Okay, we're going to go ahead and get started. So if everybody wants to grab a seat, just a few like housekeeping issues. If you didn't sign in and you would like to get copies of the presentations, please be sure that you sign in and give us your email address so that I can mail those to you afterwards. We're going to have two presentations this evening. One is on the proposed bond election projects and the second one is on the budget. So after the presentation or even during, if you have questions, just raise your hand and staff will be able to help you. Now I'd like to ask Council Member Crane to come up and open the meeting and then we'll get started. We're live. Yeah, we're recording it for people who couldn't attend tonight. So I've got to speak in this. I'm pretty loud by myself, but I'll just try and tone it down a little bit. Hey, thanks for coming out tonight. I know you'll have lots of other things you could do on a Wednesday night and I've been getting a lot of questions about what's coming up in the bond, what's coming up in the budget. So I thought it best just to host something like this where you can get your questions answered and we can do it all at one time. As I was talking to some of you, I don't really have prepared remarks, but what I'll say, I'll tell you a little bit about where I'm spending my time right now. If you haven't met Katie Waring, where did she go? Right there. Katie's my district director who keeps my calendar and slaps my hand at this point now when I start trying to do something with it, but I wake up every morning and it's filled with meetings and things I'm supposed to be doing and where I'm supposed to be. But a couple of highlights I'll tell you what I've been doing. One is if you didn't hear about the Rivian deal, that's a potential $5 billion deal that will be out on the Walsh Ranch property. It's 2,000 acres they're looking at. Rivian is probably Tesla's biggest competitor. It'll create at least 7,500 jobs and good paying jobs at least $56,000. So with that, I also know with all the growth out there, I've been talking to basically every single ranch or their representative on everything outside 820, there's going to be a lot of growth. The growth in the last five to 10 years has been up north and the new census numbers show that. The growth in the next five to 10 years is going to be 820 west because we have so much land out there. We are already working and Gary Hogan's been working with me for a long period of time of talking to the entities that have oversight for what that traffic and the traffic management will look like. I don't want to have the same problems they have up north that they've been looking at and should have planned it out. So one thing I'm trying to do is get all the ranches in the room together so we can master plan this out. I've also been talking to TextDOT and to the regional RTC. I now sit on the executive board of the North Texas Commission where we're looking at all those issues and problems and I just had a phone call yesterday to talk about that from someone from there just making sure it's on their radar. The other thing as you come in that I've been working on is Las Vegas Trail. This was something that Councilman Byrd had started. I don't think anybody had really looked at it for a long period of time. My aunt lived there in the 80s when it was a great place to be but then it sort of got forgotten about and there's a lot of crime and drugs and other things in the area. So one thing we've done is you know we purchased, the city purchased the YMCA that was there. They were underwater wanting to get out. It could have gone and sold to somebody and been more apartments. We bought it, turned it into a community center for everyone and it's run by LBT Rise. We've also sat down and started talking with some folks, some public-private partnership to reimagine Las Vegas Trail and what that looks like. There's some developers that have bought property north of 30. I asked them to start coming south. Looking at the eyes of what I'd love to see there, I've used this a lot, some debulking of those apartments. That might mean tearing some of them down. It also might mean turning some of them into condos so people can own them, develop the neighborhood and have some affordable, attainable housing for them in that area. So that's something we've just gotten started that we will on Tuesday approve an RFP RFQ to hire a third party that will put together a transformational plan is what we're calling it. That will be due next April or May as part of the process which will then allow us to go after federal funds to acquire to help just reimagine what that looks like. Just for context, and you probably know it, anybody that lives closer around, 1% of the population lives in the Las Vegas Trail area but 4% of the crime in the city of Fort Worth comes from that area. So it is an unbalanced, you know, our police officers are really taxed in what they do. Their resources could be better served other places and other areas. And I know a lot of you all talked to me about that too, of crime and some things that are happening in your neighborhoods. But we've got to attack that problem before it becomes worse. So that's what I'm committed to do. And then on a daily basis, we're just addressing answering calls and making sure things are handled so please, y'all keep contacting us when you see things and trying to make the city better. And with that, I want to turn this over. We're going to talk and think about the bond first. Is that right, Michelle? We'll talk about the bond and then the budget itself. If y'all have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. If you have questions that we're going along, just wave your hand and we'll get those answered. But I appreciate it. Yeah, already. So we, and David might be better suited to answer this question, but it's about 440 million, right? It's tied to them actually performing and creating the jobs that they created. We've heard that before. Yeah. And it never worked. Yeah. I can't promise for what was before or what happened before, but happy to talk with you about it. Yeah. It's in the incentives we're giving them are tied to real jobs and real things being created. If they don't hit those marks, then they don't get the tax rebates. Yeah, that happened with Tandy and also with Cabela's and Joe's on and off. They make a lot of promises, but you all never enforce it. Well, I can say I'm going to enforce it and our city manager's going to enforce it. It's tied to real numbers. If they don't hit those with the jobs, then they won't get the tax rebates. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, sorry. On the same subject, will they be hiring from within Texas or will they be bringing in their own people from out of state? So what we've heard and David, David told me I'm wrong that there will be a large portion of them hired from here. So they're going to create jobs here in Texas. They have a very small factor, I think, right now in normal, but it won't be enough for the capacity here. Well, with average price always bringing in people from out of town, out of state, then our voting is screwed. So I was just wondering if we're going to be bringing in people from the north or people that don't see our values. I think they're, again, they're going to create the jobs here. That's our hope as part of this. Yeah. Anybody else? Okay. Roger, do you want to, are you talking about the bond firm? Yeah. Awesome. He'll get on me if I don't put this mic up here. Anyway, my name is Roger Venables and I'm with the Aviation Department, but I'm going to present to you tonight the proposed 2022 bond program. Okay. I was involved in the 2018, I got transferred over to aviation here not long ago, but I was involved in 2022 in its creation. So I wanted to stay on board. I like bond programs. I think they're, they're very interesting. And so hopefully you find this interesting tonight and we can get some good feedback on what we present to you. Michelle, don't let me mess this up again. Is that it? Great. Well, first we'll start off with some program goals. So we have to have some objectives when we start to any type of program like this. So we looked at some major program goals, if you will. We won. We wanted to maintain and improve our existing infrastructure and address equity throughout the city. We want to provide mobility and city services, particularly in those growth areas. We want to enhance our active transportation and our recreational corridors and allow for some flexibility and partnership opportunities, which are going to see in this bond program, represent some of those partnership opportunities. For instance, with Tarrant County, we're trying to partner with Tarrant County as a part of their bond program in November that we can partner up on some of our mutual projects of interest and then achieve balance and fiscal stewardship. So what that really means is if we build something, we know we're going to have to keep the lights on now, probably going to have to staff it up. There's going to be additional operating costs to the city in future years when that project gets delivered. So if it's a new community center, we know we're going to have ongoing operating and maintenance costs with it. We try to balance that and recognize it as we're starting to develop the bond program if we have a new facility. That's recognized that first year O&M when that budget year hits and no going forward, we have those continued expenses. So looking at the strategy, capital delivery, particularly in a fast growing community like this, we're chasing it a lot. We're chasing growth a lot. We're trying to get the infrastructure in place that supports that growth. We've dedicated at $29.8 million to that endeavor to go out and look at our trails and those streets that we know we're going to need expansion. We know we need to develop plans for. Let's go ahead and start that process now. Let's get these plans to at least 60% design by the time we get to the bond program. And in some instances, be able to reach out to those adjoining property owners that we need right away from and perhaps secure some of that right away in advance. This not only helps us get the right away faster because that can be a timely endeavor to go out and secure those property rights, but we also have to worry about the public franchised utilities like Encore being able to move their utilities out of the way and they do that on their own. Right of way, utilities, all that has to take place before we can even start our project. So resources, we're reserving some debt capacity. So we've got a program to $500 million bond program. We can afford more capacity, but we need to reserve some capacity in there for emergencies or things that fall out of the bond program, things that are unanticipated. Maybe we've got grant match opportunities that come up that we're not aware of right now, but might present themselves once the bond program that five-year CIP is developed. So looking at some of the program highlights, when we got put the bond program together, we said there's some things that just jump off the page, so about $213 million in leverage opportunities from partnerships with Tarrant County, or other outside funding sources. We had $229 million of identified transportation infrastructure, parks, community facilities that are located in our majority-minority areas, okay, and I'll talk about that in just a moment. About $100 million in park improvements and open space conservation. So these are just some basic highlights, but we'll see those as we go through the program. And then it recommended tax allocation, and on the budget presentation, they're going to go into a little bit more detail about this, but the overall tax rate being proposed for 2022 right now is about $0.73.25 per $100 of property value. This is on the Abilorum tax. A portion of that is split up between operations and maintenance, and then a portion of it is carved out to handle our debt, right? So bond programs, for instance, or tax notes or any type of debt instrument that we've got like that, that $0.14.75 is dedicated to retire that debt. The other portion of operating and maintenance is broken up to operating and capital. Like I said, we know we have properties that we need to take care of. We have roads that need to be maintained. So we're taking a portion of that capital, that $0.06 and a half cents, and we're dedicating that to ongoing maintenance, capital maintenance, trying to extend the life of the asset. That's extend the life of the road. That's extend the life of the facility. Manage it all the way through its life cycle. And that's paid through cash. Whereas debt is paid through debt financing, like the bond program. And generally that's for big ticket items. You know, for building new facilities or replacing existing facilities. So what goes into the project development? Well, really they're born over time. You know, if you think about the data that we collect and the analysis that we have to do so in each one of our facilities, like measuring the condition of that facility or measuring the pavement condition, understand where it is in its life cycle, when does it need to be replaced, and prioritizing that. That's an ongoing thing. That's 365 days a year. Master plan is strategic goals. So there are guidance documents out there. So when we form a master plan, we're forming a master plan that says, okay, we're going to have facilities that are going to go in here. Okay, we want to put a new community center in or if we want to put, replace a road. It's a guidance document. It's flexible, but at least it puts some framework around. And I think that's what Councilman Crane was talking about. It puts a framework about development. So we look at development activity. What development activity has occurred out there that's driving the need for some of those services that we need to deliver? City Council may have projects. Weight listed projects. We had a project from 2018 that didn't make it on the bond program. It was just slightly below in the prioritization. It still needs to be replaced. So sometimes you have weight listed projects that you have to wait until the next bond cycle to do it. Service demand. Again, back to where the demand exists. You know, in the high growth areas, there's always a need for service demands, whether it's police, fire, or roads or transportation. Public meetings, boards and commissions, neighborhood meetings. So all these things kind of factor in play over time. So we'll talk about the selection process in particular a bond. So we start out with department develops their projects. So we ask departments to prioritize and rank their projects because they know where their greatest needs are. And so put those in writing, justify those and present them to what is a committee. It's the project prioritization committee and is a representative of departments within the city to have this kind of the first filtering process, if you will, to review all those projects that are submitted by each one of the departments. Then it goes to management review for input. So the committee has some recommendations after we've got through prioritizing and ranking the project. We'll take it to the city manager and we'll say here's some recommendations. It goes through another filtering process. Always asking questions, always wanting more data, more analysis. Then it goes to city council review and input. City council will take a look at it, might tweak it a little bit and then they'll say let's go out and do some public engagement and let's inform the public of what's proposed for the next bond cycle. So we start off, the committee does with some what we call overarching prioritization criteria. Some of the departments will have these criteria along with others. If you think about TPW, well they're looking at a PCI. They're looking at the payment condition index. Again, they're trying to prioritize. They're looking at congestion. They're looking at traffic accidents. They're looking at other metrics too in addition to this. But when you look at all the projects across the spectrum, whether it's a facility, a park or a street, you're kind of using these general criteria to do that. So I'll touch on equity in just a moment, but service deficiencies, again, does the project address any service deficiencies particularly in this area? So we ask those questions. Is there leverage opportunities? Is there an opportunity to partner or leverage with outside agencies, like we're planning on doing with Tarrant County, is it part of an approved master plan? So does the department have an approved master plan that says this is a facility it's called for in our master plan? Is it a capital replacement? Do we have a facility that's well beyond its useful life and it just needs to be replaced? Does it collaborate with other departments? So if you've got multiple departments that want to achieve similar objectives but can do it in the same facility, that's good. That's a good thing. That reduces our overall footprint, if you will, and we're still able to provide those services. Is there a federal state or legal requirement? So sometimes there's mandates that are pushed on to municipalities or we might have a contract with somebody that says, hey, you need to put this on your bond program. We don't have another way to do it. Does it address public health and safety? Does it help reduce or eliminate some environmental concerns? Economic development, does the project stimulate growth? Right? Directly. So if we make an investment there we know there's job creation and there's growth that can take place. So equity, this is a new criteria that we put in for 2022 and this came right out of the task force of race and culture. One thing that we wanted to do was ask the question, that is the project located within adjacent to or serve a super majority minority area, that's a minority population of 75% or greater or a majority minority area, which is a minority population of 50% or more. And you can see where we've got these mapped out through the city, where those MMAs and S MMAs and that's a mouthful so I'll probably stumble on that a little bit, but that's where they're at. But what was submitted? When all the departments submitted their projects, we had about $1.3 billion with the project and obviously we can't fund all those projects so we go through that prioritization process that I just described to you. As you can see which is not atypical, streets and mobility usually represents the lion's share okay? That was about $677 million presented, about 53% facilities was about 28% at $164 million. Parks, non-vertical, and I have non-vertical in their parks, sometimes operates facilities that, you know like community centers for instance, we're just talking about in this category park development, so when you think of open space or swing sets or other things like that that you'd see in neighborhood parks or even in community parks. And then open space conservation is a new category for 2022 and we'll describe that here in just a moment. Right up, once we got through prioritizing all these projects and ranking them here's where we ended up with about 64% allocated being proposed allocated for streets and pedestrian mobility. Parks and Recreation about 17% public library so we're proposing a new public library in the far northwest. Fire safety improvements we're proposing is two fire station replacements. A police facility, two community centers and then of course open space conservation bringing it up the rear at 3%. So streets and pedestrian mobility, if this map anything just gives you some visual perspective of where these projects are planned for intersections, arterials, corridors and neighborhood streets. So we took the SMMAs and the MMAs and we laid them over that, okay, those majority minority areas to see where they ended up. Well about $167 million or 69% of that funding category will be located within those majority minority areas. So these are the buckets, these are the project types, okay, so there's some in here like bicycle facilities for instance of $6 million. What that means is that's just $6 million that we're going to find. We have identified need for $6 million worth of projects to address bicycle facilities or neighborhood and school safety $6 million. We know where we're going to prioritize those needs particularly for school in front of schools for neighborhood safety or safe routes to school. But starting at the top, arterials the ones highlighted in red font are ones that we're seeking participation with Tarrant County as a part of their bond program in November. So there are 11 arterials, so we'll be at about a 50-50 split. So we would propose $110 million worth of city funds as part of the bond. Leverage that with $149 million from Tarrant County and an additional $49 million that we've collected for, either through impact fee or future improvement agreements from developers to come to total project cost of $308 million. So you can see that $110 million we're trying to leverage to put $308 million of arterial projects on the ground. So if we travel down the page a little bit, $16.4 million dollars from Tarrant County for intersection projects, traffic signals, $4.5 million and then grade separated railroad crossing at 30 million. Bottom line, about $200 million is what we seek participation from Tarrant County in. We won't know until probably the next week or two which ones they're going to say yes, we'll participate and no, we won't participate. But right now this is the proposal that we have on the table in front of them. So if you look down at the very bottom on the 2022 bond funds, that's 317 million we're trying to leverage with outside funding sources to put $570 million of improvements on the ground. And as you can see without Tarrant County or some participation from outside sources, we couldn't do all these projects. So in partnership we can do more. So proposed arterials, these are 11 arterials that are being proposed. I'll let your eyes rest on those just a moment. And you can tell like for district 7 look, that's a high growth area up there. We're trying to catch up with the capacity needs and all those arterials up there. It is extremely congested. And again we're seeing a lot of arterial need if you will in the north part of town. Established corridors that are supporting transit. So we've got $10 million programmed in for East Lancash between Jones and Hanley Drive. That $10 million is what we're proposing we could use for local match to support any type of transit initiatives. The same would hold true for Eastbury and McCartn. Even those are only design dollars. There may be an opportunity even with some of those design dollars to secure some right away. Again the goal being if we know we're going to be doing something and we need additional right away, let's get it now. If we can. Because it only gets more expensive in the future. So these are the proposed intersection projects. So I believe there's three that would be located in Council District 3. Camp Billy at Brian Irvin, Camp Billy at Horn and Brian Irvin at Oklahoma. And really those are all designed to alleviate congestion and safety enhancements. I think some of you already have the list. If I failed to mention this there's a list out front if you don't kind of a large 8.5 by 14 that gives you the laundry list if you will of projects that are being proposed for the bomb program. So safety mobility our vision zero objective here. We've got high injury networks. So these are where we've got related fatalities and severe injuries. We know those are, there's about 10 of them the highest needs throughout the city where we see the highest amount of fatalities. Vision zero is just what the name implies. What improvements can be made to those corridors to eliminate traffic fatalities. Not even from vehicular, but pedestrian as well and bicycle. So almost the transportation. And these are the 10. These are the 10 areas. The corridor Miller Avenue here, the limits from Eastland to Killian. And it just goes across the board. Shows you crashes per mile, whether it's located in a super majority minority area. All but one of those is located in a super majority minority area. So park and wreck. So this is the next big category if you will. Talked about streets and mobility on the park and wreck. On the left your left is the the project types throughout the city. You can see the map we're just highlighting where the disbursement of those projects are and I'll go over in a little bit more detail about the specific projects that those represent. This is where they're located at in relationship to the majority minority areas. So again here's the project buckets on the left. We got the council district and the project type or what the project is the 2022 bond funds and then of course any partnership opportunities that have come forward as either a match or contribution to those projects. So we're taking asking for about 85 million to get about 100 million dollars worth of project improvements on the ground. The one on the far right as I mentioned earlier about operating and maintenance costs that is our anticipated first year operating expenses when we think the project will be delivered. So we know we're going to have to include that in that budget year. So, Botanic Garden infrastructure improvements. We turned over the management of the Botanic Gardens to my research institute Texas, right? And when we did we turned over a lot of infrastructure to them that was already aged beyond its useful life and really need to be replaced. As a part of that management contract they're obviously going to take care of everything from this from the time forward of the contract. This is our way of going back and rehabilitating or giving some money to rehabilitate some of those facilities that had undergone deferred maintenance and actually needed to be replaced. So we committed under that contract at least to put forward for future bonds funding to help replace some of those facilities. But again, once it's in place it's theirs to manage going forward. And that's 4.6 million dollars. Heritage and Paddock Parks renovation. This is really on the north end of the downtown. You know Heritage Park for all purposes is closed. It really needs to be rehabilitated and there's been a lot of effort to rehabilitate that. We're also going to take that opportunity not only do that but also do Paddock Park renovation at the same time which is really across the street and improve some pedestrian transportation in that quarter. You know as that convergence is right there could get very dangerous. So this is 13.5 million dollar project but we also have 8.3 million dollars of private funding that would go on top of that. Fort Worth Water Gardens 1971 I think it was put in place. We've done as well as we can do with maintenance over the years and management of that but it's aging. And you can tell in the plumbing is mostly where we're seeing the aging. We got a lot of bald cypress out there that those root systems have found their way to the plumbing and it is degraded some of that. We need to come back in and replace some of that. So this is taking 6.5 million dollars and really facilitating that. Drainage and erosion control and pond dredging you know as I mentioned we really would like to handle a lot of maintenance items with our Pego funding right that's 6.5 cent. A lot of these are there beyond that. They really need to be replaced whether it's a dam or coming back in and completely dredging out a pond for instance that more or less operates for storm water capacity. So as that thing sills up we have less capacity. So it improves drainage. And these are the location of those parks and all that is on the list that we've provided as well. Meta Brook golf course renovation. You know much like we did Rockwood where we first started out and trying to improve play of the golf course. We're coming back in and rehabilitating the tees rehabilitating the fairways kind of addressing some drainage issues that are out there as well. Improving playability that's what that 7 million dollars is being proposed for. Sycamore park. Sycamore golf. This used to be Sycamore golf course about 66 acres. We've decommissioned it as a golf course public golf course. Now we're asking to come back and develop it as a community park. So that 5 million dollars would go to that effort. So some of the things that you would definitely see in a community park right like trails and park roads and picnic facilities and security lighting again turn it into an actual park. Stop 6 enhanced neighborhood family aquatics facility. We're proposing as an enhanced neighborhood aquatics facility at 7 million dollars it will be located next to the stop 6 community hub. And I'll explain what that project is but for reference purposes this aquatics facility would be paired with that project and located adjacent to it in the stop 6 area across from Rosedale park. Forest Park pool replacement. Obviously it's it's undergone its fair share of rehabilitation over the years but it needs to be replaced now. It is being designed as an enhanced neighborhood aquatics facility. Okay. 7 and a half million dollars. Parks department was also given 900 thousand dollars in advance of the bond program to start the early design of that facility and that's what they're doing today. So the hope is by the time we get to the 2022 bond program we'll at least have the design in place for the for the new. Yes ma'am. It'll be a public pool. Yes ma'am. Yes ma'am. Echo Lake park improvements. So we got this from the county in 2017. It's about 41 acres and it's located just on the north side of Worth Heights community center. Now the county when they gave it to us gave it to us with a lot of infrastructure that was in poor condition right. The ball fields deteriorating right. Nothing in there was ADA compliant right. You had all the playgrounds that are deteriorated. What we're going to do is come back in and rehabilitate that at a cost of about 5 million. Now they did give us the property but we think we can do a great job with it and integrate it with Worth Heights. Gateway park development this is 8 million dollars for design and construction of additional park improvements and athletic fields and skate park and parking lots and security lighting at Gateway. Neighborhood park improvements. So these are neighborhood parks or properties that are required as park reserve if you will for future redevelopment for future development. So this is the list of parks here and it'll be our typical neighborhood park. We'll develop it with playgrounds and shelters and walking bike trails and picnic facilities and all the site furnishings that you would see associated with our neighborhood parks. Fort Worth Zoo. So we have a contract with Fort Worth Zoo. Fort Worth Zoological Society right to provide the infrastructure necessary to support their new exhibits. Okay. So we have a contractual obligation. This 3 and a half million dollars is to do just that. When they have a new exhibit we're going to put the water and sewer and those things in that help support the exhibit. It's a pretty good return when you look at the value of the exhibits they're putting in place versus what you know we're asking for in terms of the infrastructure necessary to support it. Trail gap connections. So these are the three areas that we're most concerned with. So the five and a half million dollars I think bomber spur is in this particular area. So we're looking to do is close those gaps in the trail sections. So this five and a half million and we'll try to leverage as much of these dollars with Texas Parks and Wildlife or someone else that might have grant funding available to assist with that project. Open space conservation. I mentioned this a little earlier that this is a new category. What we're trying to do is ecosystem preservation and open space because if we don't it's going to evaporate. It's going to be taken in for development. It's going to be put into another use and really to have more livable communities and ecosystem preservation we're suggesting 15 million dollars to go out on a prioritized basis and acquire those high quality ecosystem for preservation. We started this actually as a project maybe a couple years ago with our first acquisition on Broadgast Hill. We acquired from one of the gas to gas producers. Yes ma'am. I just had a question about the open space. This is critical that we do this because the more strip malls and parking lots and everything that we build and the more concrete the rain has to go to then you're going to start having flooding in neighborhoods that never happened before. So it's critical to keep the open space conservation as part of part of your plan. Yes ma'am. Thank you. So facility improvements so we'll talk about here as really the vertical components community centers, public safety and then a public library. This is where they're located at on that. This is where they're located at relationship to the MMA's. So here's a list of those projects. Now we've got one here in council district 3 on Getty's at Eulen. If you're familiar with that fire station, it's very small, very compact. It's supposed to operate as a 3-bay double company station but it's about half the size of a 3-bay double company station. It's a little over 5,000 square feet. We typically build them at 10,000. There's so many things wrong with this. You know other than it's aged and it shows we've actually got bay doors that do not accommodate modern fire apparatus. We have to lower the suspension on the vehicles to get them in there. There's one of many issues with it. We can't accommodate female firefighters in there. It's very compartmentalized. You can imagine it's an older structure, eight-out walls on the inside. It's just, it doesn't lend itself very well to any type of renovation. And it's in a small lot, if you will. So we're looking outside of where its location is today but still within the service area for the fire department for an alternative site to put a more modern station out there. Yes, sir. I believe it's 5933 Gettys G-E-D-D-E-S. Yeah. It's at Hewland and Gettys right there. It's where I, Brian Irvin, that's it. No, ma'am, we haven't found it yet. The fire department is diligently outlooking in collaboration with our property management department to find the best location. I guess I want to add that the site that's community accessible says something more than the site now isn't as easily accessible to walk out and things like that. So they are looking for a site in that area that would be more community friendly since the fire stations are within 24 hours, 72 weeks. That's probably the closest fire station to you. That's probably your closest fire station to you recently over in Wellington, too. Yeah. Kind of embedded in a residential area, too. And I think to Valerie's point, we're going to kind of pull it out of there. So it is more accessible to the community. And then, of course, our far northwest library Stop Six Hub and then a fire station community center replacement and then a new northwest patrol division. So the far northwest library we have our eyes on a site at Avondale, across from Cendera Ranch. Far northwest. That was a particular area, if you looked within a three mile radius of that general area that I just described to you. We added over 3200 people during a pandemic year in a three mile radius. 20,000 already out there in a three mile radius. Yes, sir. I don't know if they're ever going to do something to replace the originally library. Every time you have a bond issue, it's never on there. Well, it's really out. Okay. Well, I'll tell you what, because these comments are good. So we'll go back to the library service and we'll determine where that sits today in facility, its facility condition when it's kind of scheduled for replacement. But we rely a lot heavily on the library and what services they need to deliver and what their highest priority needs are. But we will definitely check. Well, that's important because it serves the Como community too. All those people rely on the computers. Right. So, I just mentioned Fire Station 16 at the bottom at 8.2. So included in that is land acquisition, obviously design and construction of the facility. But Fire Station 37 which is more in the north is on Ray Wright Road 4721 Ray Wright Road. That fire station was intended and moved in, it's a modular building so it was actually moved in in 1998 to serve as a temporary because we had growth occurring in the north. Well, it's about time it has a permanent home. Right now it sits on Ray Wright Road which is really a blind curve out there so it's more difficult for the firemen to deploy out of sight and get back into it. And it's about half the size of what we need for a three bay double company station. So we'll be looking at an alternative site for it too. Community centers. I mentioned earlier the stop six hub community center and really this is a replacement of the existing MLK community center except it won't be at the same location. It'll be located where Cavill Place used to be located. It was right across from Rosedale Park in the stop six area. What we're proposing is a 28,000 square foot community center that's more multi-purpose because I mentioned project collaboration earlier this is one where we'll have about 3,500 square feet of public library we'll have all the recreational components that you see with the community center. Plus we'll have the ability to deliver services out of there social services programs out of the community center. Right next to it would be where we would locate the aquatics facility that I mentioned earlier. Fire station community center at 11.5 is a waitlisted project from 2018. We went with Diamond Hill as a replacement community center still didn't do away with the need to replace the fire station community center. It really is an old historic fire station that's been built around and added on to over time and it looks like that. It's very compartmentalized it's got a second floor that's inaccessible for any programming needs because it's not ADA accessible. What we're proposing to do is remove everything except the historic fire station preserve as much of that component as we can and then design around it and not do it over periods of time. Let's do it all at once. There's also some acreage that surrounds that community center that we're also going to go ahead and do some park improvements on it as well. Northwest Patrol we already own a property of 3,900 Angle Avenue which is west of Meacham. We bought that property every intent of putting in a Northwest Patrol and consolidating their operations. Right now they're housed on Main Street and they're housed in the stockyards. We pay about $151,000 a year in lease rent for a facility we don't own so that we can liberate ourselves from that lease expense at least the fire department can because they're taking it out of their operating side and build a new facility for them about 32,000 square foot so we'll be able to house and consolidate those Northwest Patrol division so that's $18.6 million. So where we're at today so we're in the public meeting phase if you will we're out seeking some input and comments we're also validating and adjusting if we need to some of the projects that we cost it out six to eight months ago and I think it's no surprise the cost of materials have moved up right we've got some inflation that's occurring particularly in the labor market too so we want to be able to go back and validate those costs and those assumptions that we made when we put these models together a year ago in some instances and then of course we'll finalize a project list hopefully by the end of the year have something for city council after all this input to say these are the propositions and projects we want to move forward with be able to set that election sometime in January or February and then of course have the election in May of 2022 now between the time we set the referendum and the actual election we'll be coming back out and sharing with you each proposition that you'll be asked to consider as part of the bond program so it doesn't end here we're going to continually come back out and keep these things in front of you so you stay educated on everything that takes place from this day forward so Michelle is this where it's located yes sir how long does it know about the manager training in Forest Park we'll do Trinity Park I tried all summer to find out what happened to that the phone number was disconnected never saw it run and I was sure we were going to lose that attraction like we lost the traditional train which is now a great vibe attraction and it has I've seen the past few weeks started running again on a very limited schedule five hours having something and who owns that is that part of the zoo does the park the park but somebody that goes tracts or through a public park well we just happen to have someone from parks here it is it's a private owner and operator for the train but he does have a lease with the park department to operate the train through the city other than that I'm not real sure about its current operation and why there was a hiatus in its operation but I can get your name and number afterwards it's just barely functioning and we were down there when it was supposed to be open and there were people from out of state and you know no signs ever posted the website was incorrect too after we're through here the website was incorrect on the parking website on the train I said the number it has is just connected excellent I will touch base with you can you elaborate please on page 4 sidewalks do you want an installation of sidewalks okay so that's just a bucket list it's a bucket of money the TPW goes through a process to prioritize where their highest sidewalk needs are so we know where some of those gaps in sidewalk connections are or where the highest priority needs are that right now they're working on that list and I think there's some folks from TPW here that might be able to share some of that information with you after we get done with the presentations and get down to more detail particularly if you're interested in a particular area town okay thank you as Lorraine makes her way up to thanks Roger as Lorraine makes her way up to talk about the budget I want to just point out some people city manager David Cook is here in the back deputy city manager Jay Chapa is over here assistant city manager Dana Bergdorf is the city manager Val Washington is here we've also got police chief Noakes is he hiding in the corner back there police chief Noakes is here chief Aldridge and west side commander Barthin is here too along with some other city staff so I appreciate you all just so you all know this is important for them to see this and be out here with us too so come on up good afternoon I'm Lorraine Coleman budget manager with the city of Fort Worth planning and data analytics department started I did a real good job matching these walls today so that's important and the other thing is that my boss normally gives this presentation and he couldn't be here this evening and so I thought I'd get some chance to practice today and I didn't so I'm going to walk through this data with you and what we're going to talk about tonight is we're going to talk a lot about property tax and the variables and how those impact us and then we're going to talk a little bit about budget we're going to show you some slides and give you some numbers and then we're going to talk about what's next so and you're going to hope that I can do this presentation correctly alright so property tax values budget next steps so first of all we're going to talk about the assessed values and the recommended tax rate so this slide just basically shows you the growth that we've had over the last seven eight years and what you're seeing up here is the total appraised value which is the equivalent of the market value so if you sold your house today what would it sell for that's what appraised value is the net taxable value is the next line and that's if you own a home and you have a homestead exemption on it that's your net taxable value and I'll call your attention to the net taxable value those two numbers so for 2021 fiscal year we're at $79 billion this year our new value is $87 billion and I draw your attention because I'm going to walk through that to show you how we get to those numbers so in fiscal year 21 we had $79 billion in taxable value net taxable value and of that and in 22 we have $87 billion and we added $4.2 billion in which is a change in taxable value which is a 5.3% increase in the existing value in Fort Worth so the $79 billion increase 5.3% for everything that was existing today or at the same time and then we added $3.2 billion in new construction which brings us to a 9.4% increase from 21 to 22 so those increase in values particularly the increase in existing value has allowed us to reduce the tax rate so we went from and you heard Roger talk about this $74.75 and we're recommending a rate of $73.25 this year which is a reduction of a penny and a half and the way we break this down when we calculate taxes and if you go out to our website and you look under the budget page and you scroll all the way down to the bottom you're going to see something called truth and taxation and we've listed for you there a lot of links that you can look at for the appraisal districts the counties there there's information from the comptroller's website that you can look at you can look at our calculations and when you look at those calculations we're going to see two basic rates which is operations and maintenance or your O&M and the debt rate so that's what you'll see that's what we're required by the state to calculate now the city takes it one step further because we have a commitment to pay as you go capital infrastructure so we take our operations and maintenance rate and we further reduce that or we don't reduce it we just split it between operations which is your salary and benefits contractual obligations and capital which we call pay as you go capital and we'll have a list later in here that will tell you what that goes for and what it pays for so and this is the way we break the rate down so it's about 80-20 split between operations and maintenance and debt and you'll see as we go further on we sort of maintain that split as we go this is just a historical how those rates have looked over since 2013 and you can see beginning in 2016 that we began or 2017 we began to reduce our rates as values grew it allowed us to reduce our tax rate at the same time so you'll see that we've gone from 85.5 cents in 2016 to the current 73.25 cents that's recommended for this year for 22 the bottom portion of it just shows you the percentage of our tax rate that goes towards debt and to the pay go and you can see that we've maintained around 29-30% year over year when you look at this line here so important variables are the value, the rate and the revenue so we take our taxable value and that's what we use to calculate levy and revenue on and we multiply it by the tax rate to come up with the revenue that you see here so while values are up 9.4% we've lowered the tax rate so that overall revenues are only increasing by approximately 7% and remember more than 4% of that is attributable to new construction so this is just another way to look at the values that those rates create as far as O&M and this is a comparison of current year to what we're proposing for 22 and you see what we generated last year what we expect to generate in 21 in the variance here also this year is economic development and what we've done this year is taken about a quarter of a cent the value of a penny in tax revenue is about 8 million dollars so a quarter of a cent would be the 2 million and we have set it aside for economic development so that's something new we've done here that you see on this slide that's a little bit different and that's to be used for cash and economic incentives as we go forward so this slide demonstrates how these different variables impact you so if you had a home that was $200,000 and you had that average 5.3% increase in value that we talked about earlier that would increase the taxable value of your house to $210,600 so that's how that increase in value impacts you so you can see below we've reduced the tax rate because of that increase and how that impacts you in city worth taxes is that at the 7.75% it was $1,400 and your value's grown but even though the lower's rate it's still a little slightly higher at $1,500 so when you go back to this same chart and how this breaks down this is what you're paying for city services if your house was at that value you're paying the $1,543 overall $1,200 goes to operation maintenance which then means $1,000 or $1,100 for operations $137 goes to capital the infrastructure the pay as you go and then $311 goes to debt or INS so now we're going to talk about the recommended budget to the city so right now the budget is a total of $1.8 billion as you can see the majority of that is for the general fund which has contains the public safety your parks your libraries your code our administrative services are also included in that we also have enterprise funds your water your sewer solid waste storm water we have special revenue funds like the CCPD culture and tourism are included there we have internal service funds that service internally the city our fleet services our health risk account fund we have debt service and then fiduciary funds so looking more granularly at the general fund when you look at revenues you can see that basically 80% of our revenues for the general fund are generated through taxes property tax and sales tax the remainder are through you know charges for services license for permits we do transfers between departments for services fines and forfeitures those take up the other 8% 20% could you go back to back to back to okay you have a budget of 1.8 billion dollars and you have revenues of 796 million so the 1.8 billion is for all funds citywide it's not just this general fund so this is our total operating budget it includes all funds there's a billion dollar difference there this this is just the general fund so you can't see it so this is 761 million just this fund by itself is the 761 million which matches the revenue on this one smoking mirrors okay see my boss put this together so I'm just saying so yes and these are the general fund revenues we talked about that and then this is just a comparison of those those same revenues from this year to what we're proposing for next year and the dollar amount of change and the percentage change and if you remember if you signed up outside you will all get a copy of this presentation too so part is all the departments that are within the general fund and this has their budget current year versus what we're proposing for 22 in the variance we go from high to lows so you'll see the police department, the fire department park and recreation transportation those are our top four dollar wise what's the non-departmental because there's a big change there non-departmental is a budget that we use for all those things that we can't directly put in another department one of those being separation pay when people leave the city they sometimes have vacation on the books or that they get paid out for so rather than putting big chunks of money in departmental budgets we will hold it in contingency fund in non-departmental and part of that also is I believe for the new city hall cost we place money there because it didn't belong in anybody else's budget so we put it in non-departmental yes what is the budget for a code of good finance is that where does that fall in there it's above library yes library is 22 you know it's 25 24 million to 25 6 which is a 6.8% increase and how long has that diversity and inclusion line item it's at the bottom of the page that department has I think this is the third year for the diversity and inclusion department anybody raise your hand if I'm wrong on that one I think it is the third year so so it was created it was created out of the race and culture task force and they basically took pieces of other departments so the human relations commission which is part of the communications department that's existed before since 1980s or so that take care of like EEOC complaints on housing or discrimination that was moved to this department also our NBD office which is a minority business enterprise office that was part of economic development was moved to this department so the new department to try to focus on diversity and inclusion efforts overall in the city so they're working with every department to come up with an overall plan it's kind of a compilation of different groups that put together we hired a new director department and one person brought together thank you I have more on that budget in Africa does that include hiring additional people for that department or is that just a budget to get for what already exists I believe there's a budget for what currently I mean it's maintaining current services plus but there are no new employees in this code budget in the fiscal year 22 budget but that does include some contractual increases and I'd be glad to walk you through the specifics of the code budget to give you exactly where the variance is live from fiscal year 21 to fiscal year 22 but it doesn't include increasing your staff at all no it doesn't and the code's general plan budget I will tell you code is working with the marshals division to utilize them to help with the legal dumping enforcement efforts so we are going to use marshals to help with those efforts but their fiscal year 22 budget does not include the addition of new staff would it be okay if I got your number before I leave yes thank you I have a question what is diversity and inclusion in the department that's what we enjoy it was a combination of a couple other departments different divisions for those departments to have a more focused on diversity and inclusion on the opposite the only new position was a new director of operations how many people are in that department I couldn't either I'd have to go look but I will tell you the budget document I know it's very long but if you search you can find information about each department find out the number of positions they have you can find out what their budget was and what it changed to I have a question the actuarial requirement for the pension program this year is going to be $180 billion where is that in the budget right now it's not that each department's salary line items includes benefits so it's part of that overall within each department a portion of the city's salary I know you're not going to pay because in the last eight or nine years you have underfunded the pension $523 billion and every year you only put in 10 or 20% of the actuarial requirement and look $500 million that is a the pension fund is 40% funded 60% of it is unfunded and the most forceful item in the world is compound interest every year that you fully fund that pension it just grows and grows and grows and you get to where you'll never get out of it this is not the federal government we would like you all to address that 500 shortfall $500 million shortfall in the pension fund I mean to say nothing of the fact that you've got a 1.5 billion dollar deficit this year you're very good at spending money but can we please get the city on a better financial foundation comments noted I know that we as a city we have taken some actions to improve the situation with the pension I know right now we're looking at refreshing our actuarial studies to see where we are to confirm where we are now so well you know where you are you're 500 million short so two years ago hey thanks for the question and you might be reading some of the financial statements the plan is actually amortized over 42 years so it is paid off at a certain point in time the budget that's actually before this year includes more money from taxpayers for the pension that's not a positive thing to hear but the budget includes another 1.2% of all payroll to go to the pension also includes a .8% from all employees going to the pension if we don't improve the amortization to 30 years then that'll happen again next year and we'll put another 1.2% of payroll from taxpayers and we'll another .8% from employees if we still don't hit 30 year amortization at that point in time then we'll be re-evaluating where we are with the pension that might again mean more contributions from the tax, let me finish that might be more contributions again from the taxpayer changes to the benefit more money from employees or a combination of all three well look we got into this situation under the regime of Mr. Montgomery Mr. Price and I hope this part could do that I've got a question about the general fund reference to the $18 million lawsuit the city of Fort Worth needs to pay back to the state I'm a citizen on the trove of member of S.I. Fort Worth and Mayor Betts and Clyde has made a comment to the news media in reference to the $18 million lawsuit said that the city of Fort Worth general fund and C.C.P.D. couldn't face cutbacks for years to come that also was repeated by the new mayor Maddie Parker and the new city council how is that going to impact the place department and the C.C.P.D. in which funds our citizen on the trove that's a very good question and you can we're seeing how we can that's a tough question I know so I believe when we found out so basically what happened is that a very large taxpayer that does business with the federal government paid $18 million in sales taxes over a period of time that they shouldn't have paid the federal government is tax exempt they sued the state the state settled of what the state settled or not settled and so the city in essence received the state paid back a portion that they received on their sales tax the city has to pay back approximately $18 million $12 million from the general fund $6 million from C.C.P.D. because of the one cent sales tax and the half cent sales tax to the state because the state paid the whole thing back we've set up a program to pay it back and we have to have it we've done a program to pay it back it's an example of what the state of was it 14 years I think it was 12 years so to minimize the impact so we could stretch out that payment over time and I think when those comments were made we're in the middle of Covid and sales tax revenues were way down what happened is that actually turned around and we don't see PPD fund or the general fund and to code blue specifically all right They are both much more eloquent than me when for those tough questions. So We get to move on This is represent some of the drivers that impact the general fund for the increases this year as you can see pension contribution is first thing on there we also have obligations with Collective bargaining for the fire department meet and confer with the police department that we have to fund Opening new facilities accounts for some of that because we have to pay for the operations of those new facilities We increase pay for performance and of course we had some development incentives as well so moving to the next group of Funds the enterprise funds which again are your water your sewer your solid waste storm water in total. There's 631 million 78% of that is from the water and sewer fund and The main thing about the enterprise funds is that there is no retail water sewer rate increases No residential solid weights fee increases. No storm water user fee increases this year. No parking rate increases this year either That's a good thing Then we come to the next group which is special revenue funds And you'll see CCPD appears the major one funded through sales tax We also have the culture and tourism in total. They're 173 million dollars The majority these are all self-supporting funds. So CCPD is supported through sales tax And then this is the recommended CIP This is just representative of we do every year when we do the operating budget We also do a five-year capital improvement plan program So for 2022 you can see that we're investing 442 million dollars into capital and then we talked earlier about a portion of the O&M rate operation and maintenance goes to Pago capital and This year there was a four million dollar increase in that Pago capital and what it that goes towards is As you can see here street maintenance traffic system maintenance neighborhood improvement strategy park maintenance bridge maintenance Sidewalks and street lighting. So those are how those dollars are invested annually and this was again Boston this one. This was a per capita look at what our new population from the 2020 census is 918,000 and so when looking at that looking at 2021 what we generated and So there's that and I believe this is the next steps So the next steps are we have several more of these town hall meetings. There'll be a list of where these are located There is a budget work session on September 10th, which is Friday begins at 9 30. I encourage you all to log on and watch On September 14th, there will be a public hearing for both the budget and the tax rate and Then those will with their planned adoption for both of those things is on September 21st, and then there's a list of the town hall meetings And that is it So any other questions? Yes, sir This is the list that I have so yes Related to the budget so Anyone can talk about the public improvement Development tax PID 21 Las Vegas Trail Now What was your question? My question is What the money is going to be spent on specifically why there's a fifty seven thousand dollar Contribution to fund balance charge So none of the other I think all the kids have a contribution to fund charge not filled out of the paper In which Telegram when they came out with it. I Can tell you overall it's about three hundred thousand dollars this new kid because we talked about earlier I think before you arrived Las Vegas Trail initiative Well talk about Las Vegas Trail and all the crime and everything there So we put this kid it does not tax the homeowners and tax the apartments and everything else there The homeowners have been cut out in some of the businesses, but this 300,000 that'll give us about 150 that will go into for public safety so we can have some more officers down there off duty, etc working the area another portion goes to Beautification, but that's mostly gonna be trash abatement in that area And then another portion is for increased activities at the community center itself and the contribution to fund balances funds It's an assessment like a tax They don't come in till January The fiscal year starts in October So you need to build a three month fund balance so that the following year they can start operating to have dollars in those months So that's why there's a contribution to fund balance that provides every year you have that amount So you can start that year with funds before you actually collect the dollars So every every new set up basically does set up has a fund balance running fund balance to be able to do that So they have all 12 months if the funds come in three four months later Yeah, no no we carved all car do you live over that yeah, we carved all the homes out It's the apartments and the commercial properties that are being taxed I mean I Understand it doesn't have anything to do with the city of Fort, but the trash in this city is ridiculous So thanks God are they we contact because they are not doing their job Katie. I talked to you and y'all were nice enough to be back to me three or four times Just a little section from Kent buoy and horn going east to Rosedale.   Office of district engineer They're physically located around part 20, but his office is the one who runs the whole district Whenever y'all complain to us we Aren't the city we do pass it on. I understand They don't enjoy He's the district engineer for text up for this area I would also say you have a state rep and a state senator that do tech stocks budget every year And that are every two years, so you might give them a call and let them know you're Disatisfaction, it's not just me. I think the whole city I agree with you I do have one question about the huge deficit with the city and is that gonna be addressed through Property taxes or Yeah, but then I'll have to ask you for the money so So let me offer this and we have these on our website And that is the ratings from the rating agencies that rate all local governments and The city has a double a plus credit rating. So when we we don't have a triple a But we have a double a plus which is still a strong rating for local governments Our debt burden is evaluated in a number of different ways One is are we a growing? Community with growing assess values and yes, you yes, we are So the way we're rated by rating agents that I'd encourage you to look at that That's how they're gonna rate local governments And one of the expectations of rating agencies If you have a growing community is Your investing in infrastructure for a growing community Which is the 2022 bond program that Roger talked about earlier? And so if we weren't investing in infrastructure That's a way that rating agencies then look at us is not meeting our obligations for a growing community And then we're in actually in a more problematic way Carrying debt is not always a negative when you're financing Infrastructure that's going to be used by the next generation So these roads that we build are gonna last 20 years the water and sir We put in the grounds gonna last 30 years the parks are gonna last indefinitely except for the ongoing maintenance that goes along So there's a lot of reasons of using debt to finance public infrastructure And it's rated favorably by independent rating agencies that review all local governments So when you saw that portion of the property tax rate that goes to debt Right that Roger talked about That is still able to come down over time if we continue to grow with the assessed value that you've seen over the last couple decades That debt can be paid back without an increase in the property tax rate The fact the property tax rate has come down as it was been pointed out on a couple slides and Part of that is the amount that goes to pay the debt The property tax goes down values go up. Yes, they do I can we can I see you have pages from the financial statements, I'll be glad to spend time with you after and describe those I'm down at all. I've been out 14 I didn't say your property tax that revenues that you pay has gone down the property. No, no, no values are going up Property tax rates We try to bring those down. It's not always going to offset the increase in assessed value That's correct. We make up about a quarter of the tax bill It includes We get a quarter of the total tax bill It was a slim margin, but if you go back and look it raised their tax rate like 12 cents So they they offset things we did and the county did to minimize their tax rate was offset by the increase in the school tax rate So last year If your taxes went up We continued to to bring our rate down the county brought theirs down But the school district had a proposition In the november elections to raise their tax rate And I believe they raised it like 12 cents If you go back and look they had an ad All these things that they were doing but so They sort of took advantage of the fact that we were all lowering our rates and they increased theirs and it looked like it minimized what you're But Go back and look it's your school. And I'll tell you this If you go to again, I don't tell you go to the budget page on our on the city's website Scroll to the bottom and you're going to see truth and taxation And you're going to see some websites for the counties now we have four counties. So Just go to tarant But there's a website there where they're where they will include all the tax rate for For your taxes you put in your address and it's going to pull up All the tax rates And you'll see what the schools did what the county did the hospital district the water district and you can look back You can look back over several years and you can see whose rates went up who changed and who who didn't So it's it it was a requirement In the 2019 legislature that we do that website I would encourage you to go look if you have questions about it. You can email Questions about your taxes to taxes txes at fortworth texas.gov Taxes taxes and that and that that address is on that page too if you go look at it So there's a lot of useful information There's a lot of forms and it's kind of overwhelming, but One two billion dollars Well, you need to make sure that you're informed about what they're asking for And that is the thing that that's important is what are they asking for? And what are they trying to do with it? So I'm just saying No And if you look at our budget book, there's a chart that shows you what percentage everybody is So We we we try to be I'll say the reason we had this is so you know when we're putting the f y 2022 bond, you know when all those projects are I got a present about uh market value and uh sales by the home Property taxes of it at homeowner i've been hearing a lot of a lot of people would sell their houses for five 10 thousands over a price value market value Just to sell their homes and we get a lot of out-of-state investors from california and other states buying up the our houses And they and they don't care how much they spend for how those being 20 thousand over the market value Just to get the house that problem of that is that wasted all the way to the homeowner's property taxes Other tax ways not going up our market value Market and sell value is going up where it causes us to pay more taxes each year It's a city doing anything to To force these cut back on these out-state investors placing our market value On Yeah, I think it's a no. Yeah, it's to your private property.  Yeah, but I I would still do it anyways They said to me I've been fighting for years. I haven't come out I asked them to send a person out because I had my square footage wrong. They said I had a three car garage I have a one car garage They so so he's okay. You're right. He's re-measured my house. He said, yeah, you have a one car garage And I said, well, all right. I need to make these changes. How do I do that? And you want to tell me? It's the iris tax code you have to go through Uh-huh And I have his car to this day and they said I have called them a million times and said what? It was this and she goes, that is not right. I said, no, no So you cannot deal with it here in the praisel district at all So again there if you go to the website that I referred you to there That's the only way you can do well, and then if you use the taxes at port worth Texas.gov No, I've been put my own a value on there anyway, but I'm just invading rare that now, but they're horrible Those people are horrible Yeah, there you go Thank y'all for coming out. We'll stick around and answer questions if y'all have any, but yeah, I appreciate y'all


What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost? And you are not your own, you don't belong to yourself, you were purchased with the price? His presence, his glory dwells in me. I don't have to go searching for atmospheres, I am an atmosphere. I don't have to go searching for an encounter, I live in an encounter with God. Do you realize that when you walk into rooms, demons start to tremble? When you walk into rooms, sickness starts to lose its grip on people. When you walk into rooms, you shift the atmosphere.


If you guessed that the 4 o'clock block would be Community Matters, you were 100% right. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech. That fellow over there is George Benda. George Benda, I know for a long time he is a Renaissance business person who lives on Molokai and who has had great experiences and energy, including right now. Welcome to the show, George. Thanks, Jay. It's always a pleasure to come and visit with you. I really do enjoy our time together.  Yeah, well, sometime. So far, it's only been on camera. Anyway, George, can you tell the people about Chelsea Group, the company I guess you founded some years ago and built over the years? It's an energy efficiency company. How did you design and develop that? Well, Chelsea Group, I formed the company in 1990. So it was a 28-year run until we sold it this year to Amoresco. We started out doing a combination of indoor air quality, which was a hot issue at the time, and energy efficiency. Generally speaking, at that time, everybody thought it was one or the other. And what we said is, no, you can do them together, but you've got to think about it. You've got to do it correctly. Over time, the company evolved into something I call the Building Science Consulting. Ah, that sounded a perfect term. For the first 10 years, we did a combination of strategic consulting to major corporations that brought products into that market, and they wanted to know, how do we do this? And is this a good product, and are we hitting our market correctly? Consulting for the manufacturers, the vendors of this high-tech stuff for energy efficiency and air. And they were introducing products all the time. So we were working on everything from air handling systems to we did a huge amount of work on this Null Loader Spray that SC Johnson introduced. What is that now, so we know? Well, so you have a smell in a room, and before that, all you did was you put a fragrance in there so that it overwhelmed it in a sort of the toilet world of fragrances. And what these guys came up with was a way to find a molecule that would neutralize so that you wouldn't sense the compounds that were in the air that were smell. So you didn't have to lay perfume over it that way. Exactly. So you started with a, they called it a Null Loader. There was no odor in the product. So we did a lot of work with SC Johnson for years on that product. But that was one half of the business, the other half of the business I built an engineering firm. And those guys were busy working in, particularly in large privately owned office buildings and such. And we worked on indoor air quality, but we also worked on energy efficiency at the same time with the private equity firms. And this was before it was all that popular? Yeah, it was 1990 to 2000. And about 2002, the concept of sustainability finally took root. Now I've been working on it since 1990 with some of the people that were in the Rio de Janeiro Global Sustainability Conference in 1990. Are you an engineer, George? No, I studied philosophy. Okay, well, then it's completely appropriate that I called you the Renaissance business person. My master's degree was on a Renaissance, so. Oh, and we made that up. It works really well. But were you back on, were you on Molokai at the time, way back when? No, I started that company when I was in Chicago. I had until, for the prior six, eight years, I'd been involved with another energy service company called AGC, and there's a funny way this connects. And I'd worked myself from a consultant to regional director to VP Ops to CEO of that company, and then with the direction of the board sold that company to Northeast Utilities in 1990. And that then became the origin of Chelsea Group because I had nothing to do. So I had to do something. Fair enough. It's still pretty young. And that's when you came to Molokai. Not quite yet. Okay, so tell us about it. And the transition to Molokai was really important. My wife and I never really were fully comfortable in Chicago. We love the city, beautiful city, love to be in the city. For city life, there is no better city in the world for my money. But there's nothing you can do outdoors, really. I mean, there are a few days of the year. The weather's good, and it's just 10 million people, and you've got to drive for hours to get to anything that's natural, and that's where our hearts are. And so we knew that as soon as we could, we'd move away from Chicago to some place where we'd have access to the natural environment. And we were scanning the globe, and our accountant said, stop scanning the globe. It's got to be the United States or the Cayman Islands. For tax reasons, you can't go anywhere else. And when we told him we picked Hawaii, he was very upset. He had to pick the one with the highest tax rate. Leave it to the tax account. So that was a moment. We'd settled down to Hawaii, and then it was pick an island, and we toured all the islands and spent time on all the islands. But when we landed on Molokai, it was like a magical moment where we felt like we'd lived there in prior lives, and we were home, and we'd really come back to where we were supposed to be. Interesting, because Molokai is not all that welcoming, if I can say that. You can. And yet, as long as I've known you, you've been completely comfortable there. Yes. And I think a lot of it was that we came with that sort of spiritual connection of we've lived prior lives here. So we didn't come there saying, we're going to change it. We're going to make it the way we wanted it to be the way it was. We just wanted to protect it, and then we wanted it to be as good as it can be, given the criteria of the way it was. And so that's what we've done on Molokai with our lives there. It's been fun. Yeah, that's great. I know you're comfortable there, and it takes a certain, may I say, may I say this philosophical approach. The schooling stands you in good stead, George. So now you were doing business. You have been doing business from Molokai all this time. Yes, absolutely. Tell us about how that has worked. Well, it's been very interesting, because the company operating out of Chicago, we were a national company with some international reach. And I've been doing business in Hawaii since 1993. When we moved here in 2001, we finally moved our household here, and then began the transition to the headquarter here. The company was still national. And I kept it a national company, and I was going two weeks on, two weeks off, going to the mainland back and forth. And it was exhausting, Jay. It was just plain exhausting. And because I had to carry the sales, the company at that point transitioned in the sort of strange economic conditions that happened after 9-11. All of our strategic consulting, we went from 17 global clients. I mean, global corporations that we were working with, they just fired all those guys. They said, we don't need this stuff. This isn't going to happen. And they closed down the marketing and the research departments that we were working with, and the people were just gone. I think that could hurt your top line and your bottom line. Exactly. We didn't just not have clients. We didn't have people saying, well, you're not going to be able to pay for the contract this year. We were having, they're gone. There's no one to call. Start over. And rather than start over, I just refocused on the building science aspect and really doubled down on marketing to the private equity firms that we were selling to and built a national consulting operation in what is now known as sustainability in that sort of core space. So you said a minute ago that you were carrying sales. What is that being carrying sales? Well, I had other people in the organization who had responsibility for relating to clients. And they didn't produce much revenue. They didn't produce much work. So for us to go forward during that period, I would have to meet with the clients. I would have to make the deal with the clients. And then the folks that worked for me could implement the deal. So I was carrying sales in the sense of I actually physically had to go meet with these folks and keep the process of selling projects. I'll bet you didn't lose stride at all. I mean, I think in every good corporate executive and every business leader, there's somebody who can step up to what has to be done, even if that was not the plan. That's what it sounds like. Well, you know, I appreciate that remark. And when it's your own business, and I had no shareholders, it was all on my shoulders. So if I was losing money, it was literally coming out of my pocket and into the company. And that's a heck of a motivator. I can assure you that you really pay attention when it's coming out of your own pocket. And so I had to learn how to do all of those things. And it was disappointing. There were people that paid a lot of money to be sales people and they ended up sitting around the office throwing darts and having fun. And I was out there really hustling and working and they'd show up for the meeting or they'd drive me to the meeting and say nothing and wait until all of the dust had settled and then try to convince me that I owed them their commission because they had pulled it off. Over time, you had to shed those people didn't you? I did. I did. And you know, I worked it out. Everything was going along. But finally, in about 2010, I could no longer sustain the physical burden of traveling that much. And so I started to train people and really, really force them to give them sales goals and, you know, wait from the chaff, pick the people that I thought could do it. And by this time you'd learned or relearned the skill, the art, I shouldn't say the art of the deal. That's too popular right now. Not in a good way. Sorry. It pervades our universe. But you relearned, you know, how to do this sort of thing. So you were in a really good position to train new people coming in. Oh, absolutely. That's absolutely correct. And then the hard thing in high level sales like that, you're selling to really the top of corporate America. These are people who are commanding billions of dollars of assets. And you have to have a presence. You have to have this connection with them. They have to trust you and believe that you can get the work done. And that's the hard thing to get an employee to do. They tend to waffle and say, let me check and all this stuff. They don't just kind of walk in and like, I control the room. And you don't deal with people who handle billions of dollars. I'm going to drill on that for a minute because I think there's some real wisdom in there. So how do you do that? How do you make them believe in you or your company or your sales people in the field? Well, you know, I just had a conversation with a friend about this over the weekend. She's a young MBA and she's thinking of starting your own company. And she's telling me how good her administrative skills are and she can run anything. And I said, well, here's my first lecture to you. Sure, you can run anything, but you can't have a successful company unless you have a real passion for what you do. And so I've felt and it's been, you know, I'm very dedicated. You've known me for a long time. I'm very dedicated to the sustainability and environmental issues that I work on. And I would sit down in the room in the depth of knowledge and my passion and energy would just be there and be obvious. And be visible, yeah. And it was clear that I wasn't just sitting there trying to take money out of their pocket to put it into mine. Although that's their business. They really liked that when they were going to do something that related to their buildings and they wanted somebody they could trust who really cared how this came out. So how do you come at that? Do you come at that from global warming, sustainability of the environment, of the business, of the American economy of, gee, I don't know, of humanity on the planet? Or do you come at it from the point of view of this is going to save you money? The latter, absolutely the latter. What you have to know when you walk in that room is the guy across the table from you, even if he feels strongly about environmental issues and really does mean that he's going to do it, and 95 or more percent do not. His responsibility is to make money for his private equity fund. You could be sure of that. I can be absolutely sure of that. Whatever his religious propensities are, you can be sure of that. Absolutely. And so I would spend time in advance of those significant meetings finding out what the motivation was. Often it was the positioning of the company as a global leader so that those who were investing in green would invest in their fund. And then they had to have a credible program. And so I would say, well, this is what a credible program looks like so those investors will come on board. And if I knew that and I knew what the criteria were, I could walk in the door and say the ten right words that they would hear and know that those are the ten words written down in the list of things that they needed to match up to. And we were in business. You know, George, we here at Think Tech, we take a break during our shows a minute. We play public service announcements and we promote other shows. And we like to do cliffhanger questions so that people will hang around. So they'll still be there after the break. So I'm going to tell you my cliffhanger question. George, after the break, would you tell us the ten words? We'll be right back. Hey, loha, my name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii, airing every Wednesday here on Think Tech Hawaii, live from the studios. I'll bring you guests. I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe. Your co-workers safe, your family safe, to keep our community safe. We want to teach you about those things in our industry that may be a little outside of your experience. So please join me because Security Matters, loha. We're back. Community Matters. I'm Jay Fidel. This is George Benda. And you're probably sitting on the edge of your chair waiting for the ten words. The ten words you say to an official of a large corporation you're trying to do a deal with, get them on your team. So what are the ten words, George? Well, the ten words are not secret. The ten words are the ten words you read in their report. Trick is to get and read their report. Absolutely. A hundred percent. You have to find people in the organization who will give you that report before you meet with the senior. There you go. And that's the whole thing. Because the ten words vary from each report, each company. And what you see is the strategic consultants, the Booz Allen guys, the who's hot today, EY and the rest of them, they can't sell the same words over and over again. They're essentially the same meaning, but you have to say the words that were in their consulting report. And even if it was EY that did here and did here, they're different words, but they mean the same thing. So you just have to be very, very quick on your feet. Follow-ups. Yes. Do you tell them that you looked at the report? No, of course not. No, you kidding? You just use the words. Absolutely. You have to be a magician. And I will tell you that sometimes it's the most bizarre thing that sells some things. I sat down in a room, this is in the 1990s, when LED projectors were all the newest thing and hardly anybody had them. And I had an IBM computer that was a pen-based computer. People don't remember, but those things were around very early on. And it turned out, Microsoft produced a version of PowerPoint that you could write on the screen. So you would do the PowerPoint presentation and then you would draw arrows and things as you were writing it. And so the chief operating officer of a company that was doing about 300 billion at the time, who was one of the 10 largest companies in the world at the time, sitting next to me. And he's watching this. And he's looking at my hands. He's looking at the machine, looking at the screen. He's looking at my hands, looking at the machine. He's not hearing a word I'm saying. He waves over his assistant and says, by tomorrow I want one of those. He wants the machine. I got the contract, but it was the machine. There's a statement in that, isn't there?  This is so important, you know, especially if you're in a tech field, which you were in a thing, are in a tech field. So, tech, energy, it's all connected. Efficiency, it's all connected. Absolutely. It is the future, and it is so important from a business point of view. And, you know, a moral values point of view is not hard to sell. So somewhere along the line, you connected with Amoresco. Can you tell us who and what Amoresco is? Sure. Amoresco is a large energy service company. And so they bid across the country and in many other countries in the UK and several EU countries. They're trying to advance in Asia. They've done some work in Africa. So they're becoming a global corporation. They are very focused on core energy services of deep energy conservation. And they're also focused on utility market changes. So smart grids, efficient production, distributed generation, solar, other technologies. They've done all of those things, massive lighting projects and things like that. And they tend to do very large projects. But they moved on from old-fashioned classical generation using oil or coal, that sort. They don't do that. Typically, no. They don't go back in technology. They're moving forward in technology. And so they've been expanding. They've been in Hawaii previously. And now that they're in Hawaii, they're established a foothold that has more credibility than their prior projects have offered them. And so they actually came to us around the first of the year, January, February timeframe. And they came in order to talk to us about providing engineering consulting. Chelsea Group had had, before it was acquired, a tremendous team of engineers for retrofit projects. Is this the same sort of consulting you were talking about before, where you consult with somebody who is selling high-tech? No, no. This is the consulting where we're doing building science consulting to actual properties. OK, OK. And so we have this great team of engineers and they want to hire that team. And they're telling me about their challenges with their projects and some of the issues they have in working in Hawaii. And I think you can appreciate this. And it's a little bit out of school, but I'll tell it anyway. They did a project out here and they brought engineers from Boston. And they didn't have a local project manager. You know how well Boston engineers go over with local building engineers. Not very. Not very, yeah. The cultural clash is just beyond imagination. So they needed the local presence. They needed the local knowledge. And I was listening to what Ron Haxton, I think you'll meet him this week, was saying. And I said, gee, why don't you just buy my company? And he said, is it for sale? And I said, oh, yeah, I'm trying to sell this company for a little while now. And he goes, OK, we're interested. And the next day we have a non-compete, non-disclosure agreement. The following Monday we have a preliminary letter of intent. So you'd been thinking about it though. About 10 years. And he had not necessarily been thinking about it. He did not expect me to say that when he walked in the door. But then, I'm really interested because this is a moment. It's a moment in business where the heavens light up somehow. So you waited for this exquisite moment. There was a certain moment called hesitation, pause in the conversation. You knew this was the time to pop the question. It's almost like a romance, isn't it? And then you dropped the question and he's ready in some sort of spiritual way. He's ready to move in on that and actually respond to you. I like people who respond quickly. I think business is better that way. It absolutely is. Better deals and the right stuff happens. That was an amazing moment. You knew though. You knew that it was fertile ground. Well, I'll tell you how much I sense that. We had been meeting over the last year with various energy service companies that were trying to expand business. And it wasn't the right fit every time they came in. It clearly wasn't the right fit. We're looking for affiliations, for partnerships, for collaborations of one kind or another. Right. And I was very open to that. I'm not arguing that that would be a good strategy for us and for them. And we were building those deals up, but they weren't fits. They didn't match up. When he told me what his set of problems were, it was like, well, that's what we do here. These are the problems we solve. It's not that we don't look at it as an engineering problem. We look at the whole building and how does it get to the next stage? Had you read the report in advance of this conversation? Yes. And the other thing that was to give you some idea of how committed I was to this, I was slated to go home the night before. And my salesperson brought this meeting in and I said, and she said, well, should I tell them? We weren't going to take another meeting with these guys because the sales guy we'd been meeting with, we weren't doing very well with. And I said, but he had told her that it would be these two senior vice presidents that would come in. And I said, I'll take that meeting. So I stayed over an extra night, redid my travel arrangements and stayed for the meeting. And I will tell you, I was not feeling well in advance of that. I was in pretty poor physical condition, but I just stuck it out and we made it through the meeting. But read their website, read all the background in. Well, let me say that sometimes when you're not feeling well, you actually are in a kind of altered state. And the kind of limitations and barriers you might feel, the concerns you might experience in a regular state don't necessarily apply. Sometimes you do better, don't you think? Yeah, I think it's entirely possible. Entirely possible. So it worked out. So you had an agreement the day after, and from there you went to close. How long were you closing today? It took us about three months to negotiate. And it was a hard negotiation. There was nothing.  New York Stock Exchange Company. They've got plenty of lawyers and accountants. And like everybody else, the first offer was, let me steal your company. And my answer was, no, you can't. And then they got serious about it and we negotiated until we finally made a deal that was acceptable to me. And that's happening right now, George. Yes. It's done. It's closed. It's closed. We closed on August 31. They took over the company on September 1. Chelsea Group's employees are now Amoresco employees. They bought all of the intellectual property. So I cannot promote or say anything about Chelsea Group in any business-like manner. We've had to change our company name and all of those kinds of things. So yeah, Chelsea Group is gone. The king is dead, long live Amoresco. We're going to meet Amoresco on Thursday, no? I thought Wednesday, but yeah. Wednesday, whatever. Later on this weekend, we'll take a look at the celebration you're doing in Pacific Guardia in town. Yeah. Yep. Well, thank you very much for coming down, George. Well, it's always my pleasure to see you. And I look forward to seeing you again in the future with different topics. Yes. One way or the other. One way or another. George Benda, Chelsea Group, former Chelsea Group, Renaissance business person. Now you know him better. Thank you so much. Thanks, Jay. Appreciate it.


Buying a car. What it really costs with finance charges. There's a lot to know when buying a car. You will learn how to calculate monthly payments and how to understand finance charges and the annual percentage rate or APR. So you've decided to buy a new car. You don't have enough cash to buy that car. So you know you will need to borrow money to do so. Anytime you borrow money to buy a car, you will have to pay finance charges on that money. The more money put down on the car, the less the loan will be. A money-wise decision would be to save as much as possible to put towards purchasing a new car. Thus your loan would be smaller and you would pay less in finance charges. It is important to know your rights as a consumer. The truth in lending law states that car dealers who lend money must tell the borrowers the amount or rate of the finance charges. This rate is called the annual percentage rate. The annual percentage rate is already figured into monthly payments and the down payment. So let's consider a few cars. The first car you decide to look at is a new sedan. The monthly payment is $225 for 60 months with $2,500 down. The tax and registration fee would be $573.60 and the APR is 12.10%. Given that information, you can figure out the total cost of the car if you take out the loan for 60 months. Car dealers will often give a customer a reduced price if the buyer pays cash for the car. For this sedan, if you paid cash with no loan, you could buy this car for $12,595 plus tax and registration. So the car, if paid for with cash, would cost $13,168.60. Now that you know the price of the car if you paid cash and the price if you took out a 60 month loan, you can easily calculate what you are paying for the loan. Subtract the smaller price from the larger one. Your answer will be the cost of the loan. So the interest cost is $3,405.  This time, you're considering a sports car. This car is $255 per month for 60 months with $3,000 down. The tax and registration fee would be $573.60 and the APR is 12.10%. Knowing this information, calculate the total cost of the car if you choose to take out the 60 month loan. The sports car would cost $14,500 plus tax and registration if you paid cash for the car. Figure out what the loan is costing you for this car. You have now completed the learning object. Buying a car, what it really costs with finance charges.