of the valuation as produced by the retained actuary. So we went through a full replication. The second step is to review the valuation report, the experience study and all the communications ensure they comply with actual standards of practice. For both of these steps, we basically have what I call a queen bill, though. We have some observations, recommendations that will be helpful in future evaluations or reports. As mentioned, the retained actuary has acknowledged our recommendations. They indicated that those recommendations would be considered and work with the retirement fund staff to decide whether the appropriate changes, what appropriate changes would be made to that future actuarial report or experience studies. So moving ahead to the next slide, six, I'll talk about the results matching, which is part of our replication on the next slide. This is a collection of census data. This is critical. We were able to collect all the census data that the actuary used for the valuation and pretty much matched the data that's in the report to the fact that the census data that we received. We recommended a clarification of whether the annual benefit payments in the report include the cost of living adjustment that was approved effective one day after the valuation report and got that clarification. But recommend that in future reports. On the next slide, not gonna go through this, but this is just an overview of a process and the critical start of any good process is the inputs which are in the top row and green. The participant data, which I discussed, understanding all the assumptions and methods that go into the report, understanding the plan provisions, what the participants are to receive when they retire or die or become disabled or leave the city before prior to retirement. So we collected all that information, we understood all that information. And the first key thing is the present value future benefits that would be expected to be paid based on all those inputs. And so that's the critical thing. If we understand that and we can replicate that, then I think everything else at the bottom, liabilities or actual accrued is what's accrued to date and normal cost, what's being earned in the future for future benefits. Those just fall pretty well out of line from those. The value of assets minus that liability is the unfunded liability of the pension debt, which gets amortized. So the bottom line that we're trying to look at is what are the actuarially determined contributions that would be needed to sustain the fund is paying off the pension debt, which is the amortization of the unfunded liabilities and then providing their accrues, which is the normal cost. So on the next side, we'll kind of get an overview of how well we did on the present value future benefits and other liabilities. In the top row is we match very closely. Overall, we've matched reasonably closely. Present value future benefits, you can see in the right column at the bottom of the first section is within 0.3%. We like to be within 2% so we're matching very closely. Some of the other items, normal cost, actual accrued liability, different actuarial firms use different technical measures, but in the end, we felt reasonably close with the liability match. And we'll see on the next slide how that translates into actuarial determined contributions. And the top row is that actual accrued liability, we were within 0.76% so very close. But it's shooting all the way down to the bottom line, taking all the inputs and calculating the liabilities and what would be the actual real determined contributions were within 0.01% of payroll. We're within 0% of payroll within 0.01% of the dollar amount, $155.6 million versus 175.7 million dollars for an actual real determined contribution. So clearly we're able to replicate the matches, the valuation very closely, which gives us very good comfort that the actuarial is using the correct data assumptions, applying the assumptions correctly and the plan breaches correctly. On the next slide, I won't hit all of these, but the long-term projections that are in there are fairly simplified projections that the actuarial did. We were able to match within three years on the actual real value, the key funding period basis, as far as how long the plan will be before fully funded. So 55 years versus 53 years using their actual accrued liabilities. But these funding projections are used as an operation point and none of the results differences you see here would affect the operation of the plan. Just when you project out long-term difference, you do get small differences in the projections. Mike, quick question. Yes, go ahead. That on that chart, it says period dictated by funding policy, which gives you a different value of assets and when it's actually solvent, the fund is paid off. What is the difference between those two? The funding period. Incorporating only statutory contribution rates versus period dictated. Contribution, those have, well, there's ad hoc colors are in there projected out in the very long feature, but there's additional risk sharing contributions that come into the funded status of the plan. Those projections incorporate that additional funds that come in. Okay, thank you. Okay, moving to the next slide. I'm not gonna go through all the actual standards and then the next one. Actual standards of practice just generally guide other guiding principles by which we perform our work. They give us guidance on data quality, the reasonableness of economic and demographic assumptions, how to measure liabilities, how to use asset valuation methods and then actual communications. So we did go through each of the actual standards of practice that did and considered whether the current actuary was following those measures. We found some areas where they get improved and we spelled those out in detail in a report. I'm not gonna go through them all, but if we jump ahead to, I think it's slide 22, but it's the takeaway to just keep going. I'm gonna talk to my friends about page numbers and readability, there you go. The recommendations on the next slide. So we did have some clarifying recommendations around some of the application of the drop of something which is a deferred retirement option plan. The members can elect to receive benefits while they're still near retirement if it's still working. Whether spouse mortality included mortality improvements or not and the reporting of annual benefit payments. We actually had some more disclosures that we recommended around the discount rate and providing support for it and what was the rationale for choosing certain assumptions. Experience study that's currently, we were reading experience study from 2019. I believe they have one currently underway that was in your documents as well, but that was performed by the retained actuary. But we go goes into great detail, but the valuation reports were a little bit lacking and didn't always tie back to those experience studies. So we made some recommendations and the retained actuary said that they would consider and work with the fund to implement. On the next slide, this is the experience state from 2019 indicated that some of the assumptions were selected to be conservative in nature. And we recommend the fund should at least consider the most appropriate assumptions, both individually and in the aggregate. In their response, the retained actuary did indicate that the current experience state would use the most appropriate assumptions rather than conservative assumptions. So some of the disclaimers and disclosures that we recommended putting in using conservative assumptions don't apply here if they do indeed use them. So that recommendation is apparently already in process. Next slide. So that concludes my remarks. I think the last step once we got through this process, we had many meetings and we met with the staff and then we met with the ERF board and now we're here to present this. But I think the final step would be it's required to file this with the Texas Pension Review Board before report. Thank you, Mike. Questions from council? One question, and you can't read the future, but once we file the report with the Texas Pension Review Board, how long do we usually have until they, is it commentary back or what actions do they typically take at that point? I think generally if you don't hear back, there won't be any actions to take and it's suspect that this one's pretty tied up, that you won't hear anything back. It's just the formal filing that needs to occur. But if they do have questions, they will reach out. But I wouldn't expect. My experience, I haven't seen that a lot. Okay, and despite the fact that our funding period is outside that 30 years, that doesn't give you pause, Dennis? It goes back to, this is more just are the calculations correct? The evaluation produced that funding period outside the period and we agree that they are. Okay. And so there's this correction method that are under the additional risk sharing contributions that are still required. So all that is still being followed behind the scenes. This process was just to be sure that everything, that the results are what they seem and there's no issues or discrepancies that we were able to uncover that might give a different result. Thank you, Mike, I appreciate that. Dennis, do you wanna add anything to that? I was just gonna add, we have two kind of parallel state processes going on. The actuarial is just to make sure that our actuaries grew with their actuaries periodically, that if the math were totally off, then I think we'd hear back on this report. We also have the funding soundness restoration plan, which is a different aspect of the state board and we're working that plan. I think right now we're still on track with them. We will hear back, we'll have to check in at some point, but that is kind of a parallel plan separate from this. Okay, thank you, I appreciate that. Council just was awareness, the city of Dallas is in a different position than us altogether, I only mentioned it because we share same media markets, there's been quite a bit of attention on the state of their pension and it can be confusing for your constituents if at any point you need additional talking points that are, Mike did a great job, this is complex, but if you need more assistance from city management, I know that they can provide that to you if and when that time becomes necessary, especially prior to next legislative session. So thank you. Okay, I lost my agenda, where'd I go? Hold on, I've got a picture of it just in case I did that. Okay, next is city benefits on mental health and civil service general employees. And I think Joanne Hinton is going to sub in, correct for Holly? She's coming around the back. Coming around, okay. That is correct, thank you. So I just wanted to give you a little bit of a history lesson. In 2017, and Mayor Pro Tem Bibbins, you were here, Carlos Flores, you were a brand new council member. In 2017, we were $10 million in the hole. And we had to come back to council twice in that fiscal year with hat in hand to say we need more money. And that has prompted what you're going to see as I present about the innovations and the new things that we've been offering in benefits. That's what prompted our venture down into this innovation that we were working towards. So presently, we do have a medical program, just like pretty much everybody else does. We have a wellness program, physical, mental, social, financial. And we have a financial program. So these are the legs of our benefits program that we offer to our employees, active employees, and retirees. And it all works together in a cohesive network. So we've got the medical side with Aetna. Alight is our new healthcare concierge company. We've got our wellness with Virgin Pulse and our healthy challenge program. And then financial with TIAA. And then our resources for living, our EAP does provide some financial support as well. In 2018, we launched our employee health centers. And we did that with a partnership with THR. THR is the what, 600 pound gorilla in this area. And so you have a choice when you have something like that. You can either tilt at the windmill or you can embrace the windmill. We embraced it. And so we did a partnership with Texas Health Resources that allowed us to open. We're now up to four health centers for our employees, retirees, their families that are dedicated to our health, our employees and our retirees. You can get a same day or next day appointment most frequently except in the month of August when the wellness physicals are due but you can get a same day or next day appointment. They usually spend about 20 minutes per visit with you. At other providers, you don't necessarily get that kind of length of time. And we do have free mobile and online care. So if you're not able to go to the doctor's office, you can do a free virtual visit with them. We also have satellite offices. And we have five satellite offices located also in the Tarrant County area in the immediate Fort Worth area. And what we did, we determined the areas and the locations for these by using what's called a heat map which is where we did zip codes and who lives where. And that's how we determine the locations of where these facilities are. We've been very fortunate for almost the last five years that we were able to keep our providers. We did have to retire this past year in 2023. But that says a lot that they, they retired, they didn't quit, they weren't unhappy, they just had to leave us. Another one, she got married, she moved across the country or to Allen, Texas, similar in my mindset, just didn't want to make that commute over here anymore. So we do have some new providers that have just started in with us. With our wellness program, we've partnered with Virgin Pulse for the last several years. And they do a virtual program. They have a, you have an app on your phone, you can do virtual, you can do coaching, you can do challenges. We do challenges within the benefits office where I may say, okay, benefits team, can we, how many steps can we get over the weekend, that kind of thing. We have onsite programs and we're very excited that once we get to move to new city hall, we'll be able to bring some of these onsite programs with us. So we have exercise classes, Zumba, yoga, we have lunch and learns. We bring in a lot of our different vendors to do presentations and lunch and learns to our employees. And then we are blue zone certified with many of our buildings. And that was a process that we underwent before Vicki retired. So probably in 2017, 2018. And this encourages a healthier work site. For the wellness program, you do have a premium reduction option for those who are on our health plan and it lowers your premium a little bit. If you do your three requirements, the biometric screening, the member health assessment and the tobacco affidavit. And then there's an incentive for everybody, whether they take our health insurance or not, everyone is eligible to participate and receive up to $250 in a cash payout. We do, and you get points for engaging in certain activities through the Virgin Pulse app. So if you do a challenge, you may get X number of points or if you do attend a meeting, you get 500 points. If you donate blood, you get points. All of those are ways to engage in the program. In 2023, we had 89% of our staff were enrolled in the Virgin Pulse platform. The benchmark, so across the country is only 54%. Part of the reason that we have such high engagement, high enrollment, is that $1,200 stick that we have on them. As a result, it looks like our engagement is a little bit lower in terms of physical engagement. Only 25% of our people participate versus 31%, but that's because we've got such high enrollment to begin with. So that's kind of where that number changes a little bit. With the wellness program, we do offer discounts to all of our local community centers that have athletic facilities or gyms, I guess. And they have different levels depending on the community center, but we do offer a discount to our employees and their families if they wanted to start using the gyms at the community centers. And this will be helpful when we move to New City Hall because at New City Hall, we do have a gym already in the facility. This kind of provides for all of those people who may not be at New City Hall. So here's where we start talking about some of the different innovative programs that we offer. The first one we offer is a Rosti, and it's a soft tissue, musculoskeletal kind of benefit. They do kind of a combination of soft tissue muscle manipulation. They do some kind of static taping, and it helps you recover from a soft tissue injury. And they're fantastic in that they usually can get you better within about three visits. And they don't keep you hanging. So if you can't get better in three visits, they tell you, this is beyond our scope. We're gonna refer you to somebody else for an MRI to see if what's really going on there. They do also have a virtual option available so that you can do virtual physical therapy with them as well. It's a $15 copay if you're on our health center plan, but 91% of our patients were able to respond or resolve their situations within about that three visits. Similarly, we have Hinge Health. Hinge Health is virtual physical therapy. You do that on through an app on your phone. They watch you do their exercises. They may send you a machine, a TENS machine or something like that to track what you're doing. And they both do chronic and acute situations. It's covered at 100% for our health center plan, and we've had 492 participants so far use this benefit with a 45% reported reduction in pain and a 62% decrease in surgeries. So that's doing what we're wanting to do. We're trying to avoid the surgeries if we don't have to. We have on-site athletic trainers, and this is pretty unusual for the city, but we have on-site athletic trainers that support those in the more physically demanding departments. So code, fire, TPW, water. What they do is they work with cardiovascular fitness, economic, driver ergonomics, stretching, training. They average about 180 visits per month, annually about 2,000 visits, and it saves workers' comp program an estimated $1.6 million having these trainers, athletic trainers here on site. We do offer a second opinion or an expert medical opinion, and this is a benefit that allows people to talk to another doctor in the event that they've been diagnosed with something that may be more than they can handle, or new information. This is a covered benefit for those on the health plan, and you get a leading expert across the country. It'll be a virtual visit. They'll get all your information from your provider and be able to come back to you with, well, this is what your information says. Yeah, we agree with that, but here's this new option that may be a better benefit for you, or this treatment may be a better treatment offer for you. Surgery Plus is a benefit we've been offering for quite some time, and it's a bundled surgery program. Surgeries, people like to schedule surgeries on Fridays, usually, because that way you get the weekend to recover and to start to feel better before you go back to work on Monday. Surgery Plus kind of takes advantage of that by booking the surgeries maybe on a Tuesday. In fact, I did a surgery on a Monday, which meant I did not have the weekend to recover.  They are able to reduce our coverage, they reduce our costs, speak to doing a bundled surgery for us. They primarily target musculoskeletal, but that is not the only option, but that is their bread and butter. We've had 1,074 employees have surgeries through Surgery Plus with a savings of about 18 million because of the bundling of the surgeries. Hello Heart is a cardiac program, and it provides a digital blood pressure monitor that will connect to an app on your phone so that you can go and have your blood, you can take your blood pressure.  You can check your blood pressure, see how things are going with that kind of thing. And it can use it to track your blood pressure and take it back to your doctor. And so that you and your doctor can have conversations about, wow, it looks like on Tuesday, city council days, your blood pressure is really high, but on Wednesday you're doing a lot better. Those kinds of situations. It helps you provide that information to your doctor so you've got a good relationship and good feedback with your doctor about your blood pressure. 61% of our employees who have high blood pressures do engage in this, and they've reduced their blood pressure an average of 16 points with an average of $3.1 million saved due to heart emergencies. They're also able to notice things like arrhythmias and unusual heart beats, heart pressures, with this app as well. So they've noticed that in several people and have been able to refer them, say you really need to talk to your doctor about this, we're noticing this unusual heartbeat. Verda is our diabetes reversal program for type two diabetes. In the city of Fort Worth, which is not uncommon, diabetes and heart disease are our two largest cost drivers. They are what we have the most of. At one point when I first started here, one in six of our employees had type two diabetes. One in six. So that's a thousand people that have that. So we did launch Verda in 2019, I wanna say. And what it is, it's a high touch, high coaching program that works with the members, puts you on a high keto diet, I think is what that's called. And they work with the members to help lower their weight, help lower their A1C, and eventually hopefully get them off the medications. 520 employees have participated in this program to date losing 6,300 pounds, which is an average of 6.5% of their body weight. 38% of our members have limited medications. This has been a very great program that we've offered. I was just on a call literally yesterday with their team where they had a testimonial from one of our members from code. She said she could climb stairs again and didn't feel nervous about that because she no longer had any joint pain. She had lost 30 pounds and was feeling fantastic and really appreciated the support she received from the Verda coaches. We do offer other nutritional programs in the Virgin Pulse app. There is health coaching that's free and available to everyone. We do offer Weight Watchers and Wonder Health. Weight Watchers I think now just calls themselves WW, but those are both weight management programs that you can join or your spouse can join or children over the age of 18 to help work on your eating.  So these are all available for people who would like to work on their weight. Mental health, this is a big deal. I have worked in benefits 25 years and three years ago I saw my first what we would consider a high-cost claimant. A high-cost claimant in the benefits world is a little probably a little bit different than what you're thinking about, but a high-cost claimant is somebody who's over $100,000. I've never seen a $100,000 claimant in for mental health specifically. This is huge. So we've tried to really bring in partnerships and programs that will support the mental health of our members and their families. For children, we offer Brightline, which is a virtual mental health provider. For children, age is 18 months to 17 years. Now, obviously you're not on the 18, you're not putting the 18-year-old in front of the screen and letting them talk to whomever they're talking to. You're working with them, you're working with the family, the family is working with the therapist all the way up to the age of 17 years. They also can provide IEP support, so if your children do need individual education plan support, they can help you with that. So that's a great benefit that we've just started this past May and we've really seen, we haven't seen a lot of utilization yet, but we're hoping to see more of it. Talkspace is another option that we have available and that's for teens and adults, so 13 and above. Again, it's another virtual app, virtual therapy for teenagers and adults, therapists and psychiatrists who can provide medication if that's appropriate, that sort of thing. Teladoc does have mental health appointments available within their app as well. With Teladoc, you would be seeing the same provider and covered on both the health center plan and consumer choice plan at 100%. More mental health, we have the resources for living, which is our EAP. We have offer six free counseling sessions per issue covered at 100% and they can help you work through mental health, suicide prevention, crisis resources, that sort of thing. And then they also provide work-life balances. So if you need to help writing a will or you need financial help, they offer support in those areas. Our utilization rate on the EAP is about 17%, the standard and the national average is below 10%. So we have a lot of support for the EAP. And Meru Health is a coaching program that we just launched this last year in partnership with Resources for Living. It's literally more of a coaching situation where you just work on an eight-week program, each program has a focus and you just work through each week's program focus and they do little activities, you have a little meditation and you have a licensed emotional health coach. For financial programs, again, we have a fit fit fit fit through the Virgin Pulse app and they provide information about building a budget, financial planning, improving your credit, those sorts of things. We do have the 457, so we talked a little bit about the pension, the 457 is on top of the pension. This is what we offer so that maybe you can buy that RV to do your trip around the world or on the US instead of staying in a home, that sort of thing with your 457 money. It's just like a 401K for those of you who are from the corporate world. And then again with the EAP, they have a free half-hour consultation on budgeting, mortgages, credit and debt issues, those sorts of things. SmartLite Analytics, this is actually one that I am fairly passionate about because SmartLite Analytics is a fraud, waste and abuse company. We engaged them in 2021 and what they do is they comb through our claims data looking for fraud, waste and abuse and they find it and they keep finding it which is both exciting because that means they keep finding it but a little disheartening because that also means that there are people out there who are fraudulently just constantly opening up new ways to try to cheat our employees to try to cheat us. What they do is they use AI to comb through all of our data and then they find things that are not correct. They find prescriptions that are written out of Houston for a doctor that a person has never seen. They find scams that doctor's offices may be running where they have a physician assistant who is in the network when they're at the doctor's office but is not in the network somehow magically when they're doing the surgery and somehow that means they're eligible for more than 10 times what the surgeon is being paid. Those sorts of things they're looking for and they put a stop to it in any way they're able to do so. I know that personally I was called maybe a few months ago where I got a phone call and they said, hey, did you know that this is now covered through your pharmacy program? They called the wrong person because I know that what they're talking about is wrong. And I said that, I said no, that's not correct. No, this is a new benefit, just give me your number. Well, I know this, I know this is a scam but your average employee doesn't necessarily know it's a scam. So now they've given over their pharmacy number and now they're getting claims being billed to us that the member never sees. And they find those pharmacies and they shut those down for us. I'm very excited about this program because I don't like it when people try to cheat our people, that's not okay to me. And it shouldn't be okay to any of us. They've so far realized $3.9 million in savings for us by shutting down fraudulent claims and duplicate claims and those sorts of things. So from a benchmark comparison, we're just like the city, all of the other cities, we offer medical, dental, vision, life insurance, disability insurance, we're just like everybody else. Here's where we get to be different. We offer things like the expert medical opinion, we offer the physical trainers, we offer Hello Heart, we offer Hinge Health, we offer Verda, we have nutritional programs, we have a number of EAP for our mental health programs. This shows where we're different and that's what's exciting. And that's where we are making a big difference in the financial of the city but also in our members of our city. We do have, we have had some speaking engagements on some of these benefits. I spoke at the EHIR Roundtable in October. I will be speaking again at the Salva Conference in April of 2024. Holly will be speaking at a healthcare conference in March and the World at Work Conference in May. And then we did do a couple of interviews with interview people, what are they? Reporters, that's all right. We did interview people, with people who'd interview people. The Wall Street Journal and Patient Rights Advocate talking about the benefit programs that we're doing and what we're doing to try to help us save money. And do you have any questions? Say Joanne, Councilor Rebek. I do. Thank you so much for doing this. When I asked this question and you could have known but really it was that comparison chart at the end that I wanted to make sure that we were competitive with other cities and with other institutions around Tarrant County. So thank you for including that. And thank you for working so hard to make sure that our employees do have what is really an impressive benefits package when it comes to keeping us, you know, keeping them safe and healthy and on the right track so that they can come to work and be happy and make our city better. There are two things that I would challenge y'all to go back and look at. And one of those is the employee health centers and if that, what is the possibility of expanding that to children outside of illness too just for ease of our families as often, you know people choose to go to one family doctor and if we can expand that to make that viable for them. I cannot speak at this moment on conversations that will be that are occurring behind the scenes at this moment. Perfect. Thank you.  Is he back there?  All right, two. Well, good then. I don't even feel bad about what I'm about to ask for. Right now we offer a discount to our employees to take advantage of our community centers. And I'd like to know what that cost would be to expand that to allow them access specifically to those that we know that have the workout centers as at no cost or further reduced costs to really encourage them to go and utilize these particular facilities. And Richard doesn't mind at all. So we'll be good. Well, I mean, we can do the math and figure it out. I know that right now we do not have a significant number of employees attending, but I think if once we said the free word that could change, but we can look at that and see where where that could come from. Yeah, I think the benefit to that is, it's beyond just the physical and mental health benefits of being able to work out, but it also provides our employees that third space to go on the way home and really participate and be part of our community in a different capacity. Thank you so much. Thanks for our ribbons. I just want you to know that you are making the city of Fort Worth the employer of choice. And I have to say it's not just me, of course. I have four benefit staff and two wellness staff who work very hard, very hard to support the 6,000 plus active employees, not counting the 440 members who are on their own plan and the 3,000 retirees. It's, we work, and we're all very passionate about keeping doing this for our employees and for our employees and our retirees. Well, let me tell you who your biggest cheerleader is. It's a lady named Denise Cook. That being the wife of our city manager, who because of Denise, David got a Sunday appointment that he didn't think he could get. That's when you were sounding like very white for a while. But I was at a reception and Denise was there. I was having to make a decision about Medicare because I'm 69 and she just kept on talking about the benefits. And she would look at Fort Worth, Deanna. She'd look at Deata and look at David for your affirmation. I think she knew more about the plan than both of them did. And so I'm just, you know, she's the cheerleader, but this is awesome. And I hope I have that presentation so I can look at it some more. Now, do we do anything special for old people? Not yet. Okay. But I have just recently spoken with, I will be speaking in a couple of weeks with an organization about certified age-friendly employment. And so I will learn from them what it is we're looking for for old people. Well, I will suggest you talk to UNT Health Science Center. That's where most of my doctors are. And a lot of people know I got real sick after going to Holland.  But what they were able to do was basically triage me every time I go in. And so I think they are a great partner. You might want to talk with them. Even the staff there knows how to talk to people who are older. And there's no cluster of rooms, but we will be the employer of choice. And so this is great to see. And David, whatever you need to do for Valentine's, you need to make it up to Denise because she's great at promoting what they do. Any other questions or comments from Council? Joanne, great job today. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. You have a great afternoon. Council next is a briefing on the 2024 Housing Tax Credit Applications with Victor Turner, Neighborhood Services Director. Good afternoon, Mayor Council. This is that time of the year again when we get applications from developers from all over to do work in the city of Fort Worth. This year, we had initially about 15 that had inquired about doing a project in Fort Worth. We ended up with 10. Just a quick background on the tax credit program. Every state gets an allocation of tax credits that the IRS calculates that this year is $2.90 per capita. And so from those credits, they award those to developers based on the criteria that's in their qualified allocation plan, which is called the QAP. And as you can see, the developer identifies a site. In Texas, we require cities to have input as far as locations and points that can be awarded by supporting the project or not supporting. And then, TDHCA reviews applications. Once they award them, those developers are free to look for a syndicator to sell those credits on the private market to produce the equity for the projects. The two things that's most important here is the scoring. For a resolution of support, it's 17 points. Resolution of no objection is 14. And just the difference in one point can keep a development from getting funded at TDHCA. And then also, they can get an additional point if we commit any type of funding, which can be waiver fees and permits, as long as it's $500 or more. You also see notification of neighborhood associations and staff, and the project has to meet fair housing. Here's a little information on notification process. Council member has to be notified. Neighborhood services staff are supertended by the affected impacted school district. It must have at least one session. We allow them to have a virtual session if they so choose. And then you see the amount of time they must notify those neighborhood associations in advance. Here, you can see the differences between the resolution of support, resolution of no objection, and the main difference is that last line where it talks about if the project is located in one of those high opportunity areas or C&I neighborhood or revitalization area. I mentioned earlier about waiver fees and permits can be part of our development funding. You see in the blue those that are eligible for fee waiver. And then just this year, park dedication fees were added. And we asked that the developer consult with our park and recreation department about that. And then what's not waived is transportation and water wastewater impact fees. Here's a list, a map of all the projects. As I mentioned, there were a total of 10. You see the council district there located. These total about 600, well, 649 units. There are three senior projects in this one in the group and three rehabs, with two of those being a conversion from a different type of facility to housing. First one is up north in the council district for Huntington Place. It's a senior project for those age 55 and up. It does require zoning change. It's located on Bathwood Boulevard. Some of the proposed amenities include the game room, pickleball court, dog park. This project was, application was withdrawn in council district five. Next is Hughes House. Of course, Hughes House is one of the phases of development for our choice neighborhood initiative. This is for Worth Housing Solutions and McCormick Baron. This one is tax exempt. I failed to mention all the projects are tax paying with exception. This one with the Housing Authority being a tax exempt agency. 78 units in this particular development. It's located east of Rose Day and west of Cowan. DeLaur Chase is a rehab. I believe the current apartment complex is called Candle Chase, I believe, on a corner of Huland and Alta Mesa. 116 units. Sagebrook Development is the developer. May and Lash, they've done quite a few rehabs. One, you may have heard of CLO Place that they did a good job converting. So they're a developer here. Sycamore Senior Living, another senior development. 88 units. There will be a zoning change required for this particular development. It will include a fitness facility. It's also close to grocery store. I believe Winko Foods is close by and some other amenities. George and Oaks, this would be a rehab conversion to housing located downtown near the Hilton. It will include a kitchen, cyber lounge, fitness center, and some public art and courses within walking distance of a lot of amenities in downtown. Marin Grove, this is the former Lady of Victory Center, very large facility that would be converted to housing. It will also include a lot of amenities. Cyber lounge, fitness center, public art. It's also close to a Walmart neighborhood market. This is also being done by Sage Brook. What's a cyber lounge? Games. OK, sorry, I should have known that. Different than a game room, different type of games, got it. This one was withdrawn. They did it on January 31. So right now it's in the M&C, so we'll have to make some changes to that. So disregard Avenue Atlanta. Is that project not moving forward? It's not at all. OK, thank you. And the loss at Redwood, 88 units is on the intersection of 820 and Highway 287. This one also require a zoning change. It will include pool, resident garden, dog park, close to some convenience stores and small grocers. So I believe that's the last one on the list. This particular one was withdrawn. So out of those 10, there are seven being recommended for resolution of support. You also see the three that have been withdrawn. The timeline, you can see we are now at February 6. Our staff recommendations for council work session with M&C next week. Deadline is March 1 for the application to be submitted to the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. And then in July will be the awarding of the tax credits. Questions? Thank you, Dr. Questions from Council. Councilor Nettles. Thank you, Victor. Great presentation. I believe you stated that we started out with 15 applications and dropped down to 10. Out of those other five that were not on the slide, did they not meet the requirements or get scored or did they not have the support of the council members for those five? Various reasons. Some of them decided not to go forward for financial reasons. Some of them felt they may not could meet some of the things that we asked for. And they may have had some early conversation with some of you and may have decided to drop out as well. It's just a variety of reasons. I'm curious, and you can send that to me offline through email, what those five were, and the locations. Because I think, of course, housing is very important all over the city of Fort Worth. Yeah, and sometimes they do preliminary scoring with T, A, C, A, and A, C. They won't be able to compete. And sometimes they... Fair. I would like to know. Thank you. Sure. I was one of them. Oh, dear. The idea of a senior apartment complex on Bridgewood just was not safe. We have an incline right across from the library. And I just couldn't see wheelchairs and other transportation modes that older people need. It's already a problem there. But what I wanted to just share with all of you and not just with this type of housing, but we have to be careful about waivers. And so I would just ask you all, if you have a developer, whether it's this type of housing or just regular, people can waive away things like sidewalks, entrances. And there's a reason why there are rules in place. You really do want to have a way in and a way out if that's what guidelines call for. And so staff and development services know when developers come with projects in my district asking for waivers, they know to tell them you need to talk to the council office. Because you do not want to impact safety. You do not want to allow a developer to get so tight with emergency vehicles coming in and out. So don't take that lightly when you hear about a developer wanting waivers. I want them to do everything. Our best practices dictate they should be doing. And when you stand down for waivers, you may be impacting safety and quality of life. My neighborhood that was built in 2003 should have had a park, but it didn't. Would have been good to have had an HOA and people hate HOAs, but would have been good if we did because there is a perimeter wall in my neighborhood that was built by TCC, but there is no HOA. So there is no money unless we trust each other. But more importantly, we couldn't even get the insurance turned over to us from TCC because the wall technically doesn't exist, but it's there. That's what Irma Johnson built that wall, beautiful wall until a drug driver ran into it. And so just, you know, when you're looking at these projects, have your antenna up for waivers. Very seldom is that a good thing. Those are my comments. And I'll tell you more about old people sliding down. I also want to point out that the list that Victor gave was only for 9%, right? Correct. Yeah, because some of us have 4%, you know, housing tax credit propositions going. Charles, I have a comment. Go ahead, Jeanette. I just wanted to let council member Nettles know that two of those that were withdrawn were my district. They were not for my feedback. I think scoring was a factor. But what was not mentioned on a neighboring. Thanks, Jeanette. No. Charlie, you're good. Councilor Williams. I'll jump in. I appreciate the discussion, Councilor Nettles. I know in district six, and since we had three this year, one was successful last year and came back for additional financing. All three of them were within one street of each other. So they wouldn't have all made it through the process. So I think it's really important that we have this discussion given the affordability crisis we're in. So it's certainly needed. And we, of course, all have to do our part. So we'll hear you. One clarification. I wasn't concerned so much with the three that was withdrawn that was part of the 10. It was additional five that was not on this presentation. That's the clarification I want to know about. Yeah, those, they never would be. Yeah, you off the hook. Gina Bivens and Jeanette, thank you. Council Member Nettles, those never submit in an application to us at all. Thank you, Victor. Appreciate it. Okay, Council, our next and last presentation is payroll improvement update with Fernando Costa and Valerie Washington. Thank you, Mayor, Council Members. You've asked us to update you on our efforts to improve the efficiency and reliability of the city's payroll process, particularly as it pertains to our police and fire departments. And so this afternoon, as your final briefing for the day, Valerie Washington and I would like to speak with you about what we've done today, where we are at present and how we would like to work with you on decisions about how we proceed into the future to improve our payroll process. And while Valerie and I are the ones speaking to you this afternoon, the folks who have done most of the work are represented in the audience today from multiple departments, particularly finance, human resources and IT, as well as police and fire, of course, which are directly involved in the process. The law department, forward lab, internal audit, and others. So this has been, in a classic sense, a team effort by city staff to bring to you a report on payroll improvements. And this is an important topic as reflected by some of the facts that are displayed on the screen. Payroll represents almost a billion dollars or over a third of our $2.6 billion city budget. So we're talking about considerable resources and police and fire, by themselves, represent more than two thirds of the general fund budget. So that's a big part of the general fund. We have, of course, over 7,000 active city employees. And from those who are in the general fund, public safety represents well more than a half, about 57%. And last year we processed over 180,000 payroll transactions. So there are a lot of moving parts and there are many ways in which the process can go wrong if it's not properly designed. So we're trying to ensure that the process is designed to minimize errors and to improve efficiency. Now we're focusing on police and fire for a variety of reasons relating to the fact that their payrolls tend to be considerably more complex than the payrolls of other city departments. The police officers and firefighters tend to work variable hours, particularly firefighters. They tend to work frequently on holidays at higher rates, different rates from what we normally pay these employees. They work disproportionately large amounts of overtime and they work with a variety of pay incentives that we need to take into account as we pay these employees for the work. And finally, a host of special provisions in labor agreements, collective bargaining for fire, a meet and confer, which is now underway for police, provisions that are sometimes subject to interpretation. How one person reads the agreement may not conform to how another person might interpret it. And so police and fire are important for us to address. The departments participating in the payroll process include primarily finance, human resources and IT, but all departments are involved in the process in one way or another. We therefore formed a couple of years ago a payroll task force led by the city manager's office, Ms. Washington and I co-chair the task force, but we have key staff from multiple departments, finance, HR, IT, fourth lab, law, internal audit, police and fire. And recently we've added representatives of the police and fire unions to ensure that they have a seat at the table. We've kept them informed along the entire process, but we wanted to be sure that they were at the table as these discussions are occurring. The project was much needed because we need to resolve the repeated challenges associated with processing those fire police payrolls. We needed to improve time and absence tracking and invisibility, wanted to optimize the calculation of payroll time for fire and police, needed to reduce errors. In fact, often council members in the past would get word from individual police officers and firefighters that their paychecks had not been accurate and that they required attention. Sometimes we'd make overpayments, sometimes we'd make underpayments. And we need to be sure that these payments are accurate. We needed to rectify inconsistent application of policies. The policies are complex and sometimes require interpretation. We needed to minimize multiple interpretations of the same policy. And we needed to ensure full compliance with the adopted labor agreements. We set five goals for this project to ensure accurate and efficient processing through automation. We not wanted to reduce the number of manual steps in the process. The more manual steps, the greater the likelihood of human error. We wanted to pay advices to be simple and easy to read. I think we've accomplished that goal already. We wanted to improve the end user experience, make it easy for everybody who's associated with the process, particularly the recipient of pay. We wanted to improve employee accountability. Everybody needs to be accountable for the accuracy of data that are entered into the system, as well as for the results. And we wanted to streamline the business processes. We've already made significant progress on that front as well. And so we wanted to focus particularly on three attributes of the payroll system. The complexity of policies, trying to simplify those policies and ensure as much as possible that they're mutually consistent. We wanted to automate the process as much as possible, reducing manual steps. And we wanted to ensure employee accountability. If an employee wants an accurate pay, that employee needs to enter accurate data to ensure that we can process it properly. We've adopted a phased approach to this project that I'd like to ask Valerie to come forward and talk with us about it. Thank you, Fernando. Continuing on with the presentation, as Fernando stated, we adopted a phased approach and we've essentially spent the last two years in the analysis and system build phase, which is why we're here today. In looking at the analysis and system build, I'll tell you there was a lot more work in those processes than we had anticipated. And you hear people say when you start peeling back the union and looking at processes, like there's just more and more. And that's what we found in this case in looking at the processes that had been in place when we had the mainframe system and we're processing payroll and looking at how processes have evolved and been documented from that time. And there were some challenges with that. Also finding where practices didn't match up with policy and trying to reconcile those issues as well. We have spent time in the system build phase, the team working both police and fire with the UKG team to build a fire and police payroll system. I am proud to say that UKG has finished the fire build officially. They are about a month away from finishing the complete build for police. And at that point in time, once they have that build complete, we'll be able to actually start testing the system. We included a slide just to provide some of the history. We have been here before talking with you about this payroll project. When we first implemented it, we came back about a year and a half ago needing a project extension. And we are here today, hopefully with a final, not a final report out, because we are asking to keep moving on with the project. Let us finish the testing since the system has just been built and then allow some time for the system to be tested before we come back to mayor and council and share the results of that testing and then provide recommendations for next steps. As Fernando had stated, there's been some wins in this process. It's been challenging for sure for the teams working on this, but there have been some wins, including the redesign of the pay advice. Before we started this project, it was really difficult for fire and police to read their pay advices and be able to reconcile everything back to their hourly rate and pay. We have made huge strides and I think the paychecks are much easier to read for police and fire. It's allowed for better team communication in this city. We do have multiple departments that are involved in the payroll process. And this has provided an opportunity for IT, HR, the finance team to really work better together in refining those processes and communicating. And we've also had to spend time developing strategies to identify system workarounds. When you have a system or processes that aren't clear or are too complex, people will find a way to make it work. And that's what we had to deal with in the system. People found a way to make it work. So we could get paychecks issued to people. And I wanna say that as the most important part of this project is we understand how important it is to pay people on time. And that is one of our goals. We understand the stress it causes police and fire or any city employee when they have an issue with their paycheck. And I would say lastly on this slide and looking at some of the processes refining them, they have found efficiencies in the hours associated with processing payroll, that some of the new processes that we have implemented have reduced that time from staff processing. They shared, our next phase is phase three and it's functional testing. As I said, the vendor was to complete the system build for fire by February of 2024. And I've confirmed again that that build is complete. The police department build will be finished in March of 24.  The goal of the testing now that UKG has built the system is just to test out the various pay scenarios. And so that's the process that we wanna start to test out the system to see if it is working the way it has been programmed. I will say we anticipate that it is going to work. The team has spent a lot of time building this with UKG and we are fully anticipating that it will work. We understand through functional testing that they will test item A, if it works, you go to item B. And so there's gonna be a lot of back and forth and communication these next few months and making sure the functional testing does work because we want police and fire, especially the chiefs and their leadership teams to be comfortable with the processes that we have. Through this process, our initial payroll budget when we asked for this project was about $2.6 million. Just the note in here, we came back in January of 2023 and added another $1.2 million to the project budget. At this point in time, we're asking, we have identified 365,000 in departmental budgets for police, fire, HR, IT and finance to fund the $365 that it's going to need to extend into the functional testing phase. Most of that covers the backfill resources so the frontline team can be available for testing and backfill resources are helping do their day-to-day jobs as they work through that. I do have an asterisk on here. The revised project budget when we reallocate the $365,000 to the project budget is $4.2 million, but please note that we will be back after we finish the functional phase because there is additional funding that will be needed to complete the project. For a summary of upcoming council actions, we would like to bring an M&C on the February 27th agenda reallocating the funds from the department into the payroll project budget. We would like to come back immediately following the break and as we're preparing the fiscal year 25 budget to update you on the results of the functional testing and to plan for financials that we will need in fiscal year 25 and beyond for the UKG software solution. And with that, we'll take questions. Thank you. Hey, Valerie. So I've got a list. My first question is if we go to slide 14 for the $4.2 million budget. So was the original budget on this $1.2 million? How did, I know that we're over. I know that you've come back and asked us for money. So we've got 2.6 and then we did the 1.2 and now that 365, is that addition two? I'm not really clear on that. So it isn't addition two, although we're not asking for an appropriation of that, the funding is in the departmental fiscal year 24 budget. So it is in addition to the project. Is it in the department fiscal year 24 budget for payroll or are the departments having to pull that from other projects? They're having to pull that from other projects. So while you're not asking us for more money, what functionally what's happening is that we're allocating $365,000 additional dollars, correct? Correct via the departmental budgets, but yes, that is correct. And then so I wanna get some, the 4.2, that's what we've spent total. The, well, less the 365, yes. Okay, and does that include money that we gave to the vendor and staff time or? Yes. And is that staff time for the backfilled positions or is that, does that account for generally speaking the staff time that we've spent on this? It's been the backfilled for the positions, but I'm looking at it, my team and the audience and they were shaking, yes, it's been for the backfill for the positions. Do we have any sort of idea on how many hours, staff hours have been spent on this project since its inception? I think in working with HR and I'm looking at Casey and Deanna, I think that we would be able to quantify definitely the backfill hours. I think we could work with the chief and both of the chiefs and their teams and get you some hours, but I don't have that right in front of me. But I will tell you that the team, I mean, we meet bi-weekly and I know this team, especially this past year, has spent a tremendous amount of time in working with UKG and working through processes, through in our collective bargaining and labor agreements, trying to make sure that the system was built correctly and that has taken up a lot of staff time this past year and a half. Okay. How far, Jay Toppa initially told us this was gonna take nine months and I don't even know how many months ago that was. So when, how far past the initial deadline that we said this was gonna be done, are we at this point? So we originally provided that nine month timeframe in August of 2021. Our original plan, I think we had proposed that the build would be completed in fiscal year when we started the project in 21 that it would be completed in 22. Once we came back to council last January, the extent we extended the project to have a go live date, I believe of May and June of 2023. And we are now asking, we're at the testing phase and we still need through, I believe 2025 before we'll go live because we'll finish this functional build. We then have probably some end-to-end user testing and then it's a big training effort to train the personnel in the departments. So we're anticipating kind of that worst case scenario. I think there's some cushion build on there but it would be 2025. So that May 2023 date that you gave, was that for the completion of the functional testing or that was the completion of everything? We had anticipated that we would have everything completed by that time. And we weigh over, I mean, it was, I don't think that we had taken into account some of the process engineering conversations that we would need to have. Sure. But I will have to tell you that that was just grossly underestimated. Even that original nine month build as we've reflected with the team, it would have been very difficult to have completed it in that timeframe. Okay.  And so we're going from 2022 to now, May 2023 and now 2025. 2025. And so in that, so now we're not looking, our police officers and our firefighters cannot expect a reasonable, reliable pay to be in place by the city until 2025 is what I'm hearing. No, that is not true. We have, I guess I said before, we've, the project will not go live until 2025. That is accurate. We have made and worked with fire and police in the meantime with some of the process improvement. So I think that fire and police are now more accurately getting paid more consistently and more timely. There have been occasional issues. For example, in working with the local on the fire side with the holiday pay scenarios that has been a challenge. But outside of those special scenarios, I think the team has been much more, much better at making sure we're paying our police and firefighters on time and being responsive when there are issues. But we're not doing it at a hundred percent. No, I mean, we're not 100% in the new system yet. So no, and I can't say that we've addressed 100% of errors. But I would say errors have been drastically reduced. Do we know how many outstanding errors we have right now between police and fire? Let me, I don't know. And I'm looking at my team to see if anyone has that handy. If you don't mind, Council Member, if I bring that information back to Mayor and Council. That would be great. So you indicated that you were gonna come back and ask us for an additional funding and next fiscal year, is that correct? And what's that anticipated to be? If we make it through the functional testing, which we believe we will, we are looking at, I believe it's approximately less than $2 million that would get us through to the end of go live and cover the licenses and backfill expenses to get us to the project completion. What happens if functional testing doesn't work? Then we will have to come back to this body and to City Manager Cook and let him know that the functional testing did not work the way we had anticipated and built it to work. And we'll have to make a tough decision with this Mayor and Council about what next steps we need to follow. Because I think if functional testing were not to work, we still have a gap that we'll need to figure out in ensuring that we're paying fire and police accurately and timely. Okay. To use the word frustrated would be a gross understatement of how I feel right now about this particular issue. In Mayor Pro Tem, Bevins will often remind us that if you Google city of Fort Worth and payroll, this issue is not new to us. And I appreciate the time that you spent educating me on the history of where we got there. And we know that we didn't get it right back in 2010 when we didn't fully implement PeopleSoft. And so since 2010, it's 2024 now, right? So 14 years have gone by and we have limped along and we have normalized not paying our people correctly. And I think today of all days we are reminded of the job that our police and our fire do and the minimum, the bare minimum that we can do as a city is pay them correctly and pay them on time. And we're not doing that. And it's looking like 2025 until we have some sort of reasonable resolution. When you came back in, what was it, 23? And you asked for the 1.2. I was real direct in that and said that that was the last bit of dollars that we were gonna give to keep trying to band aid a system that we know isn't working. And I appreciate the enormous amount of time that staff has given to this to try to fix it. And I appreciate the fact that a lot of it was process. And how we were doing things that aren't a lack of process. And so the benefit of this is that we have uncovered a lot of those shortfalls and we are fixing those as a city, but we're still not fixing the root issue, which is getting our first responders paid on time. I am not inclined. I don't like that. And I personally, while I appreciate you've tried to do this without coming to us to amend any budgets. That's $365,000 that could be spent elsewhere and it's not. It's going to this particular project. I wanna know at what point in time do we rip the band aid off and say that since 2010, this has not worked. 14 years later, we're still trying to make it work. And we still have two years. It's almost two decades by the time we get this thing implemented, if functional testing works. So I wanna know what our backup plan is. And I wanna know what staff has done to, and I'd like you to bring back to this council what a new system looks like. And not just for police and fire, but one that integrates the entire city, because we have fixed the general employee issue generally, right? But we know that that at one point was a problem as well. So I'd like to see, I wanna know what that dollar amount looks like. And I wanna know how we get to that because waiting another two years to make sure that they get paid correctly and timely is not acceptable. So point of clarification for Valerie. UKG is a new system. It's a separate software from PeopleSoft, correct? Yes, it is, correct. What you're presenting here today is hopefully will be a new solution. You're hopeful about functional testing. Yes. I agree with Elizabeth's exasperation. I do. But I don't really see an alternative right now. I think she's just expressing the frustrations of police and firefighters that have come to her and other council members, understandably. But what I'm hearing you say is UKG is a new solution that we are functionally testing that we hope to get to a place where you can come to us and say, this is our new software application we're utilizing for the city of Fort Worth. And I would anticipate the fiscal year 2025 ask will be significant if you're embarking on a new partner that's not PeopleSoft anymore, correct? Correct. And I want to say we are paying police and firefighters timely and accurately. And if issues arise, we are addressing those immediately with the POA and the local 440. I can't even think of the last time issues have developed outside of making sure we get the holiday pay corrected. And that was did take us some time where we needed to make sure we were paying firefighters for holidays they worked. And that's something that shared with our entire leadership team. It has been, I think the work that the team has done is worthwhile to get us to this point. I'm pretty proud that they have that UKG has been able to build a system because it was tough to get there. It was tough making sure we had processes in place. You are right. There were some gaps in PeopleSoft that cost some challenges for this project but we were able to work through those gaps and work effectively with UKG to get a system program that we can start testing. But I completely understand the frustration. It was not easy to have to come back and share this information that we wanted to be upfront and honest. And share, we realize sharing the wins is a small bit of this presentation. We think things have gotten a little bit better but we understand the need to fix the system and ensure that we pay police and fire on time and accurately. I know other council members have questions. My request would be over the next several months when you start functional testing even if it's just an IR update to council about how that functional testing is looking so that they can anticipate good news come fiscal year or if it's some other departure of what we're maybe doing. Council Member Bivens. Val and Fernando, thank you both for the presentation.  And so I was encouraged when I learned of the input from the 440 and the POA. And if you can get a smile on their faces you know things are moving in the right direction. And so I'm encouraged. PeopleSoft has been, from the bowels of hell as far as I'm concerned, but I see us moving in the right direction. You know, I think back to seeing people lined up around city hall back in the day because of IT issues. But one thing I do need help in understanding Val or Fernando or I see Sherman, anybody from POA. And this is just for my clarity. Oh, let me make this point first. The idea that the 440 and the POA are at the table is a good thing. And so to make that relatable to my council peers imagine if we had been at the table of the move in of the new city hall. And so it's just. Oh my. Oh God. You know, I'm happy, I like it. But I did tell the city manager we should have at least one somebody should have been there. And I was not that person and don't want to be. But having them at the table is helpful. And so I'm encouraged by that. Now what I do need to be able to understand in my brain, I think I have it. I don't care who gets up to the microphone but talk about improved canine scheduling and processing. How did that become an issue? I kind of understand rookie transitioning to real full-time cop. Talk about those two processes and what has been done. And I think that will give just an anecdotal overview of the kind of challenges you guys have had. Sure. No, thank you. I was just looking in the audience. I think Paula, are you coming up? Okay. Paula Conaway from police department will come up and walk through some of the challenges we had with the canines. Do you want to come to this microphone Paula? Yeah, that ain't the good mic. Paula, you want to get over there. So our police department has multiple canine units within it and we had grown and added to it. And they are within the organization spread across different bureaus and they have different missions. So they have different work hours. And the canine unit is bound by not only our meat and confer we have some special pays but it's also bound by federal law for FLSA based on productive time and they bring their canines home. So they are allowed to care for their animals at home. So it's considered work time. But we have different missions for the different units. So we didn't have aligning schedules. So that made it difficult for the configuration in the new system. So we're trying to do better internally on cleaning that up. The people soft system didn't account for the canine care which was part of their work hours. So they were having to enter their time based on their own interpretation of how is it regular time or is it, how do they enter it? So it was being entered differently. So we're trying to streamline that too. So that's going to be cleaner I guess you could say but with the special pays such as a shift if canine care is under contract with the meat and confer 100% it gets shift if hours. So that just configuring all of this it just complicated things. But now we're working through it. People soft doesn't have canine care. The canine shifts built in it right now. It still doesn't. So they're having to manipulate their time sheet manually just in order to have their time sheet correct. So we're working on the people soft system at the same time as UKG. So I hope they answered, did they answer your question? Yeah, thank you on that. I just wanted to poke around this table, Jared. I wanted you all around this table just to get a peek into all of these manual processes that they've had to clean up. And that's just one example. And I think if you allow some grace, allow some patience and realize it's not just punching buttons to make something right. This has been very, very hard work. And so I commend HR and IT and everybody else. And I think at the end of the day I really like the timeframe and that it's aligned with our budget process that we will know what to expect and what we need to put off in there. But I've been pissed off about people soft for a long time but I think we're kind of getting there. But if you just imagine that little bitty process multiplied hundreds of times, you'll see how time intensive and labor intensive this has been. So my head goes off to you guys who took that dive and leaned in. And that's all I got. So my question, I have three and I'll make it super quick but just so I understand that funding will come from the individual departments. So they're paying to fix a problem they didn't create is I just wanna make sure I get that right. I would say they're helping pay for a problem that they are involved with since it's a city wide and we're looking at the different departments. Honestly, the team is trying to be creative. Our first thought wasn't to come to mayor and council and ask for an appropriation but to try to do it within budgets. The teams are working and are documenting what that impact to their budgets are so we could fully understand that. And honestly, we thought that would be the best way to approach this part of the ask to continue to get us to functional testing because we will be back for other dollars that we're gonna need an appropriation from mayor and council to help us handle. Okay, and the second thing is and I think Elizabeth will vouch for this too. Anytime like Uncle Sam ever gives you more money than you should have got. They have no problem reaching back in your pocket taking it, especially at a time when you may not be able to afford it. We see it happen all the time in the military. So is there a mechanism in place since we know that police and fire is having this issue? Clearly they have a million and one things to worry about and this shouldn't be one, but they are. Is there an audit mechanism in place to make sure that if they do feel like they're being shorted they can actually have a full audit that will then pay them what they were owed and on the opposite side, if they were overpaid they'll get that waived or forgiven. Is there, do we have anything in place for them? I believe that we do. I'm looking at Chief Fembriss. I believe if a firefighter looks at their paycheck and feels that they were underpaid, overpaid they can come to the fire department to the finance office to HR and someone will sit down with them and walk through the calculations and validate whether there was an issue or not. And I think that they would do that anytime a police or firefighter I think the chiefs and the command staff try to do all they can to handhold with that person and make sure they get the right service level to run the calculations to verify. Okay, and once the systems are completely live would our police and fire would they'll be able to go back and kind of do like at their own self audit to see if maybe some of the numbers came out right? Because from what I understand it's like school finance. There's like three people in the state who actually know how it works. So if they're able to go through and say here's what I worked on average and then they can maybe see if there's any discrepancies will there be a way for them to kind of be able to do that because some may not know if they were underpaid or overpaid. I literally got a text an hour ago about Marines that were underpaid for the last drill and it's there's three people who understand military pay too. So will that by chance be available to them once this rolled out? I am not sure. Kevin, I don't know if you know the functionality I think might have to come back once I check with the IT team and the project team on the full functionality and I'll share that with you. I would think though that there would be mechanisms that a police or firefighter could go in and look at past pays and pull up their paycheck and be able to do those exercises. Awesome, thank you. In reading the process update that was provided us here, I just wanna make sure that I'm taking away because so far we've been talking about the impacts of the payrolls about police and fire. Not that I expect you to quantify it but in terms of prevalence of technical issues they reside mostly on the fire side, correct? Is that an accurate statement? I would say anecdotally, it feels that way. It feels like they're just maybe, I can't say that their labor agreement is more complex but I would say it does seem like we've had a little bit more issues on the fire side, more technical issues with some of the pays. And that's what I'm talking about, right? Those technical challenges and I realize that, collect a bargaining agreements to offer challenges to the system but just kind of going through the report keeps looking at instances where there are more occurrences on the fire side than there is on the police side. So, going back to your upcoming functional testing is what I'm wondering, right? Say if we get all the issues ironed out on the police side, whatever they're remaining but we still have issues on the fire side. That's kind of the scenario that I'm running in my head right now, what then? It's hard to predict the future but you always have an alternative plan should that occur. So, what could be an alternative plan, right? Say that after going through this exercise, we resolve, in effect, what ails police and we're fine but fire still has some issues on their side. Do we continue on that vein or do we look at maybe a third party solution? I don't know. I think that as we've gone through this process, one, we're looking at other cities who pay police and fire and don't seem to have issues that we've encountered here in the city of Fort Worth. We're working with UKG who has supported fire and police in other cities. We may be the largest city that they've supported but they've supported police and fire contracts and departments in other cities. I think if that were the case, I think the first question I would ask with the functional testing is really making sure our processes aren't overly complicated and to see if our policies and practices align with best practices. That we've spent a lot of time even looking at other jurisdictions and their labor agreements to see are we really complex, are our processes really not aligning and do we need to do some cleanup work? And most of the time I've found that it's in the processes not aligning and needed to be cleaned up. So I guess I think that the UKG product will be able to meet our functional testing. I think that if there are little nooks and crannies in there, there might be opportunities for us to look at our processes while still ensuring that we're following our collective bargaining and labor agreements. But I think our backup plan, the team has been working with PeopleSoft and now UKG. I think that if something were to go freely wrong with the UKG testing, the team would stop. We would see what support we need in PeopleSoft and we would begin looking at potentially other vendors. But I do wanna say UKG is part of the tele-staff family. They're a reputable vendor that again, I wanna make sure that our policies and practices aren't the reason why we're not able to do a software implementation because I think there's been a mix of both. And I mean, I read things in here from a technical standpoint, it says parallel testing. Fine, I get that. That would be appropriate, generally speaking in a case like this. And this is my final question, had parallel testing being used before up to this point Valerie? No, so we haven't done any testing with the fire police and payroll project yet. They just have it built. We have spent the last year talking about developing that testing plan and the team has determined that it makes sense to have parallel testing once we have the system built and it's running to run it at the same time as PeopleSoft just to ensure that if there are any issues with UKG we would have PeopleSoft to back it up. So I think the strategy of using parallel testing once we get really into the functional testing and user testing is a good strategy because it's just a good safe double check. It does cost a little extra money to do that because you're running the two systems but the team believes that that is the best way to ensure that fire employees get paid through the system cutover. Okay, I would say Pumbly suggests be thinking of a backup plan in case we get a scenario where we're still not through with this. Valerie, just for clarification in the January 9th IR there's a final number total project number of 6.7 million I guess a million dollars in fiscal year 24 and 1.7 going in in 25. So I just wanna get clarification the number that you're showing here for total project budget that's not the total project budget, correct? Well it is the, so right now the 3.8 million is the project budget. We're asking to reallocate 365,000. Once we get through the functional testing we will be coming back for an appropriation. It'll be, I think it's less than $2 million but we will be coming for funding to get the system fully implemented once we finish functional testing. And that's about $2 million so we've estimated the total project and it's a high estimate to be about, I think it was 6.7 total. That's what's in the IR. And so I guess I'm confused that there was a 15% contractor contingency. So would any of this on their side be covered? I just don't understand how we ran over to as much as we have. I understand the programmatic issues that we're trying to solve on fire and police but that we just, from a project management standpoint it looks real bad. I think and honestly when working with UKG we the city have been the cause of some of that delay and working through our processes and making sure that our processes and policies align so it's hard to attribute the delay to the UKG team. We have spent a lot of time in the past year again looking at policies reviewing policies spending a lot of time on items like holiday pay for the fire department that I think the contingency is wrapped in and again team correct me if I'm wrong just in case as we're working with the consultant that if we get into the user testing and we would need additional support there would be some wiggle room in there that I think the team could run the numbers without that contingency in there if you wanted to see that. That'd be helpful yes because I feel like we've expanded everything we can. And just to clarify so the numbers in the IR and then January the 9th are not the accurate numbers for fiscal year 24 and 25. That is correct because we changed our approach and we thought if we could finish the functional testing first and really confirm that the processes that are being built before we come back and ask Mayor and Council for the remaining money to complete this project. Thank you. So I will attempt not to belabor any point that's already made. I have to completely agree with Councilwoman Beck on the frustration levels and some of the issues she's raised. I want to emphasize Mayor Pro Tem's point. One of the early slides it was mentioned one of the challenges was the interpretation of the meet and confer and collective bargaining agreements and kudos to bringing the other parties to those two agreements to the table. I think it just goes back to we need to have the right people at the table as early as possible and that would have probably helped quite a bit with some of these interpretation issues with getting our requirements right and properly scoping. So thanks for that. The quick question I have is with revision, retesting, training, and then deployment, one of the things I think is currently fire uses telematics or... Tell a staff. Tell a staff. Daily staffing. Right, police does not. So that's gonna be a major change to police, correct? Yes, police do not currently have a staffing software model. So the model that they're getting through this UKG project is gonna be a new staffing model. Okay, what's the comfort level there? Has there been significant discussions with the department on that? See, Chief Nokes, Chief Aldridge, I don't know if you wanna come up and talk to the staffing model. I know as the teams are working and they have subject matter experts from police, they are talking through those.  She's been the main point of contact. She can give us an update on how those conversations have been going because I think it has been a challenge as police looks at a scheduling software like Tell a Staff. So throughout this build, we've been bringing on specifically unit at the unit level, specifically special, SEER, special events and traffic and the ones that we figured that besides patrol on a daily basis, but the ones for big staffing events and especially annual events, the feedback from those units is that if the Tell a Staff portion is up and running and built and it's working the way it works for fire, that it would make their job way more efficient. It make planning more efficient rather than doing things the way they're doing things now. So the feedback from the units is once we're doing these walkthroughs where the vendor has shown us the product in multiple meetings, if that's the way once we go live it works, it is going to be way more efficient for the police department. So that's the feedback from the units that we've brought on board in certain meetings. Okay, I appreciate that, thank you. And then just one other clarification. Through the course of the presentation, we heard through 2025 and then we heard different timeframes during the year 2025. So can you firm that up a little bit for us potentially? Yes, we are looking, let me get to the microphone here. Sorry, give me just one second here. We are looking at a go live in 2025 for fire May of 2025. Is that right team as I'm looking out and I believe police will follow after that. So May of 2025 and then sometime in the summer of 2025 for police. I believe they're a month apart. September, okay, sorry, thank you. September 2025 for police, May 2025