TPW Commission

Commission Meeting, January 21, 2021

Transcript

TPW Commission Meetings

TEXAS PARKS AND WILDLIFE COMMISSION

January 21, 2021

TEXAS PARKS AND WILDLIFE DEPARTMENT

COMMISSION HEARING ROOM

4200 SMITH SCHOOL ROAD

AUSTIN, TEXAS 78744

COMMISSION MEETING

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Okay. Good morning, everyone. Before we begin, I'll take a roll call. I know our Chairman is absent.

Commissioner Aplin?

MR. SMITH: He's on listen-only.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: There he is. Okay.

Commissioner Abell?

COMMISSIONER ABELL: Present.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Commissioner Bell's absent. Commissioner Galo, she's going to be late.

Commissioner Hildebrand?

We'll probably hear from him soon.

Commissioner Latimer?

COMMISSIONER LATIMER: Present.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Commissioner Patton?

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: Present.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: And I'm present.

Okay. This meeting is called to order January 21st, 2021, at 9:35 a.m. Before presenting -- proceeding with any business, I believe Mr. Smith has a statement to make.

MR. SMITH: I do. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Commissioners.

A public notice of this meeting containing all items on the proposed agenda has been filed in the Office of the Secretary of State as required by Chapter 551 Government Code referred to as the Open Meetings Act. I'd like for this fact to be noted in the official record of the meeting.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Okay. Before we continue, I would like to announce that Action Item No. 8, Grant of Drainage Easement, Hidalgo County, Approximately 1 Acre at the Estero Llano Grande World Birding Center has been withdrawn from today's agenda.

Commissioners, as a reminder, please announce your name before you speak. Presenters, if you'll please remember to speak slowly for the court reporter. Thank you.

Okay. First item of business, approval of the minutes from the Commission Meeting held November 10th, 2020, which have already been distributed. Is there a motion for approval?

COMMISSIONER LATIMER: Commissioner Latimer so moves.

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: And I'll second. Patton second.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Okay. Latimer, the motion. Patton second. Voting as we all have learned to not like, but we have to do it, will be by roll call.

VICE-CHAIRMAN APLIN, III: Aplin yes.

COMMISSIONER ABELL: Abell yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Bell's absent. Galo is not on yet.

COMMISSIONER LATIMER: Latimer yes.

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: Patton yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Yes. I vote yes. That's enough. Action carries.

The next thing, we want to have the acknowledgment of the list of the donations which are always extremely well appreciated. Is there a motion for approval on the donation list?

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: So moved, Patton.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Patton motion. Second?

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Second Hildebrand.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Oh, there he is. How you doing? Good morning, Commissioner.

Okay. Do the roll call vote again.

Beaver, you're up.

VICE-CHAIRMAN APLIN, III: Aplin yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Abell? Commissioner Abell?

Commissioner Hildebrand?

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Yes.

COMMISSIONER LATIMER: Latimer yes.

COMMISSIONER ABELL: Abell yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: And Scott yes. Motion carries.

Next item of business, consideration of contracts which have also been distributed. Is there a motion for approval?

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: So moved Patton.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Second by?

COMMISSIONER LATIMER: Latimer seconds.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Okay. So, let's start down the list.

VICE-CHAIRMAN APLIN, III: Aplin yes.

COMMISSIONER ABELL: Abell yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Commissioner Hildebrand?

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Oh, sorry. Hildebrand yes. I was waiting for Galo.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Yeah, she's not on yet. She'll be on in a little while.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Okay.

COMMISSIONER LATIMER: Latimer yes.

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: Patton yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: And Scott yes.

Okay. That gets us to Action Item No. 1, Rule Review, Recommended Adoption of Proposed Changes and Completed Rule Review. We've got three sections here: 58, 59, 69 -- 53, 59 69, Finance, Parks, Resource Protection. Mr. James Murphy, please make your presentation.

MR. MURPHY: Good morning, Commissioners. I'm James Murphy, General Counsel for the Department and I'm here today to present on the rule review adoption for Chapters 53, 59, and 69.

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I'll begin with a short summary of the rule review process. You've heard this before in other meetings. So I'll tend to be brief with it. Our rule review requirements come from Texas Government Code Section 2001.039. All State agency rules, also known as regulations, must be reviewed no less frequently than once every four years. This review must include an assessment of whether the reasons for initially adopting a rule continue to exist. The notice of the proposed review is published in the Texas Register for public comment and regulations must be readopted, adopted with changes, or repealed based upon the review.

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We break our rule review process into three meetings on a chapter-by-chapter basis. The first meeting is notification to the Commission of the beginning of the rule review process, that is then published in the Texas Register. The second meeting is permission to publish the proposed rule or repeals resulting from the rule review in the Texas Register, again with public comment. And then the third meeting, which is the meeting here today on this group of chapters, we seek adoption of any proposed rule changes and repeals and we also seek adoption of the completed rule review, meaning retention of the remaining rules.

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Here's a -- just to orient you on the calendar, the three highlighted chapters are those before us today for adoption. As you'll see, we have one more meeting for the -- in March for the remaining three chapters and then our rule review will be completed for this four-year cycle.

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We had no changes proposed to the two chapters, 59 for Parks and 69 for Resource Protection, and we will focus solely on the proposed changes to Chapter 53.

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The first change is to Chapter 53 Subchapter A on fees, Section 53.16. This is on vessel motor and marine licensing fees. We have a clarification that a replacement marine dealer, manufacturer, or distributor's card does not include a replacement decal. There is a separate fee for a replacement decal of $126. We also have an amendment to remove an unnecessary word. So just a typo correction there.

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Our second change is to Chapter 53 Subchapter E on stamps. This is Section 533.60. We are eliminating the exemption from the upland bird stamp requirement for persons hunting under a nonresident spring turkey license and removal of references to a discontinued collector's edition stamp package.

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The next change that we have is to Subchapter F, specifically Section 53.100 for bonded title, acceptable situations for vessels and outboard motors. We have an amendment just to correct an inaccurate internal reference. Minor change here.

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We received no public comments on any of these rule changes.

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And staff recommends the Commission adopt the following motions: Motion 1, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission adopts an amendment to Title 31 Texas Administrative Code Sections 53.16 concerning vessel motor and marine licensing fees, 53.60 concerning stamps, and 53.100 concerning bonded title, acceptable situations, with changes as necessary to the proposed text as published in the December 18, 2020, issue of the Texas Register cited as 45 Texas Register 9168, 9169, 9170; Motion 2, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission adopts the completed rule review of Title 31 Texas Administrative Code Chapters 53, 59, and 69 as published in the October 2nd, 2020, issue of the Texas Register cited as 45 Texas Register 7045, finding that the original reasons for adopting the rules continue to exist as required by Government Code Section 2001.039 and authorizes the publication of a notice of adopted rule review to that effect in the Texas Register.

And with that, next slide, please, Andra?

That concludes my presentation. I'm available for any questions.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Okay. Any questions by any Commissioners?

Okay. We have nobody signed up to speak. Any other comments from the Commission or any staff member?

There being none, do I have a motion for approval regarding the first motion?

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: Patton moves.

VICE-CHAIRMAN APLIN, III: Aplin so moves. Aplin seconds.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Hildebrand second.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Got it. Okay. We get to do the roll call again. I vote yes.

VICE-CHAIRMAN APLIN, III: Aplin yes.

COMMISSIONER ABELL: Abell yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Commissioner Hildebrand?

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Okay. Commissioner Latimer?

COMMISSIONER LATIMER: Yes.

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: Patton yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Any opposed? Hearing none, motion carries.

Okay. Is there a motion for approval regarding the second motion?

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Hildebrand moved.

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: Patton second.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Go to the vote, the roll call. I vote aye.

VICE-CHAIRMAN APLIN, III: Aplin yes.

COMMISSIONER ABELL: Abell yes.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Hildebrand yes.

COMMISSIONER LATIMER: Latimer yes.

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: Patton yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Any opposed? Hearing none, motion passes.

That gets us to Action Item No. 2, Grant of Fiber Optic Cable Easement, Calhoun County, Approximately Three-tenths of an Acre at Guadalupe Delta Wildlife Management Area. Mr. Estrella, please give your presentation.

MR. ESTRELLA: Thank you, Mr. Chair, Commissioners. For the record, my name is Jason Estrella. I'm with the Land Conservation Program. This first item I'll be talking about is the grant of fiber optic cable easement of approximately 0.3 acres at the Guadalupe Delta Wildlife Management Area in Calhoun County.

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Calhoun County is located in the Central Texas Coast.

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The wildlife management area is compromised of three units. The unit we'll be discussing today is the Mission Lake Unit located in northwest Calhoun County approximately 13 miles southwest of Port Lavaca.

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The wildlife management area's Mission Lake Unit consists of just under 4,500 acres of coastal marsh and associated uplands. American Electric Power owns and maintains electric distribution lines, which traverse the Mission Lake Unit of the WMA. The easements for these distribution lines precede TPWD's acquisition of the WMA.

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AEP plans to add a communication line using aerial installation except at the entrance road to the wildlife management area, where the existing spans will not support the communications cable. AEP requests an easement to drill a conduit under the entrance road right-of-way and install the communication cable within this conduit. The proposed easement will be 827 feet long by 15 feet wide. Staff and AEP find that this method of installation will minimize impact to the WMA.

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AEP will pay up front damages for the drill pits and conduit installations. In exchange for annual payments as prescribed in the TPWD damage and fee schedule, AEP has agreed to execute letters of agreement with the Department supplementing the existing easements for electric transmission lines and associated infrastructure across the WMA northern boundary. AEP will be required to negotiate surface use agreements for all future work, restore all impacts to the WMA, and pay damages where incurred.

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Here you can see the location of the proposed easement designated by the red star in relation to the Mission Lake Unit along the north part of the -- of the unit itself.

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Here you can see the proposed easement zoomed in with the green line and the direction of the laying going under the main entrance road just north of the main facility of the WMA itself.

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And public comments, we have received 114 responses all in support.

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Staff recommend to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission adopt the following motion: Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission adopts the resolution attached as Exhibit A.

This concludes my presentation, and I'll take any questions you may have. Thank you.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Thank you for your presentation.

We have no one signed up to speak. So are there any more comments from the Commission or staff?

If not, we need a motion for approval.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Hildebrand moved.

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: Patton second.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Okay. We'll start the --

VICE-CHAIRMAN APLIN, III: Aplin yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Go ahead. And then I vote yes.

Commissioner Abell?

COMMISSIONER ABELL: Abell yes.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Hildebrand yes.

COMMISSIONER LATIMER: Latimer yes.

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: Patton yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: And I think that takes care of that.

Okay. That moves us on to Action Item No. 3, Acquisition of Land, Fannin County (inaudible).

MR. ESTRELLA: Thank you, Mr. Chair, Commissioners. Again, for the record, my name is Jason Estrella with the Land Conservation Program. This next item is acquisition of land of approximately 40 acres at Bonham State Park in Fannin County.

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Fannin county is located in North Texas along the Oklahoma border.

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Bonham State Park is located in the central area of Fannin County just southeast of Bonham and approx -- the City of Bonham and approximately 55 miles northeast of Dallas.

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The state park opened in 1936 with the help of the Civilian Conservation Corps. The park comprises of 261 acres in central Fannin County and includes a 65-acre lake, rolling prairies, and woodlands. The park sits in the Blackland Prairie Ecoregion, which is a high priority historic prairie ecosystem.

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The subject tract is an adjacent 40-acre property along the state park's northwest corner. The current owners manage to -- manage it to restore valuable native habitat. Acquisition would clean up park boundary and provide opportunities for access and recreation to the west side of the lake. The current owner offered to sell to the Department and parties signed a sale contract contingent upon authorization by the Parks and Wildlife Commission.

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Here you can see the location of the subject tract outlined in yellow in relation to the Bonham State Park itself outlined in red.

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And public comments, we have received 144 responses all in support.

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Staff recommends to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission adopt the following motion: Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission authorizes the Executive Director to take all necessary steps to acquire approximately 40 acres in Fannin County for addition to Bonham State Park.

This concludes my presentation, and I will take any questions. Thank you.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Thank you for your presentation.

We have one speaker signed up to speak, Ms. Evelyn Merz. Okay. She's not on.

AT&T OPERATOR: I don't have Evelyn on the line.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: So we can just proceed, right?

MR. SMITH: Yes. Yeah, we can go ahead.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Okay. So any comments from Commission or staff?

Being none, I need a motion for approval.

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: Patton moves to approve.

COMMISSIONER LATIMER: Latimer seconds.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Roll call vote. I vote yes.

VICE-CHAIRMAN APLIN, III: Aplin yes.

COMMISSIONER ABELL: Abell yes.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Hildebrand yes.

COMMISSIONER LATIMER: Latimer yes.

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: Patton yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: No opposition? Motion carries.

Moves to Action Item No. 4, Grant of Valve Station Easement, Nueces County, Approximately One-tenth of an Acre at Mustang Island State Park. Mr. Estrella, you're back on.

MR. ESTRELLA: Thank you, Mr. Chair, Commissioners. For the record, my name is Jason Estrella with the Land Conservation Program. This next item is a grant of valve station easement of approximately 0.1 acres at Mustang Island State Park in Nueces County.

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Nueces County is located along the Southern Texas Coast.

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The state park itself sits on the island just outside of Corpus Christi.

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The state park consists of nearly 4,000 acres of coastal sand dunes, marshes, and 5 miles beachfront. The park was acquired from the Wilson family in 1972 and opened as a state park in 1979. The City of Port Aransas requests a 30-foot-by-50-foot easement adjacent to State Highway 361 for the installation and maintenance of a high-pressured gas main valve station to service the residents of Port Aransas.

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An easement granted to Southcross Energy for a very similar purpose sits southwest and adjacent to the requested easement. The City requests a separate easement to maintain its own valves and tie in to Southcross' privately owned line. Staff believes an easement of this size will have minimal impact on the natural resources, including a nearby wetland. The station will include a 4-inch coated steel -- will include 4-inch steel-coated piping, valves and fittings and will be concealed by a wooden privacy fence.

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On this map you can see the location of the proposed easement designated by the red star in relation to the state park itself outlined in red.

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Zooming in, you can see the approximate location and area of the easement outlined in yellow as it sits just along the north side of Highway 361.

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We have received 102 public comments, all in support.

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Staff recommends that the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission adopt the following motion: Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission adopts the resolution attached as Exhibit A.

This concludes my presentation, and I'll take any questions.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Thank you for your presentation.

Any discussion by the Commission?

There being none, there are no speakers signed up. Any additional comments from Commission or staff?

Then we need a motion for approval.

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: Patton moves to --

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Hildebrand approved.

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: Patton second.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Okay. Got the roll call. I vote --

VICE-CHAIRMAN APLIN, III: Aplin yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: -- aye.

COMMISSIONER ABELL: Abell yes.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Hildebrand yes.

COMMISSIONER LATIMER: Latimer yes.

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: Patton yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Any opposed? Hearing none, motion carries.

Action Item No. 5, Exchange of Driveway Easements, Bexar County, Approximately 1 Acre at the Government Canyon State Natural Area. You're on again, James -- or Jason.

MR. ESTRELLA: Thank you, Mr. Chair, Commissioners. Again, for the record, my name is Jason Estrella. I'm with the Land Conservation Program. This final presentation that I have is the exchange of driveway easements, approximately 1 acre at Government Canyon State Natural Area in Bexar County.

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Bexar County is located in South Central Texas.

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The state natural area itself sits in northwestern Bexar County, just along the outskirts of the City of San Antonio.

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The state natural area was originally acquired by the City of San Antonio to protect recharge of the Edwards Aquifer and now covers a little over 12,000 acres. The property was transferred to TPWD for the creation of the state natural area beginning in the mid 1990s. A landowner whose home resides on an inholding has an undeveloped driveway easement which runs through a very sensitive area of the park. The landowner currently has an informal agreement with an adjacent landowner to access his property from an existing driveway, but that neighbor's property has been offered for sale and future access is in doubt.

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TPWD staff have negotiated a new driveway route west of the current easement. State natural area staff believe this driveway easement will allow for easier road development if needed and will minimize impacts to the natural and culture resources of the park. Staff further believes that exchanging the existing easement for the proposed easement will eliminate any possibility for future development of the existing easement.

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Here you can see a map of the layout of the area of the easements in question. The inholding sits within the red polygon odd-shaped there near the middle of the map. The original driveway is the -- in the north part with the green line. And again, that runs through a very sensitive area of the park. The proposed driveway on the southwestern area of the map is in yellow and ties into the existing neighbor driveway in blue. The state natural area itself, again, does surround the entire inholding.

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And public comments, we have received 121 responses all in support.

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Staff recommend that the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission adopt the following motion: Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission adopts the resolution attached as Exhibit A.

This concludes my presentation, and I will take any questions you may have. Thank you.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Thank you for your presentation there, Jason.

Any discussion by the Commission?

Hearing none, we have no speakers signed up to speak. Any other comments?

VICE-CHAIRMAN APLIN, III: Aplin moves.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Second?

COMMISSIONER LATIMER: Latimer seconds.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Okay. I vote aye.

VICE-CHAIRMAN APLIN, III: Aye Aplin.

COMMISSIONER ABELL: Abell yes.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Hildebrand yes.

COMMISSIONER LATIMER: Latimer yes.

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: Patton yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries.

Action Item No. 6, Amendment of Deed, Montgomery County, Approximately Eight-tenths of an Acre at Lake Houston Wilderness Park. Mr. Ted Hollingsworth, please do your presentation.

MR. HOLLINGSWORTH: Commissioners, good morning. My name is Ted Hollingsworth. I'm with the Land Conservation Program. This item results from a request from the City of Houston to modify a deed for a property that we transferred into their custody for their care and development about 14 years ago.

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The property straddles the Harris County/Montgomery County line, about 4,900 acres. It was acquired in the 1990s and operated in the 1990s as Lake Houston State Park.

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The Department never was able to accrue the resources to implement the public use plan for Lake Houston State Park and so working with the City of Houston and the Commission at the time, the decision was made to transfer the park because the City was able to bring resources to bear to actually develop that park and open it to the public while protecting the truly special resources on that 4,900 acres of native forest.

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As you can see in this map, it's a truly, truly unique expanse of open space surrounded by Spring, woodlands, other development, Houston. Basically hemmed in now is a very large urban park, certainly the largest in Houston itself. Again, a little over 4,900 acres. And this is the subject of the request that we've had.

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Again, heavily forested, native forest, mature native forest. Bounded on the east by the San Jacinto River, the east fork, and bounded on the west by Katy Creek. Again, for many years there was only a very small Girl Scout camp facility there. That was all we were able to maintain and open to the public. Since the City of Houston has taken over, there's a new park entrance, an internal road system, a small lake and some cabins have been developed. So the park is getting -- is getting more of the use that was intended when we acquired it.

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I'm not -- the -- those of you familiar with Houston, know that there are now three loop systems surrounding the city. The outermost loop system being the Grand Parkway or Parkway 99 system, which is nearing completion. In the 1990s, the preferred route for the Grand Parkway was to run right through the middle of Lake Houston State Park and would have cut that park in half. Staff worked with the Grand Parkway Association, TxDOT, and Federal Highways Administration and in exchange for them abandoning that route that would have divided the park in half, we agreed to work cooperatively with them on developing a route on the north side of the park along FM -- the FM 1485 corridor.

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I'm experiencing quite a lag time on these slides, so I'll simply proceed. That corridor has now been established. You may recall that last year you were asked to remove five and half acres from under the -- under the reversion clause in the deed so that that could become a part of the right-of-way for the new highway. The development of the highway has necessitated the relocation of the existing Entergy electric transmission line, which services those communities on the north side of the park.

The relocation of that transmission line is going to be entirely inside the right-of-way; but in order to comply with statutes that mandate clearing of vegetation within a certain distance of that high line to prevent fire -- and as we all know from recent years' experience, this is a very serious issue maintaining the safety of those lines by keeping vegetation out of that right-of-way -- it is necessary for an additional 18-foot strip, about a little over 2,000 feet long, to be cleared.

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At the time this issue was brought to our attention, TxDOT had already led a contract for that clearing. They were unaware of the reversion clause and because of the expense that would have been incurred by TxDOT at the taxpayer's expense to demobilize and remobilize that effort, we went ahead and entered into a right-of-entry to allow that work to proceed. In order that that work may be -- can go forward in the future without having to come back to the Commission each time, the City requests that we take that 18-foot strip, that 0.8 acres, and remove it from under the protection of the reversion clause so that they can enter into an easement or whatever agreements are necessary in the future so that that strip of land can be maintained cleared and keep that line protected and in compliance with the necessary statutes.

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This map shows where that strip is in the northeast corner of the Lake Houston Wilderness Park. Again, just a narrow strip adjacent to that five and a half acres that the Agency allowed to be conveyed to TxDOT for the purposes of developing the Grand Parkway last year.

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We have received 140 responses. One of those in opposition and the author of that response specifically stated they believe the City of Houston is destroying too much natural habitat and opposes destroying any more habitat.

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Staff does recommend that the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission adopt the following motion: The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission adopts the resolution attached as Exhibit A.

And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Any discussion by the Commission?

Since we do not have any speakers signed up, any more comments from the Commission or staff?

Not being any, we need a motion for approval.

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: Patton moves for approval.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Hildebrand second.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: I vote aye.

VICE-CHAIRMAN APLIN, III: Aplin aye.

COMMISSIONER ABELL: Abell yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Commissioner Hildebrand?

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Yes. Sorry.

COMMISSIONER LATIMER: Latimer yes.

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: Patton yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Any opposition?

COMMISSIONER GALO: Galo's here, and I vote yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Welcome.

COMMISSIONER GALO: Hi.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Hearing no opposition, the motion carries.

COMMISSIONER BELL: Bell is -- Bell is also here, and I vote yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Okay. Good to hear your voice.

Okay. That get us on to Action Item No. 7, Relocation of Access Easement, Jack County, Approximately 2 Acres at Fort Richardson State Park and Historic Site. Ted, you're up again.

MR. HOLLINGSWORTH: Commissioners, good morning again. My name is Ted Hollingsworth. For the record, I'm with the Land Conservation Program. This item pertains to a longstanding issue that we have at Fort Richardson State Park and Historic Site. I'm happy to say I believe we have a resolution to that issue.

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Fort Richardson is west/northwest of Fort Worth. It's actually in the City of Jacksboro. Jacksboro is actually a community that built up around the frontier fort. It was a frontier fort community that sprung up in the 1860s and 70s during the heyday of Fort Richardson.

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As I mentioned yesterday, if you have not had the privilege of visiting Fort Richardson State Park and Historic Site, you may want to put that on your bucket list. It is an extremely well-preserved example of a frontier fort. The living history demonstrations are very well done. It's a site that was occupied by Buffalo soldiers and frontier -- frontier Army soldiers alike.

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We acquired the property in 1970. We actually acquired several tracts, but the largest of those tracts that we acquired -- we didn't acquire all of the property owned by the landowner. The park is now about 430 acres; but the tract immediately south of the park is a 280-tract -- acre tract and the owner -- the seller of the property in 1970 retained an easement across the state park and historic site to get to the property that they continued to own. Again, just a fantastic frontier fort -- example of a frontier fort and if you're ever in that neck of the woods, you should put it on your list of things to do to go by and see it. It was active during the height of the -- what's known as the Indian Wars during the 1870s was occupied until 1878.

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Again, the seller of that largest portion of that property to us, we did not buy all of their holdings. We bought as much as we thought was appropriate for maintenance and interpretation of the fort proper. And the sellers kept an easement specifically for farming, ranching, and hunting activities. The easement did specify the access route which is -- was the existing road and is now the primary park road through the state historic site. In the 50 years since that purchase, the owner of that property has not used that easement. The property has been maintained as open space; but farming, ranching, and hunting have not occurred actively on that property and there's not been a request to use that easement.

A couple years ago, that owner sold to a new owner and that new owner has begun using that access route, that easement route, to maintain a modest ranching operation on that 280 acres south of the state park and historic site. The -- again, that existing road that was defined, that was specified in the deed, is now a primary park road. It goes through a public use area and goes through a riparian area and the development of that easement into a all-weather road would be destructive of valuable native habitat and would also be an imposition on state park operations, including -- including the visitor experience.

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So as a result, staff have worked to identify a route for an access road for this adjacent landowner that would avoid going through the public use area, would avoid going through important riparian habitat, would avoid some topography that would be very difficult to maintain erosion control on and which actually runs alongside the perimeter fence, the boundary fence on the east side of the park. The road would then serve as a firebreak. The only vegetation that would be removed is some brush and cactus, which is actually impinging on the native prairie anyway. And the road would lead the owner to a point in the fence line adjacent to a very good all-weather oil and gas road and make his operations easier.

As a result, the staff strongly recommends an exchange -- an abandonment of the historic easement and replacement with this -- with a new easement to follow that line indicated in black on this map.

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The new access route would not go through any public use facilities. Again, would follow the boundary line. Would be a much easier road to maintain with less impact to natural resources. And again, staff does recommend that that route be swapped out for the existing easement route.

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We received 236 responses, all in favor.

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And staff does recommend that the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission adopt the following motion: The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission adopts the resolution attached as Exhibit A.

With that, I'd be happy to answer any questions.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Thank you, Ted.

Any discussion by the Commission?

No speakers are signed up to speak. So need a motion for approval.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Hildebrand moved.

COMMISSIONER LATIMER: Latimer second.

VICE-CHAIRMAN APLIN, III: Aplin yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: I vote yes.

COMMISSIONER ABELL: Abell yes.

COMMISSIONER BELL: Bell yes.

COMMISSIONER GALO: Galo yes.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Hildebrand yes.

COMMISSIONER LATIMER: Latimer yes.

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: Patton yes.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries.

Next we go to Action Item 8, which has been withdrawn from this Commission Meeting.

Action Item 9, Texas Farm and Ranch Lands Conservation Council Update. Mr. Christopher Abernathy, please make your presentation.

MR. ABERNATHY: Good morning, Mr. Chairman. My name's Chris Abernathy. I'm the Program Coordinator for the Texas Farm and Ranch Land Conservation Program. We're housed in the Land Conservation Program office.

Next slide, please, Andra? Next slide, please?

Mr. Chairman, the Farm and Ranch Program was established in 2005 by the Legislature. It was originally placed under the General Land Office and maintained there for ten years. Primarily the General Land Office funded conservation easements using Coastal Assistance -- Coastal Impact Assistance Program called CIAP, which were primarily for coastal and conservation easements. In 2010 -- I'm sorry, 2015, the Legislature transferred the program under House Bill 1925 to Texas Parks and Wildlife. Under our program and under that legislation, we receive an appropriation of $2 million each biennium.

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We have -- well, Mr. Chairman -- Mr. Chairman, Mr. Reed Morian, our Chairman is also the Chairman of the Commission and he becomes our Chairman for the Farm and Ranch Council and we have our oversight provided by them. We have 12 members in the pro -- in the Council. Six are what are called ex-officio, as determined by their office, and six are Governor appointee.

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Just a brief overview of who our Council members are. Again, Mr. Morian is our Chairman; Mr. Sid Miller from the Department of Agriculture; Ms. Kristy Oates from the NRCS State Conservation Office; Mr. Rex Isom from Soil and Water Conservation Board; A&M Natural Resources Institute, Dr. Roel Lopez.

And I can't see my last bullet, Andra. Is there any way I can slide that up?

MR. SMITH: It's Peter Lake, Chairman of the --

MR. ABERNATHY: Peter Lake. I'm sorry. I should know everybody, but I --

Again, next slide, please? Thank you.

And then we have our Governor appointees. The represent various facets of agriculture within the state. Our most recent is Mr. Romey Swanson. But we have Ms. Abby Frank. She's a bank loan officer. Mr. Romey Swanson is a member of the Texas Audubon Society. Mr. Gilbert Riojas is a farm owner. Mr. Dave Scott and Mrs. Leslie Kinsel are both basically ranch owners or participate heavily in the agricultural community. And Ms. Natalie Koehler is a ranch owner.

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So the primary mission of the Farm and Ranch Program is to protect working lands and so we define working lands as those that have an ag exemption, that have produced food and fiber, that have wildlife habitat on them, that have sensitive species, that have watershed and water quality issues that we need to protect. The program, out of the appropriation that I receive each two years, I'm allowed to spend basically all but 10 percent. So about -- about 80 -- I'm sorry, 90 percent of my funds, about $1.8 million, goes towards providing grants to qualified land trusts for acquisition of conservation easements. We have an internal ranking system, and that helps us decide which priority to give to which properties. It's -- it's based on -- it gives points for various things like development, water quality, watershed, size, species, habitat. Each of those categories are given an internal evaluation by an internal ranking team.

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Since the transfer of the program to Texas Parks and Wildlife, we've approved funding for 21 projects. As you can see by the map, the majority of them occurred in Central Texas. That just happens to be a very, you know, desirable area. Lots of development, as we know, in the Central Texas area. We have a few coastal properties. We have one on the Red River which is the Bartush Ranch and we have a property out on the New Mexico/Texas border and Far West Texas.

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So we've been, I think, very successful, Mr. Chairman. To date, since the transfer -- I'm not -- let me just preface this by saying I'm not discussing or talking about the numbers prior to the transfer to the Agency. I'm referring to the active work that's been done since the transfer in 2016. We've protected over 24,000 acres of lands. We have another 3,300 acres that are actually in process currently right now.

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I want to reference -- I'm going to show you a lot of statistics and information in the next few slides about the program, but I want to -- I want to let you know that Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute recently completed a study, a very in-depth study of the entire program and they looked at a lot of statistics and economics and wildlife value and water quality value and so all the numbers that I'm going to show in the next few slides are all derived from that study. And, again, these -- these numbers are only reflected on the current properties that have been closed. So we've almost $3 million in agriculture commodities are produced on the properties that we've protected.

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Over $170,000 of wildlife value provided annually.

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This is really, I think, very notable. This is $7.3 million in water replacement costs are provided annually on those 24,000 acres.

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I think, again, we're continuing our financial success. So I mentioned that we get $2 million each biennium. Obviously, that equals about $6 million. And, again, I'm referencing -- these funds only reference the properties that have closed to date. I try not to do my statistics until all the properties have closed, and I can then make those calculations. Anyway, we have spent $3.8 million in state funds. We've had great federal funding success with $11 million and we have a lot matched funds that are provided either by the landowners or other entities that want to help us protect those properties, $6 million in match funds.

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Again, return on investment 27 to 1. So that basically means for every dollar that we spend, we get $27 worth of conservation value. I don't know any place else that has a 27-to-1 return on investment. We're only spending an average of $148 per acre on our properties out of state funds, and 86 percent of our projects get other funding applied to them. Typically, the NRCS, they're our largest funding source outside of the Department. It's federal money. It comes from the ACEP Program, the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program. It's funded through the Farm Bill. And we have a leveraging ratio and all of those funds, again, $1 of ours brings in $10 of leverage funds. So, again, I think we're very successful.

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I have a few properties I want to show you. These are just some really nice pictures and some really nice highlights of some properties that I selectively picked out so y'all can get an idea of the kinds of properties we're trying to protect.

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So this is the Pietila Ranch. It's the one I mentioned to you. It's on the border on Texas and New Mexico. It's directly adjacent to the Guadalupe Mountains National Park. It's over 6,000 acres and originally, the original property was almost 11,000 acres; but the original owner, a very -- apparently, a very famous pioneer geologist named Wallace Pratt owned over 11,000 acres and he sold half of his property to the National Park Service to help them establish the Guadalupe Mountains National Park.

This property, because it is bordered by the park, it's basically the green line that you see going through the easement is the road to McKittrick Canyon. So there's just a lot of habitat that's the worthy of protection here. It's also the only project that we have in what's called the Trans-Pecos Ecoregion. For most people, that kind of means the Chihuahuan Desert, again, in the West Texas area.

Next slide, please? Thank you.

Because of its location and because of its altitude, the diversity of plant communities here is really tremendous. It's high desert, and I'll show you another picture; but basically, the elk herds that are in the Lincoln National Forest and the mountains of Guadalupe National Park come to this ranch to winter in the lower altitudes in the winter.

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Again, playa lake. A lot of opportunity for wildlife, for cattle.

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Our next property is the Krause Ranch. It's in Real County, located near Leakey, 1,640 acres, and it just has tremendous water assets. A very prolific property as you'll see in the next few slides.

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Leakey Ranch is a working cattle ranch. I wanted to say that, and the landowner has taken tremendous strides to restore the property. This particular water feature is called Sinkhole Springs. Obviously, there's a lot of karst topography in this property. Very critical to our drinking water and to water filtration and to the recharge zone.

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This is the west fork of the Frio. Heavily, you know, protected. The banks of the Frio protected as it runs through this property. You can see a little bit of channel maintenance there by the landowners, a little water down -- it's just a really nice job that they're taking care of.

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This one is called -- well, it's another picture of Sinkhole Springs on your left and Church Springs on your right. Again, very prolific property. And actually this landowner, if you're interested, he actually maintains a very well-developed website. You can look at all of the water features. You can learn about all the conservation methods that he's taken in the last few years.

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So, Mr. Chairman, I saved the best for last, I think. Mr. Chairman Morian was extremely impressed by these next few pictures. We all were. Right now, this is kind of our crowning jewel. It was ranked No. 1 during our selection process a year ago. It's adjacent to the Guadalupe River State Park, Honey Creek State Natural Area. It contributes to that open space. It contributes to the headwater of Honey Creek.

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This picture speaks for itself, Mr. Chairman. This is an underground river. This is Honey Creek Cave. It's part of the largest cave system in the state. It has over 20 miles of under green stream -- underground stream passages, several threatened karst species, any -- also any species that are dependent on the karst habitat is thriving in here and it's very critical we take care of this. I did want to mention that this particular property has been under one family owner since its inception since 1860. It's a working cattle ranch, and it's on the National Register of Historic Places.

Next slide, please? Thank you.

So this is Honey Creek. It is a tributary to the Guadalupe River, and it eventually does flow into Canyon Lake Reservoir. So, again, very critical. These properties, although they're not significantly huge, they are critical to drinking water. Obviously, Canyon Lake provides water to over 2 million people. So these kinds of protections are just deeply needed. And I'm going to show you one more picture that is quite astonishing.

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This is Honey Creek under a high-flow event, Honey Creek Cave. This water is flowing into Honey Creek out of the cave you saw earlier. Tremendous water source. A real good example of what a karst topography does, what a recharge system does, and how it contributes to the water table and to drinking water throughout the state.

And that is my last slide, Mr. Chairman. I'm open for any questions or comments you may have.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: So I -- Commissioner Hildebrand. I've got a -- can you hear me?

MR. ABERNATHY: Yes, sir.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Can you hear me? Okay, sorry. So you've only got roughly $2 million a year to spend, 1.8 you said?

MR. ABERNATHY: Yes, sir.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: And tell me about the prioritization in terms of how you pick a particular land. Because I assume you're not -- rice field in Colorado County is going to be low on the -- low on the priority scale.

MR. ABERNATHY: Mr. Chairman, we have criteria, as I mentioned. They're numeric. They range from up to -- a total point system is up to 100. It's as much as 30 and as little as 10. Development value is critical. Habitat is another one. Water quality impacts are another one. Economics are another one. There's just several different criteria. And so when I get my applications -- and just as a side note, my application process again this year will run from March 1st to April 30th and the land trusts will submit their applications during that time and as the applications come in through that window, I generate another spreadsheet that allows me to look at what their budget requests are and then -- and how well my appropriation is and we have an internal ranking committee that's made up of specialists and basically subject matter experts almost in every aspect covered by the criteria within the Department. We even actually have an external subject matter expert that represents the agricultural community, Mr. Jay Evans. He's a ranch manager that lives in Austin.

So I bring those gentlemen together, all those people together. We look at each of the projects individually. We look at all the photos, all the information. Prior to this, biological -- like, wildlife biologists have gone out to most of these properties. They've taken pictures of these properties. They've given us an assessment of these properties to try to make sure that what's represented in the application is actually what's on the ground. So we take all of that information and we meet for a good, long day and we basically just talk about each one of these and then I send the selection team away. We make our rankings privately and we come back and then I make composites of those rankings and essentially what I do is I take my appropriation and I take the budget request and I -- we try to fund everything we can until we run out of money.

We had 11 requests last time and I funded eight of them and I spent my $1.8 million.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: All right. So you're buying pretty small tracts of land; but the idea is that landowners that want to enter into the program, they push these opportunities to you. You don't go out and actively seek them?

MR. ABERNATHY: Actually, Mr. Chairman, my applicant is a land trust. I don't do business with a private landowner. The land trusts are 501(c)(3) nongovernmental organizations. We generate a grant agreement with them. They represent the landowner. They're the ones that do all the due diligence. They bring the project to us. They complete the application. They walk the landowner through the process, and then they're -- and then my grant agreement, not only do I pay for my acquisition costs; but I pay for due diligence, which includes surveys, appraisals, mapping, baseline surveys, the closing costs, everything involved that would be required for us to acquire that easement. It's almost like a professional services contract that you would have with a consultant; but it's with a land trust, and it's a grant agreement.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Well, and the land trust, so they serve as the intermediary between you and the landowner.

MR. ABERNATHY: Yes, Mr. Chairman.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: I'm not the Chairman. That's Mr. Scott.

MR. ABERNATHY: I always make my address -- I always address the Chairman.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: That's fine. And so just a little more. The conditions around the conservation easements, are they -- are those fairly standard contractual obligations on the part of landowner to obviously not develop, not destroy the habitat, not -- I'm not sure of all the --

MR. ABERNATHY: You're doing a really good job of summarizing. Mr. Chairman, you're doing a really good job of summarizing. There's no subdivision. There's no mineral development. Typically, there's no new roads built, no new impervious surfaces built. Not every conservation easement is identical. The primary objective is to maintain the current status quo, the baseline, the agricultural production, the way it was when we first brought the property in. These conservation easements are perpetual. That's a lot to consider if you're a landowner. It's a lot to consider when you're writing a document that may be looked at by somebody 30 years from now when we're all gone. So we try to write an easement that has at least several critical clauses that we want to make sure that we protect.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Understand. I tried to buy a conservation easement back once from the organization and it is impossible to do. So I understand. Okay, great. Thanks. Now I have an understanding of the program. I didn't know it existed. Great program. Thanks very much for the presentation.

MR. ABERNATHY: Thank you, sir.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Any other comments?

I would also copy what Commissioner Hildebrand said. I actually have been here a pretty good while, and I learned something off of this deal today. I was not 100 percent aware of all the stuff you end up doing. I would like to have a conversation with you at some point, but we won't do it right now; but I just have a few other questions and just would like --

MR. ABERNATHY: Yes, sir.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: -- some clarification. But it was a very excellent presentation.

MR. ABERNATHY: Thank you, sir. I would -- I would -- the breadth of the study that I mentioned done by A&M, there's an executive summary and there's also the full report. It's available online. We can make sure that y'all have access to that. It's really well-done. I worked hand in hand with the folks at A&M providing them with as much information as I could. It's just a really nice study. It's easy to read. It's graphically friendly, and y'all I think would have -- enjoy looking at it knowing what's happening.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Speaking for myself, I'd certainly like to have access and I'm quite sure all the other Commissioners would as well because that's very interesting information. Like I said, I've learned some things that I did not even know, so.

MR. ABERNATHY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We'll make sure that happens.

MR. SMITH: Chairman Scott, just one thing I want to add is that Chairman Morian really hated to not be with y'all today to hear this presentation. As Chris said, you know, he's the Chairman of the Board. He's a huge proponent of this program. Believes very strongly in terms of the leverage and the conservation return on the investment that Chris highlighted. Very consistent with the private lands outreach work that we do in terms of working cooperatively and voluntarily in a non-regulatory and senate-based fashion with landowners. And so anyway, Chairman Morian wanted to make sure that the Commission had some exposure to this because he's been a very, very enthusiastic proponent of it and just wanted to share that on his behalf. So, thanks.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: I can see why he would. He does a lot of things along those lines.

Okay. Any further discussion by the Commission? Any other questions for Christopher?

If not --

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Mr. Chairman, I have one. So --

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Go ahead.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: -- I'm not sure I understood this. Does the Parks and Wildlife Department have access to these properties? I mean, for example, if you wanted take a group of Commissioners out? I mean, these are really interesting properties. Is that prohibited in the conservation easements?

MR. ABERNATHY: Mr. Chairman, no, it's not prohibited. It's not guaranteed either. Access is not guaranteed. Obviously, these landowners probably would not -- actually, they might enjoy showing off their property; but it's not guaranteed. It's not part of the conservation easement. There's no public access. There are sometimes clauses included for research and study by Texas Parks and Wildlife staff for various plant communities or wildlife studies or water quality they might want to conduct, but I'm sure that that's something that we could accommodate if we wanted to.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Okay, great. And Wallace Pratt was the first engineer that Exxon ever had. So he's a pretty famous guy.

MR. ABERNATHY: Based on my study, he actually went way before Exxon. He was out of Humble and did quite a bit of work.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Yeah.

MR. ABERNATHY: But he was the original landowner of Pietila.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Okay. Unless anybody has got any further questions or comments, thank you for your presentation again, Christopher. It was very, very enlightening.

And we'll move on to Briefing Item No. 10, Survey of Employee Engagement Results. Mr. Matt Kennedy, please make your presentation.

MR. KENNEDY: Wonderful. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Commissioners, Mr. Smith. For the record, my name is Matt Kennedy and I am a training specialist in the Human Resources Division and I'm here today to brief you-all on the 2020 Survey of Employee Engagement.

Next slide, please?

So today a few things that we're going to go over include an overview of what the Survey of Employee Engagement is, some general results for the Agency, a look at the TPWD climate out of the survey, our top areas of strength, as well as our top areas of opportunity. We'll dive into a couple of areas of additional interest before we tell you kind of what our plan is with this project moving forward.

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So what is the SEE? The Survey of Employee Engagement is a legislatively mandated assessment of organizational climate that's conducted by the Institute of Organizational Excellence at the University of Texas at Austin every two years. The biennial survey started in 1979 at the request of Texas Governor Bill Clements. So why is the SEE important? Honestly, it provides agencies with unique insight into how employees engage within the organization. It allows employees a platform to provide organizational feedback and quite honestly, lend support to the Agency's biennial Legislative Appropriations Request.

So who participates? Quite simply, it is all full-time employees of Texas State agencies. So who sees the SEE?

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So externally, it's entities that you see listed here. The Legislative Budget Board, the State Auditor's Office, the Legislature, Sunset Commission, the House Appropriations Committee, and the Senate Finance Committee. Internally, the results are shared with the Executive Office; Division Directors; you-all, TPW Commission; and, of course, our TPWD employees.

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So how does it work? The SEE is made up of 50 primary questions that are written by the Institute or Organizational Excellence. There are an additional 22 questions that are written by TPWD, but they're not actually scored as a part of any specific survey constructs. The constructs we'll define here in just a moment. Each question is responded to on a five-point scale with five being strongly agree and one being strongly disagree and you will see this scale represented in point totals that range from 100 to 500 points.

Now, the IOE at the University of Texas provides TPWD with agency-wide results, division specific results, and where it's applicable, region specific results in some of our larger divisions.

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Now, I mentioned before that the survey's primary 50 questions are scored into 12 different constructs seen here. I will point out that the employee engagement construct is the only one of the constructs that is made up of questions from the other 11 constructs. So, for example, a question about interacting with one's supervisor is initially scored under the supervision construct; but it's also scored under the employee engagement construct.

Additionally, it's important to establish the significance of the point totals that you're going to see today. So anything under 300 points is of particular interest to us as it identifies a development opportunity. Scores between 300 and 349 are pretty average. Scores of 350 to 400 are considered very strong. Finally, any score that you see today 400 points or above is really the standard of excellence in this survey. Spoiler alert, you're going to see a lot of very strong and excellent results today.

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So let's begin by looking at the survey response rate for the Agency. You see here between 2012 and 2018, we saw a significant drop-off of 18 percent. However, for the 2020 survey, we enjoyed a 7 percent increase. Our 79 percent response rate represents 2,312 employees in our Agency. The Institution of -- the Institute of Organizational Excellent highlights that as a general rule, response rates above 50 percent suggest a soundness. So these levels of response indicate that our employees are invested throughout all levels of the organization and, likewise, can have high expectations for actions to be taken on these survey results.

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Over the last several surveys leading up to 2020, we have seen little substantial change to our overall score on the SEE. However, we saw an eight-point increase from 2018 to 2020 up to on overall score of 382. Now, remember I mentioned that anything above 350 points is considered strong on the SEE. So this theme remains consistent through almost all facets of the survey results.

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Now, these numbers speak to various levels of engagement throughout our Agency. You see here that 50 percent -- 57 percent of our workforce is considered to be highly engaged or engaged. The IOE indicates that the nationwide average for most organizations is 30 percent levels of highly engaged and engaged. So on average, TPWD remains 27 percent more engaged than most organizations nationwide. Also, please note that just because 16 percent of TPWD employees said that they can retire in the next two years, it's not necessarily an indication that they plan to do so. Additionally, this self-reported statistic is not necessarily consistent with our workforce plan that reports 25 percent of the Agency's workforce is eligible to retire in the next four years.

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Here is how TPWD has scored on each of the 12 constructs over the last three surveys. Now, there wasn't substantial movement; but there are several positive indicators here. First, every single construct improved compared to 2018, with the lone exception of pay, which honestly only decreased by statistically insignificant two points. Second, every single score -- of course, except pay -- is above the 350-point threshold to be considered strong to excellent on the SEE.

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Now, this graph allows us to see how field employees and headquarter's employees differed in their overall score to each construct. So, for example, the Agency overall score on the community construct was 395. The field's overall score was two points less than the Agency average at 393 and headquarters employees scored five points over the Agency average for a score of 400. Now, this is a unique look at how assigned work locations can play into how responses to each construct might differ and these point spreads really do remain consistent with the 2018 results.

Now, while the one- to two-point deviation is generally considered insignificant here, the point differential on pay is of particular interest simply because in 2018, headquarters employees were far less preferential to pay as compared to the field. This dynamic has seemed to alter in the 2020 results. So we're quite honestly eager to learn more about this shift in upcoming focus groups, which we'll discuss more about later.

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One of the areas that the SEE looks at that is not a specific construct is organizational climate. So these levels of disagreement around some basic climate questions indicate to us that TPWD workplaces are fair, ethical, and adequately address harassment. Also, employees feel the need for better communication from both the top down and the bottom up.

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So there are specific questions in the survey that the IOE uses to depict climate, and you see the scores on them here. The questions range from the first one being management, upper management effectively communicates important information, supervisor reads I am satisfied with the opportunities I have to provide feedback on my supervisor's performance. Survey says I believe we will use the information in the survey to improve our workplace. Fairness, I am treated fairly in my workplace. Ethics, employees are generally ethical at my workplace. And atmosphere, harassment is not tolerated at my workplace. The top three of management, supervisor, and survey, generally refer to communication throughout the Agency; but there are some opportunities within these to make these numbers even stronger.

The bottom three of fairness, ethics, atmosphere, they really speak to workplace culture. These responses indicate that our Agency fosters a fair, ethical, and safe work environment.

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So these are the top three areas of strength for the Agency over the last three surveys. Now, while the top three constructs and their order have gone unchanged for several surveys, definitely note that for the first time, all three of our top scores are above 400 points, the threshold of excellence.

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This is the strategic construct and TPWD's single highest score on any one question was 437 and it came on this bottom statement that you see here: I have a good understanding of our mission, vision, and strategic plan. There's a couple reasons for this. First, strategic planning through the Land and Water Use Plan does provide a framework for how we forge into the future of natural resource conservation and outdoor recreation. Every employee who comes through new employee orientation not only receives a copy of the Land and Water Plan, they also receive an exercise in which they discover how they fit into our in mission through their specific and unique role in the Agency.

Second, and more important, daily our employees are doing the work that allows TPWD to be so successful. Their passion and dedication are evident in our pursuit to continually fulfill our mission to the people of Texas and we can leverage this as an Agency in our continued commitment to improvement.

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Supervision is consistently a very strong construct in the SEE for TPWD. The Agency score on this construct was 403. It's an 11-point increase compared to the previous survey. Such improvement on a preexisting strength really does leave us encouraged to see that we continue to give our employees the opportunity to do their best work on a daily basis.

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Now, remember that employee engagement is the only construct in the entire survey that is made up of statements from the other constructs. So as a result, it also happens to be the longest construct. You might see some questions here that you saw in the previous two constructs that we examined.

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You see here that at a score of 400, make no mistake, TPWD employees are clearly engaged and passionate about the work that they do on a daily basis.

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So there's been very little change in TPWD's lowest three constructs over the last several surveys. The short of it is that we continue to build on strengths that are really disguised as opportunities in information systems and internal communication; but we continue to be plagued by our struggles around pay.

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So this graph here shows the Agency score on pay on each of the last 11 SEEs or the last 22 years. Make no mistake here as well, there's been linear movement downward with the only spike being in 2010, which we were able to directly attribute to a legislatively mandated salary increase of 2 percent or a minimum of $50 per month.

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Consistently for TPWD, the lowest score on this construct has come from this question: My pay keeps pace with the cost of living. However, for the first time in four surveys, TPWD did not see a decrease in the score to this question. So there are some bright spots to still take away from that as well that we're kind of evening some things out potentially.

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So we have seen a steady increase in the overall score to information systems and as a reminder for you, this survey was taken in the brief nine weeks of 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic could have impacted the results. It would in no way be surprising to see these scores increase even more during and after the pandemic, given the tools and supports that the Information Technology Division has provided to all of us in the name of safely and responsibly staying mission focused.

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So as a part of 2018 SEE, the Institute of Organizational Excellence added two questions to the survey that are not scored as a part of any construct. These two questions that you see here around cybersecurity really help us understand more about the swift and positive impact that our IT Security team has had.

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Now, there are several questions in the SEE that in some way, shape, or form speak to the construct of internal communication. However, these are the only three that are actually utilized in the internal communication score that you see here of 367. At an overall score of 367, we continue to improve on this construct through substantial improvement in areas such as fostering a workplace culture that encourages open and honest communication.

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There are a few areas of additional interest that we want to quickly look at today. Please note that while diversity and trust are not official constructs in the SEE, workplace is one of the 12 overall constructs for this survey.

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Now, while this score that you see here of 380 is not an official construct score, it does represent the average score on each of the questions throughout the survey that aim to look closer at diversity. It is encouraging to see that employees believe diversity is a necessity to the Agency's mission success and these results help us further efforts to ensure that TPWD creates a welcoming environment that fosters diversity, equity, and inclusion.

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Further on diversity, as we look at these statistics, it's important to note that these demographics are self-reported in the SEE and are not the official makeup of our workforce. The survey's demographic questions really are some of the most unanswered questions in the entire survey and it's really not that surprising given concerns over response anonymity, a lack of nonbinary gender options, and honestly the survey's inability to separate out race and ethnicity the way, say, the U.S. Census might.

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Now, when it comes to the workplace construct, the top four questions that you see here make up the official construct score. The bottom three questions are of particular interest on the same topic, but they're not a part of the construct's score of 397. All in all, what these questions tell us is that generally speaking, employees at TPWD feel safe in the workplace by refusing to tolerate harassment and by being empowered to stop unsafe acts.

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Finally, we look at one more topic that is not an official construct of the SEE and that's trust. Unsurprisingly, respondents seem to trust the people they work most closely with in their workplaces and those same levels of trust don't necessarily translate cross divisionally. However, in one survey, we've made great strides to lay the foundations of trust throughout the entire organization. So if we can continue to break down silos between divisions and find even more opportunities to work cross divisionally, I think we will continue to see trust grow throughout TPWD.

Next slide.

So as we wrap up, it's important to share with you our 24-month cycle for the Survey of Employee Engagement. First, we administer the survey in January and February of even-numbered years. We receive the results in the April to May timeframe, upon which we brief our Executive leadership and then we provide briefings of division-specific results to each Division Director. Back in 2018, we conducted 38 focus groups across five locations and we had decent participation and were able to use that additional feedback to work with every division to craft action plans that address any concerns that may have arisen out of the SEE. Those action plans were published for the sake of transparency and I think that it's reasonable to ascertain that these opportunities for additional feedback and subsequent action planning, aided in the successful increase of almost every single score in the Survey of Employee Engagement for 2020.

Now, clearly 2020 has altered our traditional methodology. However, through some reimagining and thoughtful assistance of Commissioner Bell, we have a strategy to see the SEE through with only a few minor pandemic adjustments. It's clear, honestly, everywhere that we look through these results that our employees are consistently passionate, they're engaged, and they're wholly dedicated to their work at this Agency. The SEE is an amazing tool that provides us with some keen insight into our employees perceive their work environments.

The mission of this Agency is beautifully unique, and so too are the wonderful people who choose to work here. Therefore, it's vital that we continue to utilize organizational tools like the SEE to protect one of our most valued natural resources: Our human resources. I appreciate your time this morning, and I gladly yield for your questions.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Is there any further discussion by the Commissioner -- by the Commission or Commissioners?

COMMISSIONER BELL: Mr. Chairman, this is Commissioner Bell. I just wanted to thank the staff for all the work that they had done in the survey response and also thank the employees for their level of participation. It can be very challenging to -- in some organizations -- to get people to want to open up and share information and I think it's a credit to the staff and to the leadership that we have the participation rate at the level we do and we still want to see it go higher, but the feedback is good and I'm glad to hear that the leadership team is reacting to the feedback and responding, trying to continue to improve our circumstances for employee engagement.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Well, we appreciate your work on this, Oliver, since this is your area of expertise. It's -- this is very, very detailed. I don't remember seeing something quite like this in the past where the numbers have gone well. So everybody that's involved with this obviously is taking it very seriously, and that's a good thing.

COMMISSIONER BELL: Yes, sir.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Commissioner Hildebrand, I've got a quick question. Are there any equivalent surveys where in other State agencies or federal agencies take equivalent surveys that you can benchmark yourselves against other organizations as to how good you are in accountability or empowerment or diversity or -- and the reason I ask is that we, as a company, participate every year in the Fortune Best Places to Work Survey and it is a very analytical process administered by Fortune. It's anonymous, so the employees feel very comfortable in submitting surveys. As Oliver knows, a lot of these things are flawed because nobody wants to give frank feedback because they're concerned that their supervisor is going to see their results, so.

But what it does is then it compares you to other organizations, gives you a numerical score, and then each of the departments, it shows deficiencies and strengths. So it's one thing to look at yourself internally, but how do you look relative to other organizations that are similar to what you do?

MR. KENNEDY: Yeah, that's a wonderful and very fair question, Commissioner. So first to most simply answer your question, no, we don't have direct comparisons. We are currently working with the Director of the Institute of Organizational Excellence to pull some comparative data not just to other State agencies, but also to agencies like ours, natural resources agencies, so we can really compare apples to apples.

I will say that the IOE does point out the nationwide average for response rate -- or I'm sorry, for rates of being engaged and highly engaged and that's roughly around 30 percent nationwide and so that's the only real comparison we have where our Agency is about 27 percent more engaged than the average organization. But as far as comparing the specific constructs across organizations, no, sir, we don't actually have that data on hand.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: You know what would be great? Just thinking about this, is take every State agency in the State of Texas, create a simple, straightforward, anonymous-based survey, you know, based on best places to work or there's a thousand of these different surveys and then compare yourselves. All that sounds simple, State -- getting State government involved in that. But that would be really interesting. How do you guys compare to the Department of Public Safety or on all of these elements? So anyway, just maybe think about that some day and maybe you can be the author of that.

MR. KENNEDY: That sounds like a wonderful plan and I'm going to tap you to help me, Commissioner.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: No. No, that would be Commissioner Bell's area. I just have ideas.

MR. KENNEDY: Absolutely. And he's been a wonderful assistance to us in this process.

COMMISSIONER BELL: Matt, and I'd like to thank Commissioner Hildebrand for volunteering me and I'm happy to volunteer.

MR. SMITH: Matt, this is Carter. We don't have access to the data from, like, TCEQ or Department of Agriculture or Water Development Board or some of the Article 6 related agencies, even DPS just on the law enforcement? I mean, I would think we would be able to have a window into those agencies to do some of that comparative analysis that Commissioner Hildebrand is asking about. I -- could we --

MR. KENNEDY: Yeah. We -- we are currently looking into that. Yes, sir. So we actually are communicating with the IOE. Well, actually I might have an e-mail in my in-box. I'll go look here in little bit, but we were communicating as recently as yesterday to try to find some of that comparative data. I'm not sure how willing they are to share other agencies' data. We did work with the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the IOE had a graduate course who wanted to examine TPWD's results a little bit further and so we worked with them on that and they produced a report that indicated that we are doing very, very strong in all of these categories; but, again, even that report doesn't give us actual comparative data to other agencies like ours or otherwise.

MR. SMITH: Got you. The other thing, Matt, that I think is worth clarifying for the Commission too and you touched on it, but might want to just again expanding a little bit is, you know, these are the high-level results for the entirety of the Agency.

MR. KENNEDY: Yes, sir.

MR. SMITH: We can break these down by division and for our larger divisions, we can break these down by, you know, regions. So, you know, there may be issues that are driving a certain response within the Agency that may be more division specific and in some cases, it may be more region specific. So at least for our higher --

MR. KENNEDY: Yes.

MR. SMITH: -- or our larger divisions, we can go a little bit more granular just in case, you know, there's specific issues where we think we can focus on and obviously the focus groups that Matt is talking about, some of the other follow-up will help us in that, so. But did want to clarify that, too.

MR. KENNEDY: Yes, sir. That's a great point. Thank you for the clarification.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Okay. Anymore comments, questions by the Commission on this item?

Well, thank you very much. That was a very interesting presentation.

That will move us on to Briefing Item No. 11, Recruitment, Retention, and Reactivation Strategy, Mr. Craig Bonds. Craig, go ahead.

MR. BONDS: Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Commissioners. For the record, my name is Craig Bonds. I'm Director of the Inland Fisheries Division and I'm privileged with the opportunity to brief each of you on a strategic focus important to our Agency. As one of the executive sponsors of this initiative, I'm putting voice to the work of a multidivisional team. I'd especially like to point out the efforts of Tom Harvey, Communications Deputy Director; and members of the core writing team, Janis Johnson, Communications and Marketing; Justin Dreibelbis, Wildlife Division; Zack Thomas, Coastal Fisheries; Steve Hall, Communications and Hunter Ed; Ken Kurzawski, Inland Fisheries; and Michael Hobson of our Financial Resources Division. Thanks for everyone's time and attention to this important and timely topic.

I'll share with you how TPWD plans to participate in this R3 collaborative effort, which is gaining momentum and results nationwide. It includes fish and wildlife agencies from all 50 states, as well as private industries and conservation and outdoor recreation organizations across America. At a high level, the purpose of today's presentation is to convey four main points: No. 1, what is R3; and No. 2, why is it important to our agency; No. 3, what are we planning to do to address it; and No. 4, finally we'll wrap up by describing recent efforts to solicit feedback from our external partners on the specifics of this plan and next steps for finalizing, communicating, and implementing the plan.

Next slide, please?

In the context of outdoor recreation, R3 stands for the recruitment of new participants, retention of them, and reactivation of those lapsing out of the sports. Our overarching goal, to create lifelong avid participants in fishing, boating, hunting, and shooting sports. R3 is not new as a concept in Texas. TPWD, in cooperation with many of our partners, has been working on recruitment and retention for a long time through programs like the Texas Youth Hunting Program, Neighborhood Fishing Program, mobile shooting sports trailers, and more. We have realized through this new process that there are some key improvements to be made in the way that we coordinate within the Agency and with our partners, evaluate the success of our programs, package and sell certain licensed products and learn about our customers' priorities.

Through this effort to being more strategic and coordinated in our R3 efforts, we feel like we can make significant strides in recruiting and retaining the next generation of outdoor enthusiasts.

Next slide, please?

To best conceptualize R3 and focus our efforts, we show in Slide 3 a depiction of the outdoor recreation adoption model. It shows the steps a person progresses through the continuum of the 3Rs and acknowledges the social support necessary to move from either end towards the middle as an avid, retained participant. Recruitment activities generate awareness and interest in an activity, as well as providing opportunities for an initial trial; but unfortunately, that's where many R3 programs prematurely stop.

Next, retention activities provide the support necessary for novice recreationists to build their skills until they're able to participate independently. And finally, reactivation activities help lapsed recreationists pick back up the activity to become avid participation -- participants again.

Next slide, please?

The overarching vision and outcomes of addressing R3 are to, No. 1, create lifelong hunters, anglers, boaters, and shooters. In order to -- and this is where the why really comes in -- expand resources to successfully deliver nature-based conservation and recreation. And finally, to increase and sustain public support and relevancy for these pillar activities which are so core to our mission.

Next slide, please?

So why is it important to focus on R3 today? Prior to an exceptional year in 2020, hunting and fishing license sales, as well as registered boats, have been increasing slowly or have remained relatively stable through time. Yet, the State's human population growth has been rising sharply at a much more rapid clip. The implication is over time, the proportion of the State's population that hunts, fishes, and boats is a shrinking slice of the overall population pie. We also recognize demographic shifts occurring not only in rapidly diversifying and urbanizing populace, but participant cohorts such as baby boomers aging through and out of activities without adequately backfilling new, more diverse age cohorts to replace baby boomers, we would be heading towards a financial cliff.

Millennials overtook baby boomers in overall participation by license volume in 2014 and each year compromise larger percentages of our paying customers. To remain financially viable and relevant to a growing and diverse population, we must take a forward-thinking, strategic, and fresh look at how we plan to recruit, retain, and reactivate our customers. We're all aware that state fish and wildlife agencies and the country's wildlife conservation system are heavily dependent on sportsmen and women for funding.

Nearly 70 percent of all funds from licenses and stamps and boating registrations come from direct contact with our customers and an additional 25 percent result from federal aid funds from excise taxes on fishing gear, firearms, and ammunition sales. This user pay/user benefit funding system for wildlife conservation has been lauded and emulated around the nation and the world; but as proportional population levels decrease -- I'm sorry, proportional participation levels decrease and revenues remain relatively stagnant, what is our plan to address these trends?

Next slide, please?

Because this issue cuts across disciplinary expertise and purviews of multiple programs within the Agency, our strategy was to assemble a cross-divisional writing team to assemble our plan with several resources -- with several resource Division Directors engaged in helping shape direction and provide guidance along the way. Fortunately, we haven't had to work in an intellectual or experimental vacuum. A number of national organizations are providing leadership, guidance, and direct support to state agencies as most states are in some stage of developing R3 plans.

The Council to Advance Hunting and Shooting Sports, Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation, as well as R3 related committees within the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies have all been aligning communication and efforts towards building roadmaps, guidance documents, R3 symposia, best management practice recommendations, data dashboards, digital reference libraries, and provided contracted consultants to assist states in their R3 planning and implementation efforts.

Next slide, please?

If we're going to succeed, R3 needs to become a part of our Agency culture in our daily intentions. Our team realized early on that several goals were common across all four pillars and needed to elevated as such. To that end, these cross program goals occur across all four R3 pillars and address some of our lessons learned today. For example, we learned that better department-wide coordination was needed including, No. 1, evaluating program outcomes and using data to track participants over longer periods to measure our success. Appendix B in our plan contains a map of all existing R3 programs, and those programs that don't meet our desired outcomes need to change. And, No. 2, promoting the quality of life and economic values of outdoor recreation to a more diverse customer base and to make it easier for them to participate. And, No. 3, engaging partners to fill gaps and leverage strengths. And, No. 4, dedicate the coordination capacity and administrative focus required to advance this initiative collaboratively across Agency workgroups.

Next slide, please?

Fishing continues to serve as a gateway activity to the outdoors and Texas ranks second only to Florida in total anglers, but first nationally in the number of freshwater anglers. 1.2 million fishing licenses were purchased back in 2015, and they've been on an upward trend really since 2006. The Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation's National 60 and 60 Campaign is aimed at growing fishing participation from 46 million to 60 million in 60 months across the country. This started back in 2017 and will conclude in 2022.

Texas' proportional contribution is roughly 312,000 additional participants over that five-year timeframe or about 62,000 annual growth in fishing licenses sold. The U.S. gains almost 9 million new participants every year. However, the problem is, is with that churn or that lapse out of participation. We lose almost that many each year, which means that retaining those new anglers is such an important focus for us.

One silver lining of the global pandemic has been the reduced competition for leisure time and people flocking to the outdoors, especially fishing. We observed dramatic increases in fishing license sales since May. For example, license year '20 was up 28 percent for resident fishing year over year and we're up 25 percent year over year so far in license year '21. One of our challenges will be to better understand who they are and how to retain them as participants. Most likely this will entail surveying them, providing a diversity of easily accessible quality fishing opportunities close to where they live.

Overall, our fishing goals are to increase license sales by 2 percent annually and this would equate to our 60 and 60 proportional contribution. And then secondly to recruit, retain, and reactivate new and more diverse anglers. And as an example, one of our specific objectives is to reduce that churn rate by 2 percent each year because about 43 percent of our annual fishing license buyers churn in any given year and over this past year during the pandemic, about 43 percent of all of our license buyers for fishing have been new to fishing. So it's important to retain them.

Some of the action items that we'll do to achieve this will be collaborate across TPWD divisions to develop and implement targeted marketing campaigns through e-mail and social media, create and implement new programs and toolkits from the Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation to prevent current license buyers from lapsing. Some examples of things that we're doing right now to increase participation in our marketing team's efforts, is the retention e-mails tailored to first-time license buyers, online ad campaigns to reach new prospects, and increased use of social media.

Next slide, please?

4.5 million participate in one or more boating activities in Texas each year, supporting an economic impact of $7.7 billion. Texas has over 580,000 registered power and sailboats, but annual totals are relatively flat. Whereas, paddle craft are unregistered; yet, kayak angling has quickly become one of the fastest growing outdoor activities in Texas. Paddle craft users are an under-engaged resource for TPWD, representing potential crossover customers to other activities and potential long-term supporters of our conservation efforts. The Department must develop a plan to engage with this group and incorporate their needs into our R3 efforts.

For boating, we plan to increase the number of boating participants and the number of registered recreational boats and to establish customer relationships with the paddling community. An example objective to increase number of boating participants, is to increase boating access and some of the action items that we're going to employ to achieve this goal, are such as catalog, current information resources to establish a baseline of boating access information and promote that to our customers, expand the number of river miles available for paddle craft through leased public river access areas and/or Texas paddling trail. And another example objective is to increase the number of registered boats through the maintenance of our RBFF supported direct mail license renewal program to reactivate lapsed registrations.

Next slide, please?

Texas hunting license sales have been fairly flat over the last few years, with small fluctuations up and down due to events like Hurricane Harvey, the pandemic. However, the gap between the number of Texans and the number of Texan hunters continues to grow larger. Overarching hunting goals include increasing license sales by at least 1 percent annually. This means decreasing churn by 1 percent annually to -- by implementing actions like automatic license renewals, strategic communication with first-time license buyers about access and social support programs like the Texas Big Game Awards. We're also going to engage new and more diverse hunters by expanding adult mentored hunting opportunities, by offering more hunts on our WMAs and state parks, and supporting partners like the Texas Wildlife Association in their efforts to mentor new adult hunters.

Next slide, please?

Specific to key -- to the key area of shooting sports, we'll strive to meet the following goals. No. 1, increase access to safe places to target shoot and, No. 2, increase shooting sports participation overall. An example of an objective to increase access to safe places to target shoot, is to increase the number of TPWD grant-assisted target ranges in Texas by 5 percent per year. Some of the action items to achieve this goal include prior -- prioritize range grant criteria to serve counties and entities serving higher populations of urban and suburban residents and to provide and process at least $1 million in TPWD and Wildlife Sport Fish Restoration grants annually to build or enhance public target ranges, primarily indoor facilities in urban locations and indoor/outdoor ranges in suburban locations.

Next slide, please?

Beginning this fall and culminating over the recent weeks, staff's reached out to external R3 partners on separate but parallel tracks for fishing and boating and hunting and shooting. This slide depicts a non-exhausted list of fishing and boating partners engaged in that process.

Next slide, please?

And here's an abbreviated list of hunting and shooting partners engaged. We're currently in the process of summarizing and incorporating this feedback into our plan. Partners were enthusiastically supportive of our plan and largely felt we were on the right track, which was good to hear. While they didn't suggest any major substantive revisions, they did provide valuable editorial feedback and general feedback on a few key points and two of them I'll bring to your attention.

The first one is they agreed with us due to the fact of an influx of new participants largely due to the pandemic and the reduction in competing leisure time, for us to concentrate on retention, at least while that wave is moving through for the time being. And the second point that they made to us, is for us to be cognizant of the notion of social carrying capacity. So if we're continuing to drive participation at higher and higher levels, but the areas in which they can either recreate or access those recreational opportunities are limited, overcrowding could potentially occur and the quality of those experiences could erode. And so what -- and we totally agree with them, is the fact that, A, we need to make sure that we're increasing the amount of recreational opportunity out there and, B, in those areas where we might have underutilized access areas, we want to be able to promote those and to communicate their accessibility so folks can spread out and continue to experience high quality recreational opportunities.

Next slide, please?

Our next steps include the following: Incorporating feedback from external partners into plan's final draft over the next several weeks, and we're working on that right now; No. 2, work with our Communication Division to develop and execute internal and external rollout and dissemination plans; and No. 3, we plan to assemble and empower an implementation team to track and evaluate planned outcomes and actions; and finally, we remain committed to revising our plan at appropriate intervals to keep it strategically and tactically relevant.

Each plan iteration may have a finite shelf life, but we understand that we're in an infinite game and for a very just cause. We look forward to measuring our progress towards realizing our goals and we invite your support in our efforts. And with that, that concludes my presentation. I'd be happy to take any questions that you have on the plan.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Any questions or comments from the Commission?

COMMISSIONER LATIMER: I just want to commend you on this great job and great focus and I think it's critical to our mission that we continue in this regard. Thanks to everybody who worked so hard on it because I know -- I know it's been an ongoing process.

MR. BONDS: Thank you so much, Commissioner Latimer, and kudos to the team. This has been the work of many hands to get us to where we are today and it will continue to be a team effort going forward.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Commissioner Hildebrand. So the one slide that you've got of 2.7 million license holders. I think 20 -- what's the population of Texas? 29 million? So one of the things that I would be interested in, I'm sure you've got the data, is, you know, percentages of various age classes -- whatever defines a millennial or a zero to 18. What are the percentages that those particular groups are buying licenses and on a trend analysis, what's that look like over time? Just, I mean, it's one thing to say, you know, a bunch of old guys aren't renewing licenses again. But if you've got more specificity on, look, we really need to target zero to 22 year olds and there's a whole different communication strategy around that to a guy my age. So any thoughts on that?

MR. BONDS: Yes. Thank you for bringing that point up, Commissioner Hildebrand, and it is very important to us. And actually, we do have those data because we have birth dates for our license purchasers and we can categorize them into various different generational categories. We do know that millennials overtook baby boomers back in 2014 as the proportional share of our license buyers and that's important to us because we have time to continue engagement with them for hopefully a long time throughout their life spans and their active participation.

The other thing is lot of millennials right now have young families and so that if we can engage them now and they can introduce their young children to these core mission activities and get them hooked now, then we'll also be able to engage with them through time. So I think it's also important to keep in mind, just as you said, that certain messaging tactics are different according to whatever, you know, generational cohort that you're trying to engage with. So the tactics that we would use to engage through e-mail or the imagery that we would use, the word choice, those types of things have to be culturally and generationally relevant to that group. And so our Communications team, our Marketing team, they're highly cognizant of that. They have plans in place right now to really focus right now on millennials and especially those with young families and new license buyers at this point in time, but really with the idea of trying to grow those slices of the pie and backfill with a much broader and more diverse set of our customer base.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Okay. Could you send me and maybe the rest of the Commissioners if they want it, more detailed work around percentages of population that's getting licenses, combo, fishing, whatever it may be, and then age classes just so I can understand? Anecdotally it feels as though that the younger generation -- I know my boys' friends seem to be less inclined to want to go hunt and fish than what my cohort people did and so it would just be interesting to see the data to see if, in fact, that's true, less young people are getting licenses today on a percentage basis then they were back in 1985 or '90 or whatever the number.

MR. BONDS: Absolutely, Commissioner Hildebrand. We have a team, a cross-divisional team, that has access to those data and can do some of those summaries and analysis and we can get that to you.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: Thanks.

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: This is Commissioner Patton. And I -- I guess I want to kind of echo what Commissioner Hildebrand said regarding younger generation. My kids are currently 22 and 20 and --

MR. MONTEMAYOR: Commissioner, you're muted, I think. I think your mic is muted.

COMMISSIONER PATTON, JR.: Okay, good. I knew I had to hit it somewhere. All right. Thank you. I take a lot of young people hunting and have for over ten years and one of the things that I observed and I don't know what the answer is, but it has to do with the hunter safety education and the deferral and just kind of their general fumbling around with -- and I'm talking about the kids, you know, commitment to going and taking hunter safety education. And I'm not at all saying we ought to do away with that, but I would think maybe if we could do some type of inducement, whether it's sign up for hunter safety education and get it done and then that year's license maybe is free or next year's license is free. But I think we've got to do something to get them to do it because I don't know how many times I've made these kids go -- you know, you've got to get a license and then they do the deferral and then, you know, that's a one-time kind of deal and then the next year I see them, they don't have a license and they're like, "Oh, well, I'm just not going to hunt. I just want to hang out." I'm like, well, that doesn't really get us what we're looking for; but, you know, I'm not arguing with them. And I don't know if I've got the answer. You know, I'm really just making an observation with a suggestion of getting young people -- and I think it is the difference when, say, mine and my generation if Jeff and I are going to be the same generation, you know, we always would just go to the convenience store and buy a hunting license and ten minutes later, you know, get on down the road and I do think it's kind of a different mentality; but I think a lot of what I see is tied to that requirement, which is a necessary requirement, but I do think it is a bit of a deterrent. So I wanted to say that.

COMMISSIONER HILDEBRAND: I think that's a great point, Bobby. I mean, our kids same thing. I don't want to go hassle with the hunter safety course. It's a -- you know, I've got to go sit in the store or whatever. I mean, yeah, that's necessary. It's a good incremental requirement; but you've got to incent them somehow to want do go do that or incent a hunter to sign up five of his buddies and he gets an extra buck tag for Comal County or whatever. I know that would all be challenging, but you've got to incent people to -- you've got to incent hunters to push other people to become hunters. I mean, it's great that you've got, you know, a great internet strategy and all that; but, you know, people respond to social cues around them and so -- but that's a huge issue is that barrier regarding that hunter safety course. It is. My kids say it, and their friends say it. So think about that.

MR. BONDS: Well, appreciate the feedback, Commissioners Patton and Hildebrand. Certainly duly noted and we do have a member on our core writing team and certainly will be a key part of our implementation plan going forward and that particular issue, I may not have the best answer for that at this point in time; but we'll certainly bring it up and talk ways on how to make it as easy as possible for folks to be able to obtain that hunter ed certification, but also what types of incentives or inducements we could add to it to make it more attractive for them to get it and that certainly not be a barrier.

MR. SMITH: Just to add a little bit of color to that. You know, this has been a focus of the Commission. You know, we truncated the two-day Commission -- or the hunter ed course to one day. Took it down I think from eight or nine hours to five hours. We provide the online-only option for those that are 17 or older and I think that's really helped; but I like the idea of bringing in some of the younger constituents to help better inform us about what those barriers to participation that y'all are talking about. As y'all said, we know it works. Our -- you know, our hunter safety accidents are consistently down. That's critical. But eliminating that barrier to get out and how we can better deliver that in a way that those younger constituencies won't perceive it as a barrier is critical. So that's great direction for us to take a hard look at. Thank you.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: One point I would -- back when we passed that deal to make it to where you didn't have to waste four hours on a Friday night and ten hours on a Saturday, which is how I got my hunter safety and I told the story after I heard all the tales and I said, Let me tell you something. I was -- I could have passed the test without ever having had a minute of training, you know, and I'm sitting in there with a bunch of 18 and 19 year olds and I'm 50 and, you know, so we are making some progress; but I do think it is very important to what Bobby brought -- what everybody is focusing on. It is important to make this as user friendly as possible without doing away with it.

So having said that, I think everybody agrees that we've got to have it; but we've got to -- we've got to figure out how we tie it in and make it where people want to do it and understand it's not a day of their life. You know, we've just got to -- this computer generation that we've got, we've just got to make it user friendly, as we've been trying to do here for the eight years I've been here. You know, we continue to try to use IT to make things more efficient; but we obviously -- we have a long ways to go. I mean, there's lots of things we can do better, I think.

MR. SMITH: Well, let us take that feedback and then come back to the Commission with some ideas about some potential changes and improvements we can make with that while still delivering again that critically important hunter ed and safety program that I know the Commission supports; but do it in a way, again, that will ensure that accessibility and some more seamless participation. So that's very helpful direction to us.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: Okay. Anymore questions or comments by any Commissioners or anyone as far as that goes? Because we've just about wrapped up our agenda. So I was -- if nobody has anything to allow, Mr. Smith, this Commission has completed the business and I declare us adjourned at 11:45 a.m.

MR. SMITH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

COMMISSIONER SCOTT: And thank all the Commissioners online and everything. I know we're all in the same boat. We look forward to when we can sit down and be doing this stuff together and not having to mess with all these computers. But anyway, thank everybody.

(Commission Meeting Adjourns)

In official recognition of the adoption of

this resolution in a lawfully called public meeting of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission, we hereby affix our signatures this _____ day of ______________, ________.

_______________________________________

S. Reed Morian, Chairman

_______________________________________

Arch "Beaver" Aplin, III, Vice-Chairman

_______________________________________

James E. Abell, Member

_______________________________________

Oliver J. Bell, Member

_______________________________________

Anna B. Galo, Member

_______________________________________

Jeffery D. Hildebrand, Member

_______________________________________

Jeanne W. Latimer, Member

_______________________________________

Robert L. "Bobby" Patton, Jr., Member

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Dick Scott, Member

C E R T I F I C A T E

STATE OF TEXAS ) COUNTY OF TRAVIS )

I, Paige S. Watts, Certified Shorthand

Reporter in and for the State of Texas, do hereby certify that the above-mentioned matter occurred as hereinbefore set out.

I FURTHER CERTIFY THAT the proceedings of such

were reported by me or under my supervision, later reduced to typewritten form under my supervision and control and that the foregoing pages are a full, true, and correct transcription of the original notes.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my

hand and seal this Turn in date _____ day of ________________, ________.

___________________________________

Paige S. Watts, CSR

CSR No.: 8311

Expiration: January 31, 2023

1007 Lime Rock Drive

Round Rock, Texas 78681

(512)779-8320