San Angelo City Council 2-2-21

[0:00:00] all right the meeting has been called to order it is the 2nd of february 2021 and we will start with our chaplain prayer and pledges and gary and marcela jenkins are both here today to lead us in that prayer and pledges good morning mayor members of the council and everybody will you please join with me as we go before the lord father in heaven once more we bow before you to say thank you for this day and for everything that you've done but father we ask you today for your grace and your mercy and to endow the members of the city council and our mayor with wisdom and knowledge revelation and understanding to carry out the business of the city today thank you lord for this honor to be a part of this and we ask you lord to come in and lord endow us oh god with the wisdom that is needed to take care of the business of the city we thank you father for living in a great city called san angelo and we ask you now to bless this city council meeting to bless the officers and all the members of the council and to bless the members of the public that are here today these things we ask in jesus name amen amen i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible and liberty and justice for all honor the texas flag i pledge allegiance to the texas one state under god one an indivisible there are no proclamations today so we

[0:02:14] will move into item four on the agenda which is public comment if you choose to make public comment today we ask that you come forward state your name and your address or smd area we ask that each citizen speak just once per item unless asked to comment by counsel the public comment is limited to three minutes unless extended by council or translation service the proponent or opponent is limited to five minutes unless extended by counsel or translation services council has no obligation to respond to comments or questions from the public any response from a member of the city council to non-agenda comments is limited to one a statement of specific factual information to recitation of existing policy and last directing staff to place a subject on a future agenda do we have anyone here today who would like to come forward and offer public comment good morning and thank you mayor and council i'll be brief my name is dave erickson i'm the director of the asu small business development center 69 north chavern street we are funded by state and federal tax dollars and the sbdc provides no cost confidential business advising and training to area small businesses and we've been part of asu for 31 years last april 21st i presented to to council of the coven 19 pandemic economic resources task force recovery plan on behalf of the local economic partnership which includes the economic resources recovery task force some of the members of the task force include cosidisi and the chamber of commerce we have been working closely and effectively with these partners and implementing the recovery plan for the benefit of the small business excuse community the local economic

[0:04:18] development partnership is strong in its example of effective cooperation and collaboration for other communities since the march april period the sbdc advising team has helped hundreds of small businesses with business recovery due to the covet pandemic especially assisting sba ppp forgivable loans excuse me to local lenders we assisted with the sba economic injury disaster or idle loans and idle grants which are directly through the sba website just out of breath we have assisted numerous lenders cpas and others understand these sba financial recovery programs and we assisted in getting answers to the many questions related to them there's still much work to be done to assist the recovery the sbdc staff it's our pleasure to serve the angels san angelo small business community thank you for listening and be happy to present a full report in the future thank you dave i want to thank you for all the work that you're doing in your leadership small business is obviously the key and the foundation of our city economic foundation so what you've done how you've helped people how you've guided people has been sensational and thank you for all that you guys are putting into it it's been a great effort and your communication on it has been terrific so thank you thank you any further public comment good morning mayor council i'm patrick frick the assistant director of operations for the city want to very quickly just remind everyone that the survey for the master master drainage plan that the city is putting together is live right now on the city's website and encourage everybody to go go to that website fill out that survey let us know of any drainage problems

[0:06:20] that you may have in their particular area and give us as much information as we can so that we can make sure that this master drainage plan that we're putting together is comprehensive and covers all the particular areas of the city that may have drainage problems so just encourage all the citizens to go to the city's website to the engineering page and they can fill out that there's an interactive map there and a place to add their information so how long will that survey be up it'll be up through friday until friday until friday yes ma'am and when will we the council see the net result of this drainage study so this is this will get us to about 80 of that plan so within the next couple of couple months we should have a plan coming back to council to show you guys i would assume that you and everyone on council knows where the biggest drainage issues exist so i can't imagine that it will be too newsworthy relative to where the major drainage aries is so but we do know we need to address the drainage issues and that's exactly what we want we know what we know but we we want to find out what we don't know so that's why we encourage citizens to go in there tell us about their particular areas well what we do know sooner is better and the sooner we can get the information presented to council would be terrific and lucy would would like to make a comment i just was going to ask what do we do with the individuals that need to report this but do not own a computer if they want to they can call up to either the engineering office or they can call the operations department and speak with myself if they'd like that number is 325-650 and we'd be happy to take that information down and convey it over to the firm that's putting that plan together for us would you repeat that number again that number is 325-657-422 and that'll get you to the operations department all right thank you patrick thank you any further public comment

[0:08:24] with nine we will move into our consent agenda i'm going to ask council uh individually if there's an item that they would like to have pulled i'll start with tommy item g mayor item g will be pulled tom nothing to pull harry nothing to pull but i'd like to make a comment uh i want to appreciate every every citizen that had called text facebook whatever when my wife was laid up with kovid she's home now the prayers worked good thoughts worked and i appreciate that lucy lane billy okay then may i have a motion for approval of the consent agenda with the exception of item g lane has moved to proven the second by billy by lucy with that any public comment on the consent agenda with the exception of item g with none we'll take a vote all in favor of approving the consent agenda say aye with none opposed motion passes seven zero we will now go to item g and item g is as follows consider resolution authorizing an advanced funding agreement between the city of san angelo and the state of texas as per the terms of txdot's highway and bridge replacement and rehabilitation program in the amount of 109 259.36 and authorizing the city manager to execute all related documents shane you're on ma'am thank you mayor shane kelton director of operations for the city txdot has asked us to bring this to the regular agenda so we can make some minor uh minor changes to the to the wording here and into the dollar amount they would like us to to reduce the dollar amount by 36 cents and just have it an even number instead of the 36 cents we're going to ask you to do that anyway

[0:10:26] [Laughter] so they want to do that and then also in the in the resolution itself we have south oak street we have it spelled out south and they want it just with an s dot oak street i'm not sure why that makes a difference but it does to them so we're going to ask that we make a motion to approve uh the res the resolution authorizing the fund agreement in the amount of 109 or not to exceed 109 259 dollars even and to revise the project name in the resolution to s dot oaks street over the north concho river and shane um shouldn't street also be abbreviated st period yes st period i'm sorry street should be abbreviated as well too so you said you wanted to move this to the regular agenda but can we not do this well it is i mean because you pulled it from the consent so this is just so we could discuss it and make these necessary changes that text us wanting and we're trying to and of course we could have pulled this to the next one but uh the bridge division out of uh txdot out of austin is really wanting to fast track this so we can get this bridge so we can get the plan designs and get this bid out this next uh next fall would you please describe why the this issue's here meaning what's the project it's one thing about the language but describe the project to everybody as you know the bridge for many years now has been degraded to to a lower weight rating than what it was originally for so we can't take large trucks or anything like that over the bridge due to structural issues that are underneath where the bridge connects to the uh where the bridge beams connect to the supports underneath it and also into the embankment on the on both ends and how it connects in the bridge um it just just over time and age is just deteriorated to the point that if we don't do something now and we don't do something fairly quick it's going to get to the point that we're

[0:12:27] going to have to stop all vehicular traffic over the top of the bridge and just it would just become a pedestrian bridge at that point so we definitely don't want that in txdot has has funding available through this program and is definitely willing to help us out this is about a million dollar just to touch over a million dollar project and our portion of it is only going to be ten percent this hundred and nine thousand so great deal for the city states stepping up to really help us out pull us out of a pinch um or you know monetary paints trying to find funding to to correct these issues in this bridge so uh again let me ask you a question because there are heavy trucks going over that bridge as we speak yes and they should and they shouldn't be uh we do have it signed and it is zoned um for to not allow big large trucks to go over i know they do from time to time but they still doing a lot right now as we work on this chadburn street project there's a lot of trucks going across that bridge we will i will i will i will work on some larger signage to try to try to prohibit that so or to try to slow that down to some degree as well and what's the time frame that this would project would get started if if we can get it bid out this next fall uh coming into next fall they should be able to start the project in the in the following spring and so we're a year away we're basically a year away from from actual starting construction yes ma'am so is there any concern in this next 12 months about the safety of it right right now if we can minimize the large any large truck traffic over it we're we're it's still safe to drive over it's still safe to pass over we don't want to worry anybody about that but it's something that we need to start we definitely need to start moving forward otherwise we will have to look at probably closing it closing it to vehicular traffic now during construction it will have to be closed during construction to vehicular traffic but that's but that will only be just during the construction phase what would be the time frame on the construction reconstruction i have not we have not gotten that far

[0:14:30] along in the design documents to to start getting any uh time references on that but the bridge division has agreed uh in austin to do the design work so as soon as they start getting those plans back up here for review for us to look over as well too in the review process then we'll start getting a better timeline on on project times do i have further questions harry just real quick comment i certainly appreciate the fact that we've gotten to this spot uh many of us have known that that particular bridge was in disrepair for a number of years and it is when the main accesses both to the museum and to the fort from my perspective we we really don't have any choice but to go forward with this i suspect in my lifetime if we don't do this in my lifetime that bridge would be shut down by a dot simply because it is you know it's out of compliance it doesn't do what it needs to do from a safety standpoint so i appreciate us getting to this spot and i certainly appreciate the fact is that people are asking questions but i think it's something that's needed for a long time thank you okay so with that uh tommy would you like to make the motion i'll make the motion uh shane you want to read that again just to be sure we got that for the record sure um it's just consideration consider a resolution authorizing advanced funding agreement between the city of snazil and state of texas as spread the terms of the txdot highway and bridge replacement rehabilitation program and the amount not to exceed 109 259 dollars and authorizing the city to execute all the related documents with the revision of um the name of the project from south spelled out to s dot oaks street with street abbreviated over the north concho river i'd make that motion mayor

[0:16:34] any public comment with no public comment we'll take a vote all of those in favor of the motion say aye with none opposed motion passes 7-0 that concludes the consent agenda for today so we will move into the regular agenda item six comments regarding items on the regular agenda may be made by the public when each item is discussed as outlined above applicants proponents and appellants are accepted from the time limit above and must limit their remarks to less than five minutes so item a is a presentation of the 2020 city of san angelo's development corporation in san angelo chamber of commerce edd annual report made by economic development director guy andrews and chamber of commerce vice president of economic development michael looney you're on thank you mayor and council guy andrews director of economic development city of san angelo development corporation i think it's amazing what can be accomplished whenever you everybody is on the same page when you've got the right leadership in place mayor council our city management assistant city managers our costa dc staff and board chamber of commerce board of directors and staff there that we work with on a daily basis walt koenig michael looney our small business development center through angelo state university with dave erickson and thank you dave for all you do clifton jones leading that in asu as well it's been a pretty amazing year that we've had you have a copy of our written report in front of you for those that would like to go online and view the report you can go to economic development

[0:18:37] san angelo all run together.com that's economic development san angelo.com and look under the community profile and our report is out there along with a lot of other good information like to start off our theme is as you know in our direction as planes trains and automobiles i love this picture of our san angelo regional airport mathis field what a great asset that we have and a great tool for economic development during this year we've had several things so we have a a project that will increase our lease hangar capacity refurbishment of existing hangars and construction of new commercial hangars that's in the early development stages in 2020 also angelo state university approved a bachelor of commercial aviation degree and so there'll be some movement at the airport in regard to that we received bids for construction of a new ramp to assist the u.s customs and border patrol with their expansion of unmanned aerial vehicle operations bringing 40 uavs and their pilots into san angelo and we've done some parking and ramp improvement projects that are underway at the current time this is just an outline we uh we did a master plan uh some planning and uh have some options that we can go forward with from there of course we uh just approved the air services agreement with sky west and united airlines i just wanted to mention that briefly is today is the first day you can go out and purchase your tickets and i've already been to the website and just to verify that that information is out there tickets start at about 169 the normal price is around 199 round trip

[0:20:44] from uh our airport there'll be two flights that number again guy 169 that's sort of weekend oriented you know depending on availability and that's a round trip price that's round trip 199 is a normal price during the week for the round trip uh i were on this item do you want to clarify some of the information that went out last week concerning this and describe how that million dollars works okay i'm glad to do that um the flights begin actually on april 21st two flights daily leaving san angelo one at 9 10 in the morning the other at 2 20 in the afternoon return trips from houston on this initial schedule are at noon and 5 p.m and we expect that that will change over time in terms of the agreement that we made with skywest airlines it has three basic elements first of all we put up and set aside a million dollars as a minimal revenue guarantee and the way that works is we are not guaranteeing skywest a million dollars a year in revenue what they do is compute on a quarterly basis their revenue versus cost and if the cost exceeds the revenue we draw down on that million dollars to make up the shortfall in that so it could be the best case scenario could be that we would never have to draw that down if everybody will get out there and utilize the airline and we continue to add flights and that sort of thing but otherwise over the course of a 24-month contract we will never pay out more than one million dollars during the course of that contract that would be the worst case scenario uh we also are providing some

[0:22:49] because this is initial startup with a new station and a new airline it we will be providing 200 000 dollars for advertising and marketing of that that contract will be administered through the chamber of commerce they're already hard at work in developing that marketing and advertising campaign and coordinating with sky west we've had several calls on that so we think that they're the best partner to do that and we'll just really knock them dead the other aspect of that agreement is that we will waive the uh rental fees for uh the airport as well as landing fees and so that's what our agreement is for for this but i've never seen anything that has been so popular in our social media we haven't had at least what i've posted in linkedin a single negative comment about this everybody is congratulations let's go and all that's well and fine but again i will re-emphasize it only works if you go out and buy the tickets and let's make this thing work this is our last opportunity this uh involved a lot of hard work to get this is the first time we've had a second airline in san angelo in 20 years 20 years so let's make this thing work i also have done a lot of work on the airport exit we did clearing over on about 14 acres across from the airport and then we're expending the development corporation's expending 100 000. for exit beautification project we'll have a a monument that's in place and i'd like to thank al torres for his uh he's the one that designed and actually carries out the constructions and he's put in a tremendous amount of work in getting this project moving along so we're looking forward to seeing that in

[0:24:51] the not too distant future while we're talking about monumentation we have a couple of projects for monumentation enhancement enhancement on uh 87 coming in uh down by the pinkies uh liquor store the u-haul in between there is a median that has uh three sheep on it that's called 200 percent wool and that's being enhanced this is a design on it and if you've been by there lately this is actually pretty close to completion uh on that work and enhancing that and to make this a welcome to san angelo monument this is what the u's look like there also on the north side across from the starbucks is another median that has the working cowboy monument that i always say is pointing people in the wrong direction down kaninkine but we're enhancing that one as well as a welcome to san angelo this is the concept drawing that al made and and we're doing that project this one's a little bit further along than the other one on the south i expect it to be completed very very soon that's what that one looks like in regard to highways we've had some great activity in regard to that san angelo and the communities from laredo to the top of the panhandle recently completed the txdot study to show the feasibility of interstate 27 within the state of texas part of the ports of place corridor runs from laredo to alberta canada providing relief for overtaxed i-35 and i-70 corridors and we also had some federal legislation introduced for i-14 which is the gulf state strategic highway that would

[0:26:55] intersect one day with i-27 in san angelo this is a map that shows on your left the complete ports the planes actually runs from the port of mazatlan mexico all the way up into alberta canada canada and then this is the section that we worked on we were actually the study was divided into three segments we were in segment two that was led by mayor gunter and did a a great job on that one and so that's been done and we're we're looking forward to moving on that went on into funding and moving this project out the greatest project is or the greatest progress that's been made in 25 years and working on this project this is a map of the ports to planes uh gulf coaster t i'm sorry it's the gulf state strategic highway it's also called forts the forbes runs from fort benning georgia across will actually come through san angelo to midland odessa then back down to 10 to connect with fort bliss eventually so we look forward to that project one day in the future san angelo rail port this has been a amazing exciting it was designed to augment texas pacifico and south orient rail line by providing rail freight services to san angelo and our main thrust in this has always been to provide to our local businesses our agricultural community still providers and other manufacturers to help reduce their cost of shipping in the agricultural community probably the best way that we can help them is by shipping by rail they can reduce their cost as much as 40 percent uh and that's profit that comes back in there uh we did a 180 acre uh well site and it's in the initial development stages

[0:29:00] uh following extensive studies by our our consultant roger horton and michael looney with the chamber done magnificent work on this that line is operate owned and operated or the port is owned and operated by the south plains lomisa railroad they're actually located in slayton a lot of people because of that name think they're in la misa texas but they're actually in slaton texas it's a public private partnership with us and this uh will be a new alternative for out that it will be in addition to the six existing rail ports on the u.s mexico border this is the initial layout that we have for this port what's amazing is that bob schneeman laid this out early on we've been through a few iterations but it looks like actually bible is right to begin with and this is the way it's being laid out the map on the right shows you the location fm 2105 is at the top of that map and then 50th street is the bottom of the rail property on there uh there's actually a sign out there on the property now some of the people involved in that just want to recognize them roger horton's the man on the left in the red jacket rick bacon our commissioner for that precinct shad weisner as the man next to him that will own and operate this bob schneeman that has done great work one of the things let me just point out one of the things that bob did was negotiated with reese albert to as they're redoing 2105 to put the the dirt on to this site which advanced this project probably a

[0:31:04] good six months and save literally millions of dollars and of course on the other side of the side is our mayor brenda gunter michael looney walt koenig the president of the chamber and myself and then michael looney on the locomotive on the other side our workforce projects we have about five percent unemployment that's a fast recovery from the 12 unemployment when the businesses were shutting down from covid the development corporation has provided 150 000 dollar matching funds to support smb prime program which will provide manufacturing engineering that's in conjunction with our partners ethicon principal led and the chambers also put money into that project so they're developing the curriculum for that now and determining the types of courses that will be offered it will provide that training to both central and vike view students in 2021 at the west texas training center on the highway college campus so we're excited about that program in workforce development in terms of assisting good fellow air force base they received a spring grant through department of army or to the i'm sorry the department of the air force uh coastal d.c was recognized as a strategic priority and role to support our nation's security efforts through local support of goodfellow air force base we have more mlus than any other air base in the united states we provided 400 000 dollars in matching funds to help secure the 10 million defense economic adjustment assistance grants for goodfellow air force base and the goodfellow air force base is undertaking the project to provide

[0:33:06] capital investment to create 5g communication system required to establish goodfellow as a world-renowned intelligence training center of excellence and they just announced that they will also be training for the space force that's been created as well in that grant it included some other items as well energy conservation a covered outdoor training area and equipment astral turf for the canines that are being trained in there interoperable mobile radios enhances communications between good fellow and our local responders fully equipped emergency response trailer which enhances goodfellas hazmats response and expands joint service student resiliency assembly area so a great grant for them in regard to business retention and expansion that's headed up by shannon scott it also works very closely with michael looney in 2020 our outcomes to help our local businesses retain and expand their businesses were created 611 direct and indirect jobs that were retained we created 101 direct and indirect jobs this resulted in 46.8 million in annual economic output 38.15 million in capital investment in uh 2020 there were four executed business retention expansion performance agreements with incentives running ranging anywhere from thirty six thousand dollars to four hundred thousand dollars and those included centurion planning and design which is also located in our business incubator upstairs while they're building a new building uh dorado construction group 150 thousand dollars dl h winland still four hundred thousand dollars

[0:35:06] and then special materials uh company that's in their fourth expansion three hundred sixty two thousand five hundred dollars our business resource center and in our business factory we have the one tenant which is centurion planning and design and they occupy six of the seven offices we recently had san angelo go moving to go move into the office there are nine full-time employees and i believe that's actually up to 12 now with the addition of san angelo to go and a new employee for centurion and since with inception of that business incubate incubator we've had 106 companies occupy that space business plan competition the development corporation funds that the first place winner it was san angelo to go they were awarded forty thousand dollars uh in their report they have told us that they have served over a hundred and six thousand individual locations since inception uh second place winner was a texas australian rock company they received twenty thousand this is a unique company it's the only company of its kind that makes limestone blocks out of the best limestone in texas which happens to be in san angelo texas uh the only one in the western hemisphere that makes this kind of product and they're shipping all over the united states so we're looking forward to having them there and then third place winner uh ten thousand dollars was netco fire and safety and uh norma navarros deserves special uh recognition for her work in this this is a project we take and let her run with and she just does an absolutely awesome job of of coordinating this and working with our small business development center partners with dave erickson and others in our tax increment reinvestment zone the tiers

[0:37:08] projects we had 13 total tears agreements executed in 2020 for projected captain investment of over 10 million dollars seven of those agreements are in the north zone for capital investment of nine and a half million and six are in the south zone for investment of 515 thousand dollars in the south zone one of the projects was san angelo autism center cell storage it's another of those projects received tears funding uranus tacos a converted gas station we always like to see brownfield projects that are repurposed for that use there's one east two higg partnership and in our south we had the boxhanger 210 concho venue in the the spur building and all of those are in progress right now in the north zone twofold journey properties llc and then we have a lot of projects that are still in progress the huddle house the kent quick travel center twofold journey properties has a second agreement uh shine bright lube north and big o auto capital improvements uh special kudos to bob schneeman on this project he led our development of phase 2.2 in our business park to open up additional acreage there in phase one we sold this past year 21.49 acres for a total of 553 2555 revenue to come back there's uh currently one track of approximately 7.23 acres

[0:39:10] that's under first ride of refusal and that's in conjunction with allen's transport that bought 12 acres coverlay manufacturing is uh had bought 3.945 acres and dakota investments acres that last one is the frito-lay distribution center and if you've been by there lately they are close to finishing up on that project it's a 17 100 square foot distribution warehouse this is a overhead from our new video that we had made thanks to aep provided the money to make the video of our business in industrial park as it currently is in our phase 2.1 and 2.2 we we spent 1.1 million dollars and then about 2.2 million dollars in phase 2.2 2.2 was partially funded by a grant from the federal economic development administration for 1.25 olmey a million requiring a 50-50 match by us so that really helped us out in that our total construction budgets for the phases was about 3.5 million dollars phase 2.1 and 2.2 construction began on march the 2nd 2020 just prior to covid and is actually pretty close to being completed that that was greatly accelerated actually during that time as well project opened up an additional 118 acres that we can sell of sellable land and then we have some more projects that will go to provide the underground distribution natural gas and fiber optic to that site so this is just a schematic of

[0:41:14] where those projects took place within that park and these are overheads of that we have a traffic circle within the park that's a sort of a unique feature in there and we're getting ready to uh to clear that mesquite and everything to make the land more saleable so we're ready for uh people to move to reshore and move to san angelo this is an aep building and again thank them for the 5 000 grant they gave us to make the video the new video it's well received out there with tens of thousands of views on our social media so now i'm going to turn it over to my partner crime and michael looney to take it from here but i just want to let everyone know in case you hadn't heard that michael was just named one of the top 50 economic developers in north america so now the united states is recognizing what we already knew that we have a spectacular economic developer here so michael that's all yours yeah yes please i'd just like to make some comments after that after guys report i don't think i really have any questions guys but you know i can remember the days when i first started coming to city council and harry thomas and i would sit right out there next to each other and critique you know what was being presented and i have to say after hearing that report i feel like i need to be a cheerleader on a soapbox you need to take that show on the road because you know when we think about planes trains and automobiles and i'm not sure if the mayor coined that

[0:43:16] after that movie first or if the coast of d.c did but anyway brenda gunter presented it in her first 2017 state of the city and that's where it started okay state of the city well i'm going to give mayor credit for that because he named the movie after oh okay but i just want to say you know sometimes i believe that we take for granted what is going on here in san angelo and what is going on behind the scenes and how much work individuals are putting into what's going on the progress that san angelo is making sometimes we get so caught up i mean let me just speak of me in the minutia of the detail and don't realize how hard people are working behind i know that you and mayor and daniel just up and all of a sudden went to utah through probably many transfers on airlines to solidify us getting a second airline now i don't know what all went into that trip before it got to be that trip but i do know the nearly four years i've been on council i've been asked repeatedly what can we do about getting a second airline and then just all of all of a sudden to some of us it seems like we have a second airline we have a rail port we have progress on you know an interstate highway coming through san angelo and you know i think about previous councils that have gone before us and laid the foundation and then those previous councils that came along and built the framework and now we're putting some what do you call that sheetrock or whatever on the walls to move forward and it's exciting for us and i just you know i just hope citizens that are here today or that are watching you know this

[0:45:17] replay later can come to appreciate what is happening in the city of san angelo in the progress that we're making in so many different areas you know when talk about walking and chewing gum at the same time which has become a washington buzzword you know that is happening in san angelo and it's it's not just lip service we can actually see the results of the work that people do and so i'm passionate about it and i think everybody that has put into this from our operations department to our coastal dc to our chamber to the mayor to the city manager you know everybody that you know has had a part in this and um i just want to say thank you thank you thank you thank you because it is encouraging to hear and to know what is going on in the city of san angelo so i'm off myself thank you very much billy i also want to include in that that played no small part in getting our airport director jeremy valgardson very instrumental in already having connections from his previous job but it was definitely a team effort it was a yes it was a quick trip to st george utah but we had the right team in place to present that and to make a deal to to make this actually happen thank you i want to add to what your comments are billy and state yes in my 2017 shortly after i had been elected mayor i presented the trains planes and automobiles in the state of the city my first state of the city and the reason i did is because i understand that no economic development can happen successfully if you don't have transportation options transportation options are economic development and without them you have a very difficult time

[0:47:20] talking to companies and asking companies to expand because as guy just said transportation costs are a huge part of any business model and when you can reduce that you attract other people we had an affordable housing presentation not long ago and we found that the dollar per square foot in building a house in san angelo was more expensive than any of the other metropolitan areas in the state of texas and you know why because of transportation costs we shouldn't be paying more per dollar per square foot for a house in san angelo compared to other areas but unless we can get product here cheaper faster we're going to continue to have that as an issue and so we have to look at transportation options the day of being able to attract new companies expand companies is gone without things that we can show are happening in this city we already know that in the rail port with that rail port there are many people looking to set up distribution centers and other housing warehousing issues out there this means jobs this means jobs at a higher pay not a minimum wage we're talking about livable wages but if we did not present these ideas of planes trains and automobiles the two people standing before us would have continued to struggle in economic development because we're in competition with every city every municipality in the state of texas and 50 and 49 other states it's a competitive world and if we're going to bring jobs to this city if we're going to bring livable wages to this city you have to start with transportation that's key so thank you guys let's move on with the presentation let's go all right good morning council michael looney vice president of economic development for the san angelo chamber of commerce and what a great privilege it is to be

[0:49:24] here with everybody um all of all of those up here in this council meeting we work together and that's the key that is absolutely the key we like to work together we're more efficient we're more productive and we get deals done but you know who else sees that we work together allen's transport smc global lspi chemical out of bryan texas houston texas and others they see that we work together they see that we are all pushing forward for the common goal of producing solid economic development projects that are durable and that's one of the things that guy and i talk about all the time is that we want to set down a foundation for durable long-lasting economic development projects that are similar to ethicon and similar to goodyear these are the kinds of companies that we want to attract but also support and we support that through all the different collage of efforts that we use together even down to some of the tactics that we use like for example when we bring a company in we're able to just pick up the phone and talk to the real estate department or the legal department and they immediately jump in and one of the things we've always talked about is that our city council the city staff planning and development legal department all of our different supporters throughout the region are economic developers because if we all think of ourselves as economic developers industrial developers the customer sees that and we hear that over and over again gosh you're so different than the other city that we were looking at and that really makes a big difference on getting the transaction completed so what i'm going to do is go through our um here oh wait sorry oh down that's why the little green circle's on there isn't it all right um

[0:51:26] okay 2020 started off with high hopes and those hopes actually were realized i'm i'm grateful to say but the pandemic situation it started to creep in on us we started noticing it in february and we had never guy and i talked about it and we had never experienced anything like this before and you know you're in a really unique situation when the playbook that you've written for 2020 you start also looking up online uh community reactions to the spanish flu pandemic how to handle a seventy percent drop in bulk rate ship freight freight shipping from overseas that means blank sailings that means nothing coming our way no way to ship it these are the kind of you know on the 2007 economic crisis these were the things that we were researching to try to figure out what are we going to do how do we as as guides tell the companies that we're working with locally and that we're recruiting what we're going to do so what we did is as dave erickson just said a few minutes ago we formed the economic response and recovery program we wanted to make absolutely sure that the word recovery was in that program and this was a a collective of all of the different economic development partners partners at the city partners at the county uh to figure out how to set up a defensive framework for our community so that we could not necessarily focus on the biological side of the epidemic but also really for us focus on the economic impacts we knew the shock wave was coming it was happening so fast though that we could not rely on other communities in the country or overseas to tell us what they were doing we did no one knew it happened so quickly and so this was comprised of angelo state university sbdc they were a huge link to us i also want to mention that the lenders they were really the the kind of the unsung heroes in this because they were the ones that were administering these different programs uh the ppp and the eidl one of the other

[0:53:30] proj programs that we put out to our industrial community right away uh was the trade adjustment assistant act 1974. this is kind of an obscure unused program that is available to industrial companies that are being harmed by overseas competition so we deployed that we had two companies in san angelo that took advantage of that that qualified moving on so while all this is happening all of this excitement and tragedy we continue to just plow forward and we knew that this would pass it's a biological situation we're going to get through it economically as well so we continued to plow forward on the san angelo rail port what makes this so significant is that we have a couple of different advantages one we have the south orient rail line that runs from topolo bombo mexico which is the one of the third largest seaports in western mexico and it runs from uh from there up to i'm sorry uh runs up from from the southwest runs up through presidio texas which is on the border and then it comes right through san angelo at san angelo it vectors south and north goes south to houston north up to chicago on the bnsf the biggest class iii rail line in the united states of america our line is the the seventh of six points of entry rail bridges of entry between mexico and the united states not texas in the united states the whole united states mexico and the united states not just texas and mexico and that's very significant because it's a new bridge it's a bridge that existed since around 1917. it was just destroyed by fire around 2011 it has been rebuilt to the latest standards so as soon as that that started that that looked like it was coming near completion we began reaching out to our partners in mexico the economic development programs in

[0:55:32] northern mexico are very very solid they're very good we have established relationships with coder which is the acronym for the economic development partnership program in northern mexico and the state of chihuahua they have repeatedly told us that the amount of freight that is going to come through from mexico and also come from texas to mexico is is almost we they almost can't even calibrate how much it is it's so hard to calculate but they need to work with us this is going to produce so many different trade opportunities for bulk products and finished products both containerized and those that are on on bulk bulk commodity cars now it is very helpful that we have texas pacifico which is a part of the pharaoh mex family of companies based in san angelo so in northern mexico they consider san angelo to be the rail head because we have the texas pacifico headquarters here so it made sense that because this line really doesn't have any other areas of service along from presidio to san angelo that san angelo be basically the rail and freight hub for that line and so what we're going to basically be is an extension of the rail network throughout mexico and the bnsf system throughout north america united states and canada so this puts us in a very strong strategic position i would want to add that because we're talking about marketing not just the overall strategy of what we're doing we have five companies that we're talking to right now that are local companies three of three of them have have headquarters outside the state about using our rail port for bulk freight transloading and shipment of of different types of cargos and as guys said what that does and why i'm so thankful that the city council has put all their power behind a blessing the development of this port is that what you're doing is you're actually saving our bulk industries money whether that's steel pipe whether that's

[0:57:34] fertilizer whether that's grain commodities whether that's that's animal products people will ask the city council all the time i'm sure what can you do to save us money and help our business well when it comes to commodities especially agricultural products you can't change the global market forces you can't change global commodity prices you can't change the weather but you did have in your hands the power to change the shipping costs and that's what's going to happen with with the the bulk shipping cost used by rail and that puts money directly into their pockets okay again you can read on it will enhance efficiency that's what we just finished talking about it's also going to create a bigger network for san angelo businesses to get their products to and import for example building products from other parts of the country with we think about a forty percent reduction uh in in freight costs and this puts us on on a trade route directly interlinked by rail with chicago kansas city and houston and all the ports along the western coast of mexico there's a shot of the port that's the bob schniemann design and that is 12 different turnout lanes there's a lane for each type of commodity so you're not going to be mixing having oil with grains it's everybody's got their own and there are some images that were taken a couple weeks ago of the progress the developer south plains la mesa railroad he is not waiting around that guy has got stick rail ready to go 90 pound high tensile stick rail and that is going to be laid down probably within the next couple of weeks and actually that's where i'm getting ready to head out to after this meeting again five potential shippers and that's before we've even really started getting any track on the ground allen's transport this is a company that reported on last time we were here this is a service company a partner to a company called lspi chemical lspi chemical makes inter-regional pipeline chemicals

[0:59:37] um and uh just as an update on that they have not started construction they were about to start in february of last year but for the for covid reasons they became extremely concerned they had no idea what the market impact would be and they held back they are getting ready to start construction probably in the next 30 days and i did talk to mr fandrick and he has been given full blessing by lspi to continue to plow forward and make this thing happen and so we're very pleased to hear about that and there's a tour we took in houston of lspi and again a little bit of information about their company it's a 25 000 square foot terminal they're going to hire 10 people there were no incentives there were no grants it was it's a pure market rate transaction very pleased to be in san angelo texas double j lamb processor we talked about agriculture a few minutes ago we've talked about the the use the lambs the statues that speak to the heritage of our once massive lamb industry tom thompson knows a thing or two about that as well i've seen you when you come back from uh shearing but we are very pleased to announce that double j lam processors of greeley colorado purchased leased and purchased the former ranchers lamb brownfield site for those who don't know a brownfield site is an old abandoned building um that that that's just sitting there unproductive well they purchased the old rancher's lamb facility in september it started the last week of august and again uh as mr hassebrook jay hassebrook owner of the company uh told the the 25 attendees of the san angelo regional manufacturers alliance meeting last week it was the whole community that came together the leadership community that pushed this thing through and made this happen so quickly i couldn't have been more impressed with his remarks i wish i had him here today to talk about that but again so we have a historic sheep

[1:01:39] and goat industry that now will have a plant from which to process these animals and get them to the markets mainly in houston and chicago those are the two biggest markets and again there's your rail right there use that rail system uh three million dollars in initial capital investment they currently have 40 employees uh but they announced to us that they need another 60. so that is something that we are assisting them with as best we can and those are all really positive things and that's that's not that's also office staff accounting people that are involved in inspection and processing um and there's a couple shots there's one on the right i want to give a special shout out and recommendation commendation to our our cindy priest and to uh dan silluri and to teresa james in the real estate legal department you did awesome we appreciate you you didn't drop everything but you made room for it see i got that right and so uh yeah last time i was up here i said they dropped everything she said we didn't drop everything we kept everything going just the same but we made room for your day and what was cool about that is that that was i mean probably days after we had finalized the paperwork on the rail port and so we called her teresa and said hey we got another one and we're glad to do it and again she puts on her economic development hat and goes right to work in the bottom left corner i think everybody signed the the frame the with all the pictures that we that we all did the whole city staff signed that that's an image of me presenting that at the texas sheep and goat razors winter meeting at bentwood country club and we presented that to the hasserbrook family and it now hangs proudly in their uh in the hallway of their uh their double j lamb processors plant uh smc global this is the company that keeps on giving a simple uh little little warehouse uh deal that we did in 2018 has now turned into a company that is producing chemicals that are being sold all around the world about a quarter of their product is sold

[1:03:41] to the middle east these are oil field chemicals they make a lot of other types of products as well we are presently working on a fourth expansion with them right now and again hats off to the city planning and development staff for rolling up their sleeves and helping us with this one bringing in heavy industry is not always the easiest thing because it uh you know it's heavy industry and so uh that's something that takes a lot of eyes looking at these different projects and making sure that they're done safely they're done in a timely fashion and uh and that they are again durable and that's the encouragement that we've been given by smc global is that they are they are here in san angelo uh just as a note they have 17 employees they did not let go of one person during the covet pandemic and mr kevin huber the owner of the company in new york city uh told us that he was not going to let go of anybody he was going to keep everybody on staff and keep san angelo moving creek 27 when we recruit these companies we have to have a place for people to live and that obviously as we know especially speaking to our local real estate agents that housing is a problem when you have about one month and one day supply of housing on the market and you have about 96 percent occupancy of your apartments um that's that's that was creating some real issues for us um and so we can now help check off that box with many companies that we're talking about expanding or bringing into the region uh one of the helpful points on that is creek 27 this is a multi-family development housing it's quite unique in that it's not really an apartment complex it's not a man camp it's not town homes it is mini homes or cottages the owner of the project justin harden who you see shaking guy's hand there on the on the left uh he wanted something that was different he didn't want a traditional apartment complex and so he took his inspiration from several communities in the seattle washington area where these are actually quite common small homes

[1:05:42] very efficient amenities center pool and and just a very comfortable place to live and so he has got 14 leased already and he has i think he said 58 applications right now and we toured that project last week councilwoman dewitt mayor gunter and it's a very very good looking product that has very nice finishes and we can all be proud of and he announced uh at the meeting that we had after that tour that that housing study is what gave him the ability to do this deal so that housing study that that you paid for paid off at least with this one project this is a 25 million dollar project uh by by the fact that he gave it to his lender his lender gave it to his underwriter and so once it gets to the underwriter they have that third party report and that helped make the deal a couple projects we work on the count this this chamber of commerce is also contracted by tom greene county and this is this is to create a seamless synergy between city and county most of our transactions are located in the city limits because that's where your infrastructure is but we do have some projects that we work on in the county that actually have a benefit to the city and in this case this is one i wanted to report on this is the duke energy renewable rambler solar plant this is out on 2288. uh this is these and we work with a lot of solar power generation projects mostly on their 312 and 313 agreements between the school districts and the county that they don't take a huge amount of time because generally these companies have very large legal teams that are very accustomed to coming into cu into communities but they really appreciate our guidance and our promotion of these projects and we've been really helpful in making several of these projects work because we have such a close proximity to crew housing that makes a big difference plus we also have a a community independent school districts and and

[1:07:43] county commissioners that are very receptive to these projects it also helps that we have two major substations for energy transmission uh located very close to san angelo we like these projects because you're constructing approximately a 180 million dollar development in the county uh you do get some good effect from the construction of it but really it's a taxable asset and so it's a very large asset and the more of these larger assets we can help encourage on private property private developments the better and there's a couple shots in there object uh how close is it to the etj um it is that project is is right about on the line of the etj very close conversations with them when do we bring them into the city limits um that has been uh the only project we've had so far is where there was some right-of-way issues but that's a good question and that really depends on on the landowners that these projects uh approach we don't really have any guidance as to whether they're in the city limits or out of the city limits it's all based on the land owners that they negotiate with on a private private one of the reasons midland has such a large property tax base is because they're 25 miles outside of what you would think would be the city limits of midland is in the city limits and they bring in tremendous amount of property tax dollars for these big gas plants and i mean we always look at midland they have almost 30 billion dollar property tax base we have a six billion dollar tax base and it's because they pull in projects like this into their city limits just a comment this is the power of working together mayor i will come see you after this meeting we will talk about that very thing uh west texas moving forward conference as many of you know we were not able to have the uh the the legislative summit so we replaced it with a hybridized electronic

[1:09:46] and in-person conference called the west texas moving forward conference and it was probably one of the best conferences that the chamber of commerce has ever put on focused heavily on trains planes automobiles and industrial development so as you can tell i really like that project a whole lot uh agrilife one last thing uh we are right now in the process of finalizing our project and we have a joint project with texas a m agrilife center producing the new agrilife impact of of agriculture on the concho valley report this is a report that hadn't been published in since 2011. we thought it was time for a new one and so we were just about finished with that but just to give an idea um the the bottom dollar bottom line dollar on what does this agricultural base in the concho valley really yield what how how what does it do it's about 800 million dollars per year in a variety of different types of of enterprises that are that are um within the concho valley and so um 815.4 million was the last last calculation and that report will be ready probably in another couple of weeks and that will be ready for dissemination to to the community and then finally the texas mexico border transportation master plan uh this is a project that the chamber and uh guy andrews and his co-cdc team and i have been very closely involved in with a lot of guidance from our our partner mr roger horton on finding ways to bridge the gap between the mexican economy and the texas economy and how to respect the different communities along that south orient rail line we want to make sure that as a leader san angelo doesn't forget about our partners along that rail line all the way from coleman down to presidio and so part of that effort is to make sure that we understand what their needs are and they're all quite different you'd be surprised fort stockton and alpine very different needs from a perspective of what they desire from the rail line and so these

[1:11:49] are parts of the dialogue that we like to have and then again there's a little bit more information on our involvement with the uh uh with the with the project that you can read over and that will conclude my report i think i went over my three minutes but we got a lot going on here we have uh harry yeah i appreciate both guy and and michael uh and this partnership is very very strong uh and as we go forward it's key to the success but i also want to say congratulations to michael being named one of 50 best economic development directors that's big big for this particular community thank you so much thank you very much appreciate it for it it's a pleasure to do it we do it because we like it and we're getting good results and we're all working together you just have questions or comments billy yes um yes i won't go over my time like i did before but um i just want to say that when i first came on council and we get reports on the studies that were being done and the different master plans that were being developed and how much money we were investing into these plans you know i was sort of taken aback i thought why would we spend hundreds of thousand dollars to you know to get a written plan on something that may be just common sense but as i have spent these almost four years on this council and today is point in fact that we're reaping a 25 million dollar potential impact that's just one project for the city of san angelo on that one project where we did a housing study that i can't remember how much it cost us but it was several hundred thousand it wasn't the housing study was eighty thousand dollars oh okay that's all it was well anyway when we see this kind of return on investment i would say it's worth it wouldn't everybody here it was really

[1:13:50] worth it so it's exciting to hear this news today and thank you for all of your hard work and i add my congratulations to everybody on the wonderful recognition that you're receiving thank you so much michael thank you very much thank you hey that that's it for the chamber lucy yes michael i just want to thank you and guy and shannon for the tour a couple of weeks ago i see my area over there in the smd tour blowing up yeah and the streets that are being built over there it's amazing when all it used to be was nothing but brush i know so it's not just fresh anymore i know and it looks really pretty that's why we call you industrial lucy you've got so much going on in your area yeah you know those little one-on-one tours are awesome i'm glad you find those helpful we do i thank you for a great job all of you together it's truly a team effort and i'll tell you one of my best friends in the world is mr guy andrews and this guy is awesome he is a machine and he's got a big heart and he's a lovely friend and he is probably one of the best economic developers in the country i mean really well you know oh you got 50 of the award and he got the other 50. i'm giving him i'll i'm yeah 25 25 let him keep it at his office for a couple of months and then back to your office i think we're going to swap it around yeah because it really is such a great team environment so anyway hey appreciate you all very much i appreciate you all taking my calls too i know i call a lot of you individually when i have a specific smd industrial development that i'm working on where i need some advice or i need some ideas or counseling i really appreciate that very much thanks again thank you thank you [Applause] we will move on to item b which is consider a resolution supporting the designation of san angelo as the visual arts council of texas diana bayes would normally be here to present this and talk through it all but she is homesick so she's asked us to go ahead and proceed because we believe

[1:15:53] strongly that the sooner and quicker that we approve this resolution the better it will be and it basically is going to go to the legislative group of people and ask them to support this request for san angelo and most of you know that over the past year we became a film film friendly and a music friendly city but in addition to that we have a long history of strong arts community with a strong foundation with the sun angel museum of fine arts symphony theater a ballet tremendous amount of quality of life issues supported by the arts and so we are asking that we do this today in support of that and see if we can't get the vote in austin to do this so may i have a motion elaine a second by tommy any public comment with none we'll take a vote all in favor say aye aye with none oppose motion passes 7-0 we'll move into item c which is consider approving a discount for rental fees at the texas bank sports complex for organizations bringing in 40 or more out-of-town teams to participate in tournaments and brent you're on thank you mayor good morning mayor daniel council members i am brent casey your recreation manager for the city of san angelo i'd like to start off by letting everyone know that we do have a mitigation plan approved by dr veretas and we are ready to move forward with uh tournaments for 2021 at the texas bank sports complex so we've talked to him have his guidance and we will move forward with those um what we are requesting is we're trying to get more organizations to come into the city of san angelo we've had meetings with different people we have some of the organizations that have been here in the past we have some new organizations that we're working with trying to get them to bring tournaments into san angelo and some of them have requested that they get a discount so we are requesting a 30 discount off of

[1:17:56] the rental rates which per quad that would only add up to 97.50 per day so depending on how many teams they brought in we're only asking for that to take place if they bring in 40 or more teams from out of town so we definitely get the money back on the economic impact and it would show them that we're trying to work with them to get them in to hit to san angelo and we're willing to work with them to have the tournaments here so sounds like a great idea do i have questions from council move approval of the district approval by tommy a second by lane um any public comment with none we'll take a vote all in favor say aye unopposed motion passes seven 7-0 thank you we will now move nice job brent we will now move into our close session the executive session on the provision of government code title v open government ethics subtitle a open government chapter 551 open meeting sub chapter d exceptions to requirement that meetings be open under the following sections a 551.072 deliberations about real property regarding the ford ranch and item b 551.071 consultation with attorney regarding sheila andrews versus the city of san angelo we will now adjourn and go to closed session and we will follow up with the balance of the agenda when we return our executive session it is 10 32 a.m on february the second and so the first thing we will do is consider the items discussed in closed session and we do have an item to discuss from closed session so i'm going to ask elaine to make a motion and with that one thing i would like to say is four years ago when we first initialized this setup we knew that there would be an awaiting period of this motion that i'm about to

[1:20:00] make and it is an honor to be able to make this so with that i make a motion to authorize the city manager to negotiate and execute all documents necessary for the sale of the remaining approximate 2005 acres of the property 20 000. sorry 20 thousand and five acres of the property commonly known as the ford ranch to the linden hamlin for the price of no less than one thousand three hundred and eighty five per acre do i have a second everybody i heard six seconds with that do we have any public comment with none we'll take a vote all in favor of the motion please say aye non-opposed motion passes 7-0 with that we will move into announcements and consideration of future agenda items are there any lucy yes ma'am i would like to have someone present um something about our mlk bathrooms and whenever they get it you know their next next meeting or the pro or the next but i need somebody to give a presentation on that okay anything else there's none we all entertain an emotion for adjournment i'll move thank you all in any public comment with none all in favor say aye aye motion passes 7-0 this meeting is adjourned at 10 34 a.m

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=95gMJ_0yAqA