Clock. Alright, well welcome everyone. It's 6:00 pm
on february 10th, 2026 for the special college city council meeting. City council when
work winning winter work. Oh my gosh. Winter workshop,
training room session. So, uh, let's start with the, uh, moment of silence, of with
the prayer. Would you pray with me? Mm-hmm . Gracious, loving god. We give you thanks for
glorious day and for a wonderful opportunity to be in service to our community and a wonderful community that we live
in. We, uh, ask for a special blessing upon mike brinkman as he starts his venture with the
city of burn over the utilities department. We ask for a smooth transition between him and
his staff, and, uh, continues success and, and blessings upon that entire
department in the city of burn. Continue to guide us this evening, guide our hearts and
our minds and our decision making as we have discussions tonight about, uh, not only where we
see you leading us in this community, but where you see this community and its needs and how we fulfill
those, uh, to the best of this council's building and for the betterment of this entire community overall
in your precious systems. And we pray. Amen. Would you join me in
the pledge of ance and the texas flag?
my pgi flag, united states and america,
and two republic, which stands, one nation under god,
indivisible, with liberty and justice, overall honor,
texas flag. I pledge, pledge allegiance to be texas,
one state under god, one and indivisible. Thank
you. You may be seated. We will move on to agenda item number
two, public comments. No one you signed up to speak, but I will give the opportunity
if somebody wants to come forward somewhere in the room and stand and podium,
wherever that might be. No. Okay.
no further comments. Alright, we're gonna move on to agenda item number three. And at that time,
I'm gonna turn the rest of the meeting over to, uh, city manager, ben, tha ben, thank
you mayor and members of the council. Appreciate you being here tonight. Uh,
love this time, this part of the year every year where we, we pause,
take a moment to step back and talk about strategic policy conversations,
topics that are important for you to, to think about at, especially as
we gear up and get ready to go into our budget season. Believe it
or not, we look at sarah next week. I believe we
start internally with staff on some trainings and some kickoffs. And this week we're doing some
trainings, so that'll be really heavily upon us here, uh, before
we know what, and you guys understand how that process works. But this is the fun part.
this is where we really get guidance and what are our key,
uh, objectives for the upcoming budget season. We'll throw out some things for
you to consider appreciate, uh, what we're doing here
and your, your patience with us. Uh, we, you know, we have some presentations, but we're also
gonna have a very facilitated, kind of brainstorming strategic visioning
exercise. And so we needed to, we thought, well, maybe we try a different setup here where you
can see that wall, but also see these presentations here.
uh, so we sh we won't go more than 90 minutes. There's good
chance we might be even done before that, depending on your conversation. With that last part,
we'll start off by hearing director carroll, jeff carroll, um, giving us an
update on our safe streets for all initiative and, uh,
what's been taking place so far there and what's on the horizon. Then after
director carroll, director bloo will come up and give us a sneak
peek on the budget calendar and a couple things that are already on our radar that
we want you to be aware of. So with that director carol will
come on up
and you do have these presentations in your folder if you want to take notes on it for you.
so, evening mar and council, uh, here has been mentioned. We're here to talk
about the safe streets for all, or, uh, we commonly say ss four a engineers
like acronyms. Um, this kind of ties back in this
s four a program obviously ties into safety and security and investing in maintaining
our high quality infrastructure and advancing master plan recommendations.
safe streets for all is a federal program that's been around for many,
many years. It's had some different names over the years, but in the current five parts,
five partisan infrastructure bill, there's actually $5 billion
out there for the safe streets for all program over five fiscal years.
we're actually entering into the fifth fiscal year of the program. Um, but it's
a nationwide program trying to increase safety for roadways, but
really for bikes and pedestrians in particular, but roadways all around.
um, this is something that a lot of cities and text out are all kind of really looking into
the safe street program and it ties back into, if you remember, um, several years
ago we kind of did a, a vision zero program. Again, trying to get zero
deaths in, in a, in a year. It's kind of a goal.
we are in the planning and demonstration grant phase. The, the grant
actually has two separate grant programs. We applied
and got a a planning grant, and that's what we're working on now.
um, for some of you might remember, we actually several years ago applied for implementation
grant. We heard some rumors that everyone was planning for
applying for planning and no one was applying for implementation. And the buckets were very segregated.
so we, we tried to gamble of trying to apply for that implementation,
didn't get it. And one of the feedbacks is that you really need to do the two step process that
we've defined. Okay, we do that. Um, so we we're doing that now we're working through the
planning grant. Um, so we had a, got the grant,
we had to go then do a special federal rfq, get an
engineer to help us on the grant. We have to go through a very specific federal requirement
phase. We've been working on the planning grant. Um, one of the
big things that they have in there is called a safety action plan.
uh, when we started our mobility plan a couple years back,
we actually worked through several the items that the state requires in a safety action
plan, but we were missing some of the federal items. Um, so this eight components
are the things that are required in a federal safety action plan.
so we're working through those. We kind of, as part of this grant continuing all the
parts that we were missing that we didn't complete with our mobility plan.
um, just kind of quick history, um, april in 23 is
when we adopted and kickstarted the ss four a
planning. Um, I'm sorry, that was when we got the mobility master plan
adopted and we kind of started this process. March of 24 is when we applied for this
grant. December of 24 is when we got the grant application awarded to us. April
22 is when we got the consultant picked for us. And then may 29
of 25 is when we kind of got the actual kickoff meeting and got this process rolled. So
it's several years in the works that we've been working on this one particular project.
so what have we've been doing exactly? Um, we've been working kind of the
section number three, the safety analysis. What we've been doing, um, and chief
perez knows this as well, the, anytime that there's an accident, whether it's
burn pd or sheriff's office or it's troopers, it goes into a tech
stop chris accident reporting system. Um, and so what we did is
we got all the data for the last handful of years, the last five years of crash data
for in the city limits. And we did a lot of deep diving into those crash records.
um, I'll talk more, but we established a high injury network of our roadways
and we did a lot of effort on our downtown pedestrians. That's one thing that from citizen
surveys and just talking from a lot of our engagement activities, we get a lot of
feedback on how to make downtown safer. We've been working on
community impact assessment. Uh, this is a, a fancy way
of like what parts of town do we really think are the more areas
of pedestrian and bicycle safety are most important. Um, so one of the
things we kind of identified through our task force is kind of the downtown corridor, but also by
the schools and by some of the parks. We've had a lot of community
and stakeholder engagement. I'll talk through those. But we've had surveys.
we've had a booth at a at the market days. We have task force meetings
and I'll explain those more. And then we've kind of gone through and defined strategy
and kind of project selection terms as we go through this process.
as I mentioned, uh, we did a deep dive into crash records. In those five
years, we have 2,342 crashes in the city of burn
proper. Of those 36 of 'em are fatal and serious injury, and 24
of those were pedestrian and bike related crashes. Um, so we have those kind of the bar
charts. It's kind of interesting. If you remember, 2020 is kind of covid year
and not a whole lot of people were driving the first half of the year. Uh, but then 21
and 22 was t stop was still finishing the bridges. There was a lot of accidents kind
of up on the bridges of, while tdot was doing their work. So it was looking good in 23
and then 24 kind of spiked up again. So it's just something we'll continue to watch
as we go through the crash records, as we can progress through years.
this is, again, we, we pulled all the records in that chris database that tells
you everything of how that accident occurred. And so we were really looking
at what could be the triggers that's causing accidents at specific lo locations
using all of those crashes. Those 2300 crashes, 49%
of 'em were at intersections, 80% of them were on
the txdot system, which as you know, most of our major roads in town,
main street, river, east bandera over, sorry, west bandera over
by heb blanco, those are all t stop roads. So 80%
of our crashes occurred on those t stop roads and 1% of those 2300
crashes was a bike and pedestrian. Now, if we look
at just all of those crash records, if we look at
just the fatal and serious injury crashes, we get that
the 39% of 'em are at the intersection. So actually, actually decreased. 83%
of 'em are at the, on the textile system. So that increased the overall system, but really what jumped
out to us is 25% of the serious
and fatal injuries happened with bikes and pedestrians. So that kind of shows
you that that number of, um, they're, they're kind of a a v vulnerable group. They're
getting hit by big cars as opposed to cars running into each other. It's kind of just an obvious safety
factor. And that ties into
all of these crash records. We take all those records, we analyze 'em on a
map, and it's a federal term. We're called a high injury network.
um, I can talk a lot about it, but really it's just defining a map of where
most of these injuries are occurring. Um, when we get into
federal grants and federal opportunities, that's a specific thing is, is this
project on a high injury network. Um, so that's something that we'll look at for future
grant opportunities that now that we have this defined. So
here it is, here is our bernie high injury network.
so if you look at these roads, 73% of
those 2300 crashes occurred on these roadways. Um,
so there's some interesting ones I thought, um, that didn't jump out
initially as much as some of the others. I mean, we all kind of think main river
blanket 46. Uh, but using, looking back at all the
crash records, there's other roads on there that get to that 73%. Um, and
so of that roadway, these roadways are 15 and this was counting the
city and the tout roads. These roads account for 15%
of our city roads in the city. Again, that's 73%
of the crashes are happening. So that's kind of an interesting mindset that 73%
of the crashes are happening on 15% of our roads. Now it
obviously makes sense here, like kind of local neighborhood road people aren't
necessarily getting in crashes on your neighborhood roads. Um, but
it's, it's an interesting fact. And so now as we move forward with future grant opportunities, that'll
be a, a box of check is, is herf road on the high injury network? Yes, it is.
um, so that's something that we can look at as those federal grants progress.
I mentioned that we did a lot of engagement activities. Um, we had
a safety task force meeting that we specifically set up for this grant.
um, we had three meetings in this very room and we had a very diverse group
of people in there. We actually had two county commissioners, uh, chapman and mccall.
we had mayor pro, tim willison. We had planning and zoning chair band wolff.
we had chief perez and fire marshal lee who joined us. We had three
citizens that joined us on the committee. Uh, and that included two that were specifically kind of picked
as downtown business owners. Uh, we had tech set representatives from both the area
office and kerrville and the district offices down in san antonio. And we
had bernie, isd staff and school board members attended all of this and as well as city staff.
um, so we met in this room. We talked through the crash records, but we also had,
you can see this picture here from the last meeting where we had roll maps where we really spent a lot of time
looking at downtown main street, downtown river road, the plaza,
and several of the other areas that we did a lot of comments about pedestrian safety.
as I mentioned, we went to one of the market days. We rented one of the
stalls. We had a little popup. We sat there all day, uh, listening to people tell us what
their versions of safety on pedestrians and bikes and got a lot of good data
for that. We had our own standalone community survey for the
ssa four program. And, uh, we worked with communications that got sent out. Um,
we had that, we had a separate intersection safety assessment that we had
representatives from bernie pd, bernie fire, myself, our
consultant. We actually went and looked at several of our intersections,
uh, in person, sat there 30 minutes watching traffic and just even just standing
there, you can see some common things that are occurring. Like we watched a
river, or sorry, main and bandera and that's if anyone's gone through, that's the dual left. That
seems like a lot of people can't grab cat grasp that dual left concept there.
um, and we saw as we're standing there with six of us with yellow safety vests, we
saw near accidents of people almost running into each other. And then also
as part of this, we've created a bernie safety dashboard that has all of this crash
record data that's on online portal right now that, uh, and we've sent citizens. It's
to those that portal specifically
as we mentioned downtown particularly that's one that kept coming up
in our community engagement and the surveys and everything is how we're gonna make downtown
safer as part of this. Um, so we spent a lot of time talking about that in particular.
and going back and looking at all of the crash records,
69% of the pedestrian crashes occurred on this corridor
of main street and river road. Um, so that kind of ties back into
where our, our places that we need to be putting our most effort into looking how
we can mixed up safer. Um, but this really kind of opens up a conversation
and this is kind of a, a policy conversation as we, as part of this
grant program, we're gonna come up with concepts of safety projects.
um, and these safety projects more than likely will cause a
reduction of parking on the downtown, uh, corridor
separately. Those of you that have kind of heard, I've heard it said multiple times, hey, we need
to prioritize and improve and maximize our existing roadways
without working on new roadways. I've seen, I've seen
schematics that txdot and others have put together removing parking.
'cause that's, if you're going to maximize these roadways, removing parking is
one of the options to really reduce congestion, reduce issues with that. So
reducing parking and we're adding safety factors
could all potentially have parking implementation implications.
so that's something we need to talk through as a policy decision of what it do we
want for downtown to look like. And there's many examples out there that
I can provide of cities that have put, whether it's medians or it's
planters or decorative fences or other type items. I know we've talked in the past about
our jaywalking issues that we have downtown. Uh, there's many ways that
you can put objects in to kind of help prevent and try to focus people
to a safe location that we can do a better crosswalk
or a better with signals or lights, signs. There are all sorts of stuff we can do,
but right now it's kind of a free for all for pedestrians. For the most part. People are just crossing
wherever they want to and it's not very safe at all.
and then this, we did, we had a couple years we had the, the fatality there across
from kowski, uh, as well. So this in this downtown area,
um, we spent a lot of time and effort looking at that.
really this was a targeted approach. We looked at intersections, we're
looking at corridors, we're looking at systemic type con concepts that we can do that
improve safety all throughout our city. These
particular intersections are the ones that all of the crash records really
pointed to. Um, I don't think many people will be caught by
surprise on any of these, but, uh, river and plant, uh, there's lots of rear ending
accidents that occur at that location. Uh, that traffic is congested there
pretty frequently. Perkin river road, we know all about that intersection.
uh, main street and river road, uh, that's one that has lots of crashes. We've
had some pet issues, pedestrian issues there. Uh, main and school street, that's five
points. We've done several schematics and talked with tdot about that location over the years.
main street and bandera, that's the two left turn lane I was just
talking about. Interestingly enough though, is the esser and the bernie
high school driveway. Uh, and this is one that we've been having conversations with the
school district. Uh, there's a lot of new drivers that are using that
location. Uh, and that's something I know chief perez and I have had many meetings with txdot
and the school district on that particular location as well
as casca and scenic loop down at the bottom, uh, main and k gronkowski
that we talked about in johns school, which was interesting to me as we're working through
this project using data separately. We've already been
talking about many of these intersections just from, we just knew so that several of these
intersections needed issues and had to look at. But it is nice to have the data to
back it up that these are our most critical intersections and
in particular these corridors. So the west bandera section
along heb and all of the kind of retail in that area, but
as well as downtown. So on the plaza on the section of main
street downtown and on river road. So these are our targeted corridor
areas that we're gonna study further as part of the corridor and what projects we could potentially
do to improve safety and some of our systemic safety count
measures, uh, that we're gonna look and recommend as well. Um, noticed
around town tdot's already doing some of these things. So tdot's been replacing some
of our traffic signals with flashing yellow arrow signal
heads. Um, so you'll see some in the town are having this signal head, um,
instead of a green light that you yield to make a left turn, it's a yellow flashing
arrow. Um, so that's considered a lot safer. They've been putting the reflective back
plates, kind the yellow back plate behind the traffic signals.
um, so that's something tdot's been working on already. Um, one of the other things
that is in our safety from the state and the federal guidelines
is looking at rumble strips on the edge of lanes, but also using wider
edge lines. If you notice when txdot retried main street last year, they went from
a four-inch strike to six inch strike. We've started following that new txdot
spec as well in our re striping efforts. But just having wider lines,
data is showing as being safer. And then on a pedestrian and bicycle front,
um, one of the things we're talking about is working with tdot on the traffic signals
at a couple key traffic signals. It's called bleeding pedestrian interval.
if you've ever been sitting at the traffic signal, let's say you're driving on blanco and you wanna make a left onto
main street, when that left green arrow turns on, that's
also the exact same time that the walkers will start walking. You can
program the signal that will let the walkers, the pedestrians start first and
have kind of a head start to get out into the intersection. So when the drivers start,
they'll see the, the people hopefully, hopefully .
but right now, that's something that's a common occurrence. I see it almost daily
that people are making the left turn without seeing the people, the pedestrians
coming out. The issue with this, and again, it kind of goes back,
there's always a pro and con this makes it safer for the pedestrians, but
in theory it's taking away seconds that the traveling vehicles can go
through that intersection. You only have so many seconds in that, that cycle of the intersection.
so we might take away five seconds from the overall cycle, but it helps allow
the pedestrians to be safer because that'd be something that a couple key intersections
like blanco and maine or some of the others that we see a lot of pedestrian
activity, crosswalk visibility enhancements. That's what we've been talking
through. There's a lot of signage, there's other things we can do. There's, um,
ways that we can improve the crosswalk striping itself or other things.
and one of the things they're really in the federal guidelines and state guidelines is really going
to six foot is the absolute minimum sidewalk. And so that's
something we have lots of three foot four foot. The city was doing five foot
sidewalks for several years. We've gone to six, eight, and 10 sidewalks more
recently. Um, but improving sidewalks and blanco is a perfect
example there. If anyone's tried to walk down blanco on those little three and four foot
sidewalks and you have trucks zipping by you and you're right up on the curb, it's kind
of a, a dangerous situation. So giving you that more there, more room on
that extra sidewalk. So
what are the next steps in this big grant process? Obviously today, I'm kind of giving you the overview.
um, we will be back to counsel march 10th is our plan to
present the draft of the safe streets for all safety action plan to you to
comply with the federal guidelines. This is kind of the process that we have to go
to say that we're following the process. Um, we're gonna present you the draft on march 10th.
on march 24th. We're gonna put it online, um, available and
we'll have a a way for public to comment on it. Then later in march
we'll have, um,
sorry I have a typo messed up here. So I have march 24, but then march 26th.
so we have been told that the the next stage of
the ss four a program is supposed to come out in in march. Um,
so we're targeting that. So we're finishing up the planning grant and the whole schedule we're
working for is to finish the project. So march the new
opportunity comes out. So in may we'll finish and get the resolution approved.
we'll publish it in online to the public, and then end
of june we'll actually submit for that next final implementation
phase of the grant if that's something that we want to do for. So this would basically, uh,
potentially get us money to go build some of these things that we're coming
up in the grant process.
so that's really, we wanted to give you this just to go through that. You're going to see, and we're gonna
talk to state streets for all a couple more times in the next couple months and kind of give you a heads up of the whole
what we have been working on the past year and what we will be talking to you in the next couple months.
really. Do you have any questions? So mayor proam
is a member of that task force. I've already had smaller
one-off conversations with each of you about the downtown parking situation. Of course, we're
trying to focus on some efforts there. Uh, those
of you that are on the, uh, downtown plaza
park subcommittee, some of this will impact how we look at that project
as well. So I just wanted the whole council to be aware of this as it comes
down the down the lane. It'll have a lot of implications, not just
for pedestrian safety, but our mobility plan, our park plan, a lot of different factors.
and so it was important, uh, for you to see thatty. Did you have
anything you want to, you have a perspective on from your task force involvement?
I think the meetings were all, um, pretty great. I mean, everyone was
really engaged and it's fun just getting on the maps and kind of
everyone having different ideas. Um, even some very creative ideas for five points
from txdot, from safety perspective, not necessarily making the traffic
better, but making 'em safer. Um, um, I think tdot's
not too key on doing the roundabout like we'd all want yet 'cause
just 'cause it's such a massive project. But they had some good, um, safety
ideas. So just for me, fun being a part of that process. I think the
fact that we can possibly get some funding this way in conjunction with working with
ampo. Um, again, all these getting things shovel
ready, it's all, that's what it's all about now for funding. So, um, the more funding
we can get to get things shovel ready, um, the better we are to
get more funding. So that's what it's all about. Any
questions? No, just comments. Um, I'm glad to see that blanco made
that list because it, you know, worries me quite a bit when I see the high school track team
and cross country team running at, you know, the sun
sun's coming up. It's already hard to see along that high, uh, that sidewalk.
um, talking about solutions in the task force, the things you actually have control over.
one of the things the comments I would have is, um, I often had people
tell me their biggest concern of traffic is during the rush hour traffics around
bernie, which is the school drop off times, right? And they'll even make the follow up
comment, I don't have this problem during spring break. I don't have this problem in in, uh,
the summertime. Um, were there any conversations around, 'cause I know she had school
board members on that task force around offsetting middle school and
high school start times because that's something we could start like monday. It's not gonna be possible with
busing. I can tell you with busing, that would be, it's impossible.
you have to. So how do other places that do do that make it possible? They have, if you're a large enough
school district that you're running three routes maybe, but we would have to,
you would have to double the number of drivers because I feel like we run the buses 24 7
anyways. They idle all day. Right. And then I look at like waste management when we went
to them and saying, hey, is it possible to do single routes? And they said, we don't have the number
of routes or the scale, the scope to do it for bernie, yet y'all aren't big enough. Then they did it. Right.
so I just, you know, and part of what's possible in discussions, I didn't know if that ever came up.
so it, it did come up in conversations. We had several and we purposely had school
people there. Um, so that came up. One of the, the other conversations was even just the, the
boundary lines between schools. There are some lines that potentially are causing
traffic issues or causing more traffic to go to this particular school while
this school might be closer. Um, so we, we've talked through that with them, um, as
well and just other options that we could potentially do for the school
districts. But you're absolutely right and in general, every city school rush hour is big.
um, but our, it's even worse for us kind of because we have this
district, there are some schools now that are outside the city limits, but the majority of the schools are in the
city limits and all the people out of the city are coming into the city and then they're leaving.
and that's something even with the conversations we've had with txdot, the river
herf intersection, the on herf making the right turn
onto river in the morning and the evening, 40% of the
traffic are going to champion. Um, so they're going to champion dropping
off kids at champion and they're turning around and coming back out of champion. So
we're having cars that are going through that intersection twice just to get kids to
and from champion. Yeah. And I, you know, again, wasn't part of the task force, so I don't know what was vetted
out and what's possible. I'm not a logistics expert, I just know that transportation, there's a lot
of people that that, so it's a good question. It's a fair question. There probably isn't a
really legitimate reason why it can work or if it could, maybe it's this cost and
well, and I just, I think one thing to, and we, I think we told rich this
a couple of times. This really was focused on like pedestrian safety versus actual
efficiency of browser correct timing. Right. So it was kind of two separate things. So that's still
valid point, which we were talking about with text on in a separate meeting with frank mm-hmm . Where that
did come up more. So this is really focused more on safety
specific specifically. So that's why it didn't as much make on this list, but it did briefly come
up from a kind of different perspective. But that's why it didn't as much for this, it makes sense.
and that's also going into what can we do to improve safety.
we, we heard feedback from families that didn't feel safe for their kids to
walk to burning high school. Yes. And so they're driving their kids and they're too close to ride the
bus. They're in that one mile range. So now we have families that are driving and picking
up their kids and where they could be walking if potentially we could have
the, the sidewalk system on the city side and on the bernie campus as well.
just have it where it all kind of made it better where families would push the kids and make 'em walk instead
of driving them. But also, I'll comment in general, at one point we had
conversations with the school district as well. The percentage of bus riders for bernie
isd is way low compared to other school districts. We just have a lot
of kids that don't ride the bus for whatever reason, um, here in this, at the city as well.
okay. Is the, the targeted grant amount, is
that known? And if so, or is the targeted recommendations based off of the possible
grant amount you would get? So the, the, our planning grant
we have is set dollar amount. So we are working through concepts. I have concepts
that I'll present to you at that next council meeting. And our consultant is
preparing cost estimates for those. And so when we submit for that next grant,
we will have a dollar amount, um, for consulting and
construction and building, uh, these proposed projects. Yes. Do you know
how much it's gonna be available come next month for?
I don't remember the dollar off the top of my head. Sorry. No. Now, so quick
question, what was the consensus then? Because I know some members of the committee
don't wanna build the roads. I'm all aware of that. So what was the consensus about the
solution? You talked about getting rid of all the parking on river and maine to make the
ment safety. What, what is, what is the solution that you've come up with?
I mean, what's the thought? I don't, I'm just asking, you mentioned that, so I'm just asking. Well, I think there
was various things. I think there was, um, some ideas for
additional ways for pedestrians to get across main street safer.
right. Things like that. Um, I think jack mentioned some of the things,
um, connected to traffic lights. Um,
let us do that. Yeah. So there, there's some medians that we, we were looking at potentially some, some
medians, uh, that we could put in. It'll allow center refuge points so people can
only go halfway and then they can go all the way across, I think. Yeah, I think that would be more effective because I can tell you,
I, you could pull the people that are jaywalking and it's not because the crosswalk wasn't painted bright
white and it wasn't because it wasn't a light flashing. Tell 'em where to go. They know where to
go. It's easier to cross convenient where they are. Exactly. Mm-hmm .
so it's not about the signaling or the lights or, I mean those are all good things, but, and so our,
this planning grant is, is looking at safety, pedestrian safety
and other things. So we will have a percentage, a small percentage
of parking spaces that would potentially lose to help improve safety. But it's that
further conversation of congestion or other things that
we potentially need to do to make downtown safer that could have potentially lose more. Because
that's something even we really would be nice to have a left turn lane for southbound
main street to turn left onto river road. How many people have been stuck by someone trying
to turn left and you're stuck behind them? It'd be nice if they had their own left turn lane. We're adding left
turn lanes like that, that's gonna wipe out a block of parking on both sides of the street.
so that's a decision if we want to do that. And then also the other part of that
as well, we start putting medians in. That's gonna reduce, some
people might not have a left turn anymore. We might have some driveways or some even
city streets that might lose their avail availability to have a left across main
street. And so that'll be a decision as well. There's other cities out there that have put medians in
that had businesses will not be happy when people can't make a left into their parking lot anymore.
can I get a clar, uh, clarification? What is, we said 36 serious
injuries or death. What qualifies a serious injury? Because then the follow up
is 69% of those happened on main street. So what is a serious injury?
broken bones or er visit basically an er visit. Broken
bones chief, I don't know if you wanna describe yeah. Serious bone injuries could be all your stuff that usually is
gonna require transport by ems to an emergency facility. Severe injuries.
yeah, it was like a specific, I think that's all it was. Check.
um, there, uh, one example joe too, which is was an interesting one, which
was more of a tech stop one, which was the bandera over by heb. Right
now it's a center lane for turning mm-hmm . And they'd like
to change that to actual like a, a median with
a more defined left turn. Planned turns. Planned turns. Mm-hmm . 'cause that would be
safer. And that's, um, that's right. That right. Versus of the free for all. Correct.
correct. Exactly. So that again, that, that one would honestly didn't
even cross my mind, but that's just a data driven based on statistics
off, um, accidents. Yeah. That's something they need to probably look at too. Also in 46
too, like if you're going out 46 in the morning, you've got high school kids
that are trying to come down the center turn lane. They're already at center turn lane by valero.
you know, because they don't wanna get back up by traffic. I mean, I've been almost hit head
on two or three times there already. So that's, I think, I mean I think right now the focus
is more safety than anything to your point. Yeah. We kept,
we'd always drift towards these other solutions, but really this program
isn't for that. But I mean, right. No matter what you start drifting towards thinking of the
other solutions. But I was in a previous half building the other where we
did go and put, um, medians all up and down in main real fair, kind
of like main street. It wasn't a state highway, but it was a farm to market road
and a lot of screaming and gnashing teeth. You
hurt my business. But the data, the safety data
was so high for it. And then once we did it, uh, it
had crashes came way down. Uh, businesses still
survived. People just learn their behavior differently, right? And so, so
hey, we're not here to say we're doing this next year. Right? We gotta, we
gotta have these conversations. Little by little projects will, uh, will
occur that will have some of this in it. So we just need to be aware in our community. And they used to know we're
talking about this. I say other big positive is tech
dots continue to be a part of these conversations and they used to not be.
I think it's critical because it's good to be candid. This is great, but we all know
this. To your point, if you ignore all the other elephants in the room, which
are really, you can't solve the total problem use of kind expensive
bandaids, put it that way. But then they're good ones. I'm not saying they're bad. Yeah, yeah. But,
oh yeah.
anything else? Okay. Thank you jeff. Alright,
director . Let's talk budget.
alright. My part of this workshop today
is to talk about the deliberate approach that we take with our budget development process every
year and how it fits into our overall organizational strategic group.
starting with, of course, our strategy map, which almost any presentation
that you see me do related to the budget will always have a big old circle around the whole
strategy map. The budget pretty much hits every item on this.
additionally, every quarter when I come up and give a, uh, financial presentation,
I'll go over our strategic management system and budget cycle,
which starts, of course takes off october 1st for our fiscal year.
uh, right now we are in the second quarter we're here with the city council
strategic workshop. And after this, the leadership team is gonna
pull away for some key takeaways from the workshop tonight. And
then we'll move into budget development and adoption later in the fiscal year.
the budget process is just one component. You'll see it is that light green stripe
right in the middle right here of the triangle of our overall
strategic framework. Um, overall from the citizens at the very
top that dictate our overall vision to the employees that support
the foundation of our organization. We set our strategic priorities,
we meet our priorities, and then we measure our results.
it's important to know as we kick off the budget process that it's highly dictated by law,
both under the local government chapter, um, 1 0 2, the property
tax pay. And we, um, definitely adhere to those laws stringently.
additionally, locally, we have some requirements under our home rule charter
specifically, oh, specifically for a
balanced budget. And what that means is that we only use current revenues
to fund our operations. We don't dip into our fund balance to, uh,
fund our current operations unless there's a specific plan for it or council
gives us approval.
these are our nine budget guiding principles. And by the end of the budget process, you'll be
very, very familiar with them. But I do wanna review just
a couple of them specifically. Um, we are very strategically
aligned, the, the the thing forward.
um, we're very strategically aligned with our master plans as we're developing our budget,
specifically the 10 year rolling plan. And that does create, uh, continuity
year over year in our priorities so that we're not shifting, um, we're
keeping our eye on the longer term. Additionally, we talked
about the, um, the budget being balanced. And so when we talk about
structural balance, that's, that's what we're talking about. We do maintain an optimum
fund balance that works for us per policy for our, um, our credit ratings
and for continuing with operations. Additionally,
at the city of bernie, we aspire to be an employer of choice. Um,
we are a professional organization. We rely on a team
of highly dedicated skilled professionals to come to work every day to
provide high value services to our residents.
our approach to the budget process, as I mentioned earlier, it's very structured and disciplined.
first off, um, we're very committed to transparency from the very get
go. We have a website that will list all of our meetings, past, present,
future. The discussions that were had that anybody in the public can log on and
look at our cola with, which is our cost of living adjustment.
it is based on policy, it's based on an economic indicator. And
so that again, creates consistency year over year. It's not, it's not a
percentage that we just determine on an annual basis, zero
based budgeting. I'll touch on in just a minute what that is exactly. And
then we have a multi-year capital improvement plan that we adopt annually
as part of the budget process.
so zero based budgeting, what is that mean? It just means that, um, all
the expenses have to be justified at the point of zero. You don't just carry over your
budget for one year to another or assume that you had a certain departmental
budget last year. So this year the budget continues. Um, we have to look
at each component of the budget and justify all those expenses accordingly.
so how that works operationally is we look at last year's
budget and we remove all those one-time expenses. So if you got a
piece of equipment last year, we'll take that cost out. You, you don't
naturally just get to keep that cost rolling forward until the next year and then fund
something else. You have to ask for that money. Um, this year specifically,
we are not taking into account in inflationary factor the budgets. We'll
start at a, what we call a baseline of 0% increase.
um, of course we'll continue with the justification of recurring expenses. So
we may ask for an additional review or additional detail on expenses that
happened last year that are gonna recur, um, as not just be given that because
it got budgeted last year, I'll get budgeted again this year. Something
that's new is, um, we did analyze, uh,
departmental budgets over a several year period and where
there were, um, kind of historical over and under. So we're calling 'em budget variances.
we may have adjusted the baseline accordingly, either up or down depending on
what needed to be done. So that's, that's something new for this year where, um,
the baselines we may have to, you know, reduce the line if it wasn't used.
but then if the department feels that they still need that, they can always ask for it. And
then of course, any new requests or increases, any new programs, any new
cost delivery services, um, any new equipment
will have to be requested specifically. And that goes through a challenge and
ranking prioritization process.
so some of the things, um, that we are going to
consider this year and bring forward are, um, implementing
an equipment replacement fund. And so what that is, is it systematically
saves for your known equipment that you have in place
over the period of the equipment's life, so that there's not this one time
expense when that piece of equipment fails or, um, when you need
to replace that piece of equipment, you're saving a little bit every year because you know you're gonna have to eventually
replace it. So that's, um, that's what we want to look into.
additionally, uh, we might have some de that we are bringing for
consideration the remaining bond funding for adler road, depending on
the progress of that project. And then the gas utility and the storm water utility
do have some large capital projects that might be on the horizon. So we're looking at
potential debt. Is there additionally
the texas municipal retirement system, which is what we all pay into
for our retirement. Um, oh,
I thought, okay. Sorry, I keep doing that.
the, uh, texas municipal retirement system, um, has given cities
the option of funding 8% versus seven. So we have some analysis
to do to see what the implications of that would be to the city. Um,
and then we'll bring forward that whenever we look into it. And then we're
hoping to have a new park, uh, the north side community park not hoping to have, we're
gonna have a new park . Exactly.
so, uh, we will have to look into the operational impact of that brand new park, which we're
all very excited for. This is just
a high level overview of the main, um, point to our calendar this
year. The items with stars are those public meetings. That council
will be part of january. We already started planning for the budget and we
actually started planning the senior adopted the last one, but january was a
big planning month for us. And then of course we're kicking off the, um, council
winter workshop today, march and april are gonna be
very busy with the budget development at the departmental levels. And
then may we'll have all those one time items, those horse ranking and prioritization
items that are gonna be looked at. And then starting in
june, we'll be coming to council at least once a month with either, um, an
update presentation or workshop. And then finally some
of the, the legally mandated steps that come later in august. And then
september 8th is when they're planning on adopting.
so with all that in mind, now's a, now's a good time to think about
last year, what went well, um, where are some areas that maybe we can improve upon this
year. Um, is there any insight so far into this workshop or
that you thought about this year that you may want us to consider in our budget
approach? So yeah, last year, is
there anything specific that you'd like, didn't like? And you don't have to gimme
an answer tonight, but if there's anything you want to more for that process, now is the time
for us to weave that in. Um, I will tell you that this next
year, so the end of this fiscal year, the beginning of next fiscal year, we'll
do a citizen survey update and an employee engagement survey update.
the employee engagement survey's already budgeted. This year's budget citizen survey will be budgeted
next year's. Um, but from a process standpoint, we, we had a
lot more meetings last year. We documented things a lot more,
um, transparently on, on our website. We had a dedicated budget
website. We always had that stuff. We just more intentional about making sure everything
was, uh, clear to the public. Um,
so yeah, when do we do our, the one-on-ones or two on
twos? What, what is that in the process again? I can't remember. You have that on
that calendar is usually in june. It's not clearly outlined. The
the, so, so that was new last year. I did it twice
before. We always had it once and we kind of did that in july. I kind of did one
at the beginning last year, at the beginning of june. Okay. Here's some more things we're we're
seeing just, you know, any other insights you have. Then in july we do it again
right before we, uh, propose the budget. If
you guys are amenable to that, I suggest we keep that, that place that, that
worked really well for me. Um, you know, I just started in may, right? And I had
experience managing $500 million plus budgets before, but
managing a city budget budget and a government budget with all the different departments and how they work
together, um, you know, there is a learning curve and so I feel like, um, you did a
great job taking time to come back and explain to us and council and I had clarification
questions around just comparing apples to apples. Um, so thank you for that. And
I just feel like heading into 2026, um, I'm gonna have a lot more
familiarity with all the moving parts. So I'm looking forward to that. Um, but no, 2025 was great
'cause you took that extra time to explain it and those one-on-ones or two by twos or whatever
were very helpful. Yeah. So it's not clearly outlined here, but that is the intent to
do that. Any other
thoughts? It really comes down to how much money you had to spend. I mean, it comes, I
may hate to say it, but we talk about projects and ideas. I mean, every time we meet,
I mean, ty, you and I, this is our seventh or eighth time doing this and um,
it comes down to what sarah tells us. She thinks the revenue's gonna be, but we
know what the fixed costs are gonna be. I mean, we know what the overhead is for administration, police, fire to some
degree. We know what your growth projections are gonna be for that. But, and we know what a lot
of the projects are that are kind of sitting there. So I mean, I, I mean there's
small things I guess I could think of. I can think of a number off the top of my head, which I won't go into, but
I mean, big stuff. Well look, I'll commend you
guys. I'll come in the staff, the system that we have balances all
the things that we're in involved with. Growth, growth community. We have a lot
of infrastructure needs. We're tackling them. We still got a lot more, um,
we have, uh, growth
development concerns, right? Was residential commercial, what's too much of what,
um, what's that impact, right? We're we're measuring that. Are we having
fiscal discipline from a departmental standpoint and how much we're growing. We know we got a,
you know, a new fire station, uh, has an added cost, a new park has an added cost. We,
we, we've been talking about that. We're doing that in a very measured, balanced way
and I'm very appreciative of, of the staff for supporting that. But there's also
the legislature, right? I know. And I'm already having those conversations and hearing about what
might come down the pipe again this next session based on attempts,
last session that failed and how are those gonna morph into what might be viable
this next time around. Those are the things that keep me up at night on still how
do we manage adding more infrastructure needs? Jeff darryl's
stuff where I'd like to go do more roads. And we've talked, so you've talked to me about when's our next bond
initiative, right? That'll be still be backed by community survey data and
master plan data for sure. But that's a huge balancing act, right?
and so I, I appreciate the system that we have in place really helps us manage
that in a, in a more predictable manner. Process is perfect.
well, and having a 10 year plan and adjusting every year is definitely important. I
do think, you know, when you start thinking long-term planning and how property tax laws,
the state level might impact city revenues, you know, at the tml conference, there are cities
that have, you know, rely on entirely on property taxes. They
don't have any other types of taxes to help their city run. And, you know, what happens if that changes? And so
I do think long term there are things we need to think about. Um, infrastructure.
you know, I don't think there's anyone that disagrees that growth is happening. It's just a matter of how
we manage it. So growth is inevitable, but how does infrastructure keep up with it?
right? Right. So I think those are some big blocks that have to be thought about. Um,
it's important to have it out there. 'cause as I mentioned to you my comment, the friction between
the public's desire for things to happen, parks, roads, parking
lots, whatever. And the desire not to pay taxes or to have lower property
taxes and property taxes is the only fundamental infrastructure revenue we have.
and if the governor gets his way, I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I don't know what they're gonna place property taxes
with if they get rid of property. I'm not sure where the revenue comes from. Be that as it may,
that's what the public needs to understand. That's the friction. You want these things, they're not
free. And right. I, I, now I'm gonna say, you know, what keeps
me up at night is not the fact that a property taxes might go away, it's just the fact that the rules of
the game will change, but change drastically. And so how do we morph and pivot,
which we always do. Cities are resilient that way. And I think we, our community city
of bernie should be, um, feel lucky and privileged that we have a diversity,
uh, of assets, revenue streams, a great utility system.
other aspects that we can, uh, we can lean on because joe's right council
, there are cities that are completely a hundred percent property, residential
property tax. They have no commercial base, don't have utility systems and things
of that nature. So, uh, we just wanna be very, uh, deliberate and intentional as always
in the way we do our business and strategic so that we can handle things when they, when they arise.
any other thoughts or questions? Feel free. If you ha think of something
else, let us know. Uh, again, we're gonna be working on this in the next couple weeks with, with leadership
team. Thank you.
alright, we're gonna go to the brainstorming session.
it's a reflection exercise. Um, some
of you have probably participated in swot analysis, brainstorm,
unity, threats. We'll call 'em this a spot. I don't like the word weaknesses.
I think there's problems, right? Uh, we, we are
resilient by nature. As a municipal organization. We can address problems.
we are strong in certain areas and we know how to work around what we're not strong yet.
what opportunities do you identify? Can you see that we automate,
pursue? And what are the risks and pressures
that you're feeling maybe have hurt us? You know, talk about what we feel.
I just mentioned a couple, but I really want you guys to take a moment
and pause and we'll go, I'll facilitate this exercise to
where you just give me all your thoughts. And I, and I think you guys have already, you saw
my email last week to get you started thinking about this. Uh, danny and
nick will help me here. I'll give you post-it notes and you can, I'll give you a couple minutes and
I'll give you a question and you just, whatever comes to your mind. I want to
stress that this is a, again, a reflection exercise. It's not a
problem solving exercise. We're not trying to find solutions here.
we're not gonna be evaluating staff or evaluating a department. This
is as a city organization as a whole. Let's reflect
on our performance as a city body. That includes you guys. You guys are part of the city
organization as a whole as well. Um, so we're gonna look at governance. There
might be aspects that relate to employees and organizational culture elements. That's,
that's all fair game. I just wanted to throw that out there. There are no dumb ideas.
no dumb thoughts, no stupid ideas. Uh, what we're
gonna do, um, pass these out here and, and each
quadrant up there is associated with a certain color. And I'll, I'll, I'll throw out a
question and give you a couple minutes
privately. Just jot out as many as you want. When you're done, let me know. Nick and daniel
will come and grab those and they'll take 'em and they'll get everyone's ideas and they'll
categorize them and themes, they'll probably a lot of like-minded areas here,
areas. And then we'll post those up there. And then I'll go on to the next question and
we'll go through that through all four. Once we get done with that, when we've done all
four quadrants, we're all gonna go up and gravitate over there
to the, to the wall, look and just see what
resonates with you. What themes, what other ideas do you see?
is there certain priorities that also mean more to you than maybe they didn't before?
or just kinda see if there's things that that come to mind. And we're
all gonna share. You guys will share at least one, one or two things
because then that'll help seed or plant the, the conversation
next on the agenda. And that is, we'll look at the strategy map and how is this
working with what the exercise we just did. Okay.
any questions before we jump in? You guys? Everyone got a pen?
one, one thought per post-it? Yeah. One thought per post-it. Here,
use it. You have another one? Use another postit. Okay. Separate. If you have separate,
you can use small sentence. Yeah. 20 close, but,
oh, okay. Multiple. Yeah. So the very first one,
we're gonna look at kind of strengths. What are we good at? What do we naturally
do? Well, blue. Blue, right? Yeah. We do the blue until the,
the light blue.
um, again, one thought per post-it note.
where are we delivering? Well, as a city organization,
what are we proud of? What are you proud of? What do you think we do? Really, really good.
if you want to compare us to fair oaks and ville and fredericksburg as whatever, but
what do you think we do really well at? What are you
proud of? And I'll give you a couple minutes.
it's not my phone. Print well enough that we can bring
no scripts done there. No promises. It's just the, uh, city as a whole,
as a city organization. Yeah. This is a governing entity.
I need a another stack of postit notes numbers.
you just, we'll combine them if we have multiple,
there you go.
go ahead.
you gave a prescription for adderall.
don't
if you, if you're good, you can, you're done. Move your tube into
the side and that way I know you're, you're done. You still have some more time if you
keep going, done
messing.
it's michelen. Se
it's h-o-o-t-e-r-s in a different
ways.
what's that? If you have one? No, no. I'll give you about 10
more seconds. Okay. Just he'll pose the question.
okay. Um, you know, so when our, we did our
leadership summit last october, november, we did a similar exercise, not
the same swot analysis. We need a different type of analysis.
we have post-it notes all over the place. It's fine. Alright.
pull out your purple.
alright. Problems. Where do you see strength?
where do you see friction? Where do you see reoccurring concerns?
what are people talking to you about a lot?
don't just write my name on there. Not supposed to.
oh, okay.
brain's got a file. Hopefully the library.
library. I should have been in blue guys. I didn't say it. I forgot that. I forgot
it. I'm sorry. You're right. What did you doing? I really
was counting. Sorry, I was really counting on you. I didn't even say it
out loud. I thought I didn't even have say it.
I think that was, you can't add that.
am I the or separate? No, no, we're separate. Okay. Just making sure.
alright. Maybe 15 more seconds.
okay. Alright.
just to give a little pause so we can group some these. Let's,
we're gonna highlight really quickly kind of the themes of the strengths.
have you guys ever do that for me? Yep. So over here we've
got, these are public safety, fire, police, um,
emergency services, first responders, um, in this
kind of category. All of these you've gotta see, these are,
um, kind of policy, udc, lid, uh, bouncing,
uh, strict development with pro business tree ordinance,
bouncing growth with community identity, um,
municipal utilities and city services. All of these, um,
two rows here. These are all quality of life. So these are parts, open
space, uh, focus on quality of life, town spirit, recreation, library,
um, they here in the culture and roots. Events, community events,
main street, community engagement, all quality of life here.
staff development and leadership. Uh, more utilities.
so we had a couple right here that got separated.
utilities, uh, communication, transparency, effort,
uh, to improve at communication here. Governance
structure, fiscal responsibility. These kind of meet together. Model
city governance, uh, council administration and strong
schools. That really kind of falls into quality of life too.
okay. Alright. Pull
out your yellow, your green, yellow, green stat.
these are our opportunities. What do you think deserves more attention
over the next few years? There's something that we haven't quite been able
to go after, just because we have a lot on our plates. Or maybe the time isn't right.
what do you think we ought to pursue out in the, in the short term?
let's say maybe in the next three years or so.
not defined with anyone's counsel term. That's not that.
no, these are,
what are these ones?
new mayor. Yeah, new mayor.
put that right there. New mayor.
it's just one replacement.
new.
alright, looks like we're kind of down here. Take
.
oh, ers.
this is the mon man. That was the month. Hand
that over there. Natalie. One more. You have more for me. Yeah, right there.
thank you sir. You're doing great.
natalie, where am I supposed to put this one? . Quality of life. Tell
me. Quality of life. Things have gone way down. Quality.
you know, it's, if you look at this,
we're still trying to figure out the problem. We, we know problems. We all
are quick to, to identify what we think is wrong. It's all
district one and district five. . Thank you very much.
I know several people in the county. Yeah. Alright,
let's go to the last one while there're still processing you. Me to start. You good? Yeah.
here's the things for the problem areas. So over here we've got really kind of environmental issues
on this far left side. So this is trees, oak will, um, water
and river road park, uh, water conservation, water issues.
this second row here are traffic related issues. I was really surprised we didn't have more of those, but I
think everybody just understands that one. Um, these are
growth, uh, all all related to growth and dealing
with all those problems related to growth. Uh, these are all development inter
or these are governmental. So all of the interlocal
agreements, city, county relations, erosion of city, county relations,
all of those political, uh, issues here in the middle. Um,
these are kind of structural quality of life. So this, uh,
community activities and facilities lacking public, uh, arts and theater,
lacking recreation, uh, facility, indoor pickleball, uh,
not enough parks. These are all parking and pedestrian related.
so either, um, sidewalk or pedestrian related, um, issues.
these are all code. And, uh, udc, uh, either
were too strict, not strict enough. We're both strict and strict. Not strict enough
at the same time. Depending on which side of the strictness. Wrong enough on
everyone else. Purpose depends
on those. Um, these are kind of social media perception, public
perception, uh, lack of, of, of, uh, restraint. I want,
I want. Uh, and then a small, uh, fire department,
petty crime, public safety issues. There was one that
said the fire department is too small. Chief, I don't know how you got up here. Yeah, honestly,
only. We were building a second fire station. Guys, it's
just you to bring you that the best we can
ask tomorrow. Alright,
let's pull out the, pull out the, uh, your last stack
there. Last post of good stack. We're gonna look at our threats.
what do you think could materially hinder our
long term success?
what could materially hinder our ability
to perform the way we have in the past
new scott?
there's gotta be an aggie here somewhere. How many people
involved in this? Yeah, you could, you could, you can sort us out, you know.
okay.
what else? We got
all opportunity there. Get a few more that are coming up here.
I'm bigger step or what?
that's not, that's not, okay. Same, same, same thing twice. Okay.
. Alright. Yeah. Danny. Sheriff's, the kind of the themes on the opportunities.
so these are on these opportunities. These are gonna be traffic. So new roads,
um, repave and stripe, esser, um, infrastructure,
road grid, road diet, roundabouts,
all of their opportunities for kind of road, uh, potential
bonds grants. So this is all money funding, uh, manage
commercial, um, for options, funding, city
services, operational efficiency, vehicles and buildings. Fiscal
responsibilities in this second column. Third column is,
uh, traffic, traffic issues, transportation,
cars and people ampo projects. I'm getting shorter,
I think. Uh, this next row here, downtown walkability,
sidewalks, downtown plaza, fire trucks, patrol officers,
kind of safety related, uh, quality of live
trails and parks. Uh, unified culture and arts plan.
pocket parks, uh, big events. Driven destination,
destination town, uh, strength, our strengthen our community, uh,
involvement.
and here we got commercial development hotels, limited,
limited vape shops. ,
downtown parking and parking lot. Always attacking,
uh, planning related, uh, planning department. Expand
enforcement of the udc.
I'm not gonna try to read that one. It's okay. Expand
waste water utility with portable water.
a tap, maybe a tap pump, water up ri ridge up river.
I think a river road park, I'm assuming. Uh, discussion here.
and then partnerships with local businesses. Build relations with county,
uh, combined resources with businesses and county
engaging our youth and bisd more. And then
animal shelter upgrade. Those are the ones on our,
yeah, opportunities. Okay. So as they're processing the threats, I would like
you to pull out the strategy map in your folder.
and based off the things that you just heard or just going through this
exercise, take a minute or two to look at this map. You've
seen it in, in, in you, in utilization. I'm gonna tell you, the
last couple years have been, I think, phenomenal for us because we've had this resource.
it's been so helpful to communicate to new employees, to onboard new
directors, new council members. I think it's a communication, great, fantastic
communication tool to the public. And so you guys know, we, we lean on
this heavily. A department head cannot make a budget
request without aligning it to somewhere here. So I want you to really
reflect on this. And it's, and you'll notice it's kind of vague in
certain, it's not so precise that it locks us down, but it does
guide us in different areas and themes. So
we, we don't need to figure this out tonight, but I want to get feedback. If you think we need
to maybe pivot somewhere. Somewhere. Do we need to add something? Do we need
to wordsmith something? Do we need to open something up even greater, do account for something
else? And so, uh, my question to you is, how well do you
think this is working for us? You
don't need to answer now. Just reflect on it while we finish up these, these, uh, threats.
I would say, I thought this was one of the things I really liked when I got on council. Starting everything like that,
you could see it made it easier being new to see that alignment. I feel it
was a great tool. Um, is this on our website or found to be
aware? Think it's internal. Chris, is there strategy map on the website that is the
goal for this year? Yes. Okay. So it is a, a fundamental part of, yeah, right? 'cause I think
this is something that community should be aware of as well. And I know we use it to focus
ourselves, but we do have a couple of elements on our website
about our strategic philosophy, right? I have talked with chris about how
do we, uh, do a better job of communicating who we are. I think this is a core piece of
our governance structure for council and for the city leadership team. And you're right,
the public and the community of large need, not danny and I, christie, we
often are asked to speak about this piece across
the state. Larry had me speak to, um, to, uh, a bunch of visitors
center and directors and stuff about our, this system and whatnot.
it's really unique to a lot of folks across the state. It
is in the budget document section with several places in the budget, but not as
promised. Standalone really dropped to.
alright, danny,
tell us what you got from, from the threats perspective. So interesting with the threads here, they a
lot more spread out. Not as much grouping here. Well, and most
of the other ones we had, you know, some really big groups, uh, and themes. So,
um,
strong civic political leadership, uh, lead the community.
um, and then ta wilson. I don't know ty, you put that one or
you notice I said staff council was fair game, right?
knock it off. Right. Well, tammy needs to be open on mondays.
work seven days a week.
dr. Mackey has one about weather issues, but there's a word up the top today. Hundred percent unforeseen
weather issues. Um, threat of running outta water, natural disasters,
uh, prolonged drought, all threats that we know. Cost of living, cost
of everything, uh, but really water. Uh, and then
down here, state regulation, uh, tax revenue, state legislation,
legislation, uh, at the state level,
uh, county, county relationship, county court, lack
of, uh, cooperation with the county and bisd. Uh, failure
to maintain the budget. Um, lack of, uh,
funding, cybersecurity, economic, uh,
economic down, downturn misinformed. Public
strong, public distrust. Um, bipartisan
business retention. Oh, business division, bipartisan now I'm just making up words. . Well,
business retention. That's, you don't have the dyslexic
oriented job industry. Uh, we need lucrative professions and job opportunities.
uh, development loopholes. Decreasing approvals of
decreasing approvals of bisd equals less. People choosing
schools. Schools to build life and burning. Okay, failure. Failure
to adhere
mobility. Oh, solutions to mobility. That's the one you can tell me.
federal government, uh, turmoil discussion in, uh, in
the council or division in the council. Uh, failure to achieve
from, uh, public, what's the last name? Biden. Elector.
uh, big and outside. Uh, influences on local politics and policy.
so let me, uh, lemme invite you guys up up here. So you can just take a look
at this and um, just see if there's
any other priorities. Uh, you all have your priorities in your mind. Is there anything else that,
that you, that you see jump out at you? If you look at
what, uh, any thoughts or observations from
any one of you going through this exercise? Anything you want to share?
say that again, frank, out loud. I said I think these two go hand in hand. I said
because what we see, what I've seen a lot of these problems are, are opportunities that we're
looking at trying to address already. That true.
any other kind of observations going through this
exercise? I think it's cool to see the continuity of us in
general, right? Well, all of us come from different backgrounds, but still generally
thinking the same, same way in threats. You think there'd be differences anyway
because I think those just generally kind of different anyway. But for
the three that there would be similarities. That shows
that there are, yeah, that I like the strengths and
opportunities was very the same. Like I thought we had really strong parks, but I also
think we can improve our park. So I think this, I think some
things on our strength also be brought opportunities. Yeah, I think, uh,
I think our staff does a phenomenal job providing good resources in that area. But we
also know the demand is still a lot, the appetite's a lot greater,
right? We talked about that a year ago. The same workshop. I think the
scope of some of these opportunities or problems, you know, could be
10 timeframe. So how do you, how do you manage that, right?
is there loading up for quick wins that can be, that can be achieved and,
alright, so what we're gonna do, um, what I'll do is, we'll I'll
transcribe this and uh, and I'll send it back out to you guys so we have,
we'll document it. Then when we go into our budget kickoff of directors,
they'll have it as well. And so as they can start processing their budget and
their department of work plans for the next year, they'll, they'll identify, hey, I think we can do something
that this is low hanging fruit or wait, this might be something we gotta process in
a master plan or cip or whatever.
and so we'll handle that, uh, through the budget process. And so I'll keep you apprised
of how that goes. Alright,
appreciate you guys, your help, your involvement in this and your preparation coming into
this. Typically a lot of cities will hire a consultant to come in and this will be an
all day endeavor. Y'all did it for like 20 minutes. So thank you for being physically conservative
man and not waste us money.
alright, the last item I do is that strategy map. Is
there any feedback you have for me now, again, you can email me later, we can bring this
back in a, in a work session conversation in a regular council meeting once we have all this process.
but is there anything that you think we ought to look at? Dr. Mack,
when you say environmental responsibility is one of the four major
tenants, I don't see anywhere in the four subclasses
that it actually says anything about that we're assuming it says that.
and I think part of the public and certainly my interest is we
mentioned oakwell, we mentioned water supply, we mentioned a lot of things about code
enforcement. Somehow that should be worked in here to reflect
that because I think the public thinks many people in the public, either through
ignorance or or misinformation that we're not. And we
are, for example, tree ordinance, very strict tree ordinance. I get complaints about
the baptist hospital, which we don't even have control over, get complaints about the
aviso development, which was actually approved in 2007. So it's going forward.
so I mean, this is something we need. Yeah. You know. Okay. So I would tell
you, um, and also strengths, a lot of udc, a lot of other development
regulation. Maybe there's something that's well went in. Again, you don't wanna be so
specific that you're locked down into a very particular niche area.
uh, but you also want to make sure you're covering a lot of things. So that's, that's good.
just a reminder that these strategy map, these four quadrants are, hey, what
are your customer centric objectives? What are your business process objectives?
what are your financial objectives? What are your employee objectives? And
those four tenants above are kind of the key focus areas. We, we, we want a community that's
safe and secure, that's fiscally strong and excellent,
great community charm. We hear that everywhere. We want to protect that. There's not a whole lot
in those objectives below that about unique community charm, but we know we're gonna have business processes
and, and fiscal and employee stuff dedicated to that. So we could even open
a lot of that as well. That's a good comment. What else? Any other
things you think that, that we ought to look at? I mean, I think it's good. I mean it's,
it is a good overview. It's a good place to start. It's a good baseline. You know, if you start
trying to nitpick it and get too centralized on it, like you were saying,
then you're gonna have 10 or 12 line items under each one of those. That's the
directors s other thing. You don't want to, but we could have six objectives under each one if we want. And
I'm not opposed to that. But you don't wanna have so many things and so many values and so many,
you know, long mission statements that people are, don't understand the core of
who we really want to strive to be. So.
okay. I appreciate it. Again, the feedback is good. I'm glad. I appreciate
my directors, uh, team here to listen. Um, we will process
this. We write it up and send it back out. We'll have a follow up
thoughts about councilman al's. Um, comment.
are you open to me maybe looking at some sort of objective that constitutes
more environmental, maybe some other development regulatory okay.
included to serving our customers, our customers in public. Yeah, I would like to
see the, the summary of this, how this all boils down and then kind of layer that into
the strategy map. I think it's great that we have a strategy map 'cause you do need to have a plan and directional,
you know, guideline of where you want to go. Um, but, you know, taking
some of these common problems and strengths and we all have pretty much the same things on
here. So I think if we layer that in on top of this, it would reinforce this
code, code those to, you know, cf do whatever possible.
so what we'll do is we'll process this, get it to you, we'll do another prep. We'll have another
item, maybe, maybe the first meeting of march.
we can come back and say any, any thoughts here. We, we'll, we'll wrap
it up. Does that sound good? Mm-hmm . Excellent. Excellent
job. Okay. I said no more than 90 minutes. If we quote the mayor,
I'll give the form back to you. So you asked me not to ask council for
talk, joe not allowed to talk. No.
any comments from council? Great exercise.
you comments from council? No. Alright. Uh, great job guys, city staff. Appreciate
it. Uh, man, everybody, lori, uh, great job as always. Thank you guys for your time and for
everybody from the community was here. Appreciate your engagement. Uh, meeting adjourned
at six, or sorry, 7 31.