City Council Strategic Planning Workshop 6-23-25

[0:00:00] after 8:30. Let's go and get this uh planning workshop started. Um I'm going to start off with uh just the overview of the workshop. Um again, welcome to a new day and Monday. This will be the fun one where we actually look at the priorities city council does and actually sets those. So, if you look at your uh your schedule, we will be working on uh actually we'll be kicking off with a citywide SWAT analysis and goals presentation. I will actually be performing that. Uh city council members, you have a print out with all of that. It won't be on the screen, but you'll have the print out and I'll cover it off the printout. Next, we will move uh to the funding presentation, which is why you see Tina and Jonathan sitting there. They'll be covering um our revenues, expectations, our expenditures, and even some optional fundings. Uh I know that we have a lot of needs and uh Tina will present some of the things that we can look at uh to help fund that here for this fiscal year. Uh then we will be moving on of course to the morning break around 10:10. Moving on then to establish citywide priorities and goals. What I wanted to make sure we did for the overview of 2024 strategic priorities, I want to have each of the directors who uh is over each one of these areas. For infrastructure, we have Shane, public safety, of course, we have both chiefs here uh to do their presentation. Economic development, Michael Dame will be presenting that. And then employee compensation, Veronica will be up here to kind of talk about what uh has been done for 2024 as we move forward into the new uh year. Uh if you recall for the longest time now we've been concentrating uh as far as the strategic objectives or priorities that have been established by city council. It's been years now that we've established infrastructure, public safety and economic development as the top three areas that city council has wanted to focus on which is justifiably so. Those

[0:02:04] are the key areas that we are responsible for. This past year the one that was added on there was employee compensation. So again, Veronica will be here to talk a little bit more about that. Next, we will be moving on to the to discuss and set the new strategic priorities. I'll have kind of a um a a a way to do that, kind of try to simplify it. We'll have a a uh the flip chart up here. I'm going to go old school and start listing those things that city council really feels are their priorities, especially based off of the presentations you've seen from the city uh staff, all the directors, myself, and I'm really excited to see what that's going to look like. After we establish those priorities, we will work on the goals specific to those priorities and council members, we'll just work through all of that together. Uh this afternoon at 12:30, uh of course we'll break for lunch at 12:00. At 12:30, we'll have the the animal uh the animal task force will be here again to kind of do a quick presentation to kind of do a recap of the recommendations they made at the city council uh meeting back in May May 6th. And then we'll go into some discussions. Uh we'll kind of consider their recommendations that they made. uh gives you an opportunity to ask a little bit more in-depth questions about those recommendations. They put a lot of time into uh the recommendations. I know that they spent every week they got together for one hour to three hours at a time and they did that for uh about a month and a half, two months. So again, really excited to have their presentation on those items. And then from there, I'd like to make sure that we uh get direction from city council as far as moving forward uh what we'd like to do as it pertains to the animal services. With that, that's just a quick overview. And uh I want to go ahead and jump into the citywide SWAT goals and resources. As I mentioned a while ago, you have a print out of that in front of you.

[0:04:07] Council members, of course, Heather just reminded me a little while ago when you when you go to speak, make sure you're speaking into the microphone, make sure your microphone is on. And if you're not speaking, please turn your microphone off so we won't get some of that feedback. We kept getting some of that surge last week. So, if you would, if you're not speaking, turn your microphone off. So, I want to go and kick it off with a SWAT analysis. Again, this is my view of what uh that SWAT looks like. And I did take into consideration some of those presentations that we had last week and even a broader look at what our strengths uh actually look like, our weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. But I'll go and kick it off with strengths. The first item that I have on there is city staff. We do have an experienced staff. It's a driven staff to get their job done. And we've talked about this. The only issue at this point is we have a lot of individuals that have been there for quite a while. So with that experience also comes the the the threat of possibly losing these individuals here in the near future. But regardless, city staff definitely is uh a strength for the city. Uh another strength is stable sales tax base. We've had a steady growth year-over-year. Tina uh Jonathan, you've been submitting those numbers to us. Uh they haven't been tremendous growth, but we we'd see about 2 to 3% growth uh month by month. and we take a close look at that because sales tax revenues uh really helps to supplement. It's the second largest uh revenue source that the city currently has. So, it's something that we watch very closely. We'll monitor that every month. And fortunately for us, for the past several years, we've se we've had an uptick in sales tax revenues. Uh long-term water supply options. Um as mentioned in the discussion with uh Shane last week, uh the we do have the West Texas Water Partnership between Abene St. Angelo and Midland. We've been working together now for 12 actually about 14 years. It was about a half about about six months before I arrived here in St. Angelo. The West Texas Water Partnership had already formed. So this

[0:06:10] group had been working uh to resolve or look at options available to us for water source and uh mainly groundwater is what we're looking looking at. As mentioned last week, Forstockton Holdings was the option explored and obtained and that's something that we're moving forward right now with also the county river water supply project. It's a reuse project that is on the books or uh on paper basically we have submitted the the permits for that. One permit's been received. We're still waiting for the Ben Banks permit on that one. But so again, that is a strength because we do have a view of what our water supply can look like here in the very near future. uh public safety, you know, here in St. Angelo, uh unlike other parts of the country, there's strong support for our public safety, our police officers and firefighters, and there's a high trust for them as well. So, for us, that definitely is a a strength, the economic diversity, um we have a strong presence in healthcare, in education, in agriculture, manufacturing, military, logistics, and telecommunications. So, there is some diversity there. I think we lean more strongly toward uh governmental organizations but still uh there is diversity there in uh in in our in our community. You look at major employers, we have Shannon uh Medical Center, Goodfield Air Force Base, Angela State University. They're the anchor local employment. And uh as I talk about strings, you'll also see these pop up again in other areas like threats and what have you. For now, I do have them down as strings because they are strengths for us. We have a low cost of living, or I should I say a relatively low cost of living. It's around 5% below the national average with a lower housing median. Even though the house the cost of housing is going up, it's still uh a little bit lower than what you would see on the national average. Business friendly climate. Uh we have Texas state incentives, local economic development, streamline processes. So we

[0:08:14] have the ability to really assist companies that may want to consider coming to St. Angelo or even as we recruit them to be able to incentivize them and to help them with their processes coming through uh through to through uh to St. Angelo. We have strategic location and connectivity. We have central logistic hub uh logistics hubs with highways, railway access and a regional airport. Uh the next one I had on here is recreation and things to do. Yeah, we hear from younger people that there's not anything to do in San Angel, but they're pretty. I mean, there really is. Uh, we have the Riverwalk, the state park, we had the lakes in our area, arts and and cultural venues like the museums and theaters here locally. So, that's definitely a strength. Next one is a strong sense of community, a welcoming, cohesive big small town atmosphere. pretty much uh you do get that small town fuel, but you have access to more things than small towns would have access to uh steady population growth and Tina I know people are pointing at you and saying well even though Tina said we were actually Tina didn't say that Tina fought to say that actually no we've seen some growth I have Shane sitting back there saying how do we show a drop in in our population when we seeing the number of meters going up right as far as water meters number of housetops going up. So there's some a problem that but we do show at least about a 1% annual growth and that sounds like like a low number but when you look at since 2010 is about it's been at about 11.6% increase in the population. Uh culturalist assets uh we have an active arts district. We are the visual arts capital of Texas. Uh we have fine arts museum. We get about 90,000 vis visitors per year. We have a civic theater. So those are some of the strengths that I've listed on here. I do want to move on now to our weaknesses. Uh we have start off with salary disparity compared to peer city cities. We're up to about 15% lower than those peer cities. Uh comprehensive

[0:10:19] plan. Uh that's a major weakness that we currently have. It's outdated. We need to make updates to our zoning ordinances or thoroughare. So those are things that quite frankly are a weakness at this point. uh capital replacement shortfalls, underfunded capital replacement schedules. As the price of equipment continues to surge upward and they've gone up quite a bit and it's not just something minor, it becomes more and more difficult to try to keep up with the funding for the replacement of th that equipment. So, that definitely is a weakness for us. Infrastructure needs uh roads, drainage, and uh streets uh system aging. That 80 million 10-year repair plan is concluding. We need to develop another plan that actually addresses the needs for infrastructure. Transportation limitations. Uh there lacks an interstate highway. That's something Tom that you'll be working on. Karen is something that I27 is a project with the Porsche Planes that uh Brenda had been working on so diligently as well. But those are areas that we really want to make sure that we continue pushing forward with. At this point, it really is weakness. We have uh one of the biggest cities in the state of Texas, the third largest city in the state of Texas, doesn't have an interstate going through it. Uh and that can be problematic for our future growth. Uh school performance variability, uh mixed quality, some underperforming, insufficient mid-range housing development often targets high-end uh middle income needs under uh needs are underserved. Even lower income are underserved. extreme climate risks, scorching summers, droughts, wildfire, tornado threats. Those are always things that are a concern for our area. Move on to crime concerns. Uh property crime above average. I met with uh u Chief Griffith last Friday and we talked about that. We talked about how the challenges are very real for what they're trying to accomplish. So there's serial uh various

[0:12:24] areas that he discussed last week that uh we are underperforming when it comes to crime. We really want to make sure we do everything to lower that crime rate here in our community. I know the chief and his assistants have been working very dig diligently toward that. Uh declining revenues. We have a limitation set by state legislature without going to the voters of course has greatly impacted our property tax revenues. And when I say that, um, and Tina and I and as far as the finance department, we've looked at what that's meant to the city of St. Angelo, uh, when you start reducing and limiting what the city can receive as far as sales tax revenues. Mind you, as I said a while ago, that's the largest tax revenue source that we have. When you say we're going to limit you to three and a half% year-over-year, and then they say, of course, the state legislators tell us, but we're not really limiting you three and a half% because you can take it to the voters. I'm sorry. We live in a community that's very conservative and I'm very proud of that and but you're going to have a group that's going to say no, we don't want an increase in our property taxes. You know, so quite frankly, I think we're going to be stuck at that 3 and 12%. And that's the major challenge because we've looked at what that's meant to us over the years. It's cost us millions upon millions upon millions of dollars for things that we could have we could have used that money definitely for some of the needs that we have in our community. But because of that limitation, we're there and we'll have to discuss here in the future, you know, as far as some of the things that we need to do to shore up the city. One of the things we need to talk about is do we really need to address our property tax revenues a little bit more aggressively. Uh I have always felt that we need to be super conservative in everything we do as far as our budgeting. I know Tina's approach the finance department's approach the same way but we may have to take take a step back and when we start uh when we start planning for our needs is what we have to do to to make sure that we have the monies necessary. So then we move on to opportunities uh grant opportunities that's always a big one for us whether they're state federal grants we're always pursuing those. uh we have uh

[0:14:28] we're very fortunate that we have staff that's always on the lookout constantly looking for ways to bring in those additional money so we can leverage some of the funds that we don't have right so again that's always a great opportunity for us water expansion is another opportunity as I mentioned a while ago contra river reuse project and other water supply expansion opportunities are there and quite frankly they're not just there we're reaching out for them we're going after them uh technology deployment uh mayor I heard you last week say it several times, do more with less. And so part of the So let's just let's just hold right. I used that statement too much last week. I have heard from people um I've heard from fellow councilmen, everything. I overabused that statement. I came down here this morning. I went to a meeting we had at 7. I see street and bridge out there already busting pavement prior to 7 am to fix things. We're limited. People are our number one asset. But I want everybody to understand, I'm going to walk that statement back. Our number one focus is our people to be able to accomplish what we need to accomplish. And I was hoping in a lot of that statement with the utilation utilization of AI and other things that we can do more. All right. I'm not saying we need to do more with less when it comes to people. People are value assets. So, I I get that statement. And for any of y'all that heard that want to beat me up over it, I I get it and you're you're rightfully so. But, we have an outstanding group and we have done more with less for several years in a row. It's time we work on trying to get this thing a little bit more balanced to where I when I went through 17 pages of notes from last week's Tuesday, Wednesday. I think all of them except one talked about shortage of staff and people. I don't know what we can fund out of

[0:16:30] vacancies, but long story short, I want our focus is it's kind of like an airplane. You know, it's got to be good from the inside out. You don't put on your other mask until your mask is right. All right. So, long long story short, I just wanted to walk that back fully today. That way, I don't have to wear a bulletproof vest or anything as I go out and and migrate to my car later. But, everybody's done an outstanding job with what they have. We need to look at giving them the assets to move forward with that. And then we're going to put some challenges and some initiatives forward to make that an easier task. Mayor, thank you for that explanation. I know that uh the staff here, I have always seen you as supportive of staff, you know. So, when you said uh doing more with less, I didn't I didn't take it to mean that, you know, we're not doing enough, we should do more with less. I didn't take it that way. No, this was all on me. No, the way the way that I took it was basically uh as mentioned here, that's why it's listed under technology development, right? Uh we do uh I think if anything as a staff we do understand that we talked about the pay uh that we want to make sure that we get on par with what our sister sister cities look like but in order for us to accomplish that we also have to be really careful with those FTEEs. We don't want to blow up the FTEEs. We want to keep still keep them down here. How do we do that? We do it through technology as well. There's software out there. There's certain things that y'all talked about last week that we could be using. Then let's lo use that to become more efficient and still keep our FTEEs a little bit lower. The lower the number of FTEEs, the better chance we have of really adjusting those pro uh those uh compensations so that everybody gets paid what they truly deserve. So So mayor, we understood what you're trying to at least I understood what you're trying to say. So So in our end, mixed reviews. All right. Fixed reviews. But with that, that's why I have it listed under technology deployment though. Okay. All right. Uh next item is the public private partnerships. Uh I have listed on here the airport, industrial parks and other projects quite quite frankly that we'll be exploring as well.

[0:18:32] We want to make sure that we leverage our funds, we do everything we possibly can because we are uh limited in certain areas and we want to make sure that whatever help we have out there uh because the private public partnerships doesn't just benefit the city. It also benefits that private entity that actually moves in or to invest in what we're trying to accomplish. Uh expanding uh housing options. There's plenty of buildable lots available. Uh just prioritizing affordable and mid-range construction is something that is an opportunity for us. Attract manufacturing and trade. Rail connectivity and industrial parks ideal for new business. I know that's something that economic de development does promote and try to get that new industry in here as well. Enhance tourism, leverage the riverw walk, the rodeo, arts events to boost visitor economy. So there's more uh that can be done with tourism. Uh the leverage Goodfell Air Force Base continued the DSIP program. Uh, you know, we've been working with Goodfellow Air Force Base for the longest time in partnership uh to come up with ways to help each other out and we've we've got more uh agreements signed than any other uh any other air force in the in the United States. So, we're very proud of that. But the DIP really is the defense community infrastructure program. We work together to come up with ways to fund certain infrastructure that we have that will not just help that will not just only help good fellow air force base it'll help the city of St. Angelo as well. Uh strengthen education uh workforce link uh tie Angelo State and Howard College programs to local industry. Uh we've done that to some degree in the past, but there's more that can be done in that area. Upgrade infrastructure. Invest in roads, transit, broad broadband to attract employers uh employers and residents to our community. Boost cultural scene. Build on museum success and art center to attract uh creative industry to our

[0:20:36] area as well. Renewable energy projects, open land, sunshine, ideal for solar and storage. And we've seen some of those projects come into our area. So again, those are uh definitely available. Address service deficits, improve consumer offerings to retain uh local spending. Uh and this one, what I mean by this one is at times we get calls and we get uh citizens that are saying we would really love to have a you know when you hear papad do that's that's not going to happen. Not here in St. Angelo, but other uh it's one of my favorite places. But I say that as an extreme example, but you have citizens that really would like to see more offerings here in our community. And that's possibly something that uh that's an opportunity uh for economic development for a way to really bring uh more of that to our community and keep our our citizens spending here locally, but also bring others into our community to spend here locally as well. Uh promote uh remote work migration. So this is affordable scenic. We have an affordable scenic city ideal for telecoming professionals. So, um why not promote that? I mean, we do have an ideal city. If you'd like to move to San Angelo and you're working you're working from home, you're telecommunicate telecommunicating or you're you're working on u there's a lot of businesses now that are moving toward allowing for people to work from home. Uh so, why not recruit those individuals to our community? They have they'll be here spending money here in our community. That's something that quite frankly we need to take a closer look at. Let's look at our threats. Uh the revenue cap. My goodness, I can't emphasize this enough. State imposed 3 and a half% revenue cap on property tax without voter approval. I still look at that and the reason I look at that as a threat. This is from the outside, right? And we talk about internally uh we look at strengths and weaknesses. Externally, uh we look at threats and opportunities. threats really I mentioned revenue cap

[0:22:40] on there because it's already established but our state legislators go into session every two years and quite frankly every time they go into session um we really worry it's not just the city of St. Angela, but most municipalities in the state of Texas are really worried. So, oh, no problem. Um, we worry because we don't know what is going to be implemented, what law is going to go into effect that's going to that's going to really touch on our services, our ability to provide services. So, again, for us, that's always going to be a threat. Uh, municipal cost index. the city of San Angelo and municipalities throughout the country, we look at what we call the municipal cost index. What does it cost us to provide services? What is our inflationary rate? Well, typically the municipal cost index, it ranges around 4 and a.5%. That's how much it goes up for municipalities. As I mentioned a while ago, we've been limited to three and a half% on revenues year-over-year on this property tax revenues. So, that's not even enough to cover the inflationary rate. And that becomes very problematic for us. Workforce um threats as retention challenges in public safety and skilled trades as well. Um it's really easy to lose positions to other communities, other areas because of our inability to to pay what we should be paying. Economic vulnerability, oil and gas and military funding fluctuations could hit local economy hard. So whenever, you know, we always look at B um for the Air Force when they're start talking about closing down bases, we worry about that. That'd be a a tremendous impact um in the negative way if Goodfellow Air Force Base went somewhere else. Uh so there we are so dependent on the uh what they bring to our community. Not just I mean economically what they bring to the community is tremendous. But you look at the oil and gas industry industry as well. Whenever we have a um a drop in oil price, you have um rigs going down

[0:24:46] because uh they're not hiring. U you have folks that don't longer have the spinning capacity uh that like they normally have. I really enjoy seeing individuals from Odessa Millan here in our community on the weekend. They go back to Odessa Millan. That's a good thing. But uh they come to our community and they spend money here locally. So we appreciate that and we know that whenever um the the oil field goes down then it impacts us as well. So that is something that's a threat for us. We look at climate and disaster risk. I talked about that a while ago. Tornadoes, wildfires, heat waves threaten safety and infrastructure. uh brain drain, losing talented individuals to leave for better wages in in larger areas or other communities in our um that compete with us. Uh we have commuter commuter leakage uh which is residents shop work outside due to lack of services. We talked about an opportunity for services here in our community that we definitely would like to pursue. School and crime image negative perception may deter families and businesses. I don't want to get I don't want to elaborate too much on that, but uh I think it's pretty straightforward. Housing affordability again tightening uh rising high-end prices leaving middle class squeezed and the individuals at a lower income level really don't have any true options either. Infrastructure backlog, funding delays could degrade roads, water, and etc. And that's something that quite frankly from the very get-go that we've been focused on is making sure that we truly address infrastructure that we never kicked the can down the road. Uh my first year here I've said this over and over. The first year here I sat down with Ricky Dixon and Shane Kelton and I asked is this correct? I think we had like $680,000 budgeted for streets back then. And um that's a drop in the bucket. You're not going to get anything done with that. And what happens when you kick the can down the road? You start saying we're going to hold off on funding this area because we really need the money for

[0:26:49] something else. Infrastructure, I'm sorry, you cannot kick the can down the road on infrastructure. It has to be done year over year. Now, I'm very proud that we allocate a good portion of money toward infrastructure every year, but that's something that quite frankly we cannot uh allow to to fall by the wayside. And quite frankly, there's still a lot more that can be done with infrastructure. Even with what we've done, it's been nice, but there's more that needs to be done though. Um, regional competition, uh, neighboring hubs, Milan, Odessa, even DFW attract businesses away at times. We have to be, uh, creative in how we do our economic development, our recruitment because we don't have the monies to compete when it comes to incentivizing. We don't have the type of monies that Odessa, Midland, for instance, have compared to what St. Angela has. uh 28% of the monies that come in on sales tax revenues actually go toward economic development. So you compare that to a city like Odessa Middle where 100% goes toward uh their their recruitment through toward economic development and you know that we're at a disadvantage. So what do we need to do to make sure that we address that disadvantage? We have to be more creative. We have to come up with different ways of truly addressing economic development that perhaps uh haven't been looked at in the past. And that's something I'll touch on a little bit later on as well. Um, tourism dependence event tourism reliance. Chief, are you okay back there? Okay. No, no problem. Uh, tourism dependence, event tourism reliance, vulnerable to economic swings or weather as well. So again, uh, tourism, economic development, we talk about the needs that we have from the revenue standpoint. Uh, that's why city council has focused on economic development. these past several years. But again, as economic develop uh economic development brings in more businesses to our community, it brings in more revenue to our area as well. So that's something that again I really feel is vital and key that we focus in on, continue focusing on as well. Moving on to

[0:28:52] strategic goals, first year goals, I had quite a few quite frankly that I wanted to make sure that I put out there. I didn't want to just limit it to five or six or seven. And I wanted to make sure I talked about uh the goals that I really feel that we should be looking at for the first year. Uh financial reliance number one began a cost service studies and implement city service fee increase to better align revenue and service delivery cost. In other words, we definitely we're providing a service to our community. We need to at the we have to be breaking even uh for whatever service we provide. We cannot be supplementing because we are short uh in charging what we should for those fees. We can't be supplementing from the general fund because that really takes away from areas we should be uh really prioritizing the monies towards. So again if there's a fee provided for a service then we have to at the bare minimum cover the cost for that service. What is the cost to provided? Let's make sure that we uh we receive that cost. Streamline development. break down any silos and we heard about that last week. We went and met uh I know that Rick and I had a good meeting and we met with some staff as well to get a little bit more clarification on what that looks like. Uh so we want to make sure that whatever is out there is shorn up and and and fixed immediately and and consolidate permitting process across planning, engineering, fire and health using a unified digital platform and yes even employee placement. where do we put these employees so they can work more efficiently together. So those are things immediately from just last week's meeting that we sat down and start talking about uh to ensure that we can start implementing that as soon as possible. Um employee compensation implement a compensation study and make initial adjustments towards closing the 15% pay gap with peer cities. We do understand that it's not something that happens overnight. We're not asking for employees to get paid uh 15% increase overnight. We do understand that everything has to be planned for.

[0:30:54] Everything has to be phased in and but we all we are looking for is to ensure that there's progress made toward getting us to whatever goal we establish for that uh infrastructure design launch uh initiated key design phases for water infrastructure like the Koncha River uh per permitting. We've already started that process. We've already uh working through all of that. The airport water pressure fix drainage studies that it's that's need to be updated as well. Five uh public safety staffing began hiring for critical San Angela Fire Department and St. Angelo Police Department vacancies launch the shift the the swift water rescue team that we heard about last week and fill specialized positions with SAPD. Um so those are going to be key ones. I know the more and more that I meet with the chiefs and more and more that I truly do understand the challenges that they're faced with, they want I want to make sure that we're making we're doing everything we can to address that technology inventory. Focus on technology that will make each department more efficient and effective. Analyze continuing costs. Um, you know, we have to make sure that if we do look at technology, a lot of times it's not just that one-time cost. there is a continuing cost. It comes in the form of maintenance fees that we get for some of the software that we uh that we take a look at. So, we want to make sure that we're accounting for all of that as well. But again, the technology inventory will give us an opportunity to take a look at how we can work more efficiently in each department. Uh again, sometimes the question becomes, well, we buy the technology or does that mean you can reduce your staffing? I'm going to tell you right now that I if you compare because we've done this compared to other cities, we compare very very favorably when we look at our department by department as far as the staffing. Uh we're not talking about reducing more staffing. We're talking about making the the staff more efficient. Uh if there is an area quite frankly that we take a look at and we know that the technology can really improve upon to the point of reducing

[0:32:58] staff then absolutely then we'll definitely consider doing that. But right now, what we would love to see is to allow the staff, and I'll say this again, mayor, to allow you to do more with less, but but again, without the stress connected with just doing more and more, uh to have something that will help you become more efficient will make your job a lot more attainable. So, we want to make sure we take a look at that. Um service audits, again, conduct conducted service review to determine which can uh which can be re reduced. Uh there's quite a few services that the city provides. Do we need to be providing all the services? Should we take a look at other entities outside of the city that could provide the services? And those are things that quite frankly cost us money. So those are things that we need to take a look at and say, do we need to be providing all these services or can we reduce these? It always goes back to the cities. What are our core services? Why is it the city exists? Well, we exist for certain core services that we provide to our citizens. And we just need to make sure that we're doing those. anything outside of those core services, we need to ask the question, should we be providing it? Why are we providing it to begin with? And can we reduce these? Um the uh economic development expectations. I say address a more aggressive economic development program with a keener focus on recruitment of new business and industry and the Brett program, business retention expansion program, encouraging local businesses to participate in the program and grow. Um there's talk about we do have a contract with the chamber uh as far as the services they provide uh certain recruitment services actually uh provide the BRE program. I'd love to be able to see uh I hear rumor or discussion of needing more money for that program. Um I don't have an issue with budgeting more money uh for the chamber for economic development only if it's justified. How do we justify that increase in uh in uh funding? We need to

[0:35:03] be able to see something in return for that. So again, uh from a creative standpoint, what can we do uh to shore up and become better at recruiting industry to our community? But more so, we have a lot of businesses here locally that quite frankly are committed and loyal to our community uh that we should be approaching and say and asking them, we hear that uh you're interested in growing your business. We're here to help. Help us do that for you. You know, we don't I don't see enough of that. And I think the Brett program is going to be really big for our community and showing our loyal businesses that we're loyal to them as well, that we want to do everything we can to assist them. Also, uh, future infrastructure, develop a new funding plan to address future infrastructure projects. I talked about we're at the tail end right now of our 10-year plan, $80 million uh, dollar plan. We need to come up with a different plan that truly addresses our ability to pay for that and to make sure that it's not something that we we we u we put ourselves in hot water and we develop we start borrowing more money and we just can't afford it. We want to make sure we develop a plan that quite frankly addresses that infrastructure and a way to pay for it without it uh hurting the city financially. Skyrocking vehicle equipment costs. Develop an in-depth plan to address vehicles and equipment replacement as prices continue to surge upward again much higher than the three and a half% per year that we've been I've been talking about. And I can't harp on that enough because that's so upsetting um from a financial standpoint. It really was something that hurt the city. Uh number 11, employee incentive program fine-tune and present a list of options for employees employee incentives to assist in supplementing a phased in plan uh pay plan. Uh last week I heard a little bit about some of the options that perhaps we could be looking at. Uh 4day work week uh four 10-hour uh work days. Uh there's different options we could take a look at that makes it a little bit better for staff. Even though

[0:37:06] if we can't do the 15% pay increasers, there's other things we can do actually to help supplement that and to help show the employees that we really truly do value them. And uh we love you to stay and continue working with us. This is what we're going to do for you. So we need to make sure that we take a closer look at not just the u the pay part of it, the compensation part of it, but also uh how can we incentivize employees to stay with the city of St. Angel and show them that we really do appreciate everything that they're doing for us. uh succession plan research and implement a succession plan that fits the needs of the city of St. Angelo. We have we've had some change over in the uh in HR department. I know that's something that Brian was tasked to do to start working toward that. I know Veronica and I have had a conversation as well. That's something that we'll be looking at much much closer closer. But my my goal is for this year, this first year, to have one in place that quite frankly really fits what St. Angelo is trying to do that covers one of your goals. Threeear goals infrastructure funding program create a revolving debt funding mechanism for infrastructure, including a street maintenance fee structure. We've talked in the past about au the street maintenance program. Uh cities like Abalene and other cities across the state of Texas now charge a fee for the use of the roadways. Uh that's something that we had explored in the past and that's something that quite frankly uh we need to take a closer look at again to see how this plays into our our funding our plans for that funding. So again that's something I definitely want to make sure we reintroduce in there. the comprehensive plan over. Yes, sir. I want to ask a little bit about the street maintenance fee in the context that it was moved forward to council. That was a process that included every business. Nonprofits were also included in it. So, if you look in assessed what markets that would cover,

[0:39:10] it was all of them. If a street went by your house, but it was tiered in a level to the residential cost was minimal. Minimal. Correct. But for those that are government entities or nonprofits in this town that have a high use of our street bridge, it would address them at a level closer to their volume. Correct, Mayor. That is correct. Uh as a matter of fact, you look at a lot of the businesses locally. There's businesses quite frankly that put a little bit more wear and tear on our streets. You know, they use bigger vehicles. Uh but we look at nonprofits as well. One thing that uh we we've always uh it's always been troubling for me is that everyone uses our roadways. use our infrastructure. That that should be something that should be paid for not just by the the the taxpayers or our community, but anyone that's using our roadways should be paying that. That includes nonprofits as well. And that's why we, Mary, you're correct. That's why we took a look at that and said, "Hey, we implement this. We want to make sure that we capture all the users of our infrastructure of our roadways and make sure that um that we we take everybody to task and say, "Hey, these are being used." and we want to make sure that we present we have straight se uh safe streets for you to to drive on. Um it's embarrassing quite frankly if you're recruiting industry to our community from economic development standpoint if they drive around they see roadways that don't that aren't aren't up to par. We're asking you to come and invest in our community. We can't even invest in our own community. Uh that sends the wrong message. But yeah, absolutely that's something we have to take a look at. um the comprehensive plan overhaul that is year three and I I have heard enough that I know and I don't mean I have heard enough uh but I have you know I think if anything it is a priority that we have that we should have because we have an outdated um comprehensive plan uh one that was updated back in what 2014 but really we need to take a whole look at at all of it and start

[0:41:12] from the get-go and take a look at how our community has grown, how it's changed, and what our expectations are for the future. And we have to make sure that we address all of that. The comprehensive plan overall is a way to do it. So complete and adopt a near a new 20 40-year comprehensive plan, a master the plan as well, and zoning ordinance revisions. That's going to be key for us. Uh number three, business retention and recruitment. launch a fullscale business retention and expansion program and continue improving uh improving industrial park infrastructure. Again, I emphasized the prep a while ago. There has to be a lot more emphasis on prep. Uh we need a lot more done in that area. So, I know that there there can be done a lot more done and we need to fire facility. Uh we've talked about last week the construction of fire station number nine to address growth and address that ISO. We currently have that ISO1 rating. There's a um there's a threat that that could drop to it too. We need to have more discussion on that though and really kind of formulate a plan for how that's going to look like. And uh it'd be nice if we could really uh develop a plan that allows us to have the facility in place in 3 years, but there's going to be more discussion on that. But again, that is one of those goals that I have. Real time chrome uh real time crime center. And you heard the chief talk about this last week. Uh develop and staff a real-time crime center to enhance uh proactive policing and regional intelligence sharing. the the the chief and his assistants are all about technology about how to become more efficient, how to gather in information more quickly, how to disseminate that information, how to make use of that information. Uh the real time crime center is one of those areas that uh he's emphasized enough to me that I think it's really something important that we should be uh gearing toward water supply. secure long-term water for Lake U Nazworthy and the

[0:43:15] airport, address the systems pressure for fire suppression. Uh we've already started taking a closer look at that, but that's something that uh needs to be implemented and and and enrolling in by year three. Year five goals um a sustainable infrastructure investment improve upon a city-wide preventive maintenance program for streets water drainage and fleet leverage an asset management uh platform that can help us uh do that police facility that facility is very old chief I think that you stressed upon last week that they've been talking about this in 70 80 1990 it's been a a long time coming uh we need to develop a really good plan to make that happen. And uh that's part of that 5-year goal that we need to make sure that we have a brand new police facility in place. And what that looks like, we don't know. It could be a brand new building. It could be a building that we found that we rehabbed and made it really work for us. It could be so many different ways to take a look at that. We look at Abene and what they built out there. Actually, they bought a a home box store that I closed down and converted that to a a police station. It's serving them very well. So again, in our area, we want to do everything we can to make sure that we address that police facility, water supply expansion, fully operationalize a Contra River water reuse, and strong progress towards Fort Stockton Holdings water. Um, these are key on paper, we we're looking pretty good as far as our future for water, but I don't want it on paper. It needs to be something that we're currently working on, certainly something that we're actually achieving and that's something that needs to be done by year five. Uh we want to make sure that we have secured that bed and banks permit which by the way we should be uh Shane receiving by mid July as far as a draft permit and start working toward um really securing that water water supply. uh competitive workforce uh system in place by year five. Achieve full market alignment for employee compensation and

[0:45:20] reduce vacancy burnout through improved succession planning and HR tech technology. Economic diversification positions San Angelo as a hub for data centers, aviation, and light manufacturing through airport industrial park buildout and workforce alignment. there's quite quite frankly more that can be added to year five and year three. We can talk about that as uh we we march toward that here later on. But again, those are some of the key areas that I that I wanted to make sure we addressed the rest of it quite frankly. Hold on. I want to make sure that Okay, I'm doing good. Uh the rest of it is the required resources that I've listed on there for uh years one uh year three and uh year five. And quite frankly what we did with the staff I went through there and took a look at what would be required in order for us to accomplish some of these goals. A lot of it is going to be the city council and and city management working closely together. It's going to be department uh departments working very close together as well uh to make sure that that communication is excellent that we have the ability to um to implement what we have uh planned for and uh there's just a lot there as far as the financial resilience we look at year one service fee increases cost of service studies um we could very easily do it and I talked about the prophet has no honor in his own hometown a lot of times if you hire our consultant to come in and do a cost of service study that actually uh bodess much better probably with with the citizens when they say or the the people or the entities paying for those fees can know that it wasn't just something that was done internally. We had a professional come in and do the assessment on that. Uh so that's something that we could take a look at. Legal and council support for ordinance changes, communication staff for public

[0:47:22] outreach, uh financial modeling tools and staff time would be required in order to make that happen. Streamline development, break down any silos, unified permitting uh system. Uh citywide permitting software which was addressed last week, cross departmental training, IT and GIS support and staff time for business process mapping. And that mapping really truly shows where our shortfalls are, where the bottlenecks are, and what we need to do to make sure we can be more efficient. Employee compensation, we need that compensation study and initial adjustments. That'll be about 150,000 for classification and compensation study. The uh human resource information system, the HRIS implementation budget is about 160,000 for phase one. the human uh human resources and finance collaboration. These are two departments that have to work very closely together which they do already but uh especially for this implement implementation will be really critical for us and then city council commitment to phase in plan uh before infrastructure design launch uh water at airport and asworthy drainage contra permit we'll need engineering design consultants TCQ coordination for bed banks permit we've already I think think made good strides on that water utility and engineering staff working together to make this the launch work. Budgeted capital planning funds as well. And then moving to public safety staffing San Angela Fire Department internal funding. We already have as mentioned about the swift water rescue team. We have equipment in place. It's just a matter of funding for the staffing as well. St. Angelo Police Department recruiting and ongoing and onboarding funds. current funds that we have are funds that we can allocate toward the recruitment for some of the needs that they have. Grant applications, we've uh you saw an item at the city council last time for the safer grant and that's applying for grants that allow us to hire more uh

[0:49:25] public safety officers uh and get assistance from the from the feds initially. Uh the safer grant, for instance, pays 75% of the cost for the first year and the second year and then 35% for the third year. So that really saves the city money on areas in areas uh that we needed anyway that we were going to have to move toward hiring regardless. So that's going to be something that's key for us. The three-year goals required resources, infrastructure funding program, uh revolving fund and street fee. As I mentioned a while ago, we need council support for debt issuance or dedicated fees, finance and legal staff to structure program, capital planning and budget office staff and public engagement and legal reviews. Comprehensive plan overhaul about 600,000. Uh Erin, if you're out there, that's about right. Yes, sir. All right. We got 600,000 for consultant planning services cross departmental teams uh working together planning GIS public works and anyone and everyone that needs to be working together uh will be there community engagement campaign this doesn't happen without engaging the community to make sure that we have their support that we have their input and what we want to do moving forward with that comprehensive plan and then council champions and and public hearings. So, uh, business retention and, uh, and recruitment, updated chamber contract with K with KPIs. Um, in other words, in a way to really measure their success to make sure that we're really getting our our money's worth. Costa DC staff and economic development team working close closely together, industrial park infrastructure funding with grants or with local funds and data and marketing tools that are necessary to make it happen. Then we look at real-time crime center. Chief, there's something again that you presented. Uh it's about $ 1.5 million for equipment, software in space, three to three to five full-time personnel, inter agency, and IT integration and grant uh writing support. The one thing

[0:51:30] that stood out in my meeting with the chief on Friday is we call ourselves a quality of life community. We can't be a quality of life community if we have for instance this is one area when we talk about public safety that our crime rates a little bit higher to the the cities we compare to in some instances much higher. Um we can't have that. And so we really need to make sure that we uh dedicate funding uh to make sure that the police department has what it needs to do its job and to be fair with them because we can't have crime rates continuously go up when I know that they're putting forth their best effort. But not enough resources resources are there and available. So we want to make sure that we address that. We cannot be one of the highest crime rate cities compared to our sister communities. We just can't do that. Five-year goals require resources. Number one, sustainable infrastructure uh investment. That's with preventative maintenance and asset management, asset management software to really closely monitor the the changes that we're making to our infrastructure and recording those changes to make sure we come back around and uh maintain those areas within a certain time frame. um streets, storm water fleet and utility maintenance funding, GIS and condition assessment tools, interdep departmental maintenance planning team. Again, a lot that can be done uh within those five years if we just we're smart about it and we put it together in a manner that doesn't cost the city too much money, but does at least give us the funding to really address the needs that we have. police and fire facilities. I already talked a little bit about that as far as fire station number nine and also the police station, what it's going to take to really um fund that. And again, it's going to be imperative for us that if we're going to be building those facilities that we're also manning them and that we look for ways to really pay for that without us having to cover the full the full cost itself. water supply expansion, the Contra River reuse, the airport pressure upgrades. We need water

[0:53:34] rights acquisition and permissance consultants, engineering, construction and pressure modeling. We need state and federal funding through the Texas Water Development Board. Uh we have multi- agency coordination and we got to ensure that that's going on. Uh number four is competitive workforce system. Uh we've talked a lot about that. I won't go to too much detail. the full HRIS implementation uh sustaining uh sustained funding for pay plan adjustments, succession planning resources and and leadership training and market analysis every 3 to 5 years to make sure that we truly are maintaining and staying where we should be. And then number five, economic diversification and growth uh data centers, aviation, workforce alignment. So the COSA DC infrastructure and marketing fund in place is something that that uh KOSA DC works on airport and industrial park expansions, utility upgrades to electricity, water, and even broadband workforce training partnerships with Howard College and ASU. So these were some of those areas quite frankly that you look at when you when you start looking at goals and you start talking about in order for us to accomplish these goals, what is it going to take? There's a lot that the city of St. Angelo needs to accomplish. And um it's going to take a lot of planning. It's going to take a lot of hard work. It's going to take a lot of efficiencies. It's going to take a you know it's going to take us taking a step back and and reevaluating and looking at how we can better do this and how you know to have the action steps to make that happen to have the KPIs in place to be able to better measure whether we're meeting with success or not. So these are all those key areas. So again, that is um again my presentation for the citywide goals. And um and again, I don't know if you have any questions. I think we're I think I hit it right on time. Three minutes off. But if you have any questions, feel free to ask. Tina looks like she's ringing to go though. So with that, then we'll move we're going to move on then to um the revenues and

[0:55:36] expense discussion and also maybe some optional funding that we need to consider. with that. Tina, it's um it's your show, ma'am. Daniel, did you have anything on these this first slide? Do you want me to go past it to my presentation and come back? Yeah. She put up there. Okay. That's what we got. So, okay. So, this slide is just showing the three taxing entities. Of course, the city, county, and school district set the tax rates, and then the appraisal district um sets property values at market valuations. Um the separation of power ensures that there is not one entity solely responsible for setting um the property tax bill. For property tax um 23% of our base is commercial properties and 68% is residential. The rem remaining 9% is personal property tax. Um, of course, um, most cities have a higher commercial base, um, than we do, which lessens the burdens on the on the citizens and the property tax rate. Um, of course, we seek to increase the commercial tax base through our efforts in economic development and adding commercial properties to the tax role. Um, and the residential tax base can be increased by infield development of vacant lots. Um, again, reducing pressure on the tax rate. And Tina, I think that's important to really emphasize, right, that the more commercial businesses that we bring into St. Angelo, the the lower the impact on the the res residential park for taxpayer because right now that burden is pretty high. We want to make

[0:57:37] sure that we reduce that burden by bringing those um those businesses to our community or expanding upon the upon the current business as well. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Um so the current property tax rate is 0.7544 per $100 valuation. Um FY25 valuations were certified at $7.7 billion. Um and our tax levy at 98% collection rate was $57 million which represented a 3.3% increase in valuations. Um of that property tax revenue about almost 10 million of that went for debt service. $544,000 went to the street infrastructure fund and the remainder went to M. And of course, there's also amounts that go to the tiers. About $1.2 million in the south zone and about $1.3 million went to the north zone. Um those amounts to actually do include the pro the part that comes from the county as well. Um new improvements this year were up $90 million. From preliminary, very preliminary estimates from the appraisal district, we're looking at about $125 million in new properties added to the role for this next year. And this just showing a breakout of that property tax rate. Um maintenance and operations is represents 6178 of the tax rate. 0.72 goes to the street infrastructure fund and our debt rate was.1294. Um we do of course expect an increase to the debt service um rate because of the coliseum uh coliseum bond referendum that was passed by the voters. Uh when we first talked with Vince and our financial adviserss about that they expected a 4.7 ccent increase to the tax rate related to the coliseum bond issue. um with preliminary very preliminary I will state reiterate that um valuations it looks like it'll have a little less pressure on that tax rate because

[0:59:38] valuations are going to increase a little more than what they had used as a as a pretty conservative estimate when they did those um ran those numbers for us yes you want to go back just hold right there of our rolling debt you have a percentage just an idea of what we get rid of say over five years. How much we decrease that if any of all of those things that are coming due I know we have certain bonds and things that have come due. None of that has a close future. Is that all a distant 15 20 years before the majority of that goes away. I like talking you know we did what 120 million in streets and there's several things we funded. Do any of those go away in the near future? No. Okay. Not in the near future. We did um keep a placeholder in our debt structure and we have kept this for many years of $25 million um in that tax rate just in case we have something come up that a larger capital project that we needed to fund. We also keep a placeholder in there for um two million $2 million in the event that we decide to move our equipment replacement program into a rolling debt every other year type program. Um but with that, you know, that's kind of what our capacity is right now. Okay. And like I said, with even with those placeholders um in our debt structure, we still expect the rate to increase a little less than what we had originally thought for the policy. I just think people need to understand we have not done a lot of things historically and we have gotten behind what we've done to take our debt. A lot of those bonds are 20-year bonds and I think the last road one we did, wasn't that a 30 million? Some of them are 25-year bonds, too. Yeah. Yeah. And so, we're looking at those. We We still have that burden for another The last street bond issue we did was 20 million. Okay. Yeah. Which was more than what we had been doing, but we were able to do it because we had the capacity at that point. So, all right. Thank you. You bet.

[1:01:41] No, that was the last one out of the five. Of course, this is just um showing sales tax. Of course, sales tax is 8 and a4%. 6 and a quarter of that goes to the state. 1% comes to the city's general fund. Half a percent goes to the development corporation and the other half percent goes to the county. For sales tax revenue, we're currently over budget by $624,000 as of June. Um, our year-to- date collections, like Daniel mentioned earlier, up by 3.36%. And then projected marginal revenue for sales tax for the current year. Um, by the end of the year, we expect to have almost $1.5 million in excess of budget. Um, this chart's just kind of showing budget and actuals for sales tax and then our month overmonth trends for the same for the sales tax over the last couple of years as well. And now we'll get to the numbers. Property tax um is where we would expect it to be at this point in the year at 96% of collections. Sales tax again over budget. We're at 72% of what we had budgeted. Um and this is at 67% through the year just to give you some context. Um alcohol and bingo tax um is just about on target. Bingo tax is received quarterly. So sometimes that can look a little off. franchise taxes over budget at 70%. Um, but we are continuing to see a a sharp decline in television franchise year-over-year. Um, and then other sources um includes where's your blue book? That's mostly Oh, charges for service. I'm sorry, I skipped that one. That's at 50%. Um, a lot of that is from, um, we have an agreement with the county

[1:03:45] to do their streets. Um, and so about $2 million we're short because we haven't received that back yet. Uh, the SRO program is a little short, but that's based on reimbursement from the school district. So, we're seeing it's kind of slightly skewing the number there as well. Um, and then the other big one was um, where was that, Jonathan? Oh, municipal courts down a little bit. um we had budgeted $2.1 million there and they're only at 49% of their revenue budget. So that kind of gives you an idea of um where we're kind of short on on the revenue side for right now at this point in the year. And then other revenue sources includes interest uh indirect cost and transfers in any questions on this slide before we line. [Laughter] All right. Checks in the mail. Yeah. Okay. We'll move on to expenditures then. Um public safety at 66% of their expenditure budget. That of course includes police, fire, and uh municipal court. Question right quick. Municipal court also has a revenue part to it, right? So I have people talked about that. Is is that more of an enterprise fund calculation or the municipal court revenue comes mostly from fines and fees? Okay. It's not really an enterprise fund. No. Okay. those fines and fees would be related to citations and things like that. So, it's hard to book when you receive that. I mean, I had that discussion with Sylvia. Mhm. Okay. Thank you. You bet. Public works includes engineering operations,

[1:05:48] traffic and street and bridge, as well as street lighting. Public services includes parks and recreation and the swimming pool. Planning and development services includes um planning, permits and inspections. Um neighborhood and family services includes animal services, social services, and code compliance. And then of course there there's the health department. Um government includes city council, CMO, um city clerk, construction management. Uh administration includes legal, real estate, finance, billing and receipts, IT, purchasing, HR and transfers includes capital grants, debt service and other transfers out for general fund supported funds. Any questions on any of those year-to- date expenditure budgets? You know, I'm just just to sort of clarify for my mind, uh, all the year to date actuals basically that's um since they're all roughly around C6, it's basically we're twothirds of the way through the fiscal year and that's kind of what they're based off of. But the budget is a full year, correct? Yes, the budget is the full year. So the year-to- date compared with the revised budget is what percent they're at year to date throughout through the year. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. and comparing with the 67% like you said. Any other questions on expense? Okay, this um chart shows that our property tax represents 50% of our general fund revenue. Sales tax is 25% like Daniel mentioned earlier. Those are our two biggest sources of revenue in the general fund. And this slide kind of shows you that the property tax which is intended to cover the cost of public safety doesn't actually do that because our public

[1:07:50] safety budget represents 59% of our total expenditures. And then expenses by type. Um 76% of our expenses are personnel related. Um that would be expected in the general fund since most of the general fund is covering services that we provide which includes personnel. And then moving on to optional optional funding sources. Um I mentioned earlier marginal sales tax revenue we expect to be um close to $1.5 million in excess of our budget by year end. Of course, grants. We've mentioned several times we we're ongoing attempts by all city departments to get grants wherever they can and however they can. Um rolling debt issues that would relieve about $2 million from the general fund. As I mentioned earlier, we do have a placeholder in the debt capacities uh models. um if we chose to do something like that to relieve pressure on the general fund. Then there's the general fund fund balance um which um we don't necessarily recommend using but there is um some capacity there. We recommend a 90-day contingency. The general fund currently has an extra 16 days. So, we've got 106 day days in our fund balance right now, and that represents about $4.3 million. Um, that would be available for capacity there for onetime projects. Um, and then, of course, long-term debt issue for larger capital projects. We have that placeholder of $25 million there. And then, of course, worst case scenario would be a tax rate election. Tina on the fund balance um 90 days and fund balance would be kind of kind of key and important that we maintain to that at least that point. Right. So you said 106 days and fund balance. So between the 90 days and 106 days in fund balance there's a dollar amount connected to that $2.6 million something

[1:09:53] like 43 almost 4.4 million. Okay. Very good. Yeah. Good. So, I don't know Daniel if you So, so those were some opportunities for funding some projects and there was a slide back here. Daniel, I didn't know if you wanted to talk through any of these items or is this just for reference that was that was sent over from you guys. So, yeah, if you'd like to do that, that's great. I think if anything, I just want to make sure the city council members had kind of a a grasp of some of those monies that may be available to us, especially as we start talking about the the priorities for this year and even moving into the future, right? What is it that we want to do? But I think definitely for this year is what we want to make sure that we cover as we go into the budget uh budget discussions as well. So, I know that you talked about the marginal sales tax revenues and what may be anticipated this year uh which was about $1.4 $4 million. Uh grants, of course, we always apply for all the grants that we can get on our end, but the rolling debt issue. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that and how maybe that plays into into our strategy and how we may address the needs that we have? Well, right now we budget to transfer out of the general fund about $2 million a year, which includes the money that goes to the equipment replacement fund where Ryan Kramer purchases vehicles and things like that for general fund supported departments. And then there's $250,000 there that we transfer every year um to build up for the fire department to build up money to save up over a couple of years to buy our fire truck. But of course, we know those costs are increasing, you know, exponentially as well. Um, so the rolling debt program would relieve $2 million that could stay in the general fund um for other council um priorities basically to fund in this next year and ongoing years. Things like um salary increases or increases to

[1:11:55] other um ongoing costs. Like there's some ongoing costs here with some of these requests. These requests on this list are actually um things that were like one-time cost. Um, and so they were things that could be funded with one-time money such as excess sales tax or excess general fund fund balance. Um, and so that's what this list represents. This is a very small sampling of the total requests that were submitted to um, city manager and finance um, for target increase requests. I think the total was somewhere around five. Jonathan, you have that slightly over $5 million. The total number of in of trir was 6 million. 6 million $6.3 million. Okay. But that's combining both the onetime costs and the ongoing costs as well, which that's what you're using. Jonathan, do you have broken out just the uh T hours for the one-time funding requests? The the one-time funding, which are these items up here, total 1.2. Now, is this this is from the entire covers the entire city? Uh these are the requests submitted by departments during the two process. Yes sir. Thank you. And then the ongoing would include the other 4 something million to get you up to the six. Yes sir. There's an additional 5 million there. Okay. Thank you. Mhm. I don't see a total on that page. He's got it in a spreadsheet. It's 1.2 million total for these one time amounts. So, I don't know if you have any questions about any of these that are on this list. Um, if so, we could have representatives from the department come up and talk or um move on to the next. I do want to emphasize though that $1.2 $2

[1:13:57] million or even the $6 million. Uh these are requests submitted by directors. Some of those they understand it's not something they just want to put it out there to make sure that we understand that this is something that they're looking for. They're not necessarily looking for that expenditure for this year or they may be looking at it from a phasing in standpoint as well that we actually start considering in the near future. But it's not something that's a a have to this year when we start talking about the $6 million. there's a dollar amount that we take a look at and say, "Well, these are have twos, so we definitely need to make sure we fund these." But these actually we can work with those directors to make sure that we can phase it in or talk about when those those could be paid for in the near future. Right. And um before Daniel presents the budget to the city council, we do meet with Daniel, the finance staff, and we go through all of these requests. And there are things like he said that are have to. For example, if there's an increase in a contract, well, we know we're going to have to pay that whether we decide to put that in the budget or not. So, there are things that are have to, there are things that are need to, and then there are things that are want to is kind of how we go through it. And then Daniel will decide to fund um everything that we can before we bring the budget to city council. Um especially for those have two items and before we bring you the budget that shows whatever marginal revenue then is left, those will be included. and you do a breakdown of those marginal revenues once we get into the budget process. We'll have a spreadsheet that actually has that broken down what those marginal revenues look like and then city council can make a determination as far as how those marginal revenues will be used at that point. That's right. Let let me make a comment just maybe for the for for the benefit of the group on the on some of the placeholders you have and I'm going to say specifically on the on the rolling debt. You've got 2 million placeholder in there just as one council member. I'm going to rely on you all to say this is the year to do that. I don't know if this, you know, I've got

[1:16:02] lots of wants. Um, but I don't know if that's the wisest thing financially. So, I'm going to look to you all to say this is the best year as far as we're concerned to use that. So, I'm just going to Thank you, Tommy. And that's and that's what we we uh we paint over this stuff. It's not something that's easy for us. We really take a close look. We sit down with the count with the directors and ask more in-depth questions about, you know, the their requests as well. So when we do come forward to the city council members, we are presenting to you what we really truly feel is the the needs that we have specifically for this year. So this for this funding year. So yes, we will bring that to you and say this is what we've evaluated and this is what we've come up with at this point though. So well thank you for saying that too because my approach has always been this you're the city manager. this is your budget that you're going to present to us and say this is my recommendation to you as the city council. Um I think the seven of us know yeah we've got I guess you'd say the final say so on that but again you all are the subject matter experts. So thanks thanks for saying that. But I I rely heavily on what you say this this is what we're recommending. though that may not agree with every single department um because they may want more um but I'm going to I'm I'm I'm going to listen um strongly to to what your recommendation. Thank you Tommy. I appreciate that. Um again on our end um yeah you'll see that I think if anything and this is why this is so important right here and I still can't believe you guys gave us three days to do this. This is wonderful. Um but today after that we do this part of that decision that that's made is based on what y'all would like to see when we start looking at strategic priorities right and uh that's what we'll be working on here in just a little bit. It'll be just an exercise quite frankly probably easy exercise to

[1:18:05] take a look at but what we bring from from that what we take from that is part of where our mindset is as well. start looking at what to fund, especially what's most important to fund this year. And it's going to be based on strategic priorities, based on what the city council said. No, we we need to we want to do this. This is something that's important to us. So, uh again, these exercises are very important to us. So, this next one we do will be to kind of draw from y'all what y'all really feel you'd like to see as far as your strategic priorities. Okay. But thanks for that, Tommy. I agree. Yeah. And a lot of that, Tommy, will depend on, you know, how property tax valuations come in. Um, and so we won't know that, of course, until at least July 25th. But once we do receive those valuations and do the truth and taxation worksheet and figure out what we've got to work with, I think then Daniel and I will talk about what's the best recommendation as far as rolling debt, whether we need to do that this year or not. Um, and then that's what we would bring to our general fund workshop in August. Good point. So, what I'd like to throw in there a as we look at those and establish our priorities and I went back and looked at your list that's your your one-time request there. There are some of those requests that service a few people as as we establish our priorities. We need to establish what prioritywise would help a 100,000 people and work our way down. If it was up to me, I would I love the airport. Okay, aviation is my thing, but I I think what's important is we on this council have to look at what serves the most people most efficiently. All right? And some of those things that's on those list are are key, but they're small in the request. Let's not ignore something that, you know, as we establish a priority, let's start with what services everybody, and then we'll go down to what generates revenue because that will make us more money in the long run. But I get that. I just don't want us to forget that, you know, there there are things that help everybody and there's things that just help a select few.

[1:20:07] Let's keep it prioritized on what helps all the citizens up front. Good point. Okay. Any other questions for Tina? Tina, you really put us way ahead there. You go, girl. Yeah, you did. So, uh, with that, thank you, ma'am. I sure do appreciate it. We actually were scheduled for a break after the Tina presentation, but she finished it quite quite quickly. It's up to y'all. We can take a break or we can start off on the next one, which is discuss and set new strategic priorities. Yeah. Break out. Okay. Yeah, we'll take a break then. I want to say thank you, Jonathan, because they got us back on schedule. Ahead of schedule. So, it's 15 minutes is what we take a quick break, y'all. Hey, we're off a break. We are moving forward uh to item five, which is establish citywide priorities and goals. But before we do that, uh we kind of want to give an overview kind of an update of last year's strategic priorities, which city council had established infrastructure, public safety, economic development, and employee compensation. So, just want to give uh the city council members a little bit of an overview of some of those accomplishments to do in the 2024 fiscal year. So, we're going to kick it off with uh infrastructure with Shane. So, it's your your shot, Shane. All right. Good morning, council. um looking at infrastructure that we've completed back in the uh back in 2024 and kind of and kind of brought it up into current kind of where we are today as well because a lot of these infrastructure projects never they don't they don't coincide great with uh fiscal years or even calendar calendar years. So, uh, they're kind of rolling projects, but as a kind of looking what we completed in 2024, uh, was Chadburn phase A, um, which was the park down there between, uh, the Koncho River and Borgard. Uh, got that completed. Jackson Street right there beside the Chick-fil-A and the Taco

[1:22:09] Bell. And then a little bit some waterline work that we did across there. And again, as we're going through these, these all include um street water, wastewater, pedestrian signals, all of it. Uh and then even on College Hills, uh with the underground drainage that we did there and also bringing up leveling up some of the uh bridges going over the Aoya uh again working on the drainage issues there. Of course, Howard Street as well we completed and got that in place. And then the north Chadurn all the way from H uh US67 or the loop all the way up to 43rd Street uh was completed in that. Um just uh kind of a quick quick total on that not exact but that was approximately 66.6 million worth of infrastructure work uh that was completed in 24. Uh currently yes sir uh 66.6ish sixish million. Yeah. Uh and then currently uh for on the street side uh again some of this does include the water uh with the Glenna Edund 29th Street project that we currently have going on uh finishing up that um and we uh hopefully uh that one's uh roughly 40% complete at this time and expected completion in August of 26. uh Chadurn phase B. Uh we're uh actually we're working with text dot on this and it's a lot of coordination with text dot as we're moving through this because a portion of this is grant funded uh part part of that CACP uh dollars portion of that is going into this project as well too. So working with text dot hoping actually get our documents out, our bidding documents out in July and kind of finalizing everything up with the state in August as we're moving into that time period to get that project up and rolling and actually get construction started. Uh and then at 14th in Chadburn, uh we are putting in a

[1:24:12] new signal um at that location as well. uh that currently what we have going on right now uh that we consider in construction is uh with utilities, water, drainage, all of it together uh street money is 40 million um 300,000 40 million 300,000 million. Yeah. Million. Yeah. Um and then as we move into the um um and just quickly I'll go on some other things that we actually have in design just real quickly won't won't go long but just in design currently um Sunset Drive we don't and let me reiterate that I'm going to tell you what we have in design but these aren't actually uh all of them aren't funded yet u but we do have uh Sunset Drive which we do have fun a funding source availability for. Then we have Johnson and University Streets. Uh we have Avenue in. We have Foster Road uh from the loop basically um up to River Valley Lane. Um and then we have um our CACP phase 2 which is the pedestrian uh loop that's basically around town goes up 29th and back around. And so, um, all of those that we have in design, while, uh, only one of them is funded, that equates to about $82.1 million worth of projects we have in design. Uh, maintenance, as we're looking in our Yes, talking to the mic. Of the things you have in progress, how much do you have funds that have not been used that you have the funds, but we're waiting on say Reese Albert or Darnell or somebody for? Do you have an idea? of what we have left from the bond funding. Yeah. Do you have bond funding that's not used? Um well, we have a lot of mostly we have a lot of encumbered. The portion of it that we do not have used is roughly 24 million right now. Okay. It's all I need.

[1:26:17] Um maintenance. um in our maintenance program. LA in 2024, we uh we did uh the sil coat program and then we also did the pre pressure pave downtown um in that area. A little different uh little different application down there. But again, we don't want didn't want a lot of loose rock, a lot of that stuff that you get with regular seal coat, chip seal. Um and so we did a little different application down there in that area, especially when we're looking at Chadurn phase A and not wanting to track tar and things like that onto the onto the new cement. Um and so but uh in 2024 we spent 5.6 million uh on maintenance u for sil coat and the pressure seal. As we're moving into 2025 they should be starting the silk coat project uh within the next two to three weeks uh in July and we have uh currently encumbered uh for the city's portion of that roughly 4.5 million for this year for for the maintenance programs there. And we do have and we have already started uh design for for the 2026 season. Is that about an annual cost about four and a half to five million? That's that's what that's that that's that's the that's the amount of money that we have in our maintenance program. Uh we are uh again those are about the same number of dollars that we've had since about 2015. So again, we are starting to see our cycle times drift a little further apart than every eight years like we that we want to maintain. Uh but again that's that's one of the things that we've discussed with Daniel in the budget in the budget uh workshop so far that we've had internally Shane that's because the the cost is just going up as far as petroleum products emulsion and everything else the ash fall the prices keeps going up. So on our end what we could have knocked out 8ear cycle now it's taking 9 10 years in order to kind of back around and do the same work again. Correct. Yeah. Correct. Yep. That's that's where we're seeing our cycle time start to expand just due to inflation inflationary costs. Okay. Uh let's see. Moving on. Uh for the water side of things, that is not

[1:28:22] included with the street um uh the street project, street rehabilitation project in in 24. We completed the&&m pipe bursting project where we u had a uh old cast iron man uh that was an eight. It was portions of it were eight, portions of it were 12. And so we did, we upsized the whole thing uh to a 12- in uh new PVC water line. And so that was completed in 2024. Um that was um that project was about 4.8 million. Uh currently in construction in conjunction with Tex DOT and their improvements on SL 378, which is basically old Christoval Road from um basically South Chadron all the way out to the loop. Um that project is uh 4.4 million and it's uh estimated to be complete in um our portion of it late 2025. Tex dot will be about another year year and a half to finish up their portion of it. Uh they they will be uh of course they're using concrete pavement so it's a pretty good process and of course expanding the width of it as well. So again textile will be a little bit little bit later. Uh but we should finish up all the water um here here going into this fall. Uh currently in design, we have the 18inch uh Randolph waterline improvement project um which will take it from roughly behind Mayfield paper uh and bring it all the way up to highway just the other side of Highway 67 and tie back into MLK there. Um and again that's an old 18inch cast that runs under the river. Again ha been having several issues with that with that line for years. And so again, getting going to get that one replaced coming up um in this uh next fiscal year. Uh Lake View Heroes Drive up on the north side of town. Uh we are looking um on on that project. Um, we're looking to uh basically bring water from Armstrong down uh Ley Heroes Drive all the way

[1:30:25] back uh to tie into a line, a 12-in line right in front of um basically the fairgrounds where the elevated storage tank is. So, we're going to be putting that in there and putting some uh again getting that 12-in tied in and getting some circulation, better circulation up in that area. And then uh working at the Matthysse field for uh fire suppression um problems out there currently. Uh this this project is strictly to deal with fire fire suppression um out there and that that has just gotten underway u with all of this. We're looking um six roughly about $14 million worth of estimated and currently the Matisfield one is way too early to get a good OPC on, but again estimated 5 to 7 million just for that project. But with the other two uh we should be should be in around the $14 million uh range for those projects right there. Um and then we get into the maintenance programs currently going through the AMI meter replacement program. uh for the water utility. Uh current it's about a 14.5 million dollar project on that one as well. So um as we're moving on Nope, went too far. uh infrastructure for wastewater um completed in 2024. We had the um North Koncho River uh CIP program which was bring rehabilitating a line uh from 14th Street back down to basically Santa Fe golf course. Um that was an old clay line that was having quite a few issues in um actually had a really bad issue with it right under uh US87 and so uh we were glad to get that one fixed. Um and then of course currently uh in construction uh we're at the very final stage of this but it's the Lake Nazworthy uh trunk main project and lift station project. Um again the lift station is complete. We are doing

[1:32:27] we're currently working uh with the tie-ins and getting everything tied in u to get everything functional and moving on that should be completed this fall and that was about a $32 million project. Um and then currently in design we have the uh North Koncho shallow wastewater improvement which is actually taking going to take the shallow lift station off which we do have uh sanitary sewer overflow issues with from time to time in its proximity to the river. Uh so that's very concerning for us and so we're looking very very forward to decommissioning that lift station taking this gravity which will take a lot of the area from the central high school area a lot of that offline or out of a pump station and move it again across uh into Santa Fe Park and then all tie in right there at Santa Fe Park. Shane, I've got a question on lift stations. Once we decommission one, can we repurpose it or are they pretty much used to the point it's not worth the money to take it out? Uh, a lot of the we we do we we'll take all of the pumps, a lot of the stainless steel fittings, a lot of the stuff that we can reuse out of them to help rebuild other ones that are not being decommissioned. So, we do salvage all of that old equipment back into a maintenance program and back into our maintenance program. And so now the wet wells, things like that, we can't do anything with, but uh yeah, but all of the things that we can uh we we put back into our Yeah. put back into our system. Uh okay. And I think that's and then currently in design we do have um Nope, that was it. I think I'm good on my end. So, uh any questions on as a Fast and Furious update, but Shane, as you made your you were talking about the Lake View Heroes, could you just take a minute maybe out of your time and talk to people, tell them how important it is that these things come in a circular loop? Like you touched base on it there with the system for Lake View Heroes. you're making a circular loop to better get the water distribution correct. I mean, anytime that we're looking with new subdivisions or like this up there where we have de areas that have developed in one

[1:34:30] direction or the other, again, a lot of times we don't have a loop system. We have deadend mains. Uh, and those deadend mains, you see us flushing from time to time around town, the the fire hydrants and all of those things. That's because we do have those dead in mains and and we and you know that water gets stale in there and we start losing our chlorine residual and and of course we want to make sure that we do maintain safe water for everybody to utilize throughout our entire system uh even on those dead mains. So again, to loop those systems to make sure that we're getting that water moving through the system, keeps that water fresher and helps us not only with chlorine residuals, but uh also, you know, uh disinfection byproducts, those type things. Just keeping that water moving, keeping it fresh is highly important for our system. So, anytime that we can loop a system, see issues like this where we can loop a system, keep it moving moving and keep that water moving through the system and or in new subdivisions, a lot of times we, you know, make developers make it require a looped system to go all the way through again for those for that for that reason. And if you have any problems with that, feel free to call your city councilman SMD2, use his phone number instead of mine, too. Thank you, Shane. Thank you. Next, we'll have an update on public safety. Uh, kicking off with the chief of police, uh, Chief Griffith, you're on, sir. Good morning, everybody. Morning. I got one out of that. That's kind of lame. We can do that again, right? Good morning, everybody. Good morning. It's a great day. I was telling somebody walking in the door to me like it was Joe. Anytime after a Monday, if you find yourself on the right side of the dirt, uh, and you're alive and kicking, then it's a great day, right? Uh, I do want to say to Shane's crew, um, I told him this, you have a day, but, uh, I don't know if anybody noticed along Sherwood Way, there was a giant amount of of water leaks that went what about four or five days? Yeah. Three days. Yeah. And so constantly 24 hours basically they're

[1:36:34] fixing a water lake, one would break, one would break, one would break. and that that kind of work means something to me because I used to do that back in the day. So, thank you to your team. Um, just want to open up real quick by saying that um I need time limit because last time I went too long. So, how much time do I have? 7 and a half minutes. Okay. Uh 25 back. Um since since taking on the role of chief about um 362 days ago, but who's counting, right? Um uh I've had the privilege to leading a team that refuses to settle for themsel and this community. Uh the accomplishments that are going to you're going to hear about today uh are not just a result of police work. They're a result of um a community approach. We're trying to uh make sure that we're helping the the water department, helping the the animal control, working with the fire department. It's that that commitment uh between the city staff and our department that's moving uh St. Angelo forward. So, I appreciate that. I'm grateful for the support that we've received from on the city side. It's it's historically it's been kind of a rougher a rough approach and we want to make sure we maintain that. That's important to me. Uh it's allowed us to make meaningful progress, but the progress has come with sacrifice. Uh we have stretched resources. We've we've learned uh leaned on creativity. We've kind of shifted on the fly when things happen and asked more of our officers and staff than ever before. uh and we still um they show up over and over. They show up and I appreciate that and it's because of that um team mindset that's that we're seeing that working. Um now in as San Angelo and the community our area starts to grow even if it's by small percentages or high percentages the question becomes how do we keep the that momentum going and that's that's together uh and staying with that team mindset uh because uh sustaining what we've already started and I'll go ahead and tell you we have strained our resources to get to where we're at today to talk about these kind of accolades for 2024 and it's going to take us uh having an investment into

[1:38:37] that future making sure we put the right people in the right place and getting funding where we need it. Um, so with that, I want to kind of give you a little bit of of a background. In the last 5 years, the San Angel Police Department has conducted 122,000 traffic stops. Uh, that doesn't always mean they're going to give a ticket, and I've told my guys time and time again that just because um, uh, there's revenue attached to a ticket. We're not looking at that. We're going to look at what the best thing is to to get that person back in compliance. Sometimes that means a citation, sometimes that means an arrest, and sometimes that means we're going to give them a warning. Um the other day we talked about freedom information request. 2024 we had 4,971 freedom information request of Sanville Police Department alone. 4,971 freedom information requests came through our agency and we're on track for that. It stays right around anywhere from 4,700 to 5,000 is kind of where it kind of hovers. Oh, it goes into a lot because it pulls away from our our record supervisor. We've now created a full-time position that's a civilian. We used to have a sergeant that ran that pretty much as a as getting the video side. Uh the request for reports goes to records. So, it's a it's a spread it's spread out too far for me to have that number right. Would you say five hours per request minimum? No, it wouldn't be that long. I I'd lean on you. I'd say somewhere's probably around two hours would probably be a good guess for me depending on what the request is. Okay. That's just a ballpark to you, so don't don't don't hold me to the fire and go ahead. No, we're good. Thank you. Okay. Um, we we had in 2024, we had uh 107,000 calls for service entered into our CAD. So, that's uh 174 officers when we're fully staffed. At that time frame, we were working at about 149 officers uh functional whenever this was going on, 2024. And during that time frame, um it was a struggle. Our patrol numbers were low. We were looking at having to cut services and uh Daniel touched on it several times about um retention. We've

[1:40:40] been pushing hard and fast on that. We'll touch on that as well. Uh in the process looking at our crime data and and and Daniel touched on it a little bit and I'm going to breeze through this a little bit because I want y'all to kind of have a good idea where we're at. I came across this statement through on a uh website that said, "According to the latest data, St. Angelo has a total crime rate of 29.09 09 per thousand residents with violent crime rate of 2.83 and a property crime rate of 26.626. This places our city higher than 91% of of uh Texas cities of all sizes. So you're 91% higher. And we've always kind of relied on our numbers decreasing, right? So those you've been on city council for a while, you've heard our numbers are decreasing. They are. vast majority of all of Texas is decreasing because I think we've gotten better practices in law enforcement. I think there's some reporting issues that we're seeing. Uh Texas was always very high. Uh and so it prompted me to say, let's let's let's look at this a little bit more. Um when it comes to our crime data, um we're going to look at this at the 100,000 because it's easy mark for us. We're right around 100,000, right? St. Angelo's total crime rate is 2,96.5 for St. Angelo, the state average on that is 2,778. The other comparable cities like Long View, uh we're right next to the Long View, uh per capita, again, we're looking at is is 29.15. We see the Temple at 23, I'm sorry, 23, um 57. And then we see Tyler at 261. [Music] And then we see Witto Falls at 2983. Witto Falls is a close comparable because of this the way the city's set up, right? And notoriously uh people have always said, well, WTO Falls has a higher crime rate, right? That's what we've always looked at. They did have issues going back 10 years ago. About six years ago, they got a new chief and they changed their strategy. Um now on

[1:42:43] we're still talking about 100,000. U we're seeing the family violence rate. This is one thing that we've been working hard and heavy to do everything we can to give push back on. The Texas average per 100,000 is 819. I misspoke the other day whenever I was here and the actual number for the San Angelo Police Department for 2024 uh was 1,610. That's almost double the state average. When we look at Long View, that's 1,073. When we look at Temple, that's 594. When we look at Tyler, that's 924. And that's Witsto Falls at 992. That's 600 and some change higher out of Woodsto Falls, which has always been looked at as kind of a a more uh crimeridden city. When we look at property crime, St. Angelo leads the way in property crime. That's going to be straightforward. Uh it's not what we want to lead the way in. That's 2,622 per 100,000 for property crime. Long View 1, and 500. We'll round up. Um, I'm sorry, 2,500. Uh, the state average is 2,275. Temple is 1,968. Tyler is 2,167. And that's what you get for giving me a hard time. And then we got Tyler at 1,00 I'm sorry, 2,167. And then Witto Falls at at 2,491. That's below on property crime than in WTO Falls. Burglary, we're at 427. Long View 356. State average 304. Temple 265. Tyler 261. Witchto Falls 433. Slightly above us. Theft we lead the way again. 1,994 to the state average being 1,550. And then Long View has 1,97. Uh Temple has 1,364.

[1:44:49] Tyler is at 1,717. Witto Falls is at 1,857. Why I why I bring this to light today is because it's important for us to understand we've been looking at the wrong metric. We've been looking at our metrics saying we've been doing better, which is something to look at. But when all the vast majority of Texas's crime data numbers are going down, the real metric we should be looking at is what the is quality of life in comparison to our sister cities. Right? When we see that Texas had a higher crime rate over the the '9s and coming into the 2000s and that we're seeing that trend down, we see some people that don't report anymore in St. Angelo. I can tell you that wholeheartedly off being fresh off the campaign trail. We didn't call anybody. You got a burglary, you got your lawn mower stolen, we had no leads, the St. Angelo Police Department didn't call you. Some of that staffing, right? When we're talking about Witchaw Falls having 22 detectives and our 11, our 11 detectives are working on violent crime, basically proper pe crimes against person. We're not doing a whole lot of property crime because we just don't have the resources. Now, with that being said, the one thing that I want to highlight is that we on violent crime, uh, we're doing well. Okay, we the state average on violent crime uh which is mainly led by uh the metropolitan areas in Texas is uh 395. Uh this data set so is 283. Okay. When we compare that to to uh Tyler and Long View which are right around just above the 400 marks. Um that's because of those detectives working right. You have 11 detectives that have been doing everything they're possible in their in their ability to be able to push back on violent crime. Narcotics is a big thing. Um with with the advent of of all the different um drug outlets and everybody selling drugs, um we we started a drug task force and we'll touch on that. Um but with that um it's still everywhere's I went out this weekend. I went out for a a PR deal and I was already in uniform and stayed in a police car. I'm nothing

[1:46:51] special, but I'm I went out and wanted to just try to help. In that time frame, uh we helped u get a a murder suspect into custody from Harris County and I conducted two traffic stops uh using the technology that we'll touch on, which is a license plate reader. Um I got a hit on two different vehicles and conducted two different traffic stops. out of my first traffic stop. I had a guy that would had left a drug rehab without permission, which is kind of like an escape. Had a felony warrant that and uh was on a MTR with motion to revoke for drug charge. My next stop um uh led to a um a a young lady that ended up having a methamphetamine on her person. Um it's it's it's a huge problem. twothirds I still think is kind of a low number, but twothirds of crime being attached to narcotics having a nexus to the crime uh is huge. And so I just wanted y'all to be able to be fair because as we look at our numbers and what we're asking for and what we're going through here and how I'm so impressed that 2024 was the way it was with what resources we have. And so I didn't want to just uh leave y'all hanging with that. And I before I get into the the accolade side of things, I wanted to address any questions that might be on that because that's a lot and I'll be glad to share that numbers with you as well. We we have seen freshly off the campaign trail, we've seen a lot of these things come to line. Yes, sir. I wouldn't say I trusted the data that came off Tik Tok, Instagram or Facebook, right? I look for you to do those. I will say one thing. While you say those numbers are there, you don't see those numbers unless you experience them. All right? That's usually a firsthand experience. I don't see that visually. A lot of times I don't hear it. It it comes around secondhand and third hand. But I I want to commend you on it's good to see those things happening. They don't get out. They don't scare anybody. They're not overpublicized. They're not sensationalized.

[1:48:53] You're doing the best you can with what you have. And I was going to say I hear that from many people. We think this is great. had lots of people ask about that. Do you know if that's true or not? I said, well, regardless of that, we're doing the best job we can with what we have, and I don't see it. So, that's just my first answer to that, Travis. I think y'all are doing as best you can with what you have. The data you show here is is eye opening. Yes, sir. And we realize that we we've heard you. Well, I appreciate that very much. And I will just add one little tidbit in the in the U violent crime area. We we have we're we're watching some trends occur. Uh I I mentioned it last time about the drive by shootings connected narcotics. We had some gang activity which is gangs almost always and notoriously have narcotics connection. We had that last murder we had was based off of that. Um in a 48 hour period right here in in the Tom Green County u the sheriff's department was involved in their officer involved shooting and I want to commend their work in that. They did a great job uh great investigations. We we supplement them as a team uh effort. We brought our special operations team out there. Uh most of our a good chunk of our SWAT team was out there helping them with their perimeter. Our drone team and K-9 were all out there on that. Uh directly after that, we had a a no connection home invasion, right? Um that doesn't normally happen in St. Angelo, right, in the violent crime area. Um and and then we were dealing with a a a stabbing all within that that short window of 48 hours. Um, that's concerning to me and everything that we've shown throughout u from when I started at 18 years old in criminal justice classes until I'm doing leadership classes now for being a police chief. There's the simplicity of property crime connecting to crime overall, right? And we have to be able to push back on that. Um, Witto Falls was kind of in this but this same situation back in the early 90s and the late 2000s. They didn't put a lot of money and time and resources towards their police. Their crime continued to increase until they became really known for violent crime. Um, that will come.

[1:50:56] We have to be able to put resources where we need to be. And and me and Daniel had a candid conversation uh about just the fact what do I tell my guys that have worked here? 76% of my department has less than 5 years of experience. You know, they're looking to go other places. They're on the lower end of our pay scale. They're not getting that 81,000, right? They can they can go these other places and make a h 100,000 pretty easy. Um, and they've been told from all the cops before them, what what what is the city doing to help u bolster this treading water thing? And it it's not any one person's fault. I I think looking at metrics appropriately and using them as fair numbers is important. And that's why I'm looking at this. This is not to scare anybody. So, if you're sitting at home watching this, the St. Angelo Police is going to continue to show up and do what we can to fight crime and suppress evil. That's what we do. We have a great group of guys, but I don't want to see these guys get discouraged and burn out. So, um, for the sake of time, I'm going to move on. Um, so we we've successfully recruited and retained 10 uh new police cadets uh that they'll be graduating uh this Friday if anybody would like to come 300 p.m. at Howard College. And we'll touch a little bit on Howard College here in a minute. Uh, we've also onboarded u 10 laterals. Uh so that's really helped us laterals. We can usually get them done in about 5 months as opposed to about a year from start to finish. Um we we have had a a great um push on that and we'll continue. We just hired um we're looking in the application pool right now. I think there's three other laterals we're looking for and that's where we're going to really try to lean on. Uh these efforts have been made possible by city staff. Daniel allowed us to use sign on bonuses, incentives to be able to help that. So, that's huge. Um, so the organizational culture, um, like I said, it's been kind of a Debbie Downer. Uh, we're in the same building, in the same situations with the same number of detectives, the same thing. We just keep on treading water. And you say, well, we've added people. Uh, those people just go to fill more holes in the boat,

[1:52:59] right? So, people are bailing water in every division. Um and so there's a lot of people that are kind of burnt out. So we wanted to approach that from a new uh a new focus uh and that was on accountability on trying to uh bring in leadership uh build that leadership uh and get them to the right trainings. And so we've spent a lot of time and energy there uh doing that. Um when it comes to uh when it comes to public safety, the task force, what we just touched on a little bit, the the task force um has been super successful and we I think I've kind of beat a dead horse on that, but that's where we started with the the DPS, the Tom Green County Sheriff's Department with our federal partners uh and working through that. We have the the police academy and our and our is now at the Howard College and they get 18 college credits. Uh that is a great relationship. We're able to try to recruit out there and get some more people that were interested in law enforcement because they're out there in their in their cadet uniform walking around Howard College trying to get those people to come in place. Uh recruiting and staffing incentives uh initiatives, I'm sorry, is the wrong direction. Uh officer wellness. So again, we've we've we've worked on trying to get a uh good approach to to mental health for our officers that are seeing some of the most hideous things that humanity will do. And we have now have a counselor. He is the uh he's a professor at ASU and he's accessible to them directly. They don't used to. They'd have to come to like admin or go to HR. Everybody has his phone number. They call him, they schedule a time. Anybody that wants to go see him, it's it's off the books. He only reports to us uh dangerous situations. The Concho Valley uh threat assessment team. This one is a big one. This is we believe in keeping our kids safe. Uh the team includes representatives from law enforcement and and education. We see it from mental health and the juvenile justice system. It focuses on or uh on um basically keeping their eye on the right targets. Right.

[1:55:02] with all the different officer or with all the different shootings that have occurred across the country. We're looking to find anybody that might be a red flag, right? And in that they will try to keep an eye on that, work together and through NDAs be able to share information that we didn't use to be able to share. This is a state model that we believe in and right now is doing really well. Questions on that? Uh grants. Uh y'all have gotten a lot of these grants already, but I want to tell you real quick that that uh 85,000 right there is uh going towards a a family violent I'm sorry, rifle plates. Uh that that's going to be to help keep our officers safe because if a our pistols a pistol round would would not penetrate our vest, but a rifle round would that the ones we wear normally. And these rifle plates that they can throw over uh stops rifle rounds. So, if you get into an actual like school shooting, what we're talking about, or some sort of incident, you can throw that on. Uh, we're applying for a cops grant. Uh, we applied for the cops grant. We're applying for another cops grant because we're going to find every bit of money we can. We believe in that. Uh, that just deployed. Uh, we great team expert aspect there with um the all the in-car radios and portable radios. We can now talk to ESO, which makes it super super good to be able to communicate with our sheriff's department. And so that's that's something we just finished rolling out. Uh we've applied for that next one there with COPS is two 2.4 uh to for technology. We got that grant and we just finished getting can't we upgraded from about 2011 uh computers to 2025 computers. It was really pretty sad. Some of the the software wouldn't even fit into the screens anymore because they were just those little square things. Uh so that's been that's been super awesome to have that. And this is the the uh ALPR. Uh this is a license plate reader. Uh we're adding stationary license plate readers. We approved this. We're waiting to find out uh what the percentages will be. Uh so we can get those license plate readers that we talked about on the real-time crime center will build to that and help us fight crime. $92,000 uh is going to be able to do that domestic violence case manager, the social worker, and we've touched on that

[1:57:05] before, so I'll I'll move through that. Um $167,000 is to the motor vehicle uh crime prevention authority and that's for license plate readers. Uh the next grant we're requesting is for personnel uh and for drone as first responder. Those are both both those are looking very very solid. We go in July to advocate for those grants, but they're already speaking in ways that makes us think that we're probably going to get those uh Lord willing. uh 1.5 uh to the cops grant there is to request funding uh similar to what the fire chief is requesting. It's a cops grant for six new uh school resource officer positions. That would bump us over that uh 180 mark to 186. If we get the two from the motor vehicle theft uh uh crime prevention, then that would bump us up to what we hope to be about 188 if we can get those six positions back that are currently frozen. Uh, go ahead. Simple math right there. You're approaching nearly four million in grant applications you've done. Who writes those? Uh, we spread the love there. Uh, we Lieutenant Jeremy Kennedy, uh, Craig Thomasson, assistant chiefs. Uh, we we have Gail. Uh, she is our budget analyst. Uh, she put works through and kind of keeps up with anything that we file, but we it's not physically possible for as much government, you know, how government works. They want 18 different things that they don't ever look at. Uh for them to be all collected and and goes to one spot, but for her to be able to do all these by herself would be impossible. So we So you've got three to four people researching, sourcing, and writing for all the time. Yes, sir. Almost all the time. Yeah. Okay. Do you think you miss a bunch with the limited resources you have? I would say I don't know what I don't know. So it's possible. Yeah. I I I can tell you that we started researching um uh let's the assistant chief of police Craig Thomasson just recently uh finished his first round of professional development at the highest level that Texas has. Uh he will go through two more iterations of that, but he's he's

[1:59:06] reached out to departments all across the state through that connection of going to these it's a three-week uh course that you go through and then you do another three weeks and another three weeks. He's built some good relationships through that already. Uh through the the police chief association that I'm I'm uh working with and and going to and attending uh that that we're pulling everybody we can. I'm asking every chief I can get get with. I I partner with the Abalene Police Chief to be able to find anything that they're getting. So we're really we're trying to find everything we can on it. I just you know what you're chasing 4 million in grants with limited assets. And I I think I can't speak to it, but I mean I don't know what that compares to, Daniel, to the uh 2023, 2022. I don't know what that doesn't matter. It's all good. Actually, I do want to say that um it's been pretty aggressive actually what y'all been pursuing. We talked about that. That's a thing that quite frankly, you guys are always looking. Every time I go by to visit with you, you guys are always on the go go go. So, I do appreciate that. So, we do we are seeing more monies coming in uh through your efforts. So, we appreciate that. Yes, sir. And we're going to do everything we can. So, um, so with that, we we've we were hoping for those positions and, uh, we'll see what the what the cops grant comes out to. This would give us this ability because if we go above 180, we don't have a lot of the equipment we would need. And this is where we would ask the school district since we're covering salaries for that first few years, help us get some cars, bulletproof vest, cameras, licenses, things that would that add up when it comes to personnel cost uh, to offset that for that first few years. And then as it starts to fade out, we would ask that the school district pick up the rest of that. Does that make sense? All right. Technology. Uh the license plate reader. Like I said, I I sat at Avenue in um right there with the city. We just got that old paint shop. Was it Sherman Sherman Williams maybe? Yeah. Um, I sat right there at that location uh while I was uh going through emails and doing administrative work and the license plate reader was face facing west and as cars were going by it was it was reading license plates looking for

[2:01:09] stolen cars, looking for um missing kids. Uh city warrants is something we recently added to it and that's what this alert came through. So I was sitting there and gave me an alert said hey there's there's a there's a this vehicle has attached warrants. So I turned around and I confirmed that the that the the license plate did match. I went in and saw that the description of the one person matched made this the contact and that contact led to having felony uh THC uh products having open container of alcohol, having uh methamphetamine uh and having uh marijuana roach, right? All all off of one license plate reader with it doing the work where I would have to normally be heads up looking for all the different things, have to know a list of license plates or something, it was doing it for me in that regards. And so that was uh super nice. But it's key thing on that for anybody that's got concerns on uh technology. It required me human intervention, right, to go through and confirm all those other things. And also the courts would do the same thing for that. Um we got iPads for the um Kono Valley um MHMR. Those guys have been nothing but awesome. Uh this is to hopefully better assist those going through uh some sort of a crisis. So we have these uh I think it's 32 uh uh total iPads that are out in the field that have connection. They can they can meet directly with a a a counselor basically uh in the field and be able to give them direct support and and evaluate better than because we're not we're not counselors, right? We don't have uh degrees in psychology. So this is something that we're trying to use along with pairing it with the diversion center. Um, that's what we've done in a nutshell, but I can't tell you how much that we've seen over the course of this last year. Um, working with each one of these these younger officers are stepping up there trying to do everything they can to to help our Senate Angelie safe. And I I want to brag on the staff here at the city. They've been doing an excellent job working with us and and we're doing everything we can to integrate with

[2:03:12] emails, anything else that we can do. Um, even though we have some higher crime numbers that we're going to have to deal with, I think working with y'all and working with the city staff that we will be able to push back and bring this down to appropriate numbers with appropriate tools. And so, I believe in that mission. The officers believe in that mission. And I appreciate y'all guys, you know, have any questions on that. Travis, I got a quick kind of random question. It's probably too long for this forum, but maybe you can just give me a like quick elevator pitch. So, a lot of the the crimes and stuff you talked about, I don't know to stop some of that, right? To lower the numbers, right? Um, if you can't just put a police officer on every corner that could respond in 5 seconds to something that's going on actively, what could citizens do? What is the um best step to try to lower those crime rates with limited resources? What can we do to help that? Yeah. The first thing is is that uh on every day that we go to work, we're treading water. And what I mean by that is there's calls in the stack, we're not doing proactive police work, right? Um you need to be proactive police work. Vigorous traffic stops leads to results, right? Me sitting out there for two different license plates got to that, right? Um we need more officers on the streets doing enforcement. And I've done everything I can to take officers that have been in administrative roles or other places and put cops with guns out in the streets to help get those calls for service and and build product the productivity of of the uh tip of the spear, if you will, right? Um technology, partnering that with technology. When we know we have a burglar, uh we can enter them into different license plate readers that are stationary that will alert us as soon as that person goes into Southland. um working with the real-time crime center, what uh Daniel touched on would be uh having the ability that we're t taking data and we're taking real time information, sourcing that so when somebody does steal something, there's a there's a crime that occurs that we can try to use technology to give a um an equalizer there when we're lacking that

[2:05:15] staffing. That's that's the best way. Um uh I'm I'm hopeful that we'll keep working on laterals and developing our people and getting the things we need. Um, you know, that that's why I'm saying kind of as a as a step in the right direction, some equipment, these public safety officers that we're requesting that can help offset and give me more officers into the field. Um, you know, working through these grants because I know I'm not going to come to you and say, "Hey, we needed $7 million, which is about roughly, I think, what Witto Falls's numbers budget is more than mine." Um, I'm not asking for that. I'm asking for a phased in approach. I'm not just going to ask for crazy amounts of money because that's not appropriate uh to our tax base and to our to our people. But we can phase this in and start course correcting what we need to get the money where it needs to be. About 10% of the budget goes to law enforcement, right? I'm talking total budget. I'm not talking operational. Uh and so that that that operational side of what they're talking about 56% is Tina can correct me if I'm wrong is is the operational side 50. So it's 26% of that operational budget. U but the total city budget is only 10%. Uh we're seeing most cities putting anywhere from 12 to 15% of that of their total budget going to law enforcement. So with that extra money, the extra support is going to help us be able to to to actually slow and eventually bring this into a a bridal. I'm going to be able to stop all the crime. I'm not Batman, right? But we can bring it to where it's appropriate level. Out of those uh 170 roughly officers, how many are available for service calls? Like how many are on patrol on patrol right now today? um run about 68 because of injuries. Um my number should be at 80. We haven't been at 80 the whole time I've been there. I haven't I don't remember being at 80 in years. Um I don't want to sound like a Debbie Downer because the big thing is Daniel's approach on helping us get the funding we need to get those incentives and hire laterals and working with the officers association to allow us to hire laterals because without the the the contract we

[2:07:18] couldn't do that, right? um 10. So we've hired 20 people in a year, right? So since we first came on, 20 people now, it takes time for those cadetses to get out in October. We'll see the the fruits of that labor. Hopefully we'll still have 10 of those. If we don't, we'll probably have somewhere around eight where we see attrition rate, but that's five times better than where we were at. Uh it's that together approach saying, "Hey, I need y'all support. I need the the staff support that nobody really knew the the how bad it was until we started really looking at how this we stack up what what is is in comparison. Thank you. Thank you. That was exactly seven and a half minutes. We had the cruise of the other ones. Thank you, Chief. Appreciate you, sir. Let let me just speak something to to something that the chief just said about not wanting to be a Debbie Downer. I I heard a statement uh within the last week that is it's a pretty simple statement, but it has made a profound impact in my way of thinking. Y'all just be truthful with us. The department directors, the statement that I heard was this. Telling the truth helps us all. If we don't know, we don't know. So, Chief Griffith, thanks for just being truthful. Um, to me, that's helpful. I I to Chief Brody, the same thing. Just be truthful with us. Chief, you're on. Good morning. Good morning, council. Good morning, Mayor. U I'm going to start off with first the boring stuff, the statistics. So, uh, St. Angelo, we had 4659 fire calls last year and 13,52 EMS calls. Uh, total of 17,800 or so. And that's about 300 increase of call volume from our previous year. And most

[2:09:20] of that call volume increase has been in EMS. And it's about 75% of what we do day-to-day is EMS. So, um, our prior training academy has been very, very busy. Most of these uh achievements that I'm going to discuss today, they're going to be above and beyond our our call for service, above and beyond what our core services in the fire department are. Um and this is additional to our regular job. So, our fire training academy, they delivered over 30 stop thebleleed presentations. And this is first responders teaching our community how to first act, to act without um EMS personnel or police personnel on site to render that first care, to actively prevent somebody from bleeding out and dying during an active attack or a significant bleeding incident. Um several of these courses were taught to our city employees during city orientation and um on top of that we certified an additional 50 of our citizens in our community with CPR. What's important about this is we believe in the fire department of um increasing our resiliency in our community. Okay, what do I mean by that? Uh we are teaching everyday citizens what we already know as first responders, how to actively prevent somebody from dying. these small steps, stopping bleeding, CPR before first responders happen. So, uh we're using this as a force multiplier, basically creating an entire resilient community to impact and save somebody's life. And uh last year, you can see the numbers that we've been very very active. And uh another program that we have started is a um active shooter, active active attack community education. And we're partnering this with the police department, San Angel Police Department. Um, it takes two police officers and two firefighters to teach a lot of these classes. This, uh, active attack integrated response, A AIRR class, we did seven of those classes last year and we educated over 170 first responders, certified over 170 first responders in

[2:11:25] this program. And and if you look at that acronym and what it means, integrated response, that's police, that's fire, that's EMS, and how we talk to each other and how we integrate together whenever we do have to respond to one of these active attacks. uh first responder medical. Uh we taught four of these classes with over 50 first responders trained. Basically teaching law enforcement the um uh the actions for uh medical care immediately on scene before the ambulances arrive for transport. Exterior response to an actor shoot of events. It's an erase. We certified 33 first responders as instructors. Train the trainer. We certified 33 other instructors. they can go off and spread this information out even further. Um that same e-race course, we taught two classes and uh we trained 25 first responders in that basic tactical medical instructor course, 35 first responders certified as instructors, again a train the trainer course, and we conducted four tabletop uh active shooter exercises. And this is a joint partnership between uh DPS, the Tom Green County Sheriff's Office, and Region 15 schools. We did a active attack drill out in Water Valley. We did an active attack drill out in um uh Grape Creek and then two other schools that uh I don't remember off hand where we did them, but I know we did four different schools. So, continuing on with our ed education at our training academy, we hosted two regional basic fire trainingmies and this is the full basic firefighter training. Uh we took uh two different classes, 20 in each class from surrounding volunteer communities and we got them from non-certified all the way through uh basic firefighter. Uh so at the end of this um we had about 37 certifications that came out of it. And this the volunteer agencies, they're having a very difficult time getting certification because their only option is to go to TE's annual school three or

[2:13:28] four different times a year and it's taking them three to four different years to get fully certified and we certified this group in approximately four months for each class. We hosted it at our training academy, generated a little bit of revenue associated with that, but at the end of the day, we trained an addition, we certified additional firefighters in this region, and we were able to vet those firefighters in the event that they want to come back and work for St. Angelo. We already know what what type of person, what type of firefighter they're going to become. So, on top of that, we hosted one uh regional vehicle extrication class. We had over 40 students from all over the state of Texas. Again, we charged revenue for that. That was a Friday, Saturday, Sunday event. And um educated and certified those 40 firefighters from across the state. It was a good event. Had a great time. And it's hard for me to wrap my head around this next number. Um our training academy delivered over 50,000 hours of continuing education to just our members. So we have a lot of online training that our personnel do on their own. But then also we have certification classes, one certification class uh for like driver operator. The minimum hours for that class is like 80 hours. Okay? And we have we can I told y'all last time I spoke that we can uh teach in-house over 20 certification classes. Well, we taught 10 of those last year alone. And that goes from all way from very basic stuff all the way to advanced uh fire officer and instructor stuff. Chief, when you say delivered almost 50,000 hours to fire department members, is that staff or does members same thing as staff? Yes, sir. Internal. Okay. And again, a lot of that is uh online. Uh but our training academy has to go in there and assign those hours to our personnel. And um we have hands-on training that's hosted at the training academy. There there's a whole gamut that's included into that 50,000, but it's impressive to me that they're able

[2:15:30] to pull that off in a 12-month period. It's impressive. Thanks. So, yes, sir. So, we uh a couple years ago, we started a health and fitness initiative. It is very important to me that our firefighters are not only fit, but they're also mentally fit and uh physically healthy. So, we started a physical fitness program with the Concept 2 rowers. I've talked to you'all about this in the past. And this is a um it's a fitness test that's based on the DPS standards. And it uses your weight, your age, your gender, and it assigns you a time for a 20,000 meter road test. And if you meet that time, based on what that time is, you'll either hit 50%, 60% all the way up to 100% of the road test. And what that percentage means is if you get 50%. That means you beat 50% of the population that is your age, your weight, and your gender, but you also 50% also beat you. So we established this very um very modest goal of 50% road test time with needing wanting 100% of our department meeting that time. So we set up this mandatory initiative. Every year we will be tested. And you can see back in 2023, we had about a 94% of this 50% time. And each year we got a little bit better, a little bit better, and we are still reaching for that 100% of that 50% goal. And I'm pretty confident this year, if it's not 100%, we'll be very, very close to it. So, it's a great program. Go ahead. What's the time for is this a 2,000 meter row? Yes, sir. And it depends on age, weight, and gender. So, like myself, I'm uh 29 years old. Yep. I weigh 175 lbs. Yeah. And I'm a male. None of that's true except for one of them. I'll let y'all decide. So, um and basically my row time to hit 70%. Is um 8 minutes and 15 seconds, I believe. Sounds like a lot of time. No, it's not. For me to hit 100% I have to

[2:17:32] be like 7 minutes and 30 seconds. But my 50% time is like 9 and a half minutes. and I easily make that 50% time. So, but the the taller you are, the less time you have. I think the mayor wants to challenge them. Um, I would I would welcome him to come by. 97 years old. I'm 400 lb. And you just throw out the metrics and I'm in. You look really good for 97, by the way. It's been a very great program. Um, you know, it gives us a goal to shoot for. You know, you may not hit that 50%. Or you may hit 70%. And we give a little bit of um incentive for our personnel to hit that 70%. And then also all the way up to 100. If you can hit 100% of your goal, we're going to reward you for it. And uh it gives us again something to shoot for and to make ourel continuously work harder and get better. So we continue on the health and fitness. uh firefighters are uh significantly more susceptible to contracting cancer. The number one killer of firefighters is heart disease. Number two is cancer. And depends on what statistic you look like, they flip those around. So a couple years ago, we uh partnered up with OnDuty Health. They are a third party vendor that comes in and does a complete head-toe health assessment of every of our firefighters. And uh this health assessment is compliant to NFPA 1582. And I know y'all don't know what that is, but it basically sets up what these health assessments need to look like. And in this screening, they do a V2 max, which is the true reflection of how physically fit a person is. It measures how much oxygen you are consuming during um aggressive cardiovascular work. and then also does a um Doppler body scan where they're scanning major major organs with sonogram and detecting any type of masses, any type of inflammation in your system. It is um pretty compelling how how accurate this

[2:19:35] stuff is. We did have a firefighter last year who had a mass on his thyroid. He had no idea what it was and it was pretty scary for him and didn't know that it was even there until he we did this body scan, detected this mask. He went into his uh to an ENT determined that it was a benign tumor. But had he not done this, at what point would he have noticed it when it was four times the size of its normal size or when? So, this is a huge program for our department. It's going to catch cancer sooner. And as you all know, the sooner you catch cancer, the more likely you are going to to overcome it and beat it. And uh that number up there, 75 firefighters, is not correct. It's actually 90. So we try to hit 25% of our department every single year. And uh it's about 45 members. We just completed round two. And um in a 4-year period, we'll be able to hit all 180 of our personnel. So it's a great program, and I thank city staff for funding it, and it will pay for itself over time. And thank you for that. So, now the cool stuff. We got to replace some uh fire fire trucks last year. I talked to y'all briefly last time about some of the brush trucks we've purchased. Brush one is that type six, which is a large body pickup truck with a pump on the back. And brush two is the um all-terrain vehicle that you see out in California. It's a significantly larger brush truck. Both of these vehicles will be used to protect St. Angelos's urban interface and uh they are strategically placed at at at the stations that have those trained personnel to operate those. Brush one we have already received. It's already been deployed and um it is a deployable asset for TiffMas. Uh brush two set to be delivered in September of this year. Again, it will be used here locally first and uh potentially deployable on any type of tiff mis um u requests. And super big news on our swiftwater rescue boats. We received them Thursday

[2:21:37] afternoon. They are here. The um city shop has those and get them asset numbers and get them into our system. We have training scheduled for our personnel uh in July and then later in September to get eight personnel completely trained up. And I'm hoping by the end of the year this program is fully operational and we are ready to start deploying locally. I will not deploy these boats outside of St. Angelo until we are 100% confident that we have the skills and the abilities to take care of our personnel before we send them out of town. So, it's very close. We should be done by the end of the year. Real quick, let's go back to the brush trucks. So, surrounding areas, if we have brush control, they could be deployed there to help the surrounding areas such as outside of St. Angelo. Yes. If we get a star request from the state from Tiffas, uh we again we analyze our local capabilities and whether whether we need to be deploying those cuz first and foremost we're going to take care of St. Angelo. And if we can, we have these two brush trucks and we have two additional brush trucks. So this will make a complement of four fully trucks. So we can send two teams completely out and still have two local brush. For me, I remember on the north end of town, we watched the fires come up to 201. Yeah. So with that fire, we were not included in we were not part of tiffas back then. So we could not deploy to that and there was a lot of misunderstanding why wasn't involved with one of our local neighbors. Now we can deploy to that. So cool. Miss Coffee, did you have something? Okay. I thought you were going to ask. So these two brush trucks, brush one, 315,000, brush two, $514,000. Boats $48,000. And one thing that is not on here because we received it in 2024 was engine 8 and it was about 840,000. We paid 400,000 out of or for that truck out of the Tiffas account. Both brush trucks, the boats, and half of engine 8, a total

[2:23:42] of $1.3 million that was not paid for with city local tax dollars. Speaking of tiffas, we last year we increased our tiffas capabilities. We have one strike team leader and one strike team leader trainee. So in order to be a full strike team leader, he's got to get a bunch of operational periods. He is very close to being a strike team leader. And what the strike team leader does, he has a team of five resources with their personnel and he is in charge or she is in charge of that entire strike team. That is a very big position and it takes a lot of training and um lots of operational periods to get that achieved. And then we move down to engine boss. An engine boss is the supervisor on a single resource, a brush truck. And that person is responsible for their crew on that truck. We have seven engine bosses locally. Uh 40 deployable team members at any given time. 10 of 10 members on our rim team. That's a ra rapid extrication model. And for every major wildfire, they are required to have at least one rim team. And that is a um personnel that are trained on rope rescue, high angle rescue, you have a UTV and a four-wheel drive truck. It's designed to extricate firefighters or these wildland firefighters from bad situations and get them transported to safety. Bill, uh, last year we had a pretty active year in Tiffas. 16 wildfires we were deployed on and, uh, one of those was to California and we had five all hazards. I briefly discussed that with y'all earlier. Most of those were for high water events and severe weather events. One of them was very interesting. We deployed on a eclipse allhazard. Y'all remember the eclipse last year? They were expecting lots of additional resources, hundreds of thousands of people converging on Junction, Texas that could not support that many people. So the Tiffas system struck up a strike team and we were part

[2:25:46] of it. It was interesting. Um grants pretty successful year last year. Uh these are all of the grants grants that were awarded to us. the AFG, assistance to firefighter grant from FEMA, 136,000. That was for a exhaust capture system for two of our stations that did not have those. And now every station has an exhaust capture system, which is important for cancer reduction and cancer um prevention. Uh Department of Homeland Security awarded $57,000. Most of that money was awarded for tightening up security at a few of our campuses. also um purchasing muchneeded equipment for our tactical medical team uh ballistic vests, helmets, uh flashlights, just needed equipment for those teams. Uh we were awarded this this next year from the Homeland Security another $25 for that team for some night vision glasses, goggles, and then also a Siri grant. This is was awarded to our city and not necessarily to the fire department for uh radio infrastructure funding and that was through the council of governments. They assisted us through that assist us with that through the office of the governor. Currently we have a couple open uh grants FEMA AFG grant 585,000. We applied for emergency generators at our stations that do not have them. Um I'm not very optimistic on this grant, but you know what? We applied for it hoping for the best. So, it's a significant amount of money and we'll hope we get it. And then we just recently applied for the FEMA safer grant. That is for the staffing that we discussed at council last time we met. And that $4.3 million is covered over a three-year period that would be awarded to us if we got the grant. So, pretty big deal. Super excited that we found a piece of property and we were able to secure it last year. 2.9 acres at the crossings. Does this pointer work?

[2:27:49] Look at that. So, this is the location that we're looking at. Fire station number nine. It's right about here. And this is the plat. That doesn't do any good. That's actually the plat of it. If you can see this road here, right? This road right here is Ben Fickland and this is the crossings and 277 frontage runs along this side here. So it it looks to be a great location. It is a little I would want it to be a little further south, but this is the best location that we can find. I've already got rendered drawings uh to be put on this plat and everything is going to work out very nicely for this piece of property. So, we secured this piece of property last year and uh looking forward to the future future building side. Okay. So, our major accomplishments last year and this this this next one is a really really big one and I don't know everything that was involved in getting this accreditation because one of my team members did all of the heavy lifting. It's our national accredit accreditations through coins and please don't ask me what it means. So Holland I know it is accreditation of emergency medical services. Uh lots of manh hours put into this. Lots of oversight from the national accreditation committee. Several interviews with them. And we are currently enter a letter of review year of review at the end of this paramedic program. They'll come back in and re-evaluate us and then we'll get the blessing hopefully get the blessing to be fully accredited. And this gives us the autonomy to begin and end our own paramedic program when we choose to do so. And we can also bring in outside students into our program as a revenue generation mechanism. So uh this last year administratively was very busy. We uh completely reviewed and update every SOG and rule and rig the fire department has. So to understand the scope of that, we have a 540 page SOP booklet and then about 120

[2:29:54] pages for our rules and regulations. Uh we also did an extensive 10-year SFD strategic plan that took approximately 9 months. We brought in a team of stakeholders and built a task force and we had several different working groups, different um workshops, if you will. We set uh reasonable strategic goals for a um three-year, a 5year, and a 10-year and uh built this massive 120 page document. I'm pretty proud of it. Um the rules and regulations, the SOPs, the strategic plan, all of those were building into the next bullet point. Uh these were all requirements for us to apply and request the Texas Fire Chief's Association to look at the Stangel Fire Department and see if we can be awarded the best practices designation. Um there are only about 35 fire departments in the state of Texas that have received this uh best this designation and we have submitted all of our documentation. We started in February and we completed miday midmay and we should hear something back from best practices. um first part of July and then they'll come do a site visit with us. I'm hoping that September or the October city council meeting will be receiving our best practices at council. So, more news to come. Super excited. It's a really big deal. And we have all sorts of regulatory agencies that come in and do audits and do inspections to make sure we we're following the rules. uh DSHS, uh Texas Fire Commission, DPS because we do uh background investigations uh for our our new applicants and TCOL because I have law enforcement officers in our fire prevention office and then of course at COAMS for our accreditation. We had zero deficiencies, zero zero discrepancies this last year's um inspections. So was that seven and a half minutes? I was real close. Yeah. No, we've got a

[2:31:56] little bit way too long, but um Chief, thank you. I don't know if anybody has any quick questions for the chief, but I would like to, if you would humor me, uh, this was to be an update as far as some of the priorities we had last year. We're running kind of tight on time right now. So, I know you have information on economic development in here. I will ask you to review it on your own time. And even the HR, I see Mike back there celebrating. Um, even HR, Veronica's probably celebrating, too. Um, the information's in there. Uh the the the the crux of what I really wanted to do right now is get into the actual discussion of those priorities that that y'all would have for staff moving forward. But the information is in here and so it's there for your review. Okay. With that said, Chief, thank you so much for that presentation. Do appreciate it, sir. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. With that, Heather, you're on. No, I mean you Well, you're gonna be riding. You have the uh Let me get that. Thank you, ma'am. All right, here we go. We lost somebody, didn't we? No, Tommy. Tell him this is the This is the All right, Heather.

[2:34:55] So, this next um session really what we'd like to do just a little bit of brainstorming. We want to take a look at what uh priorities we really want to key in and focus on this year. uh as I mentioned a while ago and you saw a presentation a little while ago that uh kind of pertain to what we looked at last year which was infrastructure, public safety, economic development and uh employee compensation. So those were the four priorities last year. Now this year I've already gotten feedback from council members that some of those priorities look like I think one that really has stood out has been the comprehensive plan. I've heard a lot about the comprehensive plan and I'd like to make sure we get that up there as well. This is coming from council members that have have sent emails to me about this. The next one was the uh employee compensation is another one that I got as far as having a plan in place for that. I heard about a green space, uh, parks land, but again, that's part of what a comp plan would do as far as, uh, ironing out the details on that. So, those are really, quite frankly, the big three that I kept hearing about. Uh so council members, if y'all would like to add to to that, of course, you can select off of what we had last year, the you know, as far as infrastructure, uh public safety, uh economic development, uh any of those also are on the table, but we just kind of want to start throwing up there some of those some of those general broad um items that you feel should be something we focus in on. With that said, I'll open it up very informal. always at the front is is public safety. I mean, we've we've got to always keep that at the very front of all the things we can we have to convey as public safety. Um,

[2:36:58] and I won't go far down my rabbit hole, but number two is water for me. And uh I think water should always be one of the the key plans that we have to the key initiatives and priorities that we have to protect research pursuit go to great lengths but with that comp plan now we can rearrange those any way we want and there's existing Daniel I don't know where exactly you want to go on there but like public safety within public safety I know to me that is the animal shelter would fall under public safety you know for me underwater would be um uh the airport, you know, trying to get water to the southwest side of town. Priorities there going back to compensation plan, that's your comp study is going to go right back in there. So, that's already listed. Mhm. You've already gone very kind of specific there, which is the broad is great and you already hit the specific part of it. That's good, too. So, but yeah, that's that sounds great. Any other any other thoughts as far as that y'all would like to have on there? Yeah. Um, several times it's been mentioned that we need to address infrastructure issues, the water, sewer replacement, and extension funding. Did I get that right? Um, I I've heard a lot today. There's a lot that sounds very hopeful that there's a concerted effort to treat create a proactive culture. Yes. Um that's that's awesome. And so it makes us need to say less I think if we if we keep in mind that stewardship is our obligation and that we understand the legacy value of making progress on big picture issues then then it's a whole new world. Good. So, we're hearing basically again those

[2:39:03] top three were the ones that I heard mostly and and uh mayor absolutely I think public safety, water, anything dealing with infrastructure still goes back to council for years now have been saying hey these are our priorities um and I definitely believe that that's exactly our core services is why we exist right to provide public safety to provide the infrastructure for use for our citizens and Tommy you're about to say something and I you know over the weekend as I've been thinking about all of this, it at least dawned on me, and you just used the two words that I'm going to start with. Core services, that's public safety, that's water, that's wastewater, that's streets. Yes, sir. It created a question in my mind. Do we really need to call those priorities when in fact if we agree that they are core services we need to focus on those almost regardless no matter what no matter what. So then what we're going to do those thing what do people assume they're going to get when they pay their taxes? Public safety, streets, water, wastewater. they assume they're going to get that. So then what do we have to have to accomplish those things and that's what it comes down to and that is the biggest asset that we have and that is our employees. Mhm. I hope we put an absolutely the brightest spotlight on our employees, their compensation, their professional development. To Karen's point that she just made, this this is my sixth, seventh, how how it doesn't matter.

[2:41:07] This is the most hopeful and excited I've been about what can come of this for the organization and not only the organization but for the community. To Tom's point earlier really the reason the seven of us are here is to try to make an impact for the betterment of our community. And when if we will keep the core services in mind, but then take care of the assets that make it possible to take care of those core services, our employees and the tools they need. That goes to technology, that goes to um not only monetary but non-monetary things that might make their lives better. Um so I hope we put an absolute laser focus on our employees. my last two years here. To me, that is extremely important. And I know we can't get there in one year with respect to compensation, but let's make an absolute valiant effort to put something in place that we can begin moving toward over the next two to three years. I would like to be able to in three to four years have people looking at St. Angelo and say there's the best practices right there in municipal government is St. Angelo, Texas. If you want to know how to do this, just look at St. Angelo. If you want to know somebody that's doing this well, look at St. Angelo. It also occurred to me, Daniel, you have got some really, really bright, not some, a lot of really bright people in this organization. Good people. The thought occurred to me, I'll bet you could gather some groups of those people and tasks them task them with looking at your processes and coming up with ideas

[2:43:11] that may not involve money at all, but may be able to create some efficiencies within the organization because they do it every single day. They know what might make things better for them and within their department and ultimately spread across the organization. You know, I bet you got some people in your departments that would raise their hand and say, "I'd love to work on that with you." And it might not be the usual suspects of it might be the the person that just keeps their head down and really is not that well known or visible because all they do is they just do their job. So anyway, I I am excited about what what this holds. I I think even looking at my notes for high performance organization and what that means and that does mean the best practices and it means the there is a lot of excitement. I know that with this council right now there's more of an openness right to really uh explore what we should be looking at and making improvements in areas where we know we should be making improvements on. Um and again I really sense it from this council and here's an example of that. three days. You guys gave us three days, you know, for this workshop and we really appreciate that because really that gives the c the the directors an opportunity to come up here and talk about all the things that are important to them. Um the the goals that they have that was huge for them and that shows that at this point we have a council that's willing to listen and say, "Hey, we want to move forward and make the city better." And we all do too, working together. And you're absolutely right. There's way to do that. um to to create that culture with high performance organization, but it starts Tommy with telling your staff you're important to us. You know, you're you're requesting staff to come together and come up with all these brilliant these great ideas, which I think that everyone here would be willing to do that, but we also have to tell our staff, we are prioritizing you, too. We're placing value on you and we're showing it at this point. In order to have a high performance organization, you have to show first and foremost that

[2:45:13] you value that staff. And you just nailed it, Tommy. And that's what it comes down to is saying, "Hey, let's pull it together. Let's do what we can for our staff." And the staff will do everything we ca they can for the city as well. So, we all have to work together on that. So, absolutely, you're talking about core services. We do know what the core services are. We could break that down. As a matter of fact, part of what I've talked about earlier is doing the service audit, right? To determine what services we we provide. We could start off with the core services uh from the very top and say these are the ones that we provide all the way down to the ones that really aren't core services and make sure that we concentrate on the top core services. We develop plans for each one of those and how we're going to move forward. But you're right, we know what the core services are. You know, it also occurs to me um and I was a part of this and and and I'm going to apologize to you publicly, Daniel. um for not empowering you as the as the CEO and the city manager to to do some things that just need to be done from an organization standpoint. Um I I sense from this council the support and when I say empower to me that means support and that goes that cuts across all lines. that would be employee improvement in compensation, employee improvement in um their development, professional development. But um I don't think we did that as well as we could have or should have in the past. So I over the next two years I I hope to to give you the support you need to um literally lead this organization as the CEO. the the the council is here to set policy and to me a policy direction is absolutely suggesting if not telling you pay these people pay them well um develop them professionally develop them

[2:47:14] professionally well to me that's a that that is that's a a strategy but it's also um a a policy decision that's that falls within our purview that we make that decision as a policy. So, I want to empower you to do these things and support you to get these things done over the next several years. Thank you, Tommy, for that. And I want to make sure that my staff is empowered as well to make the decisions they have to make to make their departments much better as well. So, I do appreciate that. I think of course the past is the past really I want to look at from right now with this council moving forward and with my staff, which y'all mentioned, we have a very talented staff. I'm very blessed to work with the staff that quite frankly is the sharpest that I've I've ever had. uh been blessed to work with. So, we can pull this together and we know we have a lot of challenges, you know, especially when it comes to revenues. We know that there's a lot that we have to address as far as planning financially, but we can do it. We can pull it together. And what I'm hearing right now is the compensation plan, anything have to do with with employees, the training, everything else sounds like a top priority at this point. And uh with that, uh I know that we can all work this together and make that happen as well. It may be a phased approach of course but uh within the couple of years or three years we can make that happen. Yes sir. So I think one thing we hadn't put on there what pays for it all is economic development. So I'd like that to be a line item on there too. Please I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt. You know Daniel you when you were what I love about this whole process someone will say something and then we we're on the same page and we tend to amplify that. in going back through a lot of the weaknesses in these different departments that the staff has uh that they've noticed and put into really great description can be solved. Not just I mean money doesn't solve everything. I wish it did, but it's

[2:49:19] they they know what they need, but like the crime will go down if we have more officers on the street. A lot of inefficiencies occur when you have burnout and over overused anxiety and believe it or not, when even the equipment will suffer. I had that in my company. We were all burned out and that's when a wreck occurs. You know, a lot of different things. I agree with you that the we need to celebrate and take care of who got us here. You know, without the staff, we can't have a city. Without the citizens, we cease to exist. Yes. Yes, ma'am. But I do believe and I said this I think the first day that we did this. We have the opportunity to be the most consequential staff and city council in the last 20 years and I I firmly believe that we're on it. It's like a a veil has been lifted. There's a sigh of relief. And Tommy, I believe you nailed it that we we have this unique opportunity and we're not going to screw it up. We're not, you know, we're not. Y'all got us here and we're going to help. We're going to empower you and put put St. Angelo back on the map. All right, let's get to it. Mary, thank you, man. I appreciate that. And I know Harry, you had some college, but I've been waiting patiently. If you know me, that's probably not a very good word. So, but what I'd like to say is uh Mr. Heert can wordsmith very well. What he said was was absolutely correct. We've got to invest in our employees. Let them do what they do best. But we heard it last Tuesday and Wednesday from almost

[2:51:23] everybody that made presentations. We need to look at best practices, priorities, procedures. Almost everybody said the same thing. So, let's let him do that. And Tommy said it well. and that is maybe that person that's been over the corner this whole time is a person that wants to jump in there and lead that type of thing. One other thing that I think we need to not lose sight of and I know we don't have unlimited resources but we need to continue to look at what our assets are outside of the people what our assets are in the town and make sure that we are investing in those assets or allowing some of our public partners to come in and invest in that because when we do that, I think we'll increase our sales tax. Anyway, thank you. I'm I'm I'm a little bit of the push back. I We also need to speak for our constituents. And so part of that is property taxes. It was said a couple times today, well, it's only three and a half% increased. That's only if you've lived in your home for a long time. anyone that's bought in the last five years is paying way more than three and a half percent on average of what they were 10 years ago. So that's one thing I don't think we look at. We got to look at both sides, right? I I try to do that. I try to be the mediator. Um so I just I also want to show how all the you know the pay disparities here that's that's across our city. So there's a lot of people that are still struggling dayto-day. So, what I would like to see more is kind of like Harry touched on there at the end, the the coliseum coming up, our Texas Bell Street complex. Um, all of our city things that can bring in revenue utilize those way more. They are underserved, underutilized. Youth sports is a

[2:53:25] multi-billion dollar industry and we have hardly any of it in St. Angelo. We have a lot that would participate in it, but we don't have any of that money coming in. You go look at Midland. You go look in Hobbs. you go look in in Clyde, Texas. Um, Portland, Texas, they they're building hotels around their use for facilities because of how much money is coming into that city. Um, so and I don't know if that's a we talked about some of the partnerships, you know, some of that we may need to get with the hotel organizations and get with the restaurant organizations and like, okay, here's the ideas we have. How can we all work together to bring more outside money in to pay for all this? Think of think of all the money that could come in that's not having to come out of our citizens pockets, but it's coming from outside the people that are willing to pay for that property taxes. If you want to own a home, you have no choice but to pay that. These people are willingly going and paying that money. Um they that is their discretionary income. So it's uh to me it's just a better fit to bring that money in to utilize it for a lot of this extra stuff than trying to take it out of our own citizens pockets anymore than we have to. So, so basically you are talking about all the revenue producing assets we have to make sure we maximize that. Maximize them way more than they ever have been. Absolutely. Under things bring these people. Absolutely. Shannon Shannon Shannon is a complex. It's all very correct that everybody said water. We can't do anything without water. So, we have to keep that on the forefront. And I think we've got a pretty good uh view of it and where we need to go. But uh again, yeah, once we have that water, we got to take care of the city. Um and we have to take care of those employees. I have a business that that's a big issue. If you don't have those employees, it's hard to get things done. Yeah. Um so, uh but you also have to pay for it. So again, that kind of reiterates what Patrick said is the the revenue sales tax to try to to pay for

[2:55:28] better stuff. Thank you, Joe. I think that what you and Patrick just said as well, that's part of what staff would work on because we do understand we still go back to our conservative ways no matter what. I mean, when we budget, we always look at everything conservatively though. So, it really matters when we start talking about uh really studying our services to determine what we should be providing and also we are maximizing uh We're talking about fees earlier. I was doing in my presentation is that we are currently charging fees that don't even cover our cost of service. There are certain things that we're doing. So, it's just it's when it comes to revenue producing uh assets. It's even the departments are really aren't considered an asset, but they actually provide that service. We want to make sure that we maximize that as well. Just to the point of break even. There's a lot that we can be doing. I'm sure I'm sitting looking at staff right now nodding their heads saying, "Hey, there's certain things we've been wanting to do for years now, but there's been push back." And I will say this because of politics a lot of times you know no matter what we try uh if we are trying to balance out and just charge for the services that we're supposed to be charging for instance uh there's always push back you know and because people don't want to pay more than what they they they have to. So we have to be mindful that a lot of what we would love to recommend and we will recommend implementation on uh is going to be very well thought out and it is going to be fair. It's going to be a break even. It's going to be something that allows us to free up some of those monies in the general fund to be able to to cover some of the things that we should be covering, which is employee pay and others. Uh doing more infrastructure. There's so much we can do, but I agree with everything that's being said right now. And to unleash staff to really start working on and come up with those ideas, that'd be wonderful. That'd be excellent. Any other thoughts? This document's not complete. It's the key things that we can come up with today, but should something come and happen as a surprise or an initiative that we need to a priority we need to take care of. It's still in there. I don't want anybody watching at home

[2:57:30] going, "Those are the only things we're focused on." No, it's it's a much bigger vision than that. But these are the ones we've identified today as being something we need to address and great input as far as economic development and bringing people in. with that. I don't know if you want to go in these in detail right now. We don't need to. I mean, at this point, uh, really the foundation is what we're looking for. And I think that I've heard enough from all the council members that actually express what I was hoping here to be honest with you. You know, I think at this point even that we can develop we can develop uh goals for each of the things that you've mentioned up there and break it down into short-term or long-term. That's not a problem for staff to do that. But we needed your input just to kind of hear hear from you what what's important to you, what's important to your constituents. I think that we've gotten just what what you see right now is a good start. And if something pops to mind quite frankly uh tomorrow or tonight, you're you're thinking about something. Oh, I definitely want to make sure that we address this. Let me know about that. Send it to us and we can make sure that staff addresses it and we develop a plan for that as well. Yes, ma'am. Is it premature since we're excited and hopeful to ask for a public revisiting of accomplishments in a few months? Absolutely. Or on a schedule that we can designate. I don't know if quarterly quarterly might be too soon, but six months, I don't know. Yeah, I'd be that'd be totally fine. Absolutely. That basically I talk about KPIs, right? How do you how do you measure your your success? And uh absolutely we can come back and say this is what we've developed and we I think if anything we're going to need your support anyway for some of the things we implement. But I have absolutely no issue with that. I think if anything that's accountability everybody's looking at me. Um, you went for the bus. Um, I know there are constraints just due to things that are outside of city control.

[2:59:35] For those people involved in business, moving at the pace of government can drive you nuts. Yeah. Yeah. I'm crazy. I've I've I've learned to live with it, Mary. I I'm I'm not going to tell you I like it, but I've learned to to live because there's things that we have to live within. But I say all that to say in areas that we can move on more quickly, let's move on them more quickly. Okay. Mhm. Let let let's let's hasten the pace on those things that we can hasten the pace on and not sacrifice quality or excellence. But I think that would make an impact on attitudes communitywide. I think council and even our boards and commissions. So let's to the extent it is humanly possible, let's move more at the pace of business than the pace of government. Shows good faith. And we can we can we've got good minds here and we are all pumped and ready. I don't think that's that's going to be a problem. And I actually think the the staff that I've talked to, they're they're they can't wait. Yeah, you know, it's it's like, you know, making a a thorough bread a plow horse. That's not what they are. They need to I don't know if this is the right time to bring this up. I don't. So, forgive me. I've had a lot of comments and actually calls on the retirees on their compensation part. Mhm. Can that be revisited? Because

[3:01:36] I don't really their insurance. You're talking about their Yes. I know we didn't just cut it completely off, but is there my my concern is that when we make a commitment that we we stick to it ex and from what I'm understanding is that we we backed off of that a bit. No, we didn't. It didn't change. No, we spent nearly half a million dollars going back in and providing a benefit to those retirees that said, "Hey, we came on and somebody finance HR Veronica, help me, Kimberly." We went back in and the cost of that when the inflation reduction act terminated, our carrier couldn't fund that anymore. We went back in and made a decision at council to refund that. Veronica, why don't you come in and touch base? I don't need you getting the wrong information. I need you to know before you got here what we did. Well, exactly. Because let's let Veronica speak to that real quick. And we if we I can get with her. I think it'll be if she can touch it real quick. And are you are you uh referring to what occurred last year during the benefit process? Kimberly might be best to speak on that um in detail. I wasn't here during that time. Um but yes, it's my understanding that there was going to be a significant um increase in cost for the retirey benefit and so that um was something that the city funded. Um that's correct. We saw a 63% increase to the cost of retirey insurance. Um and we planned on sharing a portion of that cost with the retiree. Unfortunately, due to some legislation um and some laws that we were unaware of and our consultant at that time was unaware of, we were not able to make that transition for the retiree to contribute to some of that increase. So, the city did take on the full cost of that. We do have a plan in place for

[3:03:40] that retirey contribution and possibly their plan to change in the upcoming year. Thank you. Uh, and we can get you some more detail on that. Make sure it was about a half million, wasn't it, Kimberly? I mean, 574, wasn't it? Yeah, we'd be happy to, you know, have additional discussions with you, kind of walk you through that process. And, um, we're actually coming up to, um, open enrollment again. And so, um, we do have a different consultant now. Um, they're going to be going out to bid for every benefit service. and that includes for employees and uh retirees whether it's pre or post 65. So you'll be hearing some more information on that. Well, I'm I'm proud of y'all for doing that. You know, that that's goes back to that perception of some people and when I'm when I don't know, you know, some I don't know what I don't know. Sure. on things. And Mary, but you know, now that you can absolutely come up to us and we'll we'll sit there for as long as we we need to just to make sure we go through the details with you. That's great, Daniel. Oh, I I just when they were I had Golly I I got caught flatfooted because I didn't know the answer and so anyway, thank you for allowing me that what is now a stupid question. Okay. No, it's not. It's you weren't here for people to bring up a discussion with you on something you weren't here to see. It's it's not right. It's they the staff here did a great thing and stepped up and provided a benefit to to people that are not even eligible for that benefit any longer are the ones that took care of it to make sure we held to our word. So, well, good, good. Thank you all. With with that said, um I know that what we have up there actually what I'd included in my in my goals um what I presented earlier covers a lot of this actually covers all of it. But we will Tommy as you mentioned look at especially there's a lot of low hanging fruit there always is you know you can start looking at and move at the speed of business. the times we get bogged

[3:05:43] down by regulatory things, you know, that we know that we'll face. But the things that we can move faster on, we definitely we want to be able to move faster on as well. That's good. But, uh, again, I think that we have the feedback we need at this point to kind of move forward. And I do understand that as far as some of the goals uh that that we've talked about, sure, why not come back uh have here and say, "Hey, this is what we've done. This is what we worked on." And we just do a quick follow up to the channel. This is what uh you said benchmark. Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely. You know, you you start off, you set a policy, it sounds great, and then if you don't follow through, I mean, that was just wasted time. So, I I love that it's it's a scheduled monitoring, if you will, you know, um and the citizens will appreciate that and it's a good accountability tracker. Okay, with that then I think we're good. Uh we we do have lunch right now and uh we have the animal task force coming in here at 12:30 to do their again go over the recommendations again. So we have a little bit uh deeper discussion and kind of give some some feedback from council direction moving forward. With that let's take a break for lunch. So we are going to be discussing animal shelter. Uh we do have the animal task force here today. Thank you'all for joining us. I know that y'all did a presentation back in May. It was a really good presentation. I thought really great uh recommendations as well, but we wanted this opportunity to really sit down with y'all and we do have brand new council members. So, we did print up the recommendations. You'll have them in front of y'all so we can kind of have a discussion about that and kind of move forward. And judge, I know that you're the chair of the group. Uh if you would like to kind of kick it off and start talking about um the the group and and what those recommendations are. Okay, I'll be glad to do that. Thank you. Um, I want to thank all the members of the task force for being here today to take some time to be back with us. And we did go through the recommendations uh at the

[3:07:48] council meeting. And of course, we took a lot of hours and put it into about 20 minutes of of presentation. And so today, we we can answer a lot of questions that you may have. uh real quickly we can just go over some of our recommendations and then you can take your questions from that point. Uh understanding and knowing that we have reasons why. So if you have questions on any of our recommendation today, we're more than happy to explain why we're making that recommendation and the purpose of it. You know, when we were put on the task force, we were told to look at what was the problem and then come up with solutions to the problem. And of course when we looked, one of the first things that we found was yes, do we have a problem with dogs running loose in St. Angelo? The estimate that we have at there's somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 36,000 dogs in the city of St. Angelo. On any given day, there's over 500 dogs a day that are running loose in the city of St. Angelo. And some people I've had people say, "Well, how do you know that?" I know that because of these people sitting right here and a couple three more that aren't here. And they literally went out and took pictures and we literally started counting animals that we would see. And if you all remember, and I didn't bring all my stuff, but if you'll remember at the council meeting, I showed you a packet that we had uh for one week. And in that packet, if you'll recall, was hundreds of pictures of dogs that were taken in that one week that were loose in the city of St. Angelo. So, if you would have told me that, and people did tell me that before we started this task force, I would have said they don't have a clue what they're talking about. But I guarantee you this group knows what they're talking about because they did the research that went into it. Now, you just think about that 500 dogs a day in the street. Will you think about it on your way home tonight? I will be very surprised if some of you don't see at

[3:09:51] least three dogs running loose and that's just on your way to your house. A and so we have to look at that because what does that affect? That that affects our public safety. Dog bite cases, the number of people being bitten are up. We've got to be able to resolve that. The number of dogs that we have at the shelter are up. We've got to be able to resolve that with all these strays and everything going on. Then there are some recommendations that goes along with that. U and one of the first things we looked at was the city ordinances. Now, we're not recommending you bring in any other city ordinances because we've got city ordinances for just about covers everything. Now, we have recommended some minor changes to some of the city ordinances uh but no major and not any new city ordinances because the whole purpose of of city ordinances and to to enforce the laws that you have and those laws along with the laws of the state of Texas basically in the Texas health and safety code. Those are the laws that comp that regulate animals in the state of Texas and in the city of St. Angelo. What we need to do is enforce those laws. That's what that's what has to be done is those laws have to be enforced. So then what is the issue there? Well, now we don't have enough animal control officers to do this. I mean, we're basically working with two at this period of time. We have four on the books. Uh we have a supervisor. Uh we have recommended that you go to eight. Now, we know because of your budget and your restraints that you have that right now probably isn't time to just add four more people and then four more trucks. But if we do this right, we don't have to do that. One of the things we talk about is shift work. You see the dogs in the morning when

[3:11:52] you're going to work, taking your kids to school. You see them on your way home after 5:00 and that's when most people see them. So during the day, we don't really have all that much sidings and need for that. So there's no reason we can't go to shift work 7:00 in the morning till 8:00 at night, something like that. And that would use two people, which would also use two use one truck. So we're not asking you to go spend hundreds of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars just to buy new equipment at this time, but we can do that as it is needed and necessary. As a retired employee of the city, um I became very good at looking at how do we take this budget and make it work. And that's what we got to do with animal shelter, too, is we've got to take what budget you have, make it work. So, if we do that and we increase the number of uh animal control officers out there on the street, then we will be able to start bringing those numbers down, bringing them into the shelter. And then what do we do with them at the shelter? You know, we have to make sure that all these animals are spayed or neutered. We have to make sure that happens. Uh right now, the number of animals that are in the shelter versus number of puppies versus actual dogs, we have to make sure that's under control. How do we do that? Spay or neuter. How are we going to get the money to spay or neuter? Well, you you have currently a budget that is going into adoptions and stuff. uh that money can come back into the city fund and the city do their own adoptions which they've done for years in the past. That will open it up to uh not only the shelter itself doing the adoptions uh but other agencies in the community uh to help and assist with that. If the city charges fees for adoption and those fees can go to help towards paying for the cost of the adoption. Also, spay or neuter is included in that. No animal leaves that

[3:13:55] shelter ever without being spay or neutered. Once we start that, we believe that it'll take somewhere in the neighborhood of five years for us really to make a big dent in this. But we have to remember the numbers. 500 dogs today in 10 years is hundreds of thousands of dogs. And so when we begin to spay and neuter and take care of that problem, then we start solving that problem. How do we do that? We have to develop a spay or neuter program. We talked about there are grants, there are things out here that that the city can apply for in order to get money to do that. I know the city's received some money and grants before. Uh we can do that. We've also talked to a lot of people about donations towards just doing spayer neuter. I believe it's very feasible to think that you could do spayer neuter funding off of some donations and easily collect 30,000 $40,000 a year that would help you with that program. Some of the vets that we've talked to are willing to work with us on that so that we can bring that at a reasonable price. We we we expect them they're making a living. We know they have to do that. uh but they can help us with this program. We can develop that. Daniel and I had a discussion about asking the city to make donations perhaps using through water bills, things of this nature. $1, $2. I just think if you get a thousand people in the city of St. Angelo to give you $2 a month, that's $20,000 a month. That's $200,000 a year you can use for spay or neuter. It's a donation program. It's a it's a volunteer program. We believe you can get funding through this and the grants that go along with that. Uh when we talk about the adoption, if you do this and you charge the fee, then you won't have an additional charge for that. Uh because there would may be a need for additional personnel. Uh that would have to be evaluated by the city

[3:15:57] itself and then y'all make that determination. But that could be done by the contract that you have at this time that you're paying some $70,000 for. that could be put back into the city budget to be used for that. Uh so there are ways remember we started off our program at the city council meeting by saying it's common sense and what we've recommended is common sense and how we fund it is common sense. You know, I don't think it's that big of mountain for us to climb if we use the common sense base and and don't expect you I don't expect you to come up with a million dollars tomorrow to solve this problem. I don't think anybody on the committee does either, but there's a lot of ways that you can start making these steps that aren't going to cost you that much money in order for you to do. So, if we take care of the spay or neuter program, we start adopting out the animals. No animal leaves. It's not spay or neuter. We open intakes on the weekends because we have the personnel to do that. We leave. We have later times do intake. So, we're doing intakes seven days a week. We're getting animals off the street not only in during the day, but early in the morning and also late in the afternoon. We're using and rotating equipment that we have that solves some of our problems. and then we later add another two and then we we get that number up to where it needs to be. If we do this in a five-year period of time, then that number of cost and expense should in fact start coming down. It's up to us to do the job in order to see that that happens. And so the better job we do, the better job we do of resolving the issue for the citizens of St. Angelo, the public safety issues, the problems with with dogs running loose, diseases can all be taken care of with these with this common sense approach. That's kind of just a recap right there. Yes, sir. Judge, u actually, this is for

[3:18:01] any of the task board members also. Um, you mentioned the the adoption part of it, and right now we have a contract for the adoption portion of it. So you're you're you're thinking that one person y'all I mean basically could do the the adoption, but this actually kind of opens the the door to anyone any of the animal rescue groups to really come in and participate in assisting with the adoption part of or at least come in and and pick out animals because the big concern of course would be uh run out. We contract that and we have another group which is PAS is actually doing the adoption part of it. We want to make sure that um we're we're looking for partnerships really is what we're looking for. But we want to make sure that we can get as many people involved as possible uh in this whole deal. And we have the deaf and animal rescue groups that we'd love to be able uh to hopefully to participate even in the volunteer part of it. But we know that there's a lot that we could do in house, but we would we would love to see that participation from everyone else. Uh people that u have a an interest especially in animals and this group I see sitting up here in front of me right now. I I know that y'all do. So on our part there it is it is possible to do it in-house with with participation from all the animal rescue groups. The second question is this um so you say that you're recommending four ASOs at the at the get-go but you understand that we do have constraints. So two probably would do the job but you're talking about shifts. So you're not talking about initially getting ASOs throughout the whole city and different uh districts and what have you. You're saying that at this point uh you have the equipment and you can just do it in shifts by hiring a couple more ASOS and they could actually handle uh the evening where animals are more visible actually and people are home. They can actually report them. And that's what you're saying at this point. You're not saying go ahead and hire I mean hire four ASOS. You can do it by by shift work. Well, I answer that first. Yes, we want you to have four because we believe it's going to take that to cover everything. But we believe you can do two now. And if you go into shift work now with that and then go into shift

[3:20:03] work with the other, you have four trucks already. So if you go shift work and weekend work, those four trucks will be enough to provide for eight people. And we always have to remember there's vacation, there's sick, there's other things. So in essence, we're really eight's going to give you seven is what it boils down to. And understanding your budget restraints, we believe you can do it that way without a large cost. You're going to have a salary cost, some equipment cost, things of that nature. uh uniforms and such, but otherwise you shouldn't be out a big budgetary number for that. Okay. The answer on your first question, yes. These people sitting beside me, not me because I'm not even close to an expert on anything to do with dogs other than how to feed them and take care of them a little bit. These people know those answers. And yes, they've already made a commitment by being on this committee. And yes, can they help you adopt pro help you adopt animals and such? Yes. Not just these people on the committee, but a lot other agencies here in town that I believe are all willing to buy into this. I'll let y'all answer that question. Well, I know I know at least from my perspective like at Cassy's place and stuff. Like we're not looking to get a contract with the city. We don't want a contract with city. We would like to volunteer and help lend knowledge and stuff like that. That's what we've always wanted to do. Uh if there wasn't a contract for any vendor for the city, uh I would hope and assume that that the current vendor that besides doing adoptions for the city that business would be as usual for them, that they would still pull just as they are now cuz they're more focused on shelter saving lives is their their mission. And that's a good goal to have. Everybody's a little bit different. We're we're a facility based. Critter Shack is a foster based mostly. And so everybody's what they're able to do, their niche is a little different, but there's a wealth of knowledge, I think, to to help once there is a qualified shelter director in place to have that program and build it from the ground up and have it to where the community is able to go in and adopt dogs and, you

[3:22:08] know, have a good repertoire, have a good system when it's done. But also, I mean, we've pulled dogs from the shelter. We've had to go through the vendor to do it when we've done it. But, you know, it's it's not a lack of wanting to pull dogs from the shelter. It's a lack of ability because we have 500 plus dogs on the streets in St. Angelo every day. So, just like the shelter gets people coming in trying to surrender dogs and stuff, we get all those phone calls and they hit up all of us before they go to the shelter to see if we have room and we just don't most of the time. Sometimes we end up making room simply because we have to. uh if it's a medical case that we we know we can help or or a dire situation, but you know, you you can't say yes all the time. That's just the reality of rescue. It's a sad reality, but it's the way it is. But I do believe that that the volunteer base under a a a good qualified ser shelter director is going to boom. And you'll have these groups, rescue affiliated people from our rescue and all of them that are going to come back and they're going to be walking these dogs and they're going to be trying to help and stuff like that. And the the things that they did before where they went in and they raised money and got corsed for all the the the kennels and stuff like that. The rescue is like pine the the community in St. Angelo is is wanting in there those doors to help how they can and and they're getting to some ways, but right now it's being kind of, you know, only through this passage type thing. Okay. Very good. The um I do want to say though that on on our end, we really are looking for the an opportunity to work with the community as a whole because this is an issue that affects the whole community. It'll take the whole community really to come together and and help make this thing really work for us. I know that um we implemented the open intake. Y'all are still recommending leaving it open intake no matter what. It just stays that way because again biggest gripe that we've heard is well more dogs are being euthanized at this point. What's your what's your response to that as far as the when you close intake that leaves

[3:24:11] the dogs in the street and so their lives matter too. And if you go back to the presentation with the German Shepherd um that was beaten, shot, you know, if that dog had been at least taken to the shelter, it would have had a chance rather than leaving the dog in the street to attack people, attack other dogs, attack people's cats, attack people's children. Um, but intake has to remain open and it may end up being more euthanasia, which is difficult and it's nobody wants to talk about that, but it's better to euthanize a dog than to leave it out in the street dying or attacking someone. Well, I wanted to say everybody points out that the euthanasia number has gone up, but the number of animals that have gone through has gone up proportionally. So adoptions and redemptions and animals transported and pulled into rescue have gone up way more than the euthanasia rate. So for every you know they I heard somebody talking about they've you know euthanized 100 something animals in the last 2 3 months or whatever. Well there's 3 to 400 animals that have been saved that never would have even gone through that shelter. So you know it's it's a it's a balanced thing. You know, you you yes, you are having euthanasia go up, but proportionally you're also saving more lives. Animals that never would have even touched the foot of that shelter, never would have had a chance to get adopted or their own owners possibly find them and redeem them and get them back home safe. So, the system is set up the way it's set up for a reason and it works, but the focus needs to be driven away from just the negative of it. Okay. The when we talk about volunteers, volunteers can be used to help find fosters or help find other organizations. Like if you if you have a purebred dog, there are purebred rescues. And so a volunteer can be designated as that person who finds those because I do it

[3:26:17] day in day out. And so one person can do that as a volunteer. Absolutely. and they're always willing to help people. Council members, I'm sorry. I know that I' I'm kind of asking a lot of questions right here, but um y'all have any questions for them? I know that you made a recommendation that we have ordinances in place that quite frankly, they can just be amended and make some changes to the ordinances that'll make it stronger for what um y'all are recommending. And um and I I know that y'all have a list of those ordinances that you would like for us to consider as well uh for city council to consider. We definitely would like to take a look at those moving forward and see what we can actually uh do as far as an implementation. But again, on our end, we're just trying to do everything we possibly can to kind of kick it off with the the ordinances. Those are the kind of the quick changes that we can make if u on our end. But when when it goes back to the recommendations that would cost the city initially money, ASOS hiring ASOS, is there is there another area that uh that you all recommend that we address that would cost the city many money? I just want to make sure that we get that on the table because we're talking about budgets right now. There you go. Excuse me. Yes. Okay. Can I get everybody's name here? Starting with you on the end. My name is Christopher McGuffin. My name is Sharon Hoffman. I'm Mary Golder. Heather Hegwood. The the the Okay, I'm sorry. Go ahead. That's fine. In my opinion, excuse me, the most important thing the city can do other

[3:28:21] than maybe reinforcing the ordinances is to put some money into spayneuter and education. Um, we have partnered with Cassie's Place and have been doing low cost, excuse me, lowc cost spayneuter for about since 2015. And um that's the money that is probably the most wisely spent money that you can do. Uh it's not it's not cheap, but it is the most most worthwhile and it's the most that will make a difference in the long run. Um if you want figures, we can help you with that. If you want bets uh pricing, we can help you with that and we're willing to help with that. We actually came to the city several years ago with some proposals. So, we're happy to help with spayneuter ideas, voucher programs, uh, funding, and in my opinion, that is the most important thing y'all can consider. Okay. And that goes along with education as well. What What do you think, and I know you said you could help us with this figures, some figures at this point, but what would you think would be a sufficient amount of money? I know that's just a a a kind of a guess game right now, but what do you think would be sufficient for a spayneuter program for a city our size? When we started our voucher program about four years ago, it started very slowly because nobody knew what we were doing. We sold 30 the first few months, 30 vouchers. Last month we sold 210. And if we had enough money, we could sell 500 a month. Wow. About 500. So you would say I mean that would be a safe number to say about 500. 500 a month would be a wonderful number to to strive for. Yes. Oh, per per price. We do it differently than pause. Um, we have negotiated with the vetinarians for a very fair price and we chip in the rest of the fee. We sell the voucher for a portion of what the vet charges us and our cost is about $49 per animal. Okay, that's what we pay. We split that cost. That includes that includes the voucher. They the for a cat, let's say a cat, the vouchers our voucher is

[3:30:23] $45. We pay the vet $75 and we provide the vaccines. So for $85 we you're getting a cat that's spayed or neutered vaccinated and gets and gets a payment and gets a pain shot. Dogs are more. Uh so we pay the difference and it's almost $50 an animal. Okay. So are you also paying the vaccine from the veterary? We are paying for the vaccine because we can get it a lot cheaper than they can. Gotcha. And we think it's very important to include the vaccines as well as pay meds especially for females. Where's the difference coming from? Where does y'all's funding come from out of the money that we raise? There there are people that have just donated. You know, we do St. Angelo gives. We've got, you know, funding that comes like from our owner at Cassy's who's who's been very generous. That's why we we do what we do. Um and Critterjack as well. I mean, it's it's about raising funds. It's about, you know, things like big things like St. Angel gives. That's that's a huge part of what allows us to do rescue throughout the year and stuff. Um, we personally don't do grants. I think y'all may We've gotten some small grants, but we just decided that it was our priority. Yeah. And that's what we are focusing on. We still do rescue, but the spayneuter part of our program is the most important part. So, that's where we put most of our money. Currently, we're scheduled. We're looking at $120,000 in the next year. Okay. For our costs together. Yeah. Because I was going to say that at $49 an animal as far as which you mentioned a while ago for the 500, you're looking at about 24 over $24,000 per month in order to make the program work. So, it's it's expensive, but but it has just exploded. People after they found out what we were doing, they line up, they come to we sell it once a month and they're lined up around the building. Is there any criteria on who is available for those? do not we do not turn anyone away. We we did we did we did a study and in encouraging the city to help us several years ago about 80% of the vouchers we sell are within the for

[3:32:25] people with who live within the city. The other 20 are Grape Creek or out outside but 80% anywhere between 78 and 82% were always within the city limits. Sharon, do you have a group of veterinarians that specifically donate to or is it open to all the veterinarians or just a specific? If I had more money, I would add five more veterinarians. We're just we've got two veterinarians who will work with us wonderfully and do any number of veterinarians. Uh any number of surgeries for us. So, with them doing an unlimited amount, we're good where we are. But if we had more funding, we could add another five vets. Yeah. And they would be willing to do so. Are they local vetinarians or do they come in? They're all local. Okay. I've got a question. It it's two parts. The um you talked about the amount of the euthanasia would would increase just because of the ina intake. You know, it's proportional. We're considered a no kill shelter and I don't know the parameters that that make that make up that definition. What what does that entail and what are the ramifications if you remove that moniker? It's we've never been a no kill shelter. No, I'm talking about the city. The city the city is not really a no kill shelter. That requires a 90% live release rate. And to my knowledge, I think it's been reached once or twice. Um you said a n a 90 90% live release rate. Live releases hard to understand. that means is the doors have been closed and animals have not been allowed to come into the shelter because those animals may need to be euthanized, but the animals that are in the shelter they can find homes for or they can transport them out and that counts as a live release. They transfer them to another facility, for example, Canada. Um, and that counts as a live release. Okay? So, but the dogs that the doors are closed to, every stray dog on the street doesn't count. And that's a part of Best Friends Animal Society program that the shelter and Paws have been involved

[3:34:27] with. But the shelter is no longer involved in that with Best Friends, right? I hope not. I mean, that's a question. That's a question. I mean, I I'm still hearing almost on a daily basis that people are getting told at the door, the shelter, if they try to find a if they have a stray and they take it that that dog's going to get killed in three days. Just flat out. Are you serious? And and the problem is is it it makes everybody that is an animal advocate in this community that's on Facebook and everything else look at it's like you know when when the shelter doors opened it was a good thing because there was actually a place for animals to go but everybody else looked at it as oh it's this you're just putting them in there to kill them. And then we try to educate them. We tell them, well, if it's if it doesn't have a chip, then it's going to have three business days, not three days. Three business days is what the ordinance says to get reclaimed by owner. If it does have a chip, then it gets seven business days. Or is it? Yeah, that's right. Seven business days to get reclaimed. Then it's eligible to be pulled by a rescue or adopted. And it's they're like, well, once that time limit's passed, they're going to be the the first one. They said they said they're going to be euthanized. It's like no that it should be a rolling system. The dog that's been there the longest obviously would be the one that's in jeopardy of that. And from my understanding it may be around 3 to 4 months now is when they might reach that point. But 3 to 4 months in the shelter, which is made to be a temporary facility regardless cuz it's a m municipal shelter, is is a is a turnaround time that gives that dog opportunity to be seen by the public, reclaimed by an owner, possibly pulled by a rescue or transported if it's to a good place. Um, but I mean if if if my little Yorkie got out, I I' that's the first place I'd be going to look as a shelter because, you know, if you don't if you if you don't encourage people to use it, what happens is everybody just tries to to keep dogs

[3:36:30] safe by giving them away and this and that online and then your little animal's gone. You never get it back. Cuz we've seen that. We've seen dogs show up four or five years later because somebody kept it cuz they didn't want to take it to the shelter. And then you have to reunite this animal and now you got to explain to the person it's like you kept a dog it wasn't yours you know because you didn't do the process right. You can Google no kill. It has not worked anywhere in the country. It has been a disaster and it's been what's happened here and that is loose dogs on the street. I'm a lawyer. I get a call of a dog bite at least two or three times a week and the people that own the dogs don't have insurance and the people are going to Shannon and they're having a 20 30 $40,000 bill that never gets paid. So the dog bite issue is a real public health crisis and it's that way anywhere where you have the nokill moniker. Well, and that's really when you look at the animal shelter, the purpose for its existence, really when you look at public health and safety, that should be our primary concern no matter what. You know, we want to keep our public safe and um the way to do that is to ensure that those the the animals are off the street. U we do have a heart and I can tell you right now that if somebody finds an animal, takes it to the shelter, we that, you know, if they want to participate in the foster program, the goods program, they're more than welcome to do that. but they say no, they don't want to do it. We're going to take the animal no matter what. We're not going to push it back on the street. Uh owner surrender. Somebody comes in and they want to surrender their their their animal. Um you know, we could recommend to them, you know, you we have a you do counseling actually through pause. We could do counseling through pause, but again, if they refuse to participate in that, we are not uh just going to allow them to take their their their animal back home because more than likely if they're done with the animal, they're done with the animal. Who knows where it's going to end up? So, we have opened the the the doors. Uh we have allowed for animals to come in that in the past we we wouldn't have. But, uh unfortunately, that does mean that there's more animals at the

[3:38:32] shelter. But we also know that the last thing we want is have those loose animals out there on the street uh that could be a nuisance or worse. You know, they bite someone and it becomes an issue worse. Yeah. Kill somebody, right? So, we want to do everything we possibly can to address that. So for us as far as as a city, public health and safety really is the is a key when it comes to the animal shelter. And that's one thing we want to make sure that we're securing. There is an older gentleman that we're working with right now who kept a mother dog um as part of the mommy and me program. They have nine puppies. He's an older gentleman. He can't get help. He can't take the puppies back because of the way this program is written. He can't take the puppies to the shelter. He can't take them anywhere. He has to keep them. He has no means to take care of nine puppies. He's he's an older older man. Why can't he take him back? I mean, why won't the shelter part of the contract that you can't take him back to the shelter? You can't take him to the shelter and pause won't take him in. It's not No, you can't order surreners. No, you can't. You can own surrender. So, I'm seeing my staff back there. I know. That's that I'm I'm When I'm looking at y'all, I can see the staff. I'm not trying to call them out or anything. We have that contract. There is a there's a 180 degree difference in what y'all are saying and what I'm seeing the staff indicate. And I'm not saying anybody is lying, but there is the there is a gigantic disconnect. Sorry. What does the contract say? They were that they can't if they have if they keep a dog under the um the programs through PAUSE, they cannot owner surrender the dogs. They cannot take them. They if they adopt a dog, they cannot take the dog back to pause and cannot take We're talking about paws. We're talking about the animal shelter, though. Yeah, we're talking about our animal. They can't take it to the animal shelter. If they adopt a dog and it doesn't work out, they don't take it back. And then this guy has nine puppies that he can't take care of and didn't want in the first place. Okay. And he was just trying to do a good thing. Did he ask to take all

[3:40:35] nine puppies? No. Mama had nine puppies. Okay. So, those were his to begin with. No, it was a dog he was a dog he a dog that was on the street that showed up at his house and had nine puppies. Okay. So, it may have been that he was referred to them as the vendor and that program and that's how he ended up under contract with them. Okay. It's I it's it's like if if somebody finds a dog and they end up going to to Crittershack and say, "Hey, I'll foster this dog." You know, they can't just give the dog away or something. At that point, they're they're bound like it's a Crittershack dog. They're working towards getting an adoption for it or whatever. Now, Crittershack, if something like that happened and the person's like, "Hey, I just can't do it anymore." They're going to just go get the dog and find another foster and take take care of it. Um, but this when you get into a situation of a mom that's pregnant or has puppies and a whole bunch of them like that, you get into I mean they're they're providing food, they're providing resources or whatever. So, they're looking at eventually getting an adoption for that. But if the adoption doesn't come because we're overwhelmed with animals in St. Angelo, then then that that ends up creating those kind of stagnant situations. Let me let me try something a little bit different right now. So, all of you all have a copy of the recommendation? I do not. Oh, you didn't get a copy of it. Let me see here. Thank you. There she is. She's got one. Oh, she got one. I just got it. Yeah. Thank you. So, and I left a copy of the u of the recommendations up there as well for each one of you to have a copy. What I like to do is because y'all are here, y'all put a lot of work into these recommendations. I'd like to go through each one of them just individually and say, "Okay, this is what we feel needs to happen to tackle the the issue, the problem." Yes, ma'am. just like to ask a quick question. Uh since we're discussing the urgency of spayneuter programs and the issues of trying to navigate various social programs or or

[3:42:40] whatnot, uh the issue of puppies and uncontrolled breeding. Do you any of you by any chance have current information on the population of our shelter percentage of babies to adult animals? I'd be curious. We we got that from Kim had according to her 37% of the population is puppies. Wow. 37% of puppies. Is that under six months? under three months. She has the dates on. Hold on one second. I think it's under six months. Under six months. Yeah. Now, that's Pam's numbers that she received that she got from I know I know when we went out to tour it was very difficult to tell because the kennels that had puppies would have a litter of puppies, maybe two to half a dozen in them. And those kennels had no ID cards on them saying how many there were, what litter they were for, anything like that. So, and they were being kept in separate areas and like the quarantine room and stuff like that. Um, but puppies in general should, you know, it's shouldn't be in there very very very long, you know. Um, they should be the top priority to get adopted or get pulled out by rescues if possible or perhaps prevent them from being born in the first place. Yeah, sure. Um, the shelter is no place for puppies. Parvo is endemic out there. um up for respiratory infection in kittens, um ringworm, there's all kinds of things that happen out there that are just very difficult to get rid of. U not letting those puppies be born in the shelter would be preferable. Puppies or kittens in my opinion. Okay, with that um what I was saying is I know that we have the recommendations from all of you

[3:44:44] and really again a lot of thought and work went into it. I want to get just a little bit more specific into each one of them. So when I when I mentioned the one that y'all recommended like community safety revise the city ordinances clarity and effectiveness including updates definition and removal of outdated language. you'll have a copy of that and that's something that quite frankly that we uh would like to see of course so we can kind of go through it thoroughly and say hey these are some of the changes that we're recommending as well um and quite frankly I know that I can tell you have them all right there too there's quite a few of them is that correct yes yes there's there's quite a number of them there there was I know one of the ones I wanted to mention was um and it's it's an ordinance right now is that that you know we're supposed to have a city tag all animals are supposed to be registered with city tag. That ordinance didn't go away. It just quit being done. Okay. And the vets provide that information back to the the city. Now, that's a way to generate revenue right there. That's city tags. They have to be issued. Um but also, it's an opportunity to create a database where every dog in the city is tagged again through the city. So, they have a a centralized database that they could have online. And then if every animal's required to be microchipped, you could easily just add their microchip information to that tag. So now you've created a database that could be looked up by police, fire, animal shelter, any of those things if a stray dog comes in. So they don't have to go online and look through the national databases. They could check first to see if we have it locally registered. Okay. And if that microchip number is listed with the city. Okay. So Daniel, let me ask a question. How many animals after they've been in the shelter and they leave the shelter or leave paws don't have a chip in them? Paws, they're going to have a chip because they're being adopted. If you're talking about a owner redemption through the shelter, they don't have to do anything. They the city shelter, from my understanding, can issue them a citation if they want to, but it's, you know, it's uh So, you're saying they're not

[3:46:48] chipped before they leave? You're saying they have a voucher? If I lost my dog and it's not chipped and I go to pick it up from the shelter, I have to pay the fee to get it out, but I'm not aware of if the shelter is going to require me to chip it or not. Morgan, do they require a chip? I need some clarification on this. Can I tell a story? Okay, let Morgan answer his question. Morgan Chegwin, interim director of neighborhood and family services. All uh return to owner pets um are given a microchip before leaving the facility. If an owner refuses a microchip um and they live in city limits, they receive a citation for failure to microchip. Um the only exceptions would be an owner coming to redeem their pet that actually resides outside city limits. We encourage it, but it's not required. Or a dog that is being redeemed out of bite quarantine and the bite was particularly um bad and to a person. Uh for those we would make it part of their spayneuter follow-up that they've got to get that done at that time. So and that's less than a dozen a month that are leaving by those means. So the so hundreds of dogs a month are leaving I'm sorry a year are leaving redeemed by their owners with a microchip. It is the minority, the vast minority are leaving with no chip, no tag, no ID and they are followed up with either through the court system with a citation or through the spayneuter followup which is also a citation. So, so on that if they're getting chipped, which is a modification to an animal, which is an own piece of property, why aren't we requiring them to be spayneutered before they leave? That is a modification to somebody's property. get them. That is basically, but you don't do a spay and neuter on the shelter premises. No, but we used it used to be that they were they had to be done it had to be done before the owner could redeem the animal to the at the vets's office. The dog the dog was the animal was not released at the shelter.

[3:48:50] If you wanted your dog back and it wasn't spayed or neutered, it was go directly to the vet and they had several vets and you would go to the vet and pick it up there. So there was no question that it was done. It was never given back to the owner to have to to do the spayneuter. Right. So do our two vets I mean how would we get dogs to there I get your point but to get them from the shelter to the vet for the redemption. I think I have been told before that when you do voucher programs things like that a lot of times people don't ever redeem the voucher. They never come back. And I have gotten phone calls from people personally that they don't have the money to pay the fines or the fees to go get their dog. So there's this is one of the most complicated issues that just it's a global problem. It's a national problem. It's only ours. I think the way that the the judicial system is set up about is is you can if I'm not mistaken, you can you can get cited for your dog not being spayed and neutered basically comes down to you can just go in and pay the fine, but you don't have to actively fix the situation. I guess I can answer that. Step in, Alan. Has that changed? Because I I was going to tell I had my dog. It's been years ago. She got picked up. I found her at the the the uh facility. To get her back, she had to be spayed, neutered. So, I said, "Well, I want my vet to do it." It got shipped to my vet. I went and paid my vet and then I got her she got a tag that's before microchips, but I couldn't get her back without her doing that. Yeah, but before and I don't know when it stopped being this way, but I can tell you when I was actively out there from 2009 to 2013, that animal went in a city vehicle to the vet. Not it never any other way. It always, even when we took it as a rescue, we didn't take it to our vet. It was delivered by the city to the vet and we would go and pick it up. And I don't know when that changed, but it did change. And it wasn't necessarily

[3:50:52] the same day. I mean, they had to wait till the vet had an appointment available, but yes, we picked them up from the veterinarian after their surgery, and that that is the way it used to be. They the city did take it. Um, and that's what we're recommending now is that because once they go back to the owners, then you have no control over what happens to it. Well, I see there's some steps and some policy there. The initial reason I had Morgan come up was to validate whether pets left there that were not chipped. And I heard that scenario exactly as it is. We do chip everything. There's very few instances where they don't. What I was getting at was it was implied that we don't know if they ever get chipped when they leave the shelter. And I think we do. I think we do make an effort there. No, it's Sorry, that was a misunderstanding on my part. It does sound like a huge misunderstanding. Is the is the Does the city register all those chips? Yeah, I was going to add that clarifying point that whether it's an adoption through Contra Valley Pause or an owner redemption with the city, those two different agencies register that pet's microchip to the new owner. And any changes that the owner ever needs to make, they can make that locally through us or through just the national database by calling the microchip implant facility, but not only does that animal get microchipped, it gets registered same day. Thank you. And the answer on judicially is that if we get it in court, the the judges can look at that and I can say that many many a time if you went and got it spayed or neutered, got it taken care of, brought it back in, I was very apt to let you go or place you on a deferred disposition that if you get it done, it automatically ends up as a dismissal. If you don't agree to do that, then we can find you. That that's all. We can't order you to go do that unless you agree on a deferred disposition or something like that. So, judicially, we don't have the authority just to make them do it, but we can use that as part of the sentencing phase of whether they have or whether they haven't done that. Okay, cool. Thank you, Judge Allen. We'll go I mean, you know, Daniel, we'll go back to your

[3:52:55] questions on suggestions. Yeah. Uh again, just for clarification again, you mentioned that first item that was of concern to you in the ordinance or the amendment that you would like to see was that part as far as the tagging. Uh any others in particular that you felt if you want to just kind of cover those and see what we on our end need to be working on? Well, I don't think there were really any huge changes to the ordinances, but we did recommend that spayneuter be at six months rather than four months because that was what the vets recommended as health-wise for the animal. Okay. We we also did recommend on that to hold on agenda. Yeah, the um there should be breeder permits for those people who are breeding dogs and there hasn't been one sold in two years. Okay. And so we did recommend upping the price of that and um actively in yeah active enforcement because you can look on Facebook all day long and people that are selling puppies who obviously don't have breeders permit. So nobody's listed, but everybody's got one. I I don't that, but I'm just saying there there are difficulties. We make rules for a population, not an individual. And it's so hard to enforce some of these things in those situations. I didn't mean for that to be a pun, but I'm just saying no, there are things that are difficult to do. It's easy to say, but it's very difficult to implement. We'll have to take those opportunities. but they're on Facebook and they'll talk to you. Oh yeah, my puppies are at X address. I was like, okay, knock not. Here's your citation. I have two questions. I wanted to add just real quick. I think the reason that it's okay. All this started a lot of it is because like what you're saying the people online I don't care whatever you know in 2015 and stuff is when the no kill movement hit and everybody you know we're going to start spay microchip and that's going to get it and so shelters

[3:54:58] started modifying their behavior and slowly intakes went down but spayneuter didn't necessarily go up because the general population I mean you could talk to people now you could probably talk to somebody you know that doesn't know their dog has to be microchipped or spayneutered um people within the community of animal rescue and stuff like that. They're very aware and they're encouraged by it. But so you've had almost a decade decade now of where a policy was put in place that's supposed to counteract the youth in Asia and so shelters start closing intake. So euthanasia goes down, but the the population on the streets went up. I mean, I think we can all agree 7 8 years ago it was random that you saw a dog running around in St. Angelo. Sure. Certainly not in packs, you know, like on Sherwood Way or in Southland or or you know, anywhere just about. I mean, there were some places, yes, but it's like those were the ones where all the rescues were out there fighting to get this dog because there's a stray dog over on 32nd Street and and everybody's setting out traps and and food and everything. Now, that's all over town every day. And so as the intake closed, it started with going from county to city and this and that and everything. It's just it's made it to where we have more dogs because euthanasia is not happening because there was 5 to 8,000 dogs being euthanized a year or animals here at our own shelter. And then it just kind of stopped. And so you shut the doors, the animals aren't coming through. They're still out there. They're still breeding and they're just growing and growing, growing. And then we shut off all the surrounding areas. they they go from us to being dumped out in all those areas, but we're not helping those areas anymore. They don't have a place to even bring them in. And so it's just caused a problem that just keeps escalating. So opening the shelter, that was the first real positive thing that I think has happened in a long time. One other change was about own definition of an owner because now the definition of an owner is if you have a dog for 3 days, it's yours. You got to spay, neuter it, you got to vaccinate it, you got to chip it, you got to do all those things theoretically that are required under the ordinances.

[3:57:01] We're recommending that be stretched to 10 days because that lets a finder make some effort to place that dog either through breed rescue uh or them keep the dog themselves or whatever, but let's go 10 days rather than three days. That encourages people to make efforts to find the owner or to place the dog. Okay, very good. Uh I know Karen, you had a question a little while ago. You're what's the definition of a breeder in our ordinances? Because we're a farming and ranching community. Everyone here understands showing an animal through 4. Those those animals are special to those kids and to those families. They're a very specific breed. Um they are shown in narrow categories. They aren't just I had a cute goat and so I bred it to my neighbor's cute goat. U can somebody speak to that? I don't know the answer. I have the definition here. So an owner of an unaltered dog or cat that sells, trades, or gives away the offspring of an al unaltered dog or cat. It's the definition for an animal. It doesn't have to be a purebred. It can be you know the the border collie and the lassa accidentally. So does this breeder thing only only pertain to dogs and cats? It okay. It's not goats and all that. Good. Now Karen threw Karen threw us off with a cute goat. [Laughter] And we looked at the breeders permits that were issued. There were none issued in 2024. There were 10 issued in 2023 and all and those were primarily pit pit mixes. There was only one that appeared to be an AKC breeder, a dog that was going to be registered. And not that that's one way or the other, but that these are dogs that at least somebody was paying the breeder fee, but the breeder you have to re up annually. And if you look at Next Door Facebook, you know, there people selling lots of dogs out there.

[3:59:05] They're selling them still in parking lots. Okay. Well, thank you for that. I know. So, you you covered uh we're at the um the owner definition. Is there What's the next one on there? You have another one on there that you'd like to cover on the ordinance part of it. Was probably the big ones. We don't. Okay. Pot belly pigs don't need vac rabies vaccines. We we took pigs out. Did you? Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, the next one you had on recommendations under community safety is strengthen enforcement of existing city and state laws concerning dangerous animals, strays, intake procedures, and spayneuter requirements. We've talked about the state spay neuter part of it as well. I mean so far do you want to elaborate a little bit more on item B? I think one thing on intake is we talked about um making sure well for for for the ACOs and um for the the staff working there is you know I mean why can't let's let's try to utilize things like body cameras and and video systems and recorded phone calls and everything so we can have a record of all these things so we can really get good numbers and crunch how many people are trying to bring in animals, how, you know, how many are being adopted, but also it's it's good for the city if if somebody comes in there and doesn't act properly or their animal is aggressive or something or does something, you know, you've got a a permanent record to protect liability for the city and the shelter workers by having that stuff. I mean, we we we body cam up our police when they go out to do things. I think that that this is no different, you know? I think it's it's it's it encourages good behavior by the citizen, but it also encourages good behavior by the employee as well. Okay. It's expensive, I think. Under section 3.01.012,

[4:01:09] 012. Um, we talked about animal. It says the exception to a spayneuter requirement is animals transferred to another animal shelter or qualified rescue that provides an application to the city agreeing to follow all state and local laws. And we had said that needs to be all animal that that it all animals need to be spayed and neutered before they leave the shelter. Okay. The I guess the next one is the current. Mhm. Yes sir. I think on that is what we discussed earlier is we believe that number does need to go to eight in order to allow you to do this in shields. that'll provide uh a good coverage of the city, not only in area, but also in time, and allow for an opportunity for us to be able to do a better job of intake because opening intake is a big answer to taking the animals off of the street. Uh, and it was also part of the reason changing the ownership ordinance is because if I got that dog on Friday and I couldn't take it to the shelter until Monday, by law, that became my animal. Yes. Yeah. So, we did that in order to solve that issue also. Uh, so that was one of our recommendations there. Can I ask a question? Is intake open to cats? Because I'm hearing more from people saying that they are not the intake is closed as to cats. Are is intake open to cats and dogs at this point? When I specifically did the intake, it was for for dogs. Just dogs. Yes, ma'am. It was for dogs. So, dog it's not open to cats. I'm sorry. Owner relinquish is not open to cats. I had I had somebody tell me that they were told No, my my my charge to my staff was dogs because that was the issue that we're faced with at that point was they were told cats were just allowed to roam so that people dumped the cat out down by the river. No, I mean I mean again on our end on our end what we're doing is the dogs. We're not doing open intake is not for cats. Is that correct ladies?

[4:03:13] Okay. I just want to make sure that I'm Well, that that's leading to cats. The February 27th policy change was specifically to the intake of dogs. Correct. So, uh people bringing in cats, they may participate in Good Sam. Um they are referred to second chance program for rehoming cats that they own. Um but there's no there's no open intake for cats under the current um policy. We we do take in a good many cats. Uh but we do encourage participation good Sam and do refer to second chance for owned cats. I I think cats pose a public health problem just as much as dogs do an overpopulation of cats and we have that here if you again if you read next door which uh is they all people talk about are cats in their yard, stray cats in their neighborhood, people feeding stray cats. Um I don't understand why cats are not a public health issue as well as dogs. Again, the initially what we're addressing were were the dog bites and the risk associated with that because that was what was coming back as far as a lot of the reports was the fear of the loose animals, loose dogs that were that could attack or were attacking. And that's why we took immediate action or I took immediate action to make sure that open intake for specifically for dogs. Now for cats that's something that our end and city council members we could take a look at and say hey yes that's what we want to do as well but for I mean initially it was just the dog population. So okay and mayor I think we looked at that one time where we talked about feral colonies we we did some funding for some feline feral colonies in the past and when you take one out they easily get replaced so you can expand on that a little bit. It's our so when a cat comes into the facility the um about about this right this time of year more than half are neonatal kittens and so to the extent the finder is able to participate

[4:05:16] in good Sam or transition to foster through contra valley paws that's ideal to keep them healthy but to the extent the individual can't do that we certainly take them in. Um, right now this time of year, the minority of animal cats coming in are mature cats and so they are slated for SNR and that's explained to the person at the front counter. Look, unless this cat is a nuisance in its neighborhood, meaning that it's biting people, it's aggressive in some way, but if it's simply a community cat, um, it does run through our SNR program. So the city funds to pay for that spayneuter and rabies vaccine and FBRCP vaccines um have been fully expended and the and our rescue partner Contra Valley Paw is currently pulling all those cats and spayneutering them. That is at risk of their funding and not being able to do it any longer. Um but right now all all mature cats unless they're a nuisance, unless they're a problem in their home neighborhood, um are being put back in their home neighborhood spayneutered vaccinated. So, where are those feral and non-feral? Because this could be a cat that somebody just left out of an apartment that is being considered a feral cat, but it's not a feral cat. Any community cat. So, it's just they're spayneutered and returned to their home neighborhood. Where they where are they taken? to their home neighborhood to the address where they came in from quite frankly. All of them unless they become sick and or are a nuisance, in which case we're still honoring the three-day stray hold. So, an owner may come forward for their cat um or we seek medical treatment uh for the cat. But so I can't say all of them go back home, but the vast major they don't take them outside of town and put them in places. No. What about tame cats that are owner surreners? Um they're well those are referred to our second chance program through our rescue partner Contra Valley Paws because we do not have open intake for cats. So you're not taking any cats? No, we take in hundreds of cats. Of course we take in cats. There is just coordinated effort around cats. So if a cat is owned and the owner comes in and wants to surrender their cat, they're referred to the second chance program

[4:07:19] through Contra Valley Paws. They go through their process with it. Contra Valley Paws can recommend it for a shelter intake and we do that process or they can work on getting the cat rehomed directly from its home of origin. So the the cats that are coming in are stray stray cats. So quick question mark, how many at large cats do you have? Say in May, did you get any versus dogs? How many at large reports or something other? Well, we don't take at large reports for cats because they're allowed to free roam. So, if someone calls and says, "Hey, there's a cat running around my neighborhood." We just vet it from there that, you know, the cat is allowed to do that. Do you know who's feeding it? I I I don't know right off. I apologize. But, um, for for dog at large, we received about 240 calls uh for dog at large in May. And for cats, I mean, equivocally, I mean, essentially, we received no cat calls for dog or cat out because that's not a violation. That's what I Yeah, I was gonna say, how many injury reports from cats versus dogs? I can get that to y'all. I'm just curious and Travis, maybe Travis would would know the number of people being bitten. It's by and large by dog and that was the impetus for the policy change in February and that is we we had previously reported to council that dog bites were on the rise and needed attention. So, uh, the number of cat bites reported are the large majority. I would say maybe 10% of our bite events that are coming in are from cats perpetrating a bite. I have I have two questions. One, they get deferred over to to Paul's and then did you say that if Paul's decides the shelter needs to do an intake on a surrendered cat, then y'all take it in? It's a recommendation. So, Paul So, the so the vendor determines if a cat's intake by the animal shelter. No, I wouldn't categorize it that way. So Pause has a checklist that they go through with the owner and they're identifying, you know, why do you need to owner surrender this cat? If it's something that can be solved, then pause wants to offer resources to solve it. Did you recently lose your job and need access to a pet food pantry? Is the animal experiencing some kind of medical issue that can be assisted through the compassion fund? Pause is going to work through that

[4:09:20] process. But if there's no resources that could resolve the issue for the owner, pause lets us know and says, "Hey, we've worked through this whole process. There's nothing else we can do. We would recommend it for a shelter intake and and we contact the owner for next steps." All right. So, we we've done a lot of Q&A here, but we we need to keep it on task kind of where we're at. Thank y'all both for your question. Daniel, let's go back to Yeah, absolutely. And so, right now, um the discussion we're having really is just kind of address the dog situation. We could talk about cats later, but uh the dogs part of it is what I want to make sure that we we shore up right now. And so I know Judge, you had talked about the number of ASOs and I got my notes on there as well as far as uh from four to eight, but really even an additional two, you know, in shifts would work usually the same vehicles and what have you. So I do have my notes on that. I don't know if you wanted to add anything else to that that part of it on item ice 1C. I really think that's just a a thing that you're going to have to do based upon how how you can fund it during that time. We do believe that two is ne two more additional and fill the open one that you have. Okay. But also uh to answer that question, yeah, there is something else. If we're going to get good people do that job, y'all need to look at those salaries. You're expecting people to do a job that is very dangerous, very difficult to handle, and you're paying them a very, very minimum salary in order to do that job. That job they've got to learn how to go to court. They've got to learn how to testify. They got to learn learn what elements of a charge are, elements of a complaint are, what it takes to file a charge. There's a lot of things they have to do. And and I know people will make remarks about, well, you're a dog catcher and this kind of stuff. Well, there's a lot to that job, not just the physical part itself, cuz there's a heck of a lot on the physical part. And I've seen these guys for 50 years in what they do. But they've also got to be intelligent enough and smart enough that in a lot of ways they are acting in the same capacity as a police officer. They're taking their out there

[4:11:23] taking that call. They've got to learn how to deescalate. We've got to learn how to do these things. We've got to go back to educating them. Adam and I both agreed that between the police department and the court, they and the city attorney's office, we can train these people to do their jobs a lot better, but we've got to have the person with the ability to be able to do that. So, uh, you need to take a long look at the salaries that you have for those people and get them a decent salary so that we can obtain, uh, applications from people that will fit into those positions that can handle your neighborhood problems. And, uh, judge, as you mentioned, it's not just a neighborhood problem. It's also showing up in court and knowing how to handle that case, knowing that they're, you know, you know what they're reporting, uh, when they're there at court. Yeah. They got to know what the laws are. I mean, you you got when when they're testifying, you've got to be able to prove the four corners of that complaint, the elements that are in there. You've got to know what it means. You've got to understand what it means because you're the person making the charge, not the court, not the animal shelter. That person is the one making the charge. And and I've seen it before when they didn't even understand what they were doing. That's just what they were told to do. And and that's not what we need in our public. No, it serves no purpose for us if that happens because then we really don't have a case at that point then. So that's right. That's exactly right. All right. Thank you for that. Uh let's move on to item uh 1D. 1D if we can address item 1D. Implement structured occupancy management strategies prioritizing owner redemption adoption and humane euthanization when when necessary. Well, and we hit on that earlier. Um uh you know we believe that we need we need people that prioritize what we have here. The honor redemption, the adoption. We need the city we believe the city needs to go back doing its own adoption program. We believe that that

[4:13:27] will allow you to uh better handle this will open the door for many other agencies to do more adoptions uh than just just there at the city. uh providing the intakes as we said before, making sure that we have that. We all know and none of us like to put an animal down, but is it more humane to put an animal down or watch him get run over by a truck on the road and lay on the side of the road or starve out there in the cold or starving in the cold? The things that can happen. And none of us want to be well none of us want to euthanize any of these animals, but we can't continue to have 500 dogs a day running around in the city of St. Angelo. And we can give them an opportunity to come into our shelter, be adopted through there, be adopted through the other agencies that there are in the city. And if they don't, at least they have a place to stay and they're getting fed and taken care of until that time. Absolutely. So yes, that's what we we ask you to look at that uh animal welfare uh spay and neuter. Spay and neuter is the answer. We can talk about picking them up all day long and we've got to do that, but until we spay or neuter and cut down the number of dogs we have out there in the public that are out running loose, we're not going to solve the problem till we can solve that. And the way you solve that is spay or neuter. We also we need to throw in here because Mary Golder for years was involved in education. And we need to get into our schools and we need to educate them about spay or neuter programs about handling and how you take care of an animal. This kind of stuff we need to be able to educate our public. We need to use whatever means necessary the city's uh website. This kind of stuff. We need to educate the public that you find a dog, take it to the pound. This happens. We need all these things to be reiterated now over

[4:15:30] and over to the public that it's there for that purpose and why we're going to do these things. So, education has to become a very big part of that. Okay. Mary, I'm sorry. Mary, you were about to say something a little while ago. Yes. Can I address why the city should take back the adoption process? Sure. It was very successful for years. And you have breed rescue working with the with when you get a qualified shelter director, they're going to have the opportunity to work with other rescues. The person that knows an animal best is the person that's responsible for the day-to-day care. And that's happening at the shelter. It is very awkward if someone goes to the shelter, walks the stall, says, "I want to look at this dog." somebody from Paws has to come over, get the dog, goes back to Paws, that person doesn't have the day-to-day intimate knowledge of that animal that the shelter staff does. The other thing is that is the most gratifying part of working at a shelter is seeing an animal you've cared for go home with somebody. And if you ask your staff, it's to me right now it's just a place where a dog goes to die. That's very demoralizing to your staff. They need the the plus of seeing the good side of this. The shelter needs a big PR remake. People are afraid to take animals there because they're told that the animal's going to die in three days. Not that we're going to take the animal, vet it, hope, try to find the owner. It's going to have an opportunity to be adopted. They're being literally frightened, I believe, into not taking animals to the shelter. The city needs to see the shelter as a good place, a place where their animal can be found if they lose it, a place where an animal gets a second chance. So, your shelter staff needs to be the ones that are involved in adopting animals. Thirdly, you are not going to find a qualified shelter director if they are not allowed to do adoptions. Any I've looked all over the country. every single criteria is the directors want to do adoptions because again that's the happy side of animal control.

[4:17:36] Very good points. Thank you for that ma'am. Appreciate that. That is several times it's come up now that this three-day rule and is that hearsay or is that the truth? That's ordinance. No, that's that's the way it is. That's the definition of owner in the ordinance. That's why we're asking that the own that the owners No, I mean 3 days if they if they shelter a dog gets No, the No, not that 3 days. If a dog gets picked up and takes to the shelter in 3 days, it's going to be euthanized. Is that rumor or hearsay or is that the truth? And I'm looking at the ladies there. Is that what you're doing or is that a that just a amped up rumor? By state law, there has to be a three-day hold to allow time for the owner to redeem. Okay. But I'm talking about if they get youth I don't know that answer, but the average citizen interaction is this. I found a dog. I bring it to the shelter, right? And we say, you know, where did we you find it? We want to confirm residency. How long have you had it? If it's an owner, it's a whatever. We work through that process. Then we say, would you like to participate in our good Samaritan process? And it's where we send we provide we we scan it for microchip. We vaccinate it. We we provide all these services, but you hold on to the dog for a few days. and we have it already in our lost and found resources. Let's say you can't participate in that. We say, "Can you please stay with this dog story?" It's not your average citizen that is chasing down a dog they don't know, taking an hour out of their day, putting a strange animal in their car with them. This is someone who's savvy. This is someone who cares about animals. I I just that to me it's a yes or no question. the if a person gets an animal that goes to the and and you say that people are afraid to go take it to the pound animal shelter whatever you want to call it if they're afraid to do that because they're going to be put down in 3 days is that happening we are euthanizing dogs at 3 days with minor reactivity issues that is true but what the conversation with a r an average citizen a finder of a dog is thank you for

[4:19:39] advocating for this pet we're happy to take it in it will be at risk of euthanasia. Right now, our longest stay dog has been there about 5 weeks and it's a young puppy. We're regularly euthanizing young, happy, healthy puppies for space and capacity right now. So, if a dog came in today, it would be at risk of euthanasia by end of July. So, not 3 days, but but there is a very short in my opinion turnaround for capacity. So, we do have that conversation to say, so it's not can you please? No, I think the we don't say please don't bring this dog to the shelter because we're going to kill it in 3 days. That is not a conversation. What we do say is it is at risk of euthanasia even if it's a happy healthy dog. Thank you for investing in this pet. Can you take it one step further? This this all kind of came about when we were running and so we got asked about a lot. We had nothing to do with it. From my understanding like from from what I understand is is the policy legal wise is 3 days. Once in 3 days you can euthanize. It is eligible for any outcome. But our internal policy is not that yes, we're going to euthanize your dog in 3 days as long as it's a happy healthy dog because we can. It's no, it's going to go into the process and we still euthanize the ones that have been there the longest, not the ones that have been there a week or less. Those are only euthanized in extreme circumstances like you talked about. Um like 3 days, you have to you have to hold the dog for 3 days. You'll have to be on the mic, please. And I I think the public perception and we talked about it and we talked about PR as well is that when it came out it said within after 3 days they can be euthanized and that's what everybody focused on. It wasn't that they will be it was no it's still we still euthanize as space is needed not and that that gap is narrowing. Our length of stay used to be 2 months used to be longer. So right now to say that the longest stay dog at the shelter is has been there for 5 weeks. I could come back in August and tell you it's been 3 weeks. I could come back in October and say it's 5 days. So we aren't making the citizen any promise that this dog will be here until end of July. It is entirely based on intake and capacity that we have no more than 180 dogs at any given time. So if we had a large

[4:21:42] natural disaster or a large hoarding case there we could get into look as soon as the dog's off its hold in 3 days it's gone. But that's not where we are living right now. And that is not the conversation at the front counter. The conversation at the front counter is this dog is at risk of euthanasia. Please continue to share. Please participate in good Sam if you're able. Is the 180 because of space? Uh the 180 is because of capacity. It's largely based on staff time. So it's not based on number of kennels. It's not based on square footage of the building. It's based on NACA recommendations of 15 minutes per care per day per animal. Okay. So it's what the staffing is. So to is are we at capacity as far as can as well every day? Yes. Well, so to if to double that number, we would need double the staff and double the space. I'm sorry. I said if we were to try to get that number to 300 or 500 that our dogs are on the street, would it take three times as much staff plus three times as much space? I think that's fair to say yes. Okay. But do you want to put that many dogs in a temporary municipal shelter? No. Obviously, we don't want that. But but there's so many things that we have to look at, right? We're not directors of places. We have public safety. We have that to fix. So to help get them off the street, spay and neuter is going to take a while. Like all these recommendations, it's going to take years. So our immediate fix, how can we get there? And it sounds like she would need more staff and more space to get more dogs off the street and not have to euthanize within 5 weeks or two weeks or whatever it ends up being. Sure, there'd be a cost connected to it. Absolutely, Patrick. Um, yeah, you could you could expand the size of the shelter, more staffing, but of course there's that cost connected with it versus, you know, what is it the citizens want us to be paying for when it comes to the taxpayer dollar? Do they really want us to expand the the the shelter, hire more more staff, you know, uh, it comes down to owner responsibility. It comes down to there's a lot of taxpayers in our community that rely on other taxpayers. They're being they're being responsible with their pets. And so all of a sudden, you're relying on the other taxpayers are being responsible with their pets. Worst yet,

[4:23:44] the ones that don't have pets are paying more and more to fund those type of services. And that's what I'm opposed to. I hate hearing that our other responsible citizens are having to pay more money to cover the cost for the ones that are being irresponsible. Yeah. So, that's my my issue question. And in your Go ahead. In your uh during all your research, did it ever come up about maybe having a a vet on staff? And is that Sure. I believe there was a period of time when there was a vet on staff and that you could do your spay and neuters that way. Yeah. Right there on location and we recommended that that be reinstated. Yeah. You recommend what I can do. We recommended that that again be a part of the pro be a part of Okay. Because that's I asked y'all that everyone else that I've talked to they say no that it's that's a bad idea. It didn't work. And that this is where I feel curious that is that the the vets in town They're against it. And I don't know if that's because it cuts into their revenue because again, here we are at a 180. I Yeah. No, that's that's a rumor that that is not true. It doesn't. So, the vets in town would prefer that we have our own spayneuter y in house. There's plenty of dogs and cats to go around to our pets and they're not their jobs are not in danger. But there are two vets who have said that they would come in and help the shelter on a part-time basis. Meaning if we set up like an O that and the other thing is right now to get a space surgery you're waiting two weeks. I just set one for three puppies and at least two weeks till I can get an appointment. So it's not like people are are standing there at vets saying I don't have enough to do. Everybody's really busy. Okay. Can I ask a random quick question on that? Uh y I'm sorry. Um I believe it was Sharon, right? Uh I think you were talking earlier about the voucher systems. Do y'all bid may be the wrong word, but do you all go ask the vets, hey, what would it cost if we got vouchers and you can give us so many a month and they'll say we can do it at

[4:25:46] $50, $85 or whatever? Like how how does that process work on how do you get the most cost effective for when we started the program? We came up with what we thought would be a fair price that the vets might accept and they agreed. It's a it's a fra it's just a fraction of what their normal fee is. Uh so we just and we've actually not ever we've not gone up the whole time we've been paying them the same thing. It's about time we need to start paying a little bit more. But uh they accepted it. We every vet that we talked to accepted it because we have an excellent relationship with them. We pay our bills on time which is very important. Um the shelter used to have their own O suite. Okay. They had a whole O suite at the shelter. Um, and they agreed to we do have some that limit our how many they will do a month, but we have several that will do almost an unlimited amount. So, we're very fortunate and we've had very good rapport and relationship with the vets that we use. We actually have a program in Manard with the vet there. The vetting Christoval is part of our program here and we could add more if we had more money. Thank you, Tommy. You had a question a little while ago. Mary, you you mentioned the the public health standpoint of of bites. Um, both dogs and cats. Did you all gather any public health data with respect to any serious illnesses that have resulted from either dog or cat bites? I did not because I have enough of it in my office to document it. I have a case and I've got all the paperwork where a dog was had three bites and every time was sent back to this owner until it got my client, the second one that went to Shannon Hospital and he was there a week. The dog went back after that attack to that family. So, I mean I I know I didn't do a research. I have enough of it at my office and I'm glad to share it with you. So the the the answer to the question is we've got

[4:27:49] plenty of public health issues. Absolutely. Okay. And you you can testify to that simply because of folks that have contacted you in your course and scope of your daily work. Absolutely. And the other thing is these bills that Shannon aren't getting paid. You know, that's another public issue because there's no insurance. There's no requirement. this person that had three dog bites. So, the statute says he's got to have proof of li of homeowners liability insurance. Well, that was never enforced and he had no insurance and my client had a week in the hospital and has been in wound care for six months and I've got all that documentation I can share with you. I get my client's permission. I'm sure he'll be happy for somebody to look at it. Okay. Thank you. When you say go back, you mean from the shelter? Yes. Well, no, the dog was never taken in. Okay. But it was a home. Well, I take that back. Yes, it was quarantined at one of there were three times. So, one of the times it was quarantined, but every time that dog went back to these owners every time. And the shelter had the photographs from the second bite, which was gruesome. Not nearly as bad as the third bite, but this man was out of work. I mean, it was just it was unbelievable to me that nothing was done to put this dog where to to enforce the statute where the dog could have been euthanized. I know of a family that picked up five kittens and they and their three children are having to take rabies serious because the k one of the kittens died and they had it tested and the kitten had rabies. We got Yep, we do. Um we'll move on to 2B. Uh maintain open shelter intake. And we've already done that uh as far as for for dogs. So we'll skip to item three, original uh organizational improvements. Item A, elevate animal services to report directly to the city manager. Uh, I do understand the importance of that. I do understand that it just uh it gives me personally the opportunity to manage that position until at some point uh that position can actually function at a

[4:29:52] level that is um acceptable. Not just acceptable, but at a high level. So, I understand that. I'm willing to actually take a look at that and say yes, I don't have an issue with that. Uh we're going through the process right now of selecting a uh a new C new director for that position and uh we've gone through the first phase. We've moved on to the second phase. But that is something that on my end I really feel that I don't have an issue stepping in initially just to make sure that it uh it functions the way it needs to be functioning. So I don't have a problem with that. Good. Um with that uh we'll move on to 3B. hire qualified animal services director to oversee operations, enforce laws, and lead uh education and volunteer programs. And I mayor, looks like you have a comment on Well, I think y'all know that everything goes from the top down and you're going to have to have good leadership at that shelter to make the changes that are necessary. And to find somebody good, you're they're going to have to have experience and training and education in this job. I agree. And that's exactly what we're looking for for that position as well. Thank you for that. Uh moving on then to item A um 3C, reinstate the shelter's adoption functions. We already talked about that including hiring an adoption coordinator and developing foster and volunteer initiatives. So we kind of jumped around but we did cover cover that as well though. So I think that there's a lot uh within your recommendations. I think they're all very strong recommendations and there's a lot that can be done within each one of them, right? But um that's why we kind of wanted to sit down. It was kind of a brief presentation. I think y'all covered a lot in the May meeting, but we wanted to make sure we sat down and got more input from y'all, some of your thoughts as well. Uh, thank you for that. I think there are some really good discussion. I took a lot as far as a lot of notes on my end, but there's a lot that if anything, I'd like to be able to be able to go back to y'all as we start moving forward to the implementation part of it and kind of sit down and if you all would afford me some time uh from time to time when I call up and say, "Hey, can we sit down and talk?" I'd love to be able to have that with y'all.

[4:31:55] Okay. Yes, we're certainly willing to talk any time, discuss this with you. And uh I think you can see is that we're after the things that we talked about public safety. We're after trying to stay within a reasonable budget for the city to do it, but more importantly to to get these animals off the street to be main to them and to take care of our constituents and people out here that that we need to be protecting them from. the the fact of looking at a doctor to come a veterinarian to come inside, that's certainly what something we'd all like to see, but that's also a big expense. And so we're trying to offer solutions and yeah, we'd love for you to go hire one. But the other solution is the solution that we've offered also so that we can look at that to stay reasonably within your budget and still get the job done. And so hopefully this will just give y'all a little bit of an insight for you to make the decisions and then uh come out with what you think the solutions that we given you, the ones that you believe will work and hopefully implement them so that we can get moving on this and get started on our on the plan. Thank you'all so much. And I want to thank all of y'all as far as the task force. I know this wasn't easy for y'all. Y'all went through PS went through so many different things, you know, just to come. This is all thoroughly voluntarily on your part and yet you had to go and jump through hoops and go through some of the things the staff has to go through as well and it can be a pain but you all weathered it and came through it and gave us recommendations. So thank y'all so much for that. I sure do appreciate that and I think I'll speak on behalf of council here with Daniel. Y'all took on a task that a lot of people it's a very difficult thing to do. It's not only an Angelo problem. It's a regional. It's a state global whole thing. Several cities across the nation are dealing with the same thing. But I think we all bring it back to a sense of reality of we want better practices. We want to and we're going to make changes and improvements. We're also going to dedicate more resources that were unavailable before. So as we go forward and we look at what

[4:33:57] we're going to versus what we had, there's also a difference in what resources we provided both times and and that needs to be respected on both sides of that rainbow. All right, but with that, I I can't thank y'all enough for what you've done. I appreciate your help. Thank y'all. Can I ask one more question? And yes, thank you very much. Did y'all address or have any recommendations or opinions on the the shelter itself, the building? We could bulldoze and build a good one. Say, say it again. We can build bulldo. We did it. We walked through it. I'm sure all of y'all have walked through it. That kind of leads me back to I wouldn't want one of my dogs in that shelter for 10 weeks. I probably wouldn't even want them there for two weeks because dogs will go crazy in that environment. Um, and that's somewhat the nature of the beast. It's always going to be barking and louding, but it is not a beautiful facility to go into. Walk into pause and see a really beautiful facility. We know it needs to be done. We also know your restrictions you have. Yeah, sure. Yeah, that would be that would be ideal, of course, but again, we do have to budget constraints in three days of budget discussions. We know again, thank y'all so much. Y'all have a wonderful afternoon. I've got a plan. Thank you. Yeah, thank y'all. That's it. Uh, mayor, that covers everything that we needed to cover for the workshop. Uh again, my deepest gratitude and appreciation to all the council members and the the three days that y'all dedicated to this. Uh we really do appreciate that. With that, Mayor, it's on to you. I want to thank all the directors for watching every presentation. Uh we're going to give an award for who was the most stoic in the background. Um I think that one will probably go to Veronica. But anyway, with all that done, thank y'all for being here for three days. See, you didn't even know. It was perfect. Thank y'all.

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=2kL15yf10lI