San Angelo City Council 11-18-25

[0:00:00] on November 18th, 2025. We're going to call this meeting to order. And first thing we do is like to call for our chaplain prayer and pledges. And Gary Jenkins will lead us in our prayer. >> Morning everyone. >> Good morning everybody. Will you join with us in a word of prayer? Precious father in heaven, in the name of Jesus, we bow before you to say thank you for this day. We thank you for this opportunity to conduct the business of the city and we ask you to endow the mayor and the members of the city council and all of the officers here with the wisdom that is needed to do it in a way that will glorify you. We thank you for the citizens citizens that are here and we ask you to bless this city. Your word says, "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord." So, Father, we are your inheritance, and we thank you for this day and for the ability to live in such a beautiful city as St. Angelo. We ask you to bless our firefighters and police officers, all of our first responders. And Father, if you do these things, we'll ever be mindful to give you and you alone the praise, the thanksgiving, and the glory. And it is so. Amen. >> Amence to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> Texas flag. I aliance to thee. One state one and indivisible. >> [clears throat] >> We have one proclamation this morning.

[0:02:11] Um, we're going to talk about the travel and tourism community day. If there's anybody here for that, we'd like them to go ahead and come on up to the front while we read this line up over there. front and center. Absolutely. >> Travel and tourism provide significant cultural benefits for the city of St. Angelo. Meetings, events, leisure, and travel for sports and cultural events are all key components to St. Angelo's economy. St. Angelo's rich cultural traditions and heritage gave birth to cowboys and creatives celebrating the western way of life in San Angelo as the visual arts capital of Texas. Visitors can enjoy the many tourism offerings such as the St. Angelo Stock Show Rodeo, Angelo State University, Goodfellow Air Force Base, the St. Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, St. Angelo Performing Arts Center, Lake Nazworthy Pop Art Museum, St. Angelo State Park, downtown San Angelo, and a myriad of f festivals and events. Excuse [clears throat] me. The city of St. Angelo is recognized as a film friendly and music friendly community. We recognize the importance of travel, whether related to leisure, business, or our nation's defense, which is essential and beneficial. Extending a warm Texas welcome to all visitors from near and far, is is the St. Angela way and will always be. Therefore, I, Tom Thompson, the mayor of the city of St. Angelo, Texas, do hereby recognize November 18th, 2025 as tourism friendly community day and urge all citizens to join the city council, city staff, and me in recognizing the positive effects that travel that travel has on the nation, Texas, and St. Angelo's economic prosperity and image. Would somebody like to come up and speak on this? >> I will. >> Well, good morning all. I'm Jeremy Bards. vice president with destination marketing of the St. Angelo Chamber of Commerce and it is our honor to receive this today. The reason behind this is the Texas Governor's office has created

[0:04:14] a tourism friendly certification. City of St. Angelo will now be certified as CIT as as uh tourism friendly. Going forward from this day forward, we will now be available or be be able to claim that as part of our heritage and legacy. I'd like to thank Mayor Thompson. I'd like to thank former mayor Brenda Gunner because this started even that far back. Uh as well as city council, city staff, manager of Venuela. Thank you all for all the support that you've offered. My team this morning of Caroline Drain, uh Carter Row, Janna Carter, Janna Gaddy, and Linda Berdell could not be with me. So, some of my chamber staff have come over to to join in with this photo with me this morning. And uh again, I just couldn't be more proud of this city. I love it. I love what we do. And thank you all for the uh for the support and continuing support. Thank you. Thank you. At this time, we're going to move into public comment. Members of the public may raise issues or concerns not listed on the regular agenda during this time. To participate, please sign in with the city clerk prior to the beginning of the meeting. Speakers will be called in order they signed in. When speaking, citizens must speak from the podium. Address all comments to the dis. Begin by stating your name, address, or single member district number and limit your remarks to three minutes or less. Heather, do we have any public comment? >> No public comment today. >> Well, with no public comment, we're going to move straight into the consent agenda. And I will start on the side of the dice over there with you, Mary. Do you have any items you would like to pull? No,

[0:06:15] >> sir. >> Karen Patrick, >> nothing. >> I would like to pull D. Harry. Joe. >> With that, we'll ask for approval of all items except item D. We >> I have a motion. I have a first from Harry. >> Second. >> A second from Joseph. Do we have any public comment on any of these items? With that, we'll look for a vote. All those in favor say I. I. >> Any opposed? With that, all items except D pass 70. We'll move to item D. Consider awarding task order 8 to Kimberly Horn for the design of the North Chaan pedestrian and drainage elements in the amount of 1.29900 and authorizing city manager to negotiate and execute all related items. Patrick, you're on. And the reason I pulled this when we look at that 1.3 million is a lot of money. >> It is a lot of money. >> So I want you to talk about how this is a grant. Explain that to those that might be watching looking at this number. >> Yes, sir. You are correct. that that is a fair amount of change for this when you're just looking at it on a piece of paper. But when you look at the project and what it's going to do, basically, I think we're all aware of what the CACP, the Community Accessibility and Connectivity Project that we got awarded the $18 million grant for is going to do on North Chadburn all the way to 29th Street. What this project does is it picks up at 29th Street and it continues that design all the way out to the Coliseum. But we're going to be doing more than just sidewalks. We're going to be putting in curb and gut gutter curbing and gutter along that stretch of roadway as well. We're also going to be fixing the drainage. We've heard for decades now about the drainage on that north side of town and how it's so horrible and they want a repair. This is our catalyst to do that. So, we're going to be working in a drainage element to that part as well. It's going to be connecting to the coliseum which as we know is just is going to be rehab. So that Coliseum Drive is we're going to be improving that walkability down Coliseum

[0:08:18] Drive as well as well as connecting over to Golad Elementary um down I think it's 39th Street right there. 39th or 37th Street. I can't remember which one. Um so it's a large project. Um and it's going to do a lot of good for that north side. It's going to finish what we started on that north side of town. So when you look at 1.2 two for sidewalks. That seems like a lot, but when you start considering we do have curb and gutter, we do have a a phenomenal drainage um improvement that's going to be up there and we're connecting to one of our our biggest features of the coliseum. I think that that price is fair. >> Cool. All right. Anybody else have any other questions? >> On a note, it's a little premature. I was going to wait to hold this, but last Thursday, um Tex actually awarded us a grant for the construction of this project. So, we're not only going to get it designed, but we will get it constructed as well. So, we're very very happy to say that. Um, it's the same TASA grant that we got for the CACP. Um, Text saw the value in continuing that. So, we we appreciate that award. I was going to hold back and kind of give y'all a a formal announcement, but since you pulled me up here, I'm going to take the opportunity. >> There there's take a win when you got to win. All right. With that, Patrick, did you have a question? >> Do you have a time frame on it >> uh on this design? So, we're going to be this design should be done within 9 10 months. Um, again, we're since we got that grant award, that's going to kind of set our timeline um moving forward on it. So, it may expedite the design just a little bit, but we'll still be able to do it within this and and get that project moving. >> Thank you. So, the implementation of that would be when would you start construction? >> It's so per the TASA grant, we typically have three years to construct it after the initiation of the AFA. The AFA is probably going to take eight or nine months if we if we look back at what it took us on this last one. Um so about three years to to start con or to to finalize construction on it. Um again, when we first started this project, we didn't know we were getting the grant. We were just going to get the design

[0:10:19] ready, so we had a shovel ready and actually leverage our opportunity for that grant. So we we're lucky all the dominoes fell in place, but we're looking at that about that three-year time frame to get it done. Patrick and that fits in perfect to campaign it with other construction that's going on there at the same time. >> Yes, sir. >> Does anybody else have any more questions? With that, I'll make a motion. I'll make the first motion. Can I get a second? >> Second. >> Got a second from Joe Self. >> Any public comment, Heather? >> With none on that, I'll look for a vote. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? With no opposed, item D passes 70. Thank you, Patrick. We'll move into the regular agenda. Comments regarding items on the regular agenda may be made by the public when each item is discussed as outlined above. To participate, please sign in with the city clerk prior to the beginning of the meeting. Speakers will be called in order and they are signed in. Comments are limited to less than three minutes. Applicants, proponents, and appellants are exempt from the time limit above and instead must limit the remarks to less than five minutes. Item A, consider approving agreements with the hotel occupancy tax fund program, awarding allocation up to 69,000 of hot receipts budgeted in fiscal year 2026, listed as follows, and authorizing city manager to negotiate and execute all related documents. Number one, core support, San Angela Broadway Academy for 17,300, St. Angelo Symphony for 16,700, Balades, the St. Angelo Ballet for 16,100, St. Angelo Civic Theater for 14,800. And item two will be project support the Hispanic Heritage Museum and Cultural Arts Dia de los Morettos for 2200. Downtown St. Angelo Miss Mini Wool Pageant for 1900. Presentation made by Parks and Recreation Director Carl Watt. >> As you recall in the recent past, the St. Angel C cultural affairs council in agreement with the city was allocated funding to then grant that funding out to applicants of performing arts groups and for uh organizations that held events. The key goal there is to bring in more folks into town uh and to boost

[0:12:24] um heads and beds at the hotels. Uh Sackak cultural affairs council was dissolved a few years back. last fiscal year that happened kind of while we were doing the budget process. So last fiscal year we went ahead and allocated a similar amount that those entities had gotten the previous year and then we had time to develop a process that we would follow uh after a lot of discussion about how to do that uh to again do that grant process. After looking at different entities that we thought we might work with to do this process, we decided to go ahead and this year to keep it inhouse. So, Michael Muny um helped we all got together, looked at that grant application process, made sure it aligned with state law regarding the use of hot funds, hotel occupancy tax funds, and then we proceeded with the application process. We got these applications in uh the evaluation process after reviewing the criteria, making sure the applications met the criteria. Um the scoring for those applications was given to the public art commission. Um, and that's part of the reason a few meetings ago, we brought an item to you all to change the ordinance to involve more public u performing arts aspect into the public art commission. So, it wasn't just visual arts. It's also looking at performing arts. So we went through that process and scored those and followed the process that we had outlined in the the application process uh to score those and based on those scores this is how the funding came out. We had a total of 69,000 uh dollars to use um and based on the scoring this is how the funding came out. We recommend this these funding levels. Two comments one I think we do need to look at the application process. it it does seem still seem a little bit ownorous, a little bit

[0:14:27] [snorts] tedious. We want to make it a little less complicated, a little less involved. And then also too, we may consider adding additional funds to to this to this. It's been at the same level for many years. That's our recommendation is to go ahead and improve these levels of funding. >> Carl got some initial questions for you here. Um, does every one of these are they getting when we had meetings earlier in the year right after the election in June, we talked about leaving everybody's allocation the same as prior year? >> All right. As far as hot tax funds, >> did we did we shorten anybody's funds versus prior year? >> The last fiscal year. >> Yes. >> We did. No, last fiscal year we funded about the same level it was the previous year two years ago. Were any of the specificants less than they were in the past >> uh this year? >> Yes sir. >> Yes. I guess the the one that took the biggest reduction was would be the symphony. >> Okay. >> Based on the scoring, >> right? So when we look at scoring when we sat down and discussed this earlier this year, we we talked about our regardless of how we were going to place them, everybody was going to get basically it's a transition year, new group of council. everybody was going to stay the same. I've had several phone calls, people going, I don't understand why I got a reduction of this part. And they use actually the chambers um travel data tracking to figure out where the main one called me was the symphony. What did the symphony have last year? >> Last year >> I think they had 25,000 >> 25,000. So going from 25,000 down to 14 uh down to 167 to me looks I just say it looks more like a penalty than anything else. I I don't know how this scoring went through but >> it was it was a different entity that did the scoring. So I don't know. We follow the criteria that's that was in the application process. >> Right. I have no argument with that. I'm just saying this kind of come as a

[0:16:29] surprise to some of these people here and I agree with them to get a reduction of 8 9,000 bucks Rick. I mean to me that one was a hard stick. >> Yeah. So in this case, you know, council authorized we were going to have this group review it. You have a citizen group who scores it and we go from there. If if you want to just make it a this is the amount you get, it'd be a whole lot easier on us. We wouldn't have to do any of that. Um but in this case this group and you can tell him more who the group was who made the scoring recommendations. Um but you can either one we can go reassess it all again. You can add more money to it to to bring that group up to a certain level. Um Tina might be able to address that from a hot point. I think that's doable. Um as Carl said, we haven't raised any dollars in this area for a long time. So that's not an unreasonable thing to do. >> Right. Well, it was I don't think anybody knew the new scoring process was going to change things this dramatically and I think had they did you'd had a lot more people providing a lot more input and backup and and with that I want to open it up and see if there's any other questions from the dice I see he over here Tommy just as as as a council member to your point earlier Carl since I have been back on the council in 2017 I don't believe we ever changed any of the allocation s to any of the recipients. I believe they stayed the same year in and year out. I did not compare that to what each of these received this year. Obviously, the symphony received less. My whole point with that is I would be in favor of during budget next year of increasing the amount of hot funds that we put into this specific program to get more money to these people. their costs are going up just like everybody else's. So, I would be in favor of increasing the pot and the allocation to each one if it would be easier on y'all, Rick, to just

[0:18:31] say here it is and have them maybe justify to you all as staff their request. Yeah, it may not be up to their full request, but hopefully it would be more than what they received for I don't know 8 10 12 years, not to mention this year. So that's that's my one comment. Mayor, >> just to add to that, there are some entities in that time frame who came to council and receive direct amounts. So you have Art and Uncommon Places and the Fine Arts Museum. >> They pack. So there are entities, you know, if you think that certain entities are to the level where they're providing that service, you can also do that. Leave a certain amount of money for, you know, smaller type things. >> I I would hope as a part of the evaluation process. These the these funds, as I understand it, are supposed to help increase the heads in beds for the community, which then in turn helps us with with that uh u reducing our overall tax burden indirectly. Um, it would be my hope that we I'll say vet as closely as possible without being punitive about it, but vet as closely as possible what they what the data shows they actually put that how many heads in beds they actually um can be uh can be attributed to them. So again, as the process unfolds, maybe that is something and maybe that data exists now. I don't know that I've ever seen it and if I have it, it's my fault for not paying attention, but how many heads and beds each of the entities uh says that they do and then that we in fact can verify that. >> Okay, Karen, >> um I'm glad we're discussing this

[0:20:33] publicly. I would like to say to you, Carl, that I think that desire to codify the process is honorable. It's a good thing. We've some many of us have been here long enough to have seen individual presentations and there was a lot of variation in the quality of the presentations. Some were exceptionally good and filled with data and some were softer, I guess, shall we say. So this elevates the the criteria to a uniform level which I think is a good thing. And I don't disagree with anything that Tommy and Tom have already said. I would say that I personally would love to see the process, the printed process that they have to go through, what [clears throat] the documents look like that they have to fill out, um how they compare. I would I personally wondered when I saw this report in our agenda packet about historic not just historic awards but the overall amount of hot tax that was that was um allotted for the process and so I think it would be nice to see how things rise and fall if if indeed they do. Um, in other words, if a if an entity's aotment or award is significantly different, I think we'd like to see that. And then having the the information that they receive that they must provide that includes the data that leads to the scoring would help us understand why they went up or they went down. Does that make sense? >> Maybe too many words. just like I want to see the process and [clears throat] I want to understand what happened last year historically and I want to understand why why somebody goes up or goes down. It should be tied to as Tommy said heads and beds or uh some other quantifiable.

[0:22:34] >> It it is also poss possible for council to place someone on the review committee who's looking at these if if y'all want that's certainly welcomed. So in the future you could place two people >> uh whatever. Right now Carl it was the >> public art commission >> public art [clears throat] commission >> um that you appoint that reviewed them but you can enlarge that group to more. >> Yes sir. Harry, [clears throat] >> I'm going to kind of agree with what Tommy and Karen has already said, but I also know that this process right now is kind of and and Carl said it ownorous. It's kind of tough. I'd like and Michael, you've done a wonderful job. I appreciate what you've done on this, but I'd like to see if we can't make that application a little simpler, not only for the applicants, but for the people that are scoring that particular uh group. But I also think that both Tommy and Karen have said it very well. These funds should be based on the amount of heads and beds. The more people we put in the hotels, the more money we're going to get in hot tax. So somehow or other, we should be able to figure that out. How many people are you putting hits and bids this year? And look at that. And so we can figure out approximately what this these organizations are generating uh towards that end. Carl, do you know um I mean so we're talking about this and and that's in the the agenda. It estimates their number of rooms booked um the number of people served and it looks like the ones that have the highest numbers are actually the lowest uh awarded. So what um is that how was do you know more about how it was scored? How they tried to allot

[0:24:36] that it because it seems like the data would show these others should have actually received more money. >> Sorry I'm not following. Um, [clears throat] so like let's just go Ballet San Angelo. Uh, it says that they have approximately 423 rooms booked by patrons. Um, and then the symphony was um 175. So it seems like the 420 is way more and should receive more aotment of the hot tax money because they put more heads in beds. Am I correct? >> So basically what was the scoring what was the scoring criteria? Was it totally based on heads and beds or were there other >> partially based on heads but >> Yeah. So why did some of those that had high heads and beds not score as high? >> Morning council Michael Muny. Um so what was in the background was just the application form. Um there was some other documentation that was included uh to the public art commission to review um based off of those scoring criteria. So, what was included in the background wasn't everything that was comprised of the whole application. This was just the application form that y'all are seeing. So, based off of that, I mean, I guess the feedback that I'm getting from everyone is it's a little rough, I guess I could say. Um, and so we would need to maybe look at doing something a little bit different next year. >> Absolutely. Basically what we're hearing and it makes a lot of sense Patrick what you said I think if you're going to look at criteria heads and bed beds should be one of the top should actually not just be a portion of the evaluation but it should be one of the most significant portions of it and I do agree with that with that said I know the mayor had mentioned that uh the discussion that was had was to make sure that the funding was there for the different organizations at least at the same level >> and that's a discussion we had in June >> so I think if anything at this point I know the recommendations are there but if we have an entity my recommendation right now would be we are in a transition we are learning uh we're

[0:26:39] trying to make sure that we shore up whatever uh faults we currently do have in the evaluation process so my recommendation would be to make sure that that we at least fund the entities that ones that saw a drop in the amount at least fund them at the previous year's amount and that that would be actually my recommendation there >> I would agree I think that's a fix for this year I think some of these things people could have better better prepared for had they know had they known it was going to be scored like this. So Daniel, I agree with you 100%. I would like to see all of them go back to prior year level if we can afford that. If from what I hear we're spending the same amount of funds last year as we did this year. I would like to keep them all static if we could. >> Tina Dearski, director of finance, uh to address Patrick's um question or comment on the uh the different levels the ballet actually requested less than the symphony and so that may also be part of why they received less. So just to address that point um we do have the funding available. We had budgeted for a revenue over expenditure of about 180,000 I think in this fund. So there is funding available to do whatever council directs us to do. Um, as far as um, what was requested, this the symphony actually requested 40,000. Last year they received 25,000. Um, so but to get everyone to the level that they actually requested would take, I think 36,000 like >> I'm not looking at going to the level requested, I think, because a lot of us are going to ask for everything and then hope we get half of it. But I I would like to see back to previous year. But I do think we had discussions yesterday um and throughout the year we do need to proof up the numbers you have and I think now all these entities involved understand the process and next year they will have to proof up their numbers. But as far as this year I would like to go through with no surprises and maintain what they got last year. >> So I'm going to disagree with you mayor. If they if they if they requested $14,000 and last year they got $20,000,

[0:28:44] they made the request. So, I would say we give them what they requested this year or we give them the amount. If if the if the amount that they're getting is less this year than it was previous years, then give them. But if somebody requests $14,000, I don't think we should give them $20,000 of taxpayer money. Well, and we're talking about Symphony requested 40. You know, we're not talking about giving them 40. We just want to give them 25. I think where you're going that if somebody requested less, we need to bring them up to last year. >> I disagree with that. I mean, they made the request and we're we're talking about taxpayer money [clears throat] now. It's going to be a few thousand dollars. And I'm not going to I'm going to fault that, but I want the public to understand that I'm looking at at the money in [clears throat] the way it is. If an organization requests less, maybe there's a reason that they request less and we should fund them at that level. >> I agree with that 100%. All right. Is there anybody that requested less than on this? >> No, everyone requested either the same or more. >> Okay, then I'm good. I thought I heard I thought I heard somebody say that that one organization requested less this year. >> Well, the valet requested less than the symphony did. And so I was saying that that may be the what my point on why they received less. >> They received less but they also requested less. So theirs might have been proportional to how much they asked for. >> Exactly. Yes. >> Um but that and that goes back to what we're talking about on the scoring rubric. I think they need to know that um because if they requested the same then their number instead of 14 might have been the 20 that they were hoping to get. >> So I think it just needs to be transparent on on both ends. Okay. >> So let me ask this council. Is everybody good with awarding what they got last year and keeping everything the same as prior year? >> Well, one other comment. Let's make sure that the entities know what the criteria that we will be looking for on which to score them so that they're not we need to whoever's going to review this needs

[0:30:48] to be able to say we're comparing apples to apples with each entity. So, let's make sure it's clear to those that apply that in fact they know on what they are going to be judged and if we need to give them this may be getting in the weeds way too much but if we need to give them the priority list heads and beds going to be the top top uh priority on which you're going to be graded and then here's [clears throat] number two etc. I just think it needs so that it's a a fair comparison on a relative basis um to what they have requested. >> Okay. And I think that was pretty clear in the application process. Um we basically went off of what the uh SACA was previously using for their documents. Um we tweaked them a little bit to be geared more towards what the city, you know, was requesting. Um but we can definitely take a look at that, make sure that that's very clear um going forward. Um it was mentioned that this amount has been the same for many years, $75,000 um going to SAK, you know, before the took the city took on the process. Um to give a little more history, when I first came to the city in 2013, we were doing 47% of whatever was budgeted in the hot fund. Um, and then ultimately it went to I think $125,000 a year because that's what it was at that point in time and at some point it be it became reduced to the $75,000 a year. So, um, we could certainly get y'all some history on that too if you'd like to see it. >> Cool. Thank you, Tina. I think what Michael may be able to do is send that criteria out to y'all in a Friday packet that just lets you review it ahead of time and then if you have concerns or questions about it, this is well before next year. Um then you can get back to him. If we need to bring an item, we can but that may be able to handle that Friday packet. >> And then uh also to clarify when y'all do make a me motion, are you asking Tina to take the recommendation of the committee and add money to it to bring everyone up to at least what they got

[0:32:51] last year? I think is what I'm hearing. But make sure you're clear on that. Any further questions with that? I'll make a motion. Tina, or did you [clears throat] >> change hard? >> Okay. Go ahead. >> I know. Um, again, this is the first year that this program's been implemented, so I knew it wasn't going to be u smooth sailing, so I knew there was going to be some rough patches. >> Michael, Michael, you done, Mrs. Man, I'm just kidding. [laughter] >> Michael, any maiden voyage sometimes needs a little proof in the pudding and a little but what we're doing is we're looking at being fair and consistent with no surprises. I want to make a motion to the group that if there was anybody short of prior year, they be brought up to this to prior year's level of funding and for that to go into effect um as we award this motion at 69,000 total. >> Can I can I ask Tina a question? >> Throw another >> Yeah, go ahead, Tina. [laughter] Carl just pointed out that some of the organizations actually were going to be awarded more than the previous year and so I think you the motion would need to be previous year or what was awarded whichever is higher. >> Yes. >> Awesome. But every year or higher >> do we know what the difference that amount is >> between 69 and whatever they will >> you know what the difference will be. >> So we'll have to make it a budget adjustment. Can we table this? >> It'll take a budget amendment either way. So, >> can we table this and bring it back next meeting to make it look cleaner or somebody timeline worried on the money? Daniel, you can do that. >> Mayor, I kind of agree with that, too, just because we did put the total amount at 69,000. That's how we noticed it. So, I think it'd probably be better to >> bring it back up. >> We'll bring it back on consent. [laughter] >> We we've shot it about every way you can here. But the goal and what I loved hearing from this group is we all had valid input on what we thought was fair and consistent to everybody, not only

[0:34:53] staff but also the recipients. So would it be just where I make a motion to table this item? >> And have a second from Harry. Any public comment? All those in favor of tableabling this item, say I. I. >> Anybody opposed? >> Item gets tabled till the next meeting passes 70. >> I I do want to say that I was just kidding about Michael. Michael does excellent work for us. So, I want to put that out there for anybody watching on TV. Right. >> No, no. We We love Mr. Munies. We love all the Mies. >> Great work. >> All right. After that, let's move into item B. Consider a resolution designing the number of votes to be cast for each nominee for the board of directors of the Tom Green County Appraisal District. A presentation made by city clerk Heather Statney. Heather. >> Hi. Good morning. Um, as y'all remember, a couple meetings ago, we took nominations for two board members for the Tom Green County Appraisal District. Um all of the taxing entities sent in their nominees and the top two nominees have been delivered to us for final votes. Um those nominees were the two incumbents, Lewis Gomez and Bob Reeves. So today what you will be doing is um casting your official ballots for those individuals. We have the opportunity to place 632 votes between those two individuals. So you can um split that any way you like. Um obviously most common would be 5050. Um but if you wanted to do another ratio, you certainly could. >> Any comments? >> Splitting between >> Well, let me before we do a motion, let me ask does anybody have any comments on this discussion? >> Harry, would you like to make a comment? >> Make a motion that we split 632, which is 3 316 to each of these two candidates. >> Second. I have a first from Harry and a second from Tommy Heert. Any public comment? >> No. >> With none, we'll take a vote. All those in favor say I. >> Any opposed? With no nays. Item B passes 70. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Heather. Item C, consider adopting the unpaid tax increment reinvestment zone policies and tier strategic planning commission

[0:36:55] committee's recommendations for public visionary funding proposal. Presentation made by planning and development services director Aaron Venoi. >> Thank you, mayor. Thank you, city council. I'd like to introduce Shirley Spears, who's our vice chair of our TEI board, and she led this committee. So, she's going to come up and say a few words, and then we'll get into the presentation. >> Good morning to the mayor and to the council and our city manager. Uh just wanted to provide uh a couple of other things to note about this activity that uh Aaron is going to present to you. uh we had previously come before this uh body and kind of explained some things that we were doing to make sure that we uh have funding and that we make the process simpler for people to apply. Uh we pulled people from the community, city council persons, the mayor participated in some of the discussions. We called in uh persons who had been recipients of some of the tier funding in the past. uh we called in experts uh from the realtor board uh to make sure that we were trying to address as many people's needs uh their experiences, their perspectives as possible. And so we think that this uh subcommittee that um has been working for several months now has come up with uh a very good strategy for what we need to do here in the city of St. Angelo for the next 10 years. and we hope that you will consider the work that was put into it uh and making sure that [clears throat] our uh community benefits from these tax dollars. Um I also wanted to mention that we also had some business leaders that have been around uh in the business community for a long long time uh well known understand the process was here when we started the tears process uh and so we have really tried to make sure that we have addressed every need uh that we can think of. we prioritized the things that we felt were important uh and we slapped it up against the wall

[0:38:58] and we decided okay these would be the top priorities and so we've done a lot of great work uh and as I close my comments I just want to say to the city manager and to the mayor and council we have had great support from city staff in this process and we really appreciate the work that they have done uh it's not always easy when you're working for the city and then you have groups like ours boards and commissions uh to really get that level of support. So, I just wanted to publicly say that we appreciate the work of staff and we hope that you all will adopt the resolution or the the recommendation that we have. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Beers. All right. Well, let's get into the committee uh discussion that we have today uh primarily about policy changes and about some uh conceptual or visionary funding um for public projects. And then we have a um another agenda item that deals with some private um funding. So again, uh Miss Bears mentioned that we've been working on this for quite a while. It was to build some unity between uh council and the tiers board and I believe we did accomplish that. Uh we've spent some uh strong months working together as she said, you know, putting things up against the wall, seeing what sticks, what works, what is our priorities as a community. And what I really like is that the plan reflects a strong commitment to small business development. That's kind of where the core of TEI has always been as strong as small business development. We know in our community that is one of the highest priorities we have is to continue that small b business development as well as historic and facade preservation. uh particularly in downtown and then how do we keep it vibrant and connected to the cultural district the surrounding corridors you even heard uh Mr. Patrick Fareric today talk about some exciting happenings in operations about how those corridors are even going to reach out to the north. So we did establish a unified project plan encompassing public and private

[0:40:59] areas. Um we did review the current policies and updates and reflect a project plan to simplify the access to funds. We did create unity a vision between city council and tiers board um for the remaining 10 years for both the south and north which is tiers number one and provide an action plan for city staff to enact simplified policies uh to enact for the public. Um again we've worked on consistency from south to north. Highlight safety items as project priorities to get buildings back to occupancy levels. Uh encourage early engagement with the small business development center. work with a business plan and with uh economic development as well if they have one as well as development services coming in for the pre-development meetings. Um increase the maximum award levels uh going from the 75,000 award level up to the $100,000 award level. Ability for multi-story awards and awards across the budget years. So if you have a a structure that's over three stories, you would be able to ask for an award for each story above those three stories. And again with our safety items being being highlighted. So if you needed to put it in a fire suppression system in one of our say eight or 10 story buildings downtown, that's probably a million to a million half project. Well, we may have enough money in one year to fund a couple of those floors. Maybe we do that over two or three years. Are we able to do that? And as you've seen with even just the Roosevelt, it took many years to get that project off the ground. if we want to get occupancy in some of our bigger, taller buildings, we we're going to be pressed for time trying to get those things to happen. And so we think these are ways to help move some of those things forward for some of our property owners. Um we also looked at how do you get moving forward instead of through the the the process. Uh it takes a long time to go through application to maybe DHRC, design and historic review commission. maybe then you have to go to the TEI board. Now you've got to go to

[0:43:02] city council and so there's things there and so we put this ability to move forward once the application is submitted. It doesn't hold the contractor or property owner back but they need to know that they're at risk. They may not get the full amount uh allocated or they may get no amount allocated but at least they can move forward where before the city staff would say okay you just got to stop and wait maybe for 3 to four months see if you're going to get the funding and move forward. Well, we all know that three or four months cost additional dollars. Um, and then we also have a a policy change uh in there that encourage purchased materials and supplies locally that we would rebate those sales tax funds from the tiers, particularly if you're buying something locally. So, if you're buying your lumber locally, if you're buying your windows, your doors, your things like that, buying them locally, that falls into the tier that you're using tiers, we would refund that sales tax back to um the prop the person that purchased those things. And we've kind of expanded that just to make sure that it's not just has to be within St. Angelo, but it gives the discretion to TEI board and city council to say, okay, well, if you're buying turf from one of the turf farms around here, that could be included as well. So we want to make sure that we're trying to utilize utilize those dollars back here within St. Angelo but as well as the Koncho Valley which then circulate back here in in St. Angelo as well. So the funding side of it uh we did talk about the public private uh split um and we did talk about the support for small businesses in the core downtown and along the major thorough affairs north of the Houston hard express race. Chadurn, MLK, Bryant, uh even the cross streets through there from 19th and uh 23rd and uh all the way up to 29th. Those are the the corridors that were within tiers that need to to keep focus on those small businesses, build connectivity again, uh pursue public private partnerships to enhance the zone. What is that uh where where we're working with downtown St. Angelo and other entities to make the area uh even better and more impactful. [clears throat] The priority for public

[0:45:05] projects is to directly benefit the zone. What is it going to help with the zone and try to maintain that 5050 funding model that we've had. It's not a a an absolute. There's some some years that we may spend 70% on private stuff and 30% on public stuff and other things like that. But all of that is to get those public investments to allow the private properties to continue to develop. That's what that those things are about. This is a sheet that um we came up with uh looking at the north. We were doing a very low flat estimate of the north bringing in approximately 12,000 excuse me 12 million more dollars over the next 10 years. If we cut that in half, that's six million. That's easy math for Aaron to do. So, we got that one. Um, you can see these are the public projects and we just you just heard from Patrick Farer talking about some things that are going to be happening in the north. Well, here's some additional funds to maybe even stretch those dollars that he got with a grant with into the TEI district that may even help the TEI district uh some more. You can see there's some down there about street trees and landscaping and how do we maintain those street trees and and landscaping so we can have those cool areas as people are walking back and forth to businesses and and to res to parks and things in the area. We have to maintain those trees otherwise we're going to lose them and we want to make sure that we're maintaining them. [clears throat] Excuse me. public safety. Um that's for our police department. And then dangerous uh uh and boarded buildings for fire prevention. And we'll talk about those that in a next agenda items more specifically. In the south, you're looking at placemaking uh potential. Where do we look at additional parking? Again, tree canopy connectivity with sidewalks. How do we connect those areas particularly on the south side uh of the river or is it along Concho? How do we fix some of those things? Is there some traffic areas? I would love us to see the community do something about the Oaks Bird Love Street right there in front of

[0:47:07] the fine arts museum. How do we make that intersection a little more safe because I do think that should be a much more walkable area to get to Fort Koncho to get to the the PO and things like that and again uh some public safety and some uh fire prevention things. There you see the the TASA project that's already been approved through uh TEI and city council last year just showing that those things are coming out and you can see this column over here. These are the items that we anticipate that those things will start coming out and this column here is we may take those out over a number of years so it's not a major hit to each fund and that you have enough funds to allocate back to private projects. With that, uh, we have kind of a three-step recommendation. Uh, on the north tiers, there's a public set aside that's, um, 103,740. We're going to remove that and put that back into the public projects. Um, we want to adopt the conceptual public projects. As we saw, those will still come back to the TEI board and still come back to you saying this is exactly what they're going to use those funds for and how to use those. And then the main goal is is stick to the plan. We've got a plan for the next 10 years. our uh TEI district will sunset in 2036 unless there's action by council um to to have that stop at that before that or extend it past that. And then we also have we just want to make sure that we're in line with our new comprehensive plan that's going to be coming up and our downtown strategic plan. with that um staff's recommendation and the recommendation from the TEI board is to adopt the um proposal from the strategic uh committee that has the policy updates, the funding principles, and the commitment for city staff to execute the tiers plan for the remaining 10 years concluding in 2036. With that, mayor, I'll be happy to answer any questions. First things first on this. Um, a big round of thanks and accolades to your tears group, to Shirley, Trey, everybody that stepped in and I think

[0:49:09] had several meetings that what you did with bringing this forward is you provided a rapid response to a TERS application. You provided clarity to the process and people are not going to wait on government when they make a tears application. All right? They have the ability to proceed at risk. three things that surely change the complexion of this program and move it forward uh in a very well-defined process. So, just number one, accolades to the entire group for pulling that thing off, Erin. I'm glad you championed that with Shirley and the and the whole group. Um, with that, I'll open it up to the DAS for questions. Tommy >> comment. Erin, if you don't mind, you you you went through it quickly. give us a little bit more if if you can information on the proceeding at risk. I I want to make sure that we have that out there for the public to understand as thoroughly as possible what that really means if they're going to put in an application and then it's approved and then proceed at risk. If you if you don't mind maybe put a little bit more meat on those bones. >> Yes, sir. I certainly can. So in our current policies, it states specifically you cannot move forward until you're granted the funds and a contract is signed. So what we're changing is taking that language out, informing the contractor, applicant, whoever that may be, if they want to move forward, they can at their own financial risk move forward with starting the construction project. They may get funding up to whatever the amount that they've requested or or something less or none. They still would have to go through the design and um review commission if they needed that. We would still do a contract with them, but we would make sure that everything is there. And then we go through and look at the receipts that they have done, match those up with

[0:51:10] what they've proposed within their application, and that is what we would reimburse at the end uh from the contract that we would still sign with the contractor, but they could instead of waiting that length of time for it to go through the review process of city staff and then to tears and then to city council, they could start their project. We know some projects are just facade projects, some projects are full renovations and it takes multiple months to complete. Um, and so that's where our staff is going to try to help advise them. We're going to also work with our downtown St. Angelo team. We're going to work with our small business development team over at ASU to work with these folks for they really understand what that means, that they are putting themselves at risk, but there could be funding uh if they wanted to get started. Joe, any questions? >> He Patrick Karen >> have just one quick question. Erin, >> ma'am, >> uh, is there a I don't know, for lack of a better term, uh, like a hold harmless that the city would have with that contractor. uh you know, it's one thing to read the fine print that you're not going to you may not get the money, but uh what recourse that they might I mean, we we've got it buttoned up pretty well that they can't come back and say, "Well, you really um implied uh you know, I wouldn't have made these repairs or these done this project uh if I had known that you weren't going to give that." So, I guess it's kind of a two-fold deal. whatever they would be doing on their project that they would be doing anyway. This is not just something additional and then they they feel like they got hung out to dry. >> Correct. >> And so what myself and uh our staff are doing is we're actually working up some language for our application that they would have to acknowledge that. We're going to get that through our legal team to make sure that they can review it and say that it's it's written correctly. uh so that when they make the application,

[0:53:14] they will be signing that information and we'll make sure that it's very well highlighted like you said the fine print, but we want to make sure it's highlighted that they understand what kind of commitment they're making and what the real city's responsibility is because there's no funds given until city council says yes, we can do funds and then we go through a contract to work with them. >> Okay, good deal. Thank you. >> With no more questions, I'll look for a motion. >> So move. I got a first from Harry, a second from who was it down here? >> Mary. >> Mary Coffee. Is there any public comment on this, Heather? >> With all that, I'll look for a vote on item C. All those in favor say I. >> Any opposed? Item passes 70. Aaron, before you leave the stands, I would like for you to introduce the group that's here with you today that helped with this TEI project >> with Yes. Uh, behind me again is Shirley Spears, who's our vice chair of the TEI board. There's Hannah Murrell who's our uh development coordinator as city staff member and she oversees the private side of the tiers stuff. And then uh Trey Holmes who's our board chair uh this year with TIE and again um up here on the DAS again Patrick Keley was part of the the um uh the committee. Harry Thomas was part of the committee as well as yourself, Mayor Thompson. Uh then when we also had three citizens, Michelle Babish, uh who as you all know owns the Firehouse Bed and Brew. Uh we also had Tiffany uh Sers who's the president-elect of the real estate uh the local real estate group and I'm always almost going to forget the last one but Brienne Kllum who is with our tears board as well. Uh she works uh with um I want to say it's the area foundation. She's the finance person for the area foundation. So we're very excited that we were able to work with those members um and the uh citizens and they did a great job thinking through conceptually what can this really help us with. >> All right. Thank you. Before I push legal too much on, but anyway, we'll thank y'all and that whole group to, you know, y'all deserve great accolades for that. Thank y'all very much.

[0:55:18] >> All right, we'll move to item D. Consider TI's funding request for the following public projects for the year 2026. One, public safety SAPD enhancements, environmental remediation and safety improvement, dangerous and boarded buildings. Item three, parks and public facilities, parks and downtown place making uh making plans. Presentation made by planning and development service director Aaron Venoi. Thank you, mayor. These are the three items that I mentioned uh prior that we're going to talk about a little more specifically. We've got public safety, dangerous buildings, placemaking, and of course on the south side there's uh public safety and dangerous building. Those are um three public projects that we're going to move forward with here today um and and talk about. So, let me clear that. Um the first item we're going to talk about the St. Angelo Police Department and how they need force multipliers within the TEI area to ensure uh public safety and rapid response times within our financing plan that was adopted in 2006 and again adopted in 2012 and has not changed even with the actions we just took. Has not changed. Section 8 was for public safety and it specifically talked about capital investments and would be allowed for the police department. Well, the time has come that they need some capital investment money over the next 10 years to help uh continue to make our downtown and our tears corridors safe places to be for our citizens and visitors. So, a couple of the items are the pant tilt and zoom cameras and special equipment that would extend the the law enforcement capabilities that they're able to get eyes on an event very quickly. Uh particularly if we have an emergency, uh we hold lots of festivals and lots of gatherings in the downtown and even all the way up um along MLK and Chadburn. How do our first responders respond quickly so that they can help the situation fast? We all know that a safe environment encourages small business growth and increased citizen activity and confidence. We know that we've grown that in our downtown and

[0:57:20] even along some of our corridors that they it continues to grow. This is an added step to help them continue that public safety. On the fire marshall side, um the fire prevention team um does the dangerous building boarded building um and work in those areas in tiers in the tiers district. This item is to help them continue to meet the needs in those areas. A lot of times their needs are met in neighborhoods and they can't focus on commercial areas and districts. Well, this is an opportunity to help fund some of those areas within those commercial areas through tiers. So, in there we also had section seven and section eight of the finance plan that talked about uh environmental remediation, safety improvements, and public public safety funding. So there are times while we want to do as much historic facade and historic preservation, there are times that building needs to be raised so that something new can come in. Well, sometimes those property owners don't have the funding. We don't have it necessarily in their funding. Tiers has a ways to help that to get that pro that property back to being productive in some way, which is one of the core things that we need within our TIE district. Looks like there the the two focus areas would be cleanup of commercial and multiszone properties. It wouldn't be for those single family residential areas that are within the tier zone, but it's going to be for those commercial multi uh multif family zone properties. And again, it might have to raise and remediate sites to gain the value, go back in, redo the water tap, redo the sewer tap, whatever it may be to make sure that that property is ready to start development again. The last item is about placemaking with parks and public facilities. Uh section five of our finance plan uh talked about that very specifically. This today is a request for a study and design for the Santa Fe Park and Riverfront visioning. Uh many of y'all know about that project that Carl's been working on and is coming forward. The other part is we have a a number of publiclyowned

[0:59:24] properties, buildings and such in our in our tiers district is that there may be a time here in the near future that we need to make some consolidations of buildings maybe with us in the county and what is the highest and best use of some of those buildings. Well, this would be the tiers contributing some funding to get that process started. There may be other funds that will have to come in from different ways, but how do we do that? We all know that um some of our departments need newer facilities. They're just running it out of room in the spaces that they're at. So, how do we do that? Again, this is for Santa Fe Park and those uh together. You look at the uh long-term vision for the river fund. So, what does that mean on the funding? So, the request is to award funding to SAPD in the amount of $100,000 a year for the next 10 years expiring in December 2035. So that's 70,000 from the north and 30,000 from the south annually. So that ends up being a million dollars over the 10 years for SAPD. The fire uh preventions office would be um for dangerous and boarded buildings be $200,000 over three years, $50,000 each year for the next three years out of the north and $25,000 for two years out of the south. Now, that could be extended based on city council's desire and what the results are at that time, but that's what they're needing now to kind of make sure they're moving through those things over the next couple of years. And then the request is to uh the parks department the 75,000 towards the Santa Fe parks and river master plan and reserve the 50,000 for the public facilities study of city and county properties in the downtown area for a total of 125,000 out of the south. With that, I'll be happy to answer any questions. And we do have members from each of those departments if you wanted to ask them questions. >> Erin, I'll start this off and we're looking at uh as we move down through the public safety aspect of this and Griff, you may want to ahead and come on down for this. We're looking at the dollars we're spending in these zones.

[1:01:28] Our tier zones are very important as far as the commercial development. And when you have commercial development along with commercial investment, they inspect safety and security and monitoring. Can you talk about the allocation of the funds specifically Travis that are in within the TEI map and how would they affect those businesses within the zone? >> Uh yes sir and I want to say thank you to Aaron and the whole team uh Shirley Trey everybody has been a great to work with been working through this process. Uh so the main thing we're looking for is to to find force multipliers and in the tier zone which would be we we would uh apply kind of equally. We'd be looking specifically at drone as first responder. So that's the that particular part of town would be covered by a drone to respond to emergencies as they arise. Uh so imagine even that would include structure fires that would include crashes, robberies, anything that might occur that we can get eyes on that event as soon as possible. And and then also to as as we work towards a real-time crime center, which is an important concept to understand and the easiest way to understand it is you have a citizen calling 911 and then you have an officer that's responding. A real-time crime center sits in the middle. It sits in the middle to be to have somebody that an officer can't source information while they're responding. A dispatcher is on the phone with the with the witness. And so the in between is to have um a a a a an employee that can go through and actually search real- time information, whether that be from a traffic cam, whether that be through the drone, whether that be if we have a license plate, who who what's that vehicle come back to, where's the direction travel it might go to, and it helps fill that in between zone. And so we would be looking at trying to to uh work with Patrick and his crew to build in already infrastructure to have camera feeds that we could have into dispatch so we could actually see exactly what's going on at major intersections and as a as a combination of those. >> Cool. Travis, thank you very much. She has anybody else have any questions for Griff while he's up here? Karen >> or not for >> I just have one quick question for you there. U this is not going to require uh

[1:03:32] additional employees, right? It's kind of a cross trainining. >> Not as of right now. As we move towards more having a real-time crime center, we will need to look at what that's going to take. But we're using uh current uh resources and restructuring inside to be able to get the the pilot program because that's what this is. We're hoping that it's going to work. Uh uh and we believe looking at other departments that have used it that we we'll see a a major force multiplier for public safety across the board. >> But this also could the fire department also use this uh this drone? >> Yes, ma'am. Yeah. So big cross department >> structure fires pro primarily. Uh we're also working with our our drone team talking to the uh fire chief to kind of work out how can we uh get that drone as first responder is a is a quick response. It's a rapid it's like the first engine on scene. We need to get it back to the station so it can charge and get to other calls. Uh so working with our drone team to be able to go out to those u uh structure fires which usually last a lot longer so that way it's a seamless transition. But how how many drones are we talking just one or two? >> So it's four drones total to cover the whole city. Yeah. And that still might be a little bit small, but that's what we're covering where major crime has occurred. And I want to highlight it since for every council member uh and the mayor that might get asked. This is this is not like a u first we'll have a forward- facing uh kind of like a uh when you're on the radar, you can publicly source if if somebody's flying. Same thing. We'll have a public facing. We're responding to calls. You won't be able to see the videos and things because it's going to be uh criminal justice in nature, but you'll be able to know we're not flying over your house uh right to just fly over your house. There's been a call for service there. That's the the key factor of a real-time crime center is we're not actively storing information on citizens. We're sourcing that information real time at the time of an event. Good >> deal. Thank you, Travis. Does >> anybody have any other questions for Griff? >> Thank you, Chief. Yes, sir. >> Aaron, if you'll come back up. Any other further questions for Aaron on this program as we run through it? Karen.

[1:05:34] >> Um, item three, parks and public facilities. Uh, anything that gives money, time, and attention to this makes me very happy. But can you explain in a little bit more detail how this initiative fits in with what's already ongoing for the primary portion of the downtown corridor along the river where Santa Fe Park exists, Kids Kingdom, etc. Is it it appears to be detail specific to facilities, bathrooms, buildings, etc. But if you could clarify, I'd appreciate it. >> Yes. So, the that last item within that um finance plan, it allows us to help fund designs and studies of different areas. One of them being the Santa Fe area where that's all the way up from central um central high school all the way down to almost to to here. In fact, uh part of that is within the tears district. There's parks on either side. And so, it's really visioning helping them vision what is that going to look like? And this is a funding mechanism to help that ha happen. Um I believe Carl could talk about more of what that is actually within that Santa Fe plan as he may >> see if I can >> or maybe okay or Rick can >> um on the the public side of looking at our facilities. I can see a time in our future that maybe there are some consolidations and maybe there's some facilities that could go back into the private side, be privately owned and start becoming more producing or maybe we've got some areas that the buildings are just not worth saving and we demo them and allow private development to come back and do some things whether that's with housing, commercial, whatever it may be within our particularly in our south area, but there are some publicly owned properties along the north corridor as well. but really evaluate those to give a plan to the council to say, "All right, here's what we can do with these as all of our budgets get tighter and tighter. What can we do with these things in the future?" Rick?

[1:07:37] >> Yeah. Any other question you have? But basically, um, in regard to the River Park area, it's not just Santa Fe, it's all the way across to see how that whole corridor ties in. It clearly impacts downtown, how those uh, businesses function. but also as we do that plan, that's another component that'll be added into our comp plan study. So, it goes into this overall guidelines that we're doing for development. Um, but in that case, it'll it'll help as council directed determine from St. Angelo citizens perspective how they want this to develop. We've got a lot of things going on. We've got uh the art thing, the sculptures that are being proposed, various things, but how do you incorporate those in with everything else we want? At the end of the day, how does St. Angelo want this area to develop and be best for our city? >> Good deal. >> Mary, have you got a question? >> Okay. >> All right. So, Patrick has a question for Billy. >> Yeah. Fire. >> Fire. Morning everyone. >> Good morning. Uh mine it's gonna be similar to uh what we're talking about Travis with is just um how do you think this will best help y'all with the with the dangerous and important building enforcement? >> Well, with the commercial properties uh it would allow us to work with the owners to to get up uh their building either to standard or board it up. Uh a lot of times when these businesses sit vacant for a long time, the owners don't have the money to be able to board it up or tear down the business. This will help us uh help them with that situation where we can go in and do an emergency board up so that people can't get into their their business and destroy it any further than uh what it probably is at that time. Especially if it's sit for a long time, those buildings still degrade and at some point they become structurally unsound. And this will allow us to to board them up quickly and keep people out of them so that we don't have fires and stuff downtown.

[1:09:40] Is it going to result in hiring more people or is this just to help the resources you have be able to do it? >> Right now it's just to help us with the resources. Um we our current funding will only allow us a certain number of buildings per year. This will help increase that so we can actually uh do more of the code enforcement and allow us to get them boarded up more quickly. Um, we're hoping at some point to be able to to work this out a little further to be able to get more funding u for maybe some FTEEs later on so that we can actually help with the demolition part of it a little more quickly. Uh, because as it currently sits right now, we have over 140 buildings uh that are either needing to be boarded up or demoed. Um we we're working on it as as quickly as we can, but we with fires happening uh a lot of times uh we can't uh board them up or take them down as quickly as they're coming in. Uh so we'd like to help rectify that situation with maybe some more FTEEs uh at a later date uh to be able to help us accomplish this. >> Mayor, if we Patrick Go ahead, Harry. Harry >> make a comment since Billy's up at the microphone. I want to thank you for bringing this before the task force. This is something that I probably wouldn't have thought about. So, I appreciate what you did and I'm happy that we're going to be able to incorporate this in into what we're doing. So, thank you. >> Yes. I have to give a lot of uh applause to to Aaron because this was mainly his idea to help us with the funding because I've talked to Aaron a lot about the dangerous buildings program and the city staff has been more than helpful with ideas on how to get this uh program uh in a better shape. Uh I inherited this um coming in as the fire marshal and we had over 230 buildings uh at that time and we've been able to work through a lot of those buildings and go back out and do assessments and and clear a lot of those out. Uh but again, we're still looking at 140 buildings throughout the city that still need attention. Um so

[1:11:44] with this tears funding, this will help us a lot with that. >> Any more questions? Aaron? I think we've heard a consensus from everybody at the council. So, I'll look for a motion. >> Motion. >> Who's that? >> I got a first from Karen. Second. >> I have a second from Mary Coffee. Any public comment, Heather? >> With no public comment, we'll take a vote on item D. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? With none opposed, item D passes 70. We'll move immediately in item E. Consider approving four north tiers private incentive projects totaling 300,000 and five south tiers private incentive projects totaling 279,29245 at the following locations. North projects 223 West 20th 223 West 19th 224 West 18th 219 West 19th. The south projects are 121 North Chadurn 215 West Tuig 226 North Chadurn 228 North Chadurn and 112 West Tuig. Aaron, you're on. >> Thank you, mayor. >> These are the private uh projects that went on. >> Let me let me ask one procedural question of city attorney. >> Yes, sir. >> Brandon, are are we going to be do we should we vote on these individually or should we vote on them as as two groups? >> Well, I I think you should do them as two groups, north and south. And if you can do it in a way where you're just doing a motion to approve as staff recommends for all of them, I think you can do one motion. But if you're going to change anything then obviously I think um you would need to do an individual motion >> for that change. >> First things first Joseph has to recuse himself. Is it >> for for the for the south >> for the south half with that >> one? Is it just for one item? >> Just for one item but with that very good point Tommy we'll ask legal when we get to the point of making a motion if we need to take them individually if we can take them as a group. >> All right you good. >> All right. Go ahead. Thank you, mayor. And I think I do have my slides set up that way. So hopefully we can work

[1:13:45] through that pretty pretty quickly. So these four projects, you can see what our total is currently in the north for allocation 2.5. Each one of them requested 75,000. This project right here is actually a low-rise multif family that's got eight units where these other two are new builds of duplexes. And so we'll go through those pretty quickly. um 22 uh3 West 20th. The uh total project is 100,000. The request is 75. So their match is 25,000. Facade improvement, new windows, new doors, driveway, landscaping, cleanup, and roofing. This is the back side of the property. There's a a new fence over here, so it's hard to get to the front side of the property to to see them, but you can see it's an older style uh building uh recently purchased, and the inside has been refurbished. Now, they want to do the outside uh to help add to the district. This is MLK right here. Um and 20th right up here. And so they're coming through going to new roof, new facade, new windows that are energy efficient and new doorways. And so helping that um structure become a little bit better and lasting a little bit longer in its life. 22 uh 3 West 19th. It's a brand new build. Uh project cost 325. uh 75,000 is the request and their project match is 50,000. It's for demo of some existing structure uh landscaping, fencing, window installation, and sidewalk. These are the proposed duplexes. Um I've got some pictures of the of the ones that they have currently built or building. Uh you can see the the front and the rear elevations. This is the property there that they'll be raising that building, removing it, and starting with a duplex there. The property at 22418th, same project cost, same split, uh same has a property or a structure that they're going to demo landscaping, fencing, window installation, and

[1:15:46] sidewalk. So, this pro this U property, they will demo that structure there and get it going. And of course, as you can see, this is MLK and 18th there. Again, the same style of duplex would be going on that corner. There there's some images of what they have currently built on some of the properties. You can see the front side and the back side there. And then on 19th, again, another duplex structure. Uh same cost splits. This one is a vacant property, so it's just exterior doors, windows installation, fencing, landscaping, clearing the lot of just some stuff that's there and sidewalks. Um, that structure I've, as we, as I understand, may have fallen down and so it's really just cleaning that up and moving it uh forward. So, again, a duplex on that property there. Again, here's the funding request for each one of those. 300,000 total for the that would come out of the north. That would leave us 2.2 2 and we have not had our our FY26 allocation yet. So that may go up another million.2 coming up soon. With that staff uh recommended this to the TEI board uh that each fund project be funded at the $75,000 level in the north tiers. Tiers board recommended approval with a 50 affirmative vote on October the 28th on 2025. With that, I'll be happy to answer any questions. >> Erin, I have one question for you there. Yes, ma'am. Just for clarification for those that might may be watching, all those pictures uh are residential houses. So, but this is from a a developer or contractor. These aren't just private individuals that are getting this money. Correct. >> That is correct. It's a a company that that owns all of these properties. These properties are zoned RM1, which is low-rise multifamily, which is allowed in our TEI district to fund projects on those. These just happen to be housing projects. We have funded two housing, same contractor and property owner, two

[1:17:50] of these in the past. So, they've come forward for these three. Now, um we know that they're trying to remediate some areas that have got some blight uh allow some more citizens to come and live there. Uh hopefully that gives them some more walkability to different commercial areas in there. while the TEI primarily focuses on commercial, but we also try to address some housing issues and things like that in our TEI district as well. >> Good deal. It's just when you're watching and you're saying, "Oh, well, I'd like my house remodeled, too." You know, [laughter] >> but thank you for that clarification. >> Any other questions on the north side, Karen? >> Um Erin, all four projects in the north that you've presented reference landscaping as a part of their plan going forward. Yes, ma'am. >> Given that the city of St. Angelo does not have a landscaping ordinance, how do you how do you measure and ensure compliance? >> Well, we look for first we look for street trees that are going to be adjacent to that sidewalk so that we can help protect people that are walking there with shade. And then we start looking at uh what is the actual front area while you look at this one here on the right side dominated by very large driveway. How do we improve these areas on that side? Whether that's with turf and shrubs and things like that. While we don't have a you must do six of these and you must do seven of those. We work with them very closely to go over a landscape plan so that it's acceptable to to what would be our standards if you're a um landscape architect. Uh they would look at those things and say we work with um Carl quite a bit that helps us with the right species. And then we also run things by Rick who has a good eye for some of those things to help us with, hey, this makes more sense than that. And then we work with the contractors. But again, providing shade, providing some green coverage, um, some in the outdoor areas is what's critical to us to make sure that it's successful. >> Now, we we do emphasize or I hope we do that to try to go more of a zeroscape. >> Yes, ma'am. Just because the water so

[1:19:55] >> Yes, ma'am. So, >> thank you. Any questions down here? >> Brandon, will this be a good time to take a vote on these four? >> Yep. I think one motion for the north projects. >> I have questions. >> All right, Patrick. Okay. >> Um, so I've been struggling with this one a lot. I know you know that. Um, you talked about earlier on your tears presentation. Um, one of them was strengthen downtown and it's connecting commercial corridors. Um, and another the plan reflects strong commitment to small business development. Duplexes uh don't really do those. Um, I'm struggling with giving somebody um a fourth of their duplex to build it when it doesn't really help the greater good in my opinion. That's my opinion. There's seven of us. That's why there's seven. I'm glad it's not just me having to decide on this. Um, when it comes to it, I the the sidewalks and things like that, I get right because that helps that connectivity. But if you look at the tier zone, primarily it was for business development. Um, the south has a little different, you know, it talks about hotels and and entertainment, things like that. The north doesn't quite have those um groups isolated out. I just um I'm still struggling with this one on I don't think it benefits the greater good. While it does spruce up the area a little bit. Um while it gives um some nice homes for somebody to rent, it's uh to my understanding, I don't think it's a affordable housing deal because some of those homes are there and they'd probably be a lot cheaper as is than what the duplex is going to be. Um do you have and we we've already talked some. Do you have anything else to allow on your side of why you think the tears said this is uh may not quite fit those those two paragraphs I talked about, but helps fit the overwhelming good for St. Angelo and why that money should uh be able to go to that instead of being

[1:21:57] reserved for more businesses to try to come in. That helps in my opinion a larger majority of people. >> All good questions and I appreciate those questions. So when staff is looking at these and bringing these forward to the tears board, we're trying to again like you said look at the whole picture um we believe that this is beneficial to that core area right there around that MLK and about the 19th and between 19th and 23rd. Now you can see behind this structure you can kind of start seeing there are some commercial areas that are very close to that area. One of the ideas of allowing low-rise multif family and funding low-rise multif family within a tiers district is often those people are going to use other modes of transportation other than a car to get to businesses to shop and buy things. Now, this area is very close to some of those amenities. Um, I also think we we just like you'd mentioned in the south, we're saying we want people to come here because there is shopping, there are events and things like that. Do we have enough of that here? I think with us rec making the recommendation that their funding goes towards energy efficiency on the home with windows and doing the sidewalks, the landscaping, beautifying the area. I think it fits within that tiers corridor trying to help that corridor move forward. Um I do agree with you that commercial does fund most of what happens within our community from a property tax standpoint. And so bringing those things in makes a big impact. We learned about a year ago or about a year and a half ago that the more new housing you have and new structures you have, the better opportunities you have of drawing in a commercial entity to that area because now you have people that are starting to afford things that are new that can go and maybe have some more money to go and buy some things that are within walking distance or traveling distance. Um, while I'm not sure that that answers

[1:23:58] your your full questions, um, we felt comfortable enough to bring forward this with that recommended funding amount to our TEI board. I know they talked about it a little bit about housing and things like that. Does it make sense to fund that kind of housing? We know anecdotally we have some housing needs in our community and we also believe this addresses some of those, but to your point, these are not required to be affordable housing. So they could be market rate, they could be that. Um, so that's my best answer for today. I'd be happy to continue that discussion. Um, but I think that's my answer on these today. >> Patrick, do you have any more questions? Anybody have any more questions? >> Um, could Brandon please tell us if funding residential properties is allowable by state law in tiers [clears throat] zones? I mean, I I'd have to I guess research that. I don't think so. But our financing plan, which is the ordinance that um Aaron's been referring to this whole time, I I don't think would allow for residential in any event. But, I mean, it does allow for commercial building and site improvements, which I think we're arguing this is because it is an RM1 zoning. So, I think that's how it's justified under our financing plan. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. And under the state law, it talks about trying to reduce blight and add housing in areas is what? Okay. >> And really that kind of goes back to that infrastructure discussion about sidewalks and what does the front look like. Yeah. >> On that um I great uh answers to my questions. I and we'll go on. I'm probably going to be a no still because I don't think a lot of this should be done. But I do think as presented, I do think there are some that to me personally would I would feel more comfortable tears the sidewalks, things like that, the curbing sidewalks to help that connectivity. I'm for that. Uh putting windows and doors

[1:26:00] in a in a home that somebody's going to um rent out. I don't I just don't think it helps the greater good >> for the intent >> enough for me for the intent of tears. We have an infill program. We have some other stuff. Uh, affordable housing is an issue that we still need to address. I just don't know that this helps that either. Um, I just think there's more on there than I'm comfortable with for tiers. So, that's all. Thank you, Aaron. I appreciate it. >> Aaron, I have a question. >> Yes, sir. >> We've already subsidized one of these, have we not? Under the tiers? >> Yes. Two two structures we have. >> So, we've already done two. So, to remain fair and consistent, it would keep these in and and I drive this street to four times a day. And it has certainly revitalized the neighborhood, improved the appearance. I get everybody's opinion on and you know just call them balls and strikes on where the process are but in a discussion on how to revitalize a neighborhood it has done great things and we're looking at improving our tavern with that um any more questions >> a comment comment mayor >> okay um I don't have problem with this let me this I'm really having a conversation with Patrick here when the um half cent sales tax was voted on 20 25 years ago and the affordable housing component was a part of that half cent sales tax. I believe we allocate 335,000 a year of half cent sales tax to affordable housing. It was primarily at that juncture, the way it was proposed to the voters, if my memory is correct, and the way explained to the voters, that there were going to be the target areas that would uh that um HUD looked at, I hope I get these right, Fort Contro area, Rio Vista area, Blackshere area, and there's one other that I think I'm forgetting. >> Reagan. Okay. If we take a look at those areas and what I know I know we're not talking tears. I understand that. But to to the mayor's point and to to your point the greater good when we look at

[1:28:05] what has happened in those areas simply because of how those the the areas have been brought up because of what has happened to simply the residences in those areas. I think this type development funded by tears will also help those neighborhoods rise which in fact in my opinion is for the greater good of the entire community. That's the reason I I like the project for that. I think there's a there's a theory in planning called the broken glass theory where if you will go in and fix the broken windows in buildings, it will help the value of everything around there come up. I see this as doing that. So I am I am in favor of this personally. >> Anybody else with any other questions on these first four items? With that, I'll make a motion to approve these first four items as presented. Second. >> I have a first and a second from Harry Thomas. Is there any public comment on these items? >> Chris Matlock. [clears throat] >> So, my name is Chris Matlock, um 1413 Dal Road. I am one of the owners of of these lots and doing this development. And I just I'm here to answer any questions you have or speak to anything that you may have mentioned. Um we did look at doing a commercial development on this particular site, but because of its location on MLK with the existing structures and the fact that the alley kind of divides the half block, we just didn't see it financially viable compared to the housing that we're going to put on place here. We do work with the um section 8 housing department at at the um HUD department and we do work with them regularly to try to fill um our houses that we have as investments

[1:30:07] um for low-income housing. We do believe we we built these so that they would be high quality um on the inside. They have granite countertops and things that that neighborhood doesn't particularly have on all the other rental properties. They all have garages and so we really want to try to provide something that a family on the um HUD department can come into and live in. Um and we like this location for that because of its proximity to Walmart, the Aztec Bazaar and then the the local foodies there that are KFC and McDonald's and things like that. So I just say thank you for considering this project and if you have any questions I'm here to answer. >> I will ask question. >> Sure. >> Um >> it's got to stay on the topic of >> So So you mentioned it. Um, will these be section 8 homes? >> If if we proceed to go forward with them that way, then yes, we will offer them up to people that that qualify. They have to meet criteria and then the funding has to be available for them to be able to afford the project. But yes, we be we're not discriminating against anybody and we hope to fill them um as quickly as possible to you know, we're here to make money and that's that's part of the project. We are going to zero escape. Um I know that was that was um a concern. So that'll all be zero escapement. They all have privacy fences which is also covered by tiers funding. And I think that's important for safety. Um we will do trees down the MLK side when those two lots are are completed. The reason the landscaping is not done already on the other two projects is we're waiting till we're completely finished um for just simplicity and and convenience to get them all done and and finish them up at the same time. >> Any further questions? Chris. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. >> Thank you guys. >> All right. I have a first and a second. Any more public comment, Heather? With no public comment, we'll take on item one, the first these four elements of item one. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Item passes six to one. All right, we'll move into item two, South projects. Aaron, you're on. >> Thank you, mayor. So, we do have five projects here. 121 North Chadburn. You can see here on the screen.

[1:32:09] >> Well, let's let's hold this together. Oh, excuse me. So, >> [clears throat] >> Can we identify which one we're going to have Joe's recusal on? >> Oh, I apologize. Yeah. >> 215. So, >> two. >> So, can he sit and listen or do we >> I was going to say, can we do like all the other ones and save that one for last? >> We can do that. >> All right. So, we're going to go on item two. All of the elements except 215 West. >> All right. So, you see the items here. >> Slides match here. >> Yes, absolutely. Let's get that going right now. >> You'll be five. [laughter] >> So, currently we have 48 uh,000 in the south. Um, that is kind of from this last uh fiscal year. Um, if you added all the projects up together, it'd be 279,000 which would still remain 128. Uh, we are yet to get our uh allocation for FY26. That'll be coming up here in December. So, we'll start at 121 North Chadburn. uh project is $103,700. It is a facade and historic preservation of one of uh our first uh theaters that was in town. They're going to do some uh preservation, window replacement, some zeros escaping in some areas and some um add external lighting and doors. So, here's the front of it. You can see this picture here where they're missing this uh very top piece. They're going to have that rebuilt and and put back. Um they've got a window over here that's been busted out. Uh but it's actually a very beautiful structure. They're going to come through. They're going to clean it up. Going to [clears throat] redo uh windows and doors down here. Get everything uh cleaned up for the facade. They're hoping to have some occupancy of possibly a cheer gym or something like that, but they're looking at getting this this facade cleaned up. So these are the um doors and and windows and lighting that was approved by the DHRC group. Now we'll move on to the next one which is 226 North Chadburn. It's a facade uh improvement with framing for new glass

[1:34:14] painting and a new metal awning. Their project cost is right at 35,000. Uh funding request is 26,500. This is the current state of it. Of course, uh they're coming in with new things right in this area that have all been DHRC approved. So you can see they're going to come in with new lighting above. They're going to have a new metal awning there and some new facade things um with the paint and color. 228 is a companion property right next door. Um it's uh project cost is 37,000 with funding request of 27750 for framing for glass, painting of the exterior window installation and a metal awning. Again, you can see there's nothing here right now, but they're going to come back and uh do a different type of awning. It'll be a flat awning, but not that one. They did not get that one approved through DHRC, but they have a different one that's approved. They're going to have a window and door set and lighting that will come across here at the top. One of these properties already has a tenant that's ready to get started and getting ready to move in once the renovations are done. And so, we're very excited about that. The other one will be a spec building just waiting for somebody that wants to come and finish out the interior. 112 West Tig, uh, big project there, 152,000. Um the the funding request is 75,000. It's window and door installation, an awning, an ADA improvements, and a sales tax rebate. And so here's the building here. You can see it's current state. While it looks like there's not a lot going on on the outside, but they are going to be cleaning this up, restoring that, redoing the door, redoing um the awning, and then the biggest cost is the ADA improvements inside the building with redoing the restrooms to make sure that they meet the ADA compliance um and things like that. Um so it's a while it's a small building, they've got offices proposed and they they believe they have a tenant that's uh getting ready to rent it once they get the construction done. So, with that, you see these items right here, those requests uh that they had.

[1:36:21] I don't have an exact total because I'm having to take the 75,000 out for the last one, but let me go to this slide and we'll hold off on this one right here. But you have three of them that were recommended for full funding level. So that's 121 North Chadburn, 226 North Chadurn, and 228 North Chadurn for the funding that they requested. Tears board recommended that funding. This item at 112, they requested $75,000. Uh staff recommended that to TER board, but they did remove $6,000 um with a 4 to1 vote and recommended a uh funding amount of 69,000. With that, I'll be happy to take any questions on those four items and then we'll decide how to vote those. [laughter] >> I'll start this first. Why did we get the change on the onewell 112 was to what was discussion there? >> The discussion there was on the awning. There was a line item in the background information that's required by the applicant to submit. They submitted a cost estimate of $6,000 for the awning. Um there were a few on the board that felt that was too excessive for a cloth awning. uh they would really rather have preferred a metal awning, but that is not the board to change that decision. Um and so they did make a motion at that time to would remove the 6,000 for the awning and just go with the 69,000 moving forward. >> Any questions on that? >> Well, clarify for me. The request was for cloth [clears throat] awning. >> Correct. So, this is actually going to be a cloth awning. That's what was approved by uh the design and historic review commission. Um the estimated cost on that was 6,000 for that. The tears board thought that was a little excessive for that type of awning and they wanted to pull that out. Is is that their function to decide

[1:38:25] what? >> Well, they would decide what to fund but not the design. And so that the design did not come back to because it's cloth or metal. That was some of the discussion, but that was not we we advised them that that would not be the appropriate decision to make based on the material type. They made the decision based on the cost of the awning. >> DHRC approved the cloth. Yes, they did. >> So, it was approved by DHRC. >> Yes, it is. >> Okay. >> But it complies with DHRC. >> Yes. This this would comply with DHRC. This what they've submitted to TEI to fund. And so, this was a TEI decision to say we don't want to fund that piece of this project. >> Are we legal in that, Brandy? >> I guess have to research that. I mean, I don't think that uh it is their function to determine the materials. I mean, it's whether it complies with all these things that we've talked about as far as um funding eligibility. So, >> my concern here, Brandon, are we being fair and consistent with all of these? I mean, you you just nailed it. It's we're not into the materials. We're into the project recommendation and cost. M >> and I don't want to supersede something or get in a habit of doing that. But in this situation, I see that the cost was 75,000. Similar projects presented at the same time were 75,000. This one just threw up a flag. And I think the reason we threw the flag is something that may not be our business. >> Right. >> All right. >> Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, if you find that a certain cost doesn't meet uh our requirements, then yeah, you can't fund it. Um, but if the requirements aren't tied to the materials, then yeah, that's probably not a proper reason to to [clears throat] decline it. So, >> right. >> Okay. >> And on that um on that last one, >> would you like to ask a question? I had wasn't done with Tommy yet. >> I would like to see the 6,000 stay in

[1:40:27] there. If that was the original request, DHRC approved it. I would like to see that stay in there personally. >> Okay. >> DHRC doesn't doesn't look at the cost of that. They look at the m material stuff. So it's a different two separate groups. >> But it did pass DHRC. >> But it did again pass the DHRC for that for the material for that auditing, but the cost wasn't in there. >> Right. Got that. All right. Patrick, you had a question. >> Um, sorry [clears throat] >> on that one. Um, I I watched this one in depth a little bit. Is most of that 69 just for the ADA accessibility on their plans because it didn't from the the the facade view. There wasn't much that changed. >> That's correct. Most of that is from the interior remodel to get it up to ADA compliance because it's a change of occupancy. It's been vacant for many years. Uh so there's a lot of cost in that to renovate that little build. It's although it's a small building, it just cost a lot to renovate it. >> Yeah. Um, and then on that kind of along with what we're talking about, um, have things like that been removed because it was just the funding. I know I think we're kind of getting stuck on on the material and the cost, but have y'all remove funding for certain aspects of a project and then pass it? I mean, is this a normal concept? >> Well, some sometimes it's funding dependent. If we don't have the funds, they have to all right, we won't fund this, we won't fund that. Um, so that has happened in the past. We just happen to have excess funds this year. This just happened to be one that um was looked at and thought that the because we give all that background information to the TEI board members so they can kind of look through it and see and they saw a line item that they thought was a little excessive. Now we still pay based on receipts based on what they turn in. Um and so if it comes in under that for whatever reason, say if it came in at 4,000, that's what they would be reimbursed is for the 4,000. Um, now there could be that there was the estimate included labor and things like that that would really may not have been explained on the sheet that was submitted out. Um, but there's always a chance because you know we say the

[1:42:29] maximum amount is 75,000 but the tears board and of course city council could say well we're only going to fund 25,000 of this instead of the full 75,000. Um, and it could be just based on hey we think this project is really only valued at that. we don't need to fund every single piece of this project. You would still, we believe you'd still be safe in making those types of decisions. Similar to maybe the the last decision instead of saying a no to duplexes. Well, okay, I would support $10,000 for towards duplexes or something of that nature. Um, this request just happened to be very specific about the awning. Uh, they voted to remove the $6,000 piece of that project and so that's why it comes forward with the 69,000. y'all have the ability to to as uh Mr. Heert said he would like to keep that in there. If that's what the motion ends up being, then that's what the motion is and it would move forward from there. >> Right. Thank you. >> Any more questions? >> Yeah, let me have one more coming. >> Absolutely. Eric, >> the the total cost on this project is $152,750. So, from my perspective, and I don't want to jump over the tears bar, especially when my opponent is the chair, but I'm I'm I'd like to keep this $6,000 in too that they're spending a lot more money than that. So, I make a recommendation that we approve. >> So, do you want that to be a motion and to move that one up to 75,000? >> That's correct. >> Is that your motion? >> That is my motion. Is that clear enough for you, Heather? Is that clear enough for y'all? All right, with that, we've got a first from Harry. >> I'll second that. >> I got a second from Tommy Heert. Is there any public comment, Heather? With no public comment, we'll take a vote on this item for all items >> to be approved >> except 215, >> right? At 75,000 except for 215. All those in favor say I. >> Any opposed? Then oppose. Those items pass at 70. Now we'll move to item 215.

[1:44:33] West Jose self will recuse himself at this time. Aaron 215 West Tig. Thank you, sir. This is a big project at 215 West Tuig. Uh commonly called the Copper Bull. It's going to repurpose this pro this property uh that's been vacant for a number of years now into a restaurant and an event center. You can see the total project is very very large. us to renovate the entire facility and add on the event center. This funding request specifically is for the uh fire sprinkler and smoke alarm system. Uh their funding request is 75,000. You can see that their proposed match is 107,000. So that sprinkler system and smoke alarm system is a very costly thing for this project to be renovated. Um this is the outside the rendering that they have for the outside of this project. Um we think it's going to be a great amenity in our downtown. uh it still retains the historic preservation of that structure and gets it back uh being utilized and I think it's going to be over time a a destination place for people from in town and out of town. So we're very excited that this is coming forward. So with that I will go back to that last slide. um came forward with the recommendation of 75,000 to tears board um on October 28th and they did affirm with a 50 vote to recommend 75,000 funding for that project. >> Aaron, the copper bull has been something we've talked about for a few years. Um it it does have a lot of his historic significance of who used to own the building, Lewis Hall, and before that. Uh we're great. I mean, I'm happy to see this move forward. With that, I'll open it up to the board for any questions up to the dice. Tommy, do you have anything? No, I I like I like the project. >> Karen, have you got any questions? >> Uh, it may not even be related to tears, so forgive me in advance if if I'm off. Let's keep it on the topic. >> Well, it may or may not. So, when when we originally voted to approve this with the prior

[1:46:34] >> administration, >> um it was requested that the owner of this property also restore the median in front of the building, >> the landscaping and the meeting median in front of the building. Who has jurisdiction over that? And how do we follow that? >> Uh was that in our do we have an incentive agreement with them? I mean, I would say it would be covered by the agreement with them, but >> my memory is not good enough to go back and remember who covered the medium, but if it was in the contract or if it was in the agreement, Karen, you brought up a very valid topic about that. We just have to make sure it abides by that. >> Yeah, I'll refer this back to >> find that. Yeah, >> we can research what the minutes said, but that would have been a time when they brought it back for just the zoning and >> well, I think that was the time where we didn't have enough members on our DHRC that could vote on it and so it came to council to vote on the outside the what it's going to look like. So, I will go back and read those minutes and see what the vote was and see see what we have there. >> I think the trick is that that road that median is probably owned by the city of St. Angelo. Yeah. >> So, yeah, I don't know. We'll have to look into that. Well, we'll research and get you some information back. >> I'd be curious. >> That might be a good tiers project though. >> I asked because just open the door [laughter] >> since we have some some, you know, >> public projects. That could be one. >> So, do we Brandon, are we okay to vote on the pro project as presented? >> Yeah, this isn't tied to that. I move to approve. >> Second. >> I've got a first from Patrick Keelley. I've got a second from Tommy Heert. Is there any public comment on the copper bull? >> With none, I'll ask for a vote. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Any naysay? Item passes 60. >> Mayor. >> All right, we'll move to item F. >> Mayor, let's >> Yes, sir. >> Let's take a break and then we'll get >> Let's do a quick five minutes. >> Okay, >> y'all. We're going to take a quick 5m minute break.

[1:48:36] Call this meeting back the order at 10:30 for item F, first reading and public hearing of an ordinance for RO25-07. A request to abandon a portion of the street located at East 41st Street between Crockett Street and Bonum Street and abandon a dedicated portion of Bonum Street between East 41st and the North alley. Presentation made by Aaron Venoy. Thank you, Mayor, City Council, Mr. Valenuela. This is a rideway abandonment. Here you can see an alleyway and portion of a street that is buoy right there at the old Lincoln uh middle school campus. Um this is coming from SISD that wants to consolidate those properties. It's in the Lake View uh neighborhood district 2, Mr. Joseph. The zoning district is RS1, but they're going through a reszoning. The vision is neighborhood. Um and we did send out notifications. Uh 28 were mailed out, one in favor via phone. The area is fairly large, but um there is one water and one uh sewer within the area that will require a easement, but the abandonment does not appear to ne negatively affect traffic patterns as it's not been improved and it doesn't affect the environment or the surrounding other property owners. So staff does recommend approval of this with our uh standard uh three um conditions. the payment of the ride ofway. Uh record a plat uh to absorb the right ofway and after approval of asso associated plat and payment request issuance and recordation of the quick claim deed. Planning commission did recommend approval on October the 28th uh with a 50 vote. With that, I'll be happy to answer any questions. >> So Erin, I'd like to comment this did go through planning with a 50- vote. Correct. >> Yes, sir. >> All right. With that, I'll open up to the dis with any questions. >> With no questions, I'll look for a motion. So moved. I have a first from Karen Hessie Smith and a second from Joseph. Is there any public comment on F, Heather? >> With none, we'll take a vote. All those in favor of item F say I. I. >> Any opposed? Item F passes 70. Item G. First reading of public hearing of an

[1:50:38] ordinance for RO25-08, a request to abandon an unimproved portion of West 12th along with the nearby unimproved alleyway northwest of the intersection of West 11th Street and North Bryant. Aaron, you're on. >> Thank you again. This is in the Blackshere neighborhood. Patrick Ford, Mr. Patrick Keley. This is light manufactured zoning and the vision is commercial. You can see here this is some property that never really got built on over time, but there's still two remaining rightway pieces uh just kind of lingering out there. A property owner has started to accumulate all those properties and wants to do some development in the area. So, here's just that exhibit showing where they're going to pull in those pieces and um that have never had any ri any uh pavement, no infrastructure, nothing there improved. We did send out notices. Uh 18 mailed, no, none in favor, none opposed. The analysis was this is there no city uh utilities with the abandonment. Uh this would help that area start to redevelop. that's been one of the area things that's been kind of holding them back and it does not negatively affect traffic patterns, environment or the surrounding owners. With that, uh staff recommended approval to the planning commission on October the 20th with our same three standard uh conditions. Planning commission did approve with a 50 vote. >> Planning, as you say, planning did this with a 50 vote. Patrick, this is in your district. Do you have any comments on it? Uh the only thing I wanted to make sure and I assume y'all have already looked at this is just that's getting close to the the runoff areas. It's not going to affect that anyway. If anything, maybe it'll help. >> Correct. This this process won't uh affect that at all when they replant um when they put that all together. That will probably be a something that will trigger the storm water ordinance and then our engineering services will look at it at that time to see what the appropriate remediations are. >> Perfect. Yeah, I think this is going to help development in the area and is a great use of that land. So, I move to approve. >> I've got a first from Patrick. Need a second. >> Second. >> I have a second from Tommy Heert. Didn't

[1:52:41] look up, but I'm just calling that one. Any public comment on G? >> With no public comment. All those in favor of item G say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? With no nays. Item G passes. 70H. First reading public hearment ordinance for RO25-09. a request to abandon two segments of unimproved portions of street rideway for West 10th and Merchant Street located at the located south of the intersection of West 11th Street and North Bryant. Presentation by Aaron Venoy. Thank you again. This is from the the city itself. Uh bringing this forward uh we actually own some property there that's associated with a right of way that you can see this would have been Merchant Street and Tth Street never been developed. This is in the Blackshere neighborhood uh district for Mr. Patrick Healey. It is like manufacturing zoning and industrial envision. Uh it is right within a drainage area and that is the intent of the city is to go back and dedicate some of this back to the drainage area uh for this detention uh that's down here. So that's the exhibit that they've came up with u to show that um the pieces that would be abandoned. Uh mailed out the eight notices did not receive any back for or against. Uh again, this does not negatively affect traffic patterns, the environment, or surrounding owners, and there are no existing city utilities. Uh so it makes sense at this point to go ahead and abandon it. Again, the three common um conditions. Staff did recommend approval to planning commission on the October the 20th and planning commission did recommend approval with a 50 vote. >> All right, with that, we'll roll over Patrick once again to someone within your district. Any comment? >> Good. >> Okay. >> Approve. Anybody else have questions? >> Second. I have a first from Patrick and a second from Harry Thomas. Any public comment, Heather? With no public comment, we'll look for a vote on item H. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Item passes 70. Item I, first reading and public hearing of an ordinance for PD05-2, a request for an expansion of a plan development by adding 38.712 acres

[1:54:44] surrounding the east side of the coliseum located between Lake View Heroes Drive and East 43rd. Aaron, you're on. >> Thank you, Mayor. Um this is simply an expansion to help the construction process over at the coliseum. This here is of course the coliseum property and you can kind of see that uh north south dividing line. So everything on the east side of that or the right side of your screen is being added. So this piece, this piece, this piece and this piece are added to the plan development because currently they are zoned RS1 single family residential. Well, they will need some of this area here and some of this area here for lay down yard uh for the steel that's going to be coming in for the coliseum. These areas could be used in the future for fairground activities and things like that, which obviously the expansion of this area uh makes a lot of sense. The red barn here really does need that uh PD expansion so they can continue their operations without any hindrances or things like that. the residential that's right along here. There's a school here and there's some that backs up right here and we'll talk about that just a little bit. But those that's 39 acres that we're going to move into the planned development. This is SMD number two, Mr. Joe Self and the Lake in the Lake View neighborhood. So here you can see that the vision plan for all that areas campus and institutional which is appropriate. What we're doing is changing these RS designated areas and this CG designated area to match the plan development that's here um on the the main site. Did send out 68 notices. We received none in in support or and none in opposition. We did have a few phone calls and they were concerned that we were reszoning their property, but we explained to them that that was not the case. It's only these properties here adjacent to the coliseum. Couple of the photos that we see from 43rd looking to the north. Uh from Lake View Heroes looking to the south. You can see it's very rural in nature. It's already being utilized in um basically storage and and things that go along with the fairgrounds and the uh coliseum site to keep those operations going. Uh the

[1:56:48] rationale this is an area that's been um very ranch estate and large school pro complex in the area. Uh the barn complex is leased to ASU for the rodeo activities and housing of their livestocks and activities. The expansion uh will continue to allow the use and the renovation process of the coliseum and future items as needed. With that, the staff does recommend approval of this expansion of PD0502 to those 39 acres um directly adjacent to the coliseum. Uh we did have three minor uh items that were conditions. One is about dirt and dust mitigation during the construction time. These again again can be temporary measures. Uh solid opaque fences which typically would be required for separation between this and residential. Talking to the residents, they really didn't like that because they have livestock and we also believe that livestock needs more open air fencing instead of and so we took that out. And then just construction lighting, it should be shielded away during um the residential areas during nighttime activities. With that, it did go to planning commission on October the 20th. They did recommend a 50- vote coming forward to city council. >> Awesome. Thank you, Aaron. We'll bring this forward. Joe, this is in your district. Your any comments? >> I think it's a good deal to clean it up and get it on paper what it needs to be. >> Awesome. You want to make that a motion? >> I'll move to >> I've got a first from uh Joseph. >> Second, >> and a second from Harry Thomas. Any public comment on this? With none on item I, we'll look for a vote. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Item passes seven. Any nays? >> No nays. Item passes seven and zero. All right. Item J, first reading of public hearing ordinance for PD25-06, a request to reszone the single family residential zoning district to a planned development district with a base zoning of low-rise multif family residential zoning district located at 2400 Hill Street and 2336 Randolph Street. Aaron, >> thank you. Mayor, this is a plan development to try to help a property move start moving forward in a a best use way. Um, this property is at 2400

[1:58:53] Hill and 2336 South Randolph Street. You can see there's it's hard to see on this image, but we have some other images. There's a large structure there. And then this area over here is actually vacant and platted facing. Um, it is zoned RS1. Uh, but we are going to move to a planned development district with the underlying base of low-rise multif family. So it is going to try to stay residential and do multif family. This is in SMD3 Mr. Harry Thomas and in the Rio Vista neighborhood. You can see here everything around for many blocks around is neighborhood and is has been neighborhood for for decades. We don't see that changing significantly. There are a couple of small pockets. There's one little RM1. There's RS2. There's a little bit of neighborhood commercial up there. This big uh facility here has been used many ways over the years, but recently it's become vacant, a little bit uh dilapidated, and so now there's a new project that's coming forward to try to utilize primarily the vacant space as some low-rise multif family. This would be kind of an accessory building that would be some offices and future uses uh down the road. So, we did send out um 46 notices into the area. Uh there were two opposed that were over here. Uh their opposition was they really don't want commercial activities and commercial trucks going up and down those roads, particularly Hill Street and Randolph, which are the the main roads in and then Avenue S and and things like that. This does this would once the project gets going and construction is complete, this is going to be a residential project. It's not going to be a commercial entity. They may have some accessory office uses here. They may have some um things like that, but it's not going to be largecale commercial in nature. So, here's kind of their their general concept plan. So, is up here to the top, Hill is down here to the bottom. So, you can see where they're looking at this area over here, looking at some playground, um, some outside usable a

[2:00:57] space that may end up being some of their detention pond, doing some multif family in this area, utilizing some of the current thing for offices and and things like that. Um, and then refurbishing this basketball court that's back here, and then possibly doing maybe some storage or more housing along the back. they would um utilize a main entrance there as an alternate entrance and still the entrance there. There is the possibility that an entrance would come off of to come in and assess access the um apartments at the back. You can see here on the right, this is just kind of their concept idea to get some apartments there for some uh transitional living uh on the on the property. Here are just some of the existing photographs. Um the property has a long history. um has had many times there's been some code complaints and things like that. Um but it's time for this this building to to be utilized and start moving forward in a productive way for our community. So we looked at the rationale. Um most of the history says this property should move towards multif family. Well, that's what this this is giving that opportunity for this project to do that. Um, we believe this will help redevelop the site, revitalize the neighborhood. Uh, will also service some of the community needs, especially paired with the housing option. Um, it's combining residential and some community services to support the folks that would be living in that uh facility as well. With that, the city staff did bring this to the planning commission uh in October. Um, our recommendation was to approve the plan development going from RS1 to a plan development with the underlying base of low-rise multif family with it with having six uh conditions. One is the uh change of occupancy for the main structure. Um, two, no services may be performed on site including rehabilitation or recovery services that provide care, training or treatment for psychiatric, alcohol or drug problems.

[2:03:02] Excuse [clears throat] me. Number three, site lighting on premises shall be uh shielded downward. Um number four, applicant may must provide and maintain appropriate parking. Number five, uh obtain approval from an urban design review. Number six, in install uh six-foot opaque privacy fencing along adjacent to the other residential uses to the north and east side of the and south and east side of the property. Again, this did go to planning commission on October 20th. They did recommend approval with a 50- vote. With that, I'll be happy to answer any questions. >> I think this piece of property has had several opportunities to come to to move forward, and this is by far the best one. We've waited this for a while, but Harry, this is in your district. Would you like some direction? >> Yeah. Thank you, Mayor. Just a few comments. Uh, I had opportunity to be involved in this piece of property probably 25 years ago when I was on the Boys and Girls Club because we owned [clears throat] it at the time and we sold it. So, I've kept up with it uh over the years. Um, the entrance off of Hill into the property, I I presume that's where the main entrance is going to be right now. >> Currently, yes, sir. >> Okay. Uh there's some concern with the neighborhood about because that's quite a long ways off a hill up to that building about the amount of Khichi that's there and the amount of traffic that there pulling up. [clears throat] I presume that they're planning on keeping a Khichi road and not improving it to black top or concrete. Is that correct? that depending on what they do with development, there could be the requirement that it gets black topped or sealcoded at some point to meet our to meet our requirements. It depends on how much development happens at what time, >> but we do anticipate that this will be improved over time to reduce the amount of khichi that's there. >> I I I have to agree with the mayor. uh this piece of property has been an

[2:05:04] eyesore in that neighborhood for such a long period of time and code compliance is called on a regular basis. I can guarantee you because citizens call me and I call code compliance. So I think having uh a viable operation in there will will tend to improve the neighborhood and over time may improve it. So, I uh I vote to uh approve this, make a motion to approve this as presented. >> All right. Were there any other questions? >> I have a couple. >> Yeah. >> Um that one is one part that's portioned off there. Is that a residential area home right there? >> Yes, it is. They are looking to potentially acquire this property. uh but they have not as they may be able to explain that more but they're looking to acquire that property but it is it is a separate resident separate property as as far as we know it today >> and then on the building in the center um is the plan development going to allow it to be somewhat commercial is that I mean because it says office and things like that there >> correct it will have some minor office or minor commercial uses to help support um the neighborhood that is right there on the property >> um is Turning Point the one setting up this project. >> Yes. Uh TurningPoint is looking to bring this project forward. Uh and just an FYI, there there is a fairly new property owner that they're really uh excited about this project coming forward. I'm not sure if they've signed up for public comment today or not, but uh they are in the audience. Um and so, but yes, Turning Point is bringing this project forward. >> On a weal history of it, this was uh instrumental in the very first stages of the flood. So, I do want to appreciate all the work they did with that and all the help that was done that they did a lot of good for that. Um, that's a side note on this, but no, looks good besides that. I second it if there's no other comments. >> Absolutely. With that, I will take Patrick's comments. There is a second. No public comment. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Item passes 70. With that, we'll move into item K. First reading and public hearing on an

[2:07:06] ordinance for Z25-22, a request to reszone from the single family residential zoning district to the two family residential zoning district located at 1218 Van Burren Street. Aaron, thank you, mayor. This is a cleanup item for property that had turn been turned into a duplex decades ago. Uh they just happen to need some building permits here recently and that that kind of flagged on our system to see what we need to do to clean it up. But this is in this, [clears throat] excuse me, it's the Sanantaorita neighborhood district five. Uh, Miss Karen Hessie Smith, the vision plan is neighborhood and it is a RS1 property that's going to go to an RS2. So, we did send out notifications. There were 25 notices mailed out, two in support, one in opposition. The one in opposition was they they did not want uh duplexes in their neighborhood. Um, but this has been a duplex for many many years, and this is really kind of a cleanup. uh it is not reszoning any of those other properties and allowing them to start becoming duplexes or anything like that. So here is the zoning. You can see this property right here, here, and here. Those are already zoned RS2. They're very close to this property here that's being zoned RS2 within RS2. Our vision plan allows the the neighborhood vision plan allows RS1, RS2, and RS3 to coexist in neighborhoods. Um while usually planners look at larger spaces to say all right we need to do an entire block or a couple of blocks in this case we believe that it makes sense just to go in and do this one property. If other properties over time choose to move that direction then we might look at that um you know but this one being a has been a duplex for more than two decades. This is the cleanup item to get it to continue to move forward. Um we did do the rationale study um surrounded by a few other pockets of RS2. Uh staff observe the demonstrated

[2:09:08] community need for two family housing in the area. There are a number of properties that do have two family housing even if it's just attached to their property. Um and with this since it's been around for so long we do not see any immediate adverse effects on the natural environment or the neighborhood itself. With that, staff did recommend approval of the request to reszone from RS1 to RS2 at 1218 South Van Beern Street. This did go before the planning commission October 20th and they recommended a 50 vote to approve as well. >> Thank you. I'm moving this forward. Miss Smith, this was lies in your district. It's all yours. >> I'm okay with this. Thank you. >> Is that a motion? >> I can make it a motion. If there's no other commentary, I make a motion to approve as present. >> I've got a first from Karen Hessie Smith. I have a second from Joe South. Any public comment on this item. >> With no public comment, let's take a vote. All in favor say I. I. >> Any opposed? Item passes 70. We'll move into close session executive session under the provision of government code title 5 open government ethics subtitle A open government chapter 551 open meetings sub chapter D exceptions to requirements that meetings be open under the following conditions. Item A, section 551072, deliberations about real property regarding 70 East 43rd. Item B, section 551074, personal or personnel matters regarding the regarding the assistant city manager and city manager. We'll go into close session. It's 11:50. We're going to call this meeting back to order. We have completed close session. Um, as we came out of close session, there's nothing to discuss publicly that came out of there. And now we'll go to item eight, followup and administrative issues. A, consider items discussed in executive. There's none. B, consider approving various board nominations. Planning commission Mark Clark appointed by the mayor alternate one to an unexpired term ending January 2026 >> and to Can I get a first? I have a first from Harry.

[2:11:09] >> Second >> and a second from Tommy Heert. No public comment on comment on that. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? With no appointment of Mark Clark passes 70. Item C, announcement and consideration of future agenda items. I have a couple, but we'll go down the dice if anybody has anything. Tommy, do you have any? >> No, sir. >> Joe, >> no sir. >> Harry, >> no. >> Patrick, >> no. >> Karen, >> no sir. >> Mary, sir. >> All right. for a follow-up item. Um, when we discuss today the hot funds, [snorts] I would like for them and when they work to use the database provided by the Chamber of Commerce and I'll use the uniform database when they're calculating their mileage. I mean, it's you ignore anybody within 75 miles. And I want I want everybody use the same data when they apply for their hot funds and we use to calculate that. I don't want to take independent data that somebody has applied that we can't vet. I think that provides fair and consistency amongst all the applicants. Um, number two, an item February 17 of 2026. Let me back up. Michael gave me the finger here. >> Both in application and evaluation. >> Absolutely. I just want us to be as fair as consistent as we can. >> Number two, an item February 17th, 2026 is a Tuesday. There's going to be some chamber items and some things going on that day. Tenatively, we may look at having February 17th as an evening meeting. Just want to put that on everybody's calendar. February 17th in the evening. [clears throat] Any objections to that? All right, Patrick, everybody good? All right, with that, that's the only follow-up items I have. Yeah, Michael, what do you think? >> Is it okay with you? >> Yeah, >> just making sure Mr. Dne's good with that. >> If nobody has any further things, I take a motion to end the meeting. >> We adjourn. I I have a first from Tommy Heert, a second from Joseph. All those in favor of closing the meeting say I.

[2:13:11] >> I. >> Anybody wants to stay? Let's go home. 70.

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=2AFNTwnshp8