San Angelo City Council 8-4-20

[0:00:00] everyone and welcome to the regular meeting of city council on this fourth day of august 2020. the meeting is called to order and we have every single city council member with us today so we definitely have a corn we will start this morning's meeting with the chaplain prayer from gary marcela jenkins and just to remind our audience gary and marcel our husband and wife so one of the reasons they don't have a mask on as you're watching this as they live together amen here could you please lead us in prayer this morning thank you thank you to the mayor the honorable brennan gunner the members of the city san angelo city council and the people we serve good morning everyone good morning will you join with me as i pray dear god in the scriptures you have said that citizens are to obey the governing authorities since you have established those very authorities to promote peace and order and justice therefore if i pray that our mayor the honorable brenner gunner the members of the san angelo city council and the people we serve i'm asking that you would graciously grant them wisdom to govern among the conflict and interests and issues of our times a sense of welfare and true needs of our people personal peace in their lives and joy in their task i pray for the agenda set before our council today please give an assurance of what will please you and what would benefit those who live and work in and around our beloved city of san angelo i pray lord that you protect san angelo from the spread of the covic virus as we turn and seek your face please heal those that have contracted the virus bring peace to those that have lost loved ones during this season let let us be obedient to the guidelines

[0:02:04] that have been set by cdc social dissident wearing a face mask and wash our hands it is in your most blessed name of jesus i pray amen amen amen amen thank you marcelo you're welcome special instructions for our meeting members of council and staff should begin speaking by stating their full name and smd position or role within the city today we'll now move into public comment and i'm going to start our public comment today with a proclamation um and the proclamation is concerning the el paso shootings that happen at the anniversary was yesterday and so all of us mayors in west texas have signed on to this proclamation it reads as follows our city shares in the heartbreak of the events on august 3rd 2019 in the city of el paso texas yesterday august 3rd was the first anniversary of the senseless act resulting in the loss of lives and injuries to many and should be remembered by honoring the victims the event demonstrates the perseverance of the entire community of el paso in its strength of courage service to others and hope the one-year anniversary was a day of reflection in remembrance of each life lost a time of reflection commemorating how the citizens and community community came together in unity the city of san angelo a part of west texas stands together to walk ahead as we continue the healing process as we stand strong together to continue to provide safety and security for all now therefore i brenda gunter mayor of the city of san angelo texas on behalf of the city council do hereby proclaim august 3rd 2020 as el paso strong day in san angelo texas and urge all

[0:04:06] citizens to stand behind the people and leadership of our sister west texas city as we remember their lost love at once their loved excuse me as we remember their lost loved ones and continue to heal and stand strong for continued safe city we call on all citizens to continue to carry el paso and every person affected by this tragic tragedy and their thoughts and prayers and witness whereof i hear and to set my hand and have caused the official seal of the city of san angelo to be a fixed this fourth day of august 2020. today i also want to just review the numbers the statistics for our covid19 we today cumulatively have had 2421 positive cases of those four of that excuse me there have been total tests four of 14 six total tests and negative tests of ten thousand four hundred and eighty four at this point we only have 53 pending tests which is the lowest number we've had in several weeks have had a total of 25 deaths at this point and we have had a release cases of 1389. i continue to emphasize the age category that has the highest number of positive cases and that is those who are in the age category of 20 to 29 so that's 573 cases of the 2421 positive cases making that about 24 of the total positive cases our positivity rate this past week was 24.3 down from the 24.6 the week before we still have a higher positivity rate than in the entire state of texas

[0:06:11] the entire state of texas as of last week was 17 point some percent 17.3 percent i believe so we're at 24.3 so we're still significantly higher than the state of texas so we still have work to do and the biggest focus right now has to be on social distancing as it relates to large groups or i should say large groups continue to be our biggest problem i am so proud of the citizens of san angelo for their obeying the mass order i'm very pleased when i am out about the number of people wearing masks so i want to thank all the citizens for continuing to follow the mass order but we must still continue to be diligent about social distancing and large groups we believe strongly that those large groups is where we're continuing to get the largest impact of positive cases so thank you to all you citizens who continue to report and talk to us about what's going on in the city of san angelo so we're more aware of what's happening and what is not happening so thank you with that we will move into the consent agenda and i'm going to start off by pulling items a and c from the consent agenda do i have any other items that council would like to pull from the consent agenda with none billy did you want to pull something yes i'm sorry i didn't unmute billy dewitt single member district six um i was going to pull c but i'd also like to pull f and g f and g okay we will um i will take a motion to approve the consent agenda with the exception of items a c f n g now i have a motion for approval so moved billy dewitt single member

[0:08:17] district six mayor thank you bill in a second by lane carter all of those in favor of approving the consent agenda with the exception of items a c f and g map please have a vote hey are there any nays with no nays we will accept the consent agenda as presented item a is consider approving the city council july 21st 2020 regular meeting and july 28 2020 budget workshop minutes and i would like to read the following from allen press he says i have a concern with the minutes not reflecting my public comment mayor gunter read a public comment from alan press smd one regarding probing 19. i would like to change those minutes from july 21st to clarify and that the clarification will be as following mayor gunter read a public comment from alan prest smb1 requesting public health officials present to city council on covent 19. with that uh we will move into uh let me go ahead and take a motion for approval of item a at this point now i have that motion no move second second by tom thompson um those opposed to approving say aye hi oh wait a minute you you made a motion to approve so i just asked for the negative votes oh i'm sorry i i don't appreciate it with um all of the motion with the motion passing seven zero we will move on to item c item c is as follows consider warning f d fd-01-20 ems billing and collection services team merchacon llc and authorizing the city manager to negotiate and execute all related documents and the public comment on item 5c

[0:10:20] is as follows in 1997 the city of san angelo outsourced the billing and collections of municipal ambulance fees after competitive bidding process our firm business and professional service was selected to perform these services we have been the continuous contractor for the city through two additional requests for proposals as a professional services contract the lowest bid is not automatically awarded through every bidding process other companies promised to collect more revenue for a lower fee while we were saddened to not be selected as a preferred contractor the chosen bidder's fee is significantly below industry averages the true measure of results is the total net revenue to the city this is a labor intensive contract and we question how collections can be maintained at this proposed fee without enough resources a drop of less than four percent and collections will negate any perceived savings on the fee the purpose of this email is to caution the city to protect itself from revenue loss during negotiations contract language should include collection guarantees and the ability to cancel the contract on short notice if results are not as promised we have enjoyed our 20 plus years business relationship with the city and wish you continued success as always we are available if you have any questions concerns or need our insight and this was written from tom mcdonald a non-resident a former vendor who is a president of business and professional services with that brian would you like to talk us through this contract morning mayor council fire chief brian dunn uh our contract with business professional services went out july 31st and we had sent out

[0:12:24] an rfp and received nine bids from different vendors for the billing of ems services so a committee went through all these bids and uh we came out with uh emergi-con being the one that we thought was the best uh billing vendor um as far as that goes i mean i don't we still need to negotiate with them that's what we're asking for approval today i don't know how much you want me to get into what we saw there were several things in there about the way they build different things that we thought would be beneficial to the city what is our current rate of collections as a percent of total dollar amount uh the current rate from business professional services is 10.4 percent and what are we asking for in the contract can i talk about this teresa she said yes okay uh the one the one that we chose billing rate is six percent they weren't the lowest there was people below them too so to the challenge of um that was presented in this comment what would be our answer well my answer to that would be from with the bids that we got business professional services was several percentage of points above the rest of the bidders so of the nine bidders they were the highest one out of all that but that's not the sole reason there's other things that this other company does in their collections that we think will um collect more money for the city of san angelo since this is a professional service can you talk briefly about some of those things because you know as you know our selection is not based entirely on

[0:14:26] the money it shouldn't be well and i don't know if i can enough they had a bunch of those contracts had confidential stuff that said not to be put out so i'm not sure how much that i can just the way they build some things we went over so we had a list of references with each one of these we called a bunch of these references to see how people were performing on what they said the one that we chose uh they said they um [Music] how do you want to put it uh under under promised and over delivered is basically their terms they said they ended up with more money than what that those people told them that they would get the other thing is with this company also the only people that they bill for basically are municipal ambulance services such as us as far as we can tell that is their main customer base so they are very familiar with the type of service that we run do i have questions from council ford chief dunn yes billy uh billy duet single member district six chief dunn what is the length of the contract so in the past this is the third uh ems contract that i've done as chief normally we have a three-year contract and we have two three-year extensions attached to it's how we've done it in the past if both parties are agreeable to that we also have provisions in that contract that if they are not performing that we we can get rid of them within like 30 days so there's things built into the contract for non-performance if they if they do not live up to what they said and our revenues are starting to go down we can release them from that contract and that's the same thing that's been in the contracts with uh business professional services also did um chief dunn did any of the proposals include contract um language about collection guarantees that they guarantee they would collect a certain percent

[0:16:28] i do not remember seeing that but i don't know i don't know how they can guarantee that's almost like a financial advisor guaranteeing you he's gonna make you eight percent on your money i don't know if they can guarantee that what you do is watch we know how much we're collecting and we know about how much we get off those runs so we we would be able to tell pretty quick if we're not collecting what we should be collecting and did i understand you to say a little bit earlier that you're still in negotiations we're asking for approval from council today to begin negotiations we have an extension with business professional services to cover us until we get that negotiation done i do think um but that is an important point that we do not have actually a contract at this point everything that we're talking about is terms that we anticipate we're going to be asking for in a contract but it is a request to negotiate a contract okay all right so repeat again based off of the dollar amount that uh exists in terms of collections what is the typical percent of that total collections that we achieve oh you're i i don't have that information in front of me i know how much we pay them on the collection i can tell you about how much we collected uh last year it was in the 3.6 million dollar range off ems revenues i do not have the the because there's so many numbers out there you have net collections based off different categories such as private insurance medicaid and all those variables affect that percentage as it comes in my guess would be in the 60 percent total range somewhere in there i think we need to have the ability to look at what we we collect as a net amount combine everything combined in that amount i think that's an important number for us

[0:18:30] to have i also want to know how that would 60 collection if that's about the number how that relates to other cities and in terms of collections because 60 percent collection doesn't sound overwhelmingly great so i don't know that that's the the the standard that they use mayor a lot of the standards they use is dollars per transport because you have many things in there so we may charge six hundred dollars for a transport but medicare may only pay four hundred dollars and you can't go after those people so on something like that you would only have you might get 66 then you have people without insurance that pay nothing so the overall is hard to measure what a lot of them measure off now of is the dollars you collect per transport mayor yes teresa um this item because it is a contract negotiation we do have the ability to discuss it today in an executive session so if you're interested in more information from the chief perhaps you could gather that and we can discuss it after all the other items and executive it would also allow you all to ask a little more direct questions regarding the contract and negotiations because as the chief hinted at earlier since we are just in the negotiation there's a lot of things we don't want to discuss in open session well what i would say is i don't think it will benefit us today to take this into executive session because i think we need to do some homework on some statistics so we better understand so my guess is that we should have an executive session next council meeting to better discuss some of the items that you don't feel comfortable discussing publicly today just so we're better informed we're you're asking us to give you permission to negotiate a contract it's and where i think we're agreed that we want you to negotiate but i think

[0:20:33] when we want to prove it down the road we need to better understand what we're approving in terms of expectations are we all all right so with that what we will do go ahead chieftain on i can't give you an answer on the net collections i mean we looked at a stack of proposals that was 12 to 14 inches high so i can't remember all the numbers off that but what i can tell you is i believe our our dollars per ambulance transport right now are about 360 dollars per transport that we collect they were i think that the the amount that they said that they would probably collect for us was 441 or somewhere in that range for for their collections for transport well we will i will ask for a motion to approve them to continue to negotiate on this contract with the stipulation that we will an executive session have an opportunity to get into the weeds deeper into the weeds statistically because i know that sooner or later this is uh we're going to have a conversation about ambulance fees as a part of the budget for 2020 2021. so i think it's relevant that we better understand this negotiation and the dollars before we're asked to approve the budget for ambulance fees so i'm going to ask for a motion to approve that we allow continued negotiations on this contract may i have that motion i billy do with single member district six i make that motion mayor thank you he was gonna second that with that i'm going to ask bernays only is there anyone opposed to us allowing them to continue with this negotiation nays only with no negatives all support from seven council members

[0:22:37] um you may continue to negotiate on that contract you've done thank you and we will discuss it in executive session in detail thank you we'll move to item f consider resolution authorizing the city manager to negotiate and execute a professional services agreement with the texas coalition of affordable power tcap and a commercial services agreement agreement with gexa energy for power to be provided after january 1 2023 nolan euron good morning mayor council mr valenzuela nolan sosa purchasing manager how are you all this morning good thank you this um agreement i guess i'll start by opening it up councilwoman dewitt did you have any questions for me this morning ma'am well i had what do we currently have an agreement with tcap you yes ma'am so we do have a current agreement with tcap but it is a fixed price agreement this action is going to be carrying forward into uh the year beginning january 1st 2023 they're modifying the way that they procure their electricity so they're offering their members and city as a member the option to do what's called strategic hedging where they procure one month of electricity two years in advance and that process will begin january 1st of 2021 cities have to pass a resolution saying that they wish to participate in this program before october 1st because they're going to begin that procurement process in january of 2021 for the period beginning january 1st of 2023 since they're procuring two years in advance to help us better forecast our energy costs and to achieve economies of scale by buying uh with more cities we'll have more

[0:24:39] buying power and we'll be able to bite down on our energy costs in the background i kind of discussed a little bit about city's potential savings but under this different pricing structure we're looking at saving about eighty five thousand dollars per year on our electric utility so nolan um if they start the negotiation for january 1st 2023 in january 2021 so they negotiate a price each month two years down the road yes ma'am okay so for instance when we go into january 2021 our rate is about three and a half uh cents per kilowatt hour so if they're able to negotiate for 20 23 three cents per kilowatt hour that is a locked in amount for january 2023 absolutely so each each month in 21 we will know what the rate will be in 23. yes ma'am all right so then um if it's not less than three and a half percent what do we do city retains the option under this agreement to move back to a fixed price structure um if we find that the strategic hedging program isn't working in our favor but because we're jumping on this vehicle i should say with over 160 other members we're going to be able to probably achieve prices councilwoman dewitt that are far lower than what we're getting now all right so now um in the information it looks like gex a energy is that included in this are they separate so it is included in this action item

[0:26:40] but that's a good question uh to clarify there's two different agreements there's the professional services agreement with the texas coalition of affordable power tcap which is a group that procures the electricity on behalf of the city a city's electric utility agent so that's one agreement and then the second agreement with jexa energy jexa energy is your retail electric provider just like you might get electricity from reliant energy for instance uh jeksa would be city's retail electric provider and we need agreements in place for both okay okay now um i think i know the answer to this question but i would like for you to speak to it nolan um with this contract what would be any what would be the benefit if any to the citizens of san angelo well you know the benefit to the citizens really comes from city's cost savings if we can achieve a savings of 85 000 a year in our electric utility that's 85 000 that the city can devote to another initiative that can better you know impact the public because right now you know us paying our electric bills is really an internal operating expense and we can devote those funds to another initiative that perhaps yields a more direct public benefit okay thank you i don't have any other questions mayor i move to approve item f on the consent agenda billy i'm going to wait a minute i've got a couple questions and so does lucy so i'm going to hold that motion and then um finish the questions we see you had a question we can't hear you lucy you need to unmute no man i didn't have a question i was just gonna second billy's motion okay we'll just wait one minute okay august 2023 how long is that would that price be guaranteed because you talked about this new 2023 contract

[0:28:44] so what talk to me about the terms so the base term of the agreement mayor would be for five years so we would be under this type of procurement structure for a five-year period and we would be able to forecast out as we're having discussions with budget for instance looking forward to what our electric utility is for the fiscal year beginning 2023 we're going to be able to say these are our costs for these months and really the most economic way to do that in there is to say we have a year of data for 2023 we should have that year completed in december of 2021 we will know what the rate is going to be for december of 2023 we can take that year of electric utility data we can divide that by 12 and we can get an average cost per kilowatt hour because we're procuring one month at a time there's going to be some ebb and flow and some rise and fall in that rate and so the best way to forecast that is to say this is the average and this is what we're going to use to budget for a year's worth of the electric utility and that will be how we can calculate what that rate is and what the potential cost savings for the city will be each year out i'm surprised that we haven't had a situation concerning this in the past it would seem like we because of so many other things that we do we join with other cities and a major group to negotiate and buy combined rates of of combined cities so why is that we're just now looking at this kind of a purchasing contract well city has been a member of tcap for quite some time mayor it's just they're changing the way that they buy the electricity so we've actually been on a collective agreement with these 160 other cities it's just been a fixed price model

[0:30:45] much like what you probably have in your home or in your businesses it's a model that you know what your price per kilowatt hour is based on your consumption this is a little bit of a unique way of buying electricity that we're able to take advantage of because we're a municipality and we have stronger buying power because while you might uh you know consume a couple of thousand kilowatt hours a month uh city you know consumed 29 million last year so we're a very attractive customer for an electric provider and when we partner with you know large cities or cities our size and you multiply that times 160 it induces them to offer better prices than say an end consumer could you know receive and so we're not necessarily doing any type of new initiative we've been doing this for a while but we're just going to take advantage of a new buying mechanism a different way of buying that electricity right repeat that number in terms of what's the dollar amount we spend on electricity every year as a city yes ma'am so the last fiscal year that we have a full year of data from 10 1 of 18 to 9 30 of 19 we spent 2.8 million dollars on electricity so quite honestly the 85 000 savings which is terrific isn't a very big percentage of our bill no ma'am so go ahead a lot of those numbers mayor are really driven by the volatility in the energy market in general whenever you have economic conditions say like a covet crisis happen that drives the cost of the electric utility down you know it's great but at the same time there's other conditions that cause that price to increase and so we're not going to yield just an astronomical 10 or 11 percent difference because that market is heavily saturated

[0:32:51] and we're also subject to the monopoly of the retail electric provider jexa so you know while i wish that the savings would be four or five percent you know 85 000 on 2.8 million while not substantial is still you know 85 000 that we can devote to another initiative and i appreciate the 85 000 savings but i just repeat it's not a very big percent of our total electricity bill so i would hope that we could find a way to figure out how to reduce the electricity bill of 2.8 million it's a big number absolutely uh cities already you know internally we're having discussions about different behavioral changes that we can do within the organization to bite down on some of our consumption and hopefully that will yield additional savings for us in addition to this program so do we have a plan um as a city that says these are the following five key points that what we're going to do over the next x amount of years or months to help save on electricity what is that game plan you know it's in the very early stages right now mayor but i know that one of the things that we've discussed is taking a look at the you know hours that we operate and what we can do to cut off say you know the heating or air conditioning system or you know when you know the city employees leave the office suite for whatever reason you know cutting those lights off and just doing measures like that things that we do in our own homes and applying that on an organizational level that might yield some cost savings but it's in the very preliminary stages so i don't want to misspeak at this time all right well what i think we need to do is be prepared to have you come back and talk to us about the game plan for reducing the 2.8 million dollars from just our actions that we can take internally

[0:34:52] and that's why daniel mayor bombay uh this is definitely an item of discussion since we're having our general fund fun budget discussion next week uh this is actually an item that we can touch up on as well and have a little bit more discussion as far as what we believe could be a savings to the city as well so we kind of go into a little more detail then okay thank you with that i had a motion from billy in a second by lucy let's take a vote all of those who say nay speak up now with no one opposing we will accept the resolution authorizing the city manager to negotiate and execute a professional services agreement with tcap and a commercial service agreement with gen x energy power so um let's negotiate hard and let's find some bigger savings all right with that we'll move on to item g consider approving an amendment to the concession agreement between the city of san angelo and san angelo post and authorizing the city manager to negotiate and execute all related documents and carl johnson yes paul white parks and recreation director councilmember dewitt we do have a quick presentation we can go through if you have any questions or we can try to answer questions now okay which would you prefer why don't we go ahead and give the presentation and then see what questions might exist after the presentation next slide please next slide okay stop go to the next slide please so what we're looking at doing is an amendment to the existing agreement

[0:36:55] which was approved at the june 7 2016 meeting the initial term of that expires june 7 2021 in the amendment we're looking at a new term that would have the agreement expired june 7 2026 in this amendment we're looking at updating the list of events that are not have non-exclusive concession rights adding four conscious on pawn air event and bringing the total accepted events to eight in in this um that there's eight separate would be eight separate events at which the city's concessionaire would not have the exclusive right to serve that event and i can list those events if you wish looking at updating the list of products and prices that was last updated in 2016 with one exception the cost of hot dogs went up 25 cents and then looking at some non-substantive administrative updates including the place of payment adding a clause that states that the concessionaire can't provide the service that the city can secure service from another vendor which which does not happen very often at all but we would like that clause in there in case it does happen [Music] and then also accepting methods of payment by customers and to include custom credit cards next slide please this san angelo hosts her concessionaire pays the city 25 20 of its gross revenues in the sale of food and non-alcoholic beverages and 25 from its sale of alcoholic beverages these rates were approved in september of 2008. uh last fiscal year san angelo host paid the city about 80 thousand dollars i do need to point out that the total amount that did get paid to the city is about double that uh the 80 000 is what the city retained the other amount is what passed through the

[0:38:56] city to go back to the san angelo stock show rodeo association for their event the city's largest event and prior to contracting the san angelo host the city did operate its own concessions and san angelo hosts has proven to be a much better choice to provide that service so a question may be why now we're about a year out from the end of the term of this agreement as you know the last five minutes months have been pretty brutal in terms of events they've san angelo host has virtually had no revenue the last five months they do have some upcoming financial commitments in terms of renewing the insurance purchasing new equipment and ongoing loans they have to pay off and they do wish to have some security and continuity with the city to continue to provide service i believe that's it in terms of the presentation okay try to answer any questions billy you had some questions well he answered um carl thank you you answered most of my questions as you went through the presentation but um can you explain to me in a little bit more depth when you say we collected about twice as much as the 80 000 but it was a pass-through i didn't quite get that yes the city the senator host pays to the city all the amounts from the events we have we have a separate agreement with the san angelo stock show radio association for uh there are events at the coliseum which is a huge event and the money that san angelo host earns from that event basically the city doesn't retain that because of our agreement with the rodeo association they get they they get all the concession uh revenue from that event under our agreement with them

[0:40:58] and they pay us a separate fee for their event okay so that's just um like eighty thousand dollars from this uh rodeo is just a pass through it's essentially yes thank you so host pays the city and then under our agreement we pay the we send that money to the rodeo association okay would you thompson would you like to comment on anything on this item oh sure and i am i have a experienced 10 years experience to work with san angelo host it's always been great but billy there is also a contract which you know um y'all approved here a while back the stock showing rodeo pays a very sizable amount in excess of what this payment was back to the city so i don't want you to think that those funds go through there that there's not another way that those aren't getting back to the city and i will say this for dealing with carlo we have a lot of people the san angelo hosts that question they have to provide service no matter what event or how many you're having there and also a good part that they do they provide a waiver of subrogation which is a very good legal protection for the city and for people that utilize them which if you aren't familiar with that it provides you some very long-term protection that other people don't and that's kind of my question for some of these non-exclusive events that have chosen not to go with san angelo host teresa do we have the protection that a waiver of segregation from them much like what we require san angelo hosts to provide for us teresa you need to unmute carl that might be a better question for you to answer regarding what kind of contract we do with somebody who does not um you san angelo hosted an event they must have a certificate of insurance for their event which doesn't it is a different contract than what we generally use with singers yes and why do we allow a couple of events to not use san angelo host

[0:43:02] those have primarily been traditional events that have been most of which have been ongoing before we had an agreement with san angelo host is that's the reason that there were traditional events hosted in the city well that's not true because enclave has not been it's it's in its years so it's it's not it's relatively new compared to many of those other events that is correct and some have requested to be accepted i would thank carl if i could step in maybe brenda with on plein air i think a lot of those beverages are provided to them or donated outside the realm that wouldn't require carlow to be there so somebody provides wine or something like that not requiring a beverage license so that may lead to some of that i'm not for sure on that but that might be a little bit of input there i just want to make sure that i mean i think carlo's done an incredible job on his contract and delivering services and i know it takes a lot to keep all those people available and ready for all the multiple events that he does it's bigger than what most people understand in terms of organization and staffing so i want to make sure that this contract is a win-win for the city for organizations but also for carlos so he's he tends to be very easy to work with and i want to make sure we're not stepping on any toes here in this negotiation that it's a win-win okay with that uh do i have a motion for approval every time i think i'm after district three our move to approve is presented billy dewitt single member district six i second that motion okay there's a motion and a second anybody opposed to approving this amendment to the concession agreement i'm not opposed it passes seven zero that concludes the consent agenda for

[0:45:06] today's meeting so we will move into the regular agenda item 6a consider approving an amendment to the anfield incentive program to include relocation of decent and structurally sound existing problems to neighborhoods targeted for revitalization and i have bob salas on good morning mayor uh council of bob salas nephilim family services director we're here this morning to get approval to amend the infill incentive program to include relocation of decent and structurally sound existing homes into our neighborhoods targeted for revitalization currently the infield incentive program incentivizes developers with up to five thousand dollars for construction of new homes or for commercial projects and empowerment zones now these relocated units would undergo an inspection by staff to ensure that the units are safe and decent and do not present a lead-based paint hazard to provide additional information on the concept i'd like to introduce alisa denny who has a short presentation good morning amir gunter good morning city council my name is elisa denney i'm a resident here in the city of san angelo and i've been working with mr bob solis to incorporate my project for uh placing single-family homes within the um areas that are considered for the infill incentive program i realize this is a bit of a novel project but i think that once you hear my suggestions you'll be pleased and you'll want to include us in that program so if i may i'd like to present a short powerpoint i'm happy to answer any questions that anybody may have please proceed thank you mayor bear with me as i bring up my slideshow okay so i was made aware of the infill

[0:47:31] incentive program when i was attending a city council meeting approximately one year ago and i was a new concept to me i was not familiar with it when i entered into my idea for this development i had no idea that something of this nature existed um what has arisen since then is that i have partnered with baptist retirement community and they have um eight or more single family homes that they wish to relocate they will be re-establishing those homes in their existing sites but at this point in time they are willing to partner with me so that i can relocate those homes these homes are single family homes as i mentioned mentioned pier and beam construction not modular and just briefly i'll review the facts so i have ownership of eight and a half acres within the infill incentive program qualifying area um these are buildable lots that i have during the time of my ownership for the last nine months um cleaned up fenced um it's a large particular parcel including two separate entities that i purchased it from one of which being the catholic diocese and the other part being a piece that i purchased from the um habitat for humanity so having said that when i purchased these lots it was my idea that there were you know basically eight and a half acres of undeveloped land not platted no utilities being underutilized right by downtown so we're actually located at the corner of rio concho drive extending over to the street called irene which is east of there encompassing three city blocks i would like to develop this area i am a private citizen i do not have any financial backing but

[0:49:34] i know that i can provide much needed housing for the city of san angelo and i can provide a tax revenue base in terms of property taxes for units that are not presently being taxed by the city of san angelo because baptist retirement community is actually non-profit as you all know the area where i'm asking for your help and support is based upon the fact that although i will not be constructing these single family homes from the beginning there are several reasons that it will benefit the city of san angelo number one the time frame for having a house set on site and able to be inhabited as far as the um permits are allowing is 90 days so what does that mean to you guys it means that it's an immediate tax revenue generator versus let's say i were attempting to build site build eight family homes in the city of san angelo it would be substantially greater for me to undertake that project i am working with skg engineering we have a site plan that's been established i have established utilities to that location i have established tremendous improvements to the site and i think that there are several people on this call that will support me uh in the fact that this was a terribly underdeveloped area um you know more or less for lack of a better word kind of a dump site um i personally have removed over eight loads of trash because it basically was a dumping ground and it's a beautiful piece of property and so i would ask that you include me in the infill incentive program so that i can take advantage of unused money

[0:51:35] in an area where people are not actively developing and the as in terms of the caliber of the homes i want to let you know that they are far better okay or at least in keeping and i would i would be very confident to say far better than the existing homes in the area my homes are presently um one thousand to two thousand square feet not including attached garages and these homes are something that can really rejuvenate this area they can bring almost what i'll call a pocket neighborhood for those that are familiar and start a trend as it relates to downtown san angelo i think everyone on this call is aware of the um the beauty and the amount of activity that is starting to take place in the parks downtown which are adjacent to my property just across the river and i believe that this opportunity would afford the city of san angelo not only tax revenue in terms of property taxes but also i know because of the study that was provided and presented at city council when i've been present that we do have a dramatic home shortage for single-family homes in the city of san angelo i am hoping to be a solution here for everybody the community the tax base and also local business owners because my location is approximately two minutes from downtown san angelo as far as our historic area i think that this is a win-win for everybody and once i began to discuss this with bob i felt like this was a perfect fit for this project so in terms of any questions that you may have i'm happy to answer those i am very confident that everyone this call would be

[0:53:36] extremely pleased with the quality of the homes that i will be moving in now in reference to the contrast between site-build homes and the homes that i'll be providing so although the um interiors these homes which are not new obviously they're built between 1970 and 1990 the caliber in terms of finishes and size and quality including the exteriors which will be 100 completely redone so what i would like you to take into consideration is although i am bringing in i'll call the shells okay of these homes i am also going to be 100 refurbishing those homes in terms of their exterior meaning they will be either brick or stucco they're compliant everything with city code and will be pre-inspected by planning and zoning prior to their move and i can't express to you how much i believe that everyone on this call will be extremely impressed with what i have to offer in terms of bringing this solution as to my qualifications um i am just a private resident as i mentioned i'm not affiliated with any entity but i do have a 30-year background in marketing and advertising and i will be able to market and that area in a very successful manner providing a cost per square foot to the community um that will be unprecedented as well as just the quality and feel that i know everyone on this call wants to provide for downtown san angelo this is just a little sample of the actual site itself i thought it might help for you guys to actually see what we were talking about um the community is gated as i mentioned and right now it is located across the

[0:55:39] street from subsidized housing which is an apartment building called the river point apartments but you will see that it is my vision to provide a rural feel while in the city of san angelo we would like to provide a community garden and also a park-like setting in terms of common areas for people and anyone that would like to review my site plan i'm happy for you to do that very excited and have modeled that i modeled this after a community um similar in the city of austin texas which took an undeveloped or abandoned airport facility and refurbished it into something kind of a utopic almost type of setting and yet maintaining the cost effectiveness to make it affordable for people that want to live in the city of san angelo um this is just a little bit of my marketing that i want to implement i don't want to bore you with all of it but basically our takeaway is that we're country living right downtown so um i would ask that council would consider my request what i am personally devoting to this in terms of finances finances is far more substantial than the subsidy that i'm requesting but it certainly would help expedite the process and it also would um impress the fact that the city of san angelo is supportive of the infill program um despite anything that might make it look um non-traditional because i think that everyone on this call would agree that we have to think outside the box and order to move forward so thank you very much i'll be happy to take any questions this particular area has really been

[0:57:48] blighted for a number of years uh as elisa said it's really been a dumping ground i get calls all the time uh about people dumping in that particular area so i i really think the concept is is is kind of out of the box as she said i i like the idea that we're going to take existing homes from one part of the community and put them in another part that is now um you know really not being utilized and so from my perspective uh i like the concept my two questions are the fine one i want to make sure because the infill program is all about building up tax base i want to make sure that not only the property it's the plaque itself the land is taxed but the building also will be taxed not a non-profit tax on the building itself uh thank you mayor gunter no it will be 100 single-family homes and is planted as such and so as i said with our turnaround time of relocating each home and having it ready to be able to be moved into um in all honesty we are allowed three months by planning and zoning however we're looking actually at about one month as it relates to my plan and process and as i've proven can take place in my past developments so just to answer your question i'm in no way affiliated with any non-profit i just fortunately was able to partner with baptist memorial it's a bird's nest on the ground i get it um but it does take a substantial amount of revenue to relocate those homes obviously um and to incorporate utilities where utilities were not previously accessible um i've been working for about one year um with the city of san angelo in terms of engineering and planning and zoning

[0:59:51] to make this happen and it has not been um it's not been extremely easier overnight but we are at the point where i would love the opportunity to take advantage of this program so that i can subsidize the project and invest in things like beautiful landscaping nicer finishes right that type of thing 100 single-family homes which will generate immediate tax revenue for the city of san angelo in terms of property taxes the entire development which is slated to be as many as 16 homes would be completed within 12 months that means that immediately the city will be able to um generate revenue okay so you talk about being affiliated with baptist memorials so are these houses currently owned by baptist memorial and you're buying from baptist memorial yes ma'am that is correct um they are scheduled to be either demolished or moved and so i would prefer that they're moved into the city of san angelo so that we can capitalize on that versus some other city or outside of the city limits being able to capitalize on that it's much easier to reload relocate them into rural settings but that's not my vision my vision for this project is to relocate them convenient to downtown and just to kind of piggyback on what was just said i personally have taken control of that area in terms of removing trash and debris um in terms of the scale that no one on this call would imagine um and i hate to use the word police but i have had to personally police the area working with the um you know department of natural resources and the engineers of san angelo to make it safe now we're in a situation where it's ready to be developed and move forward and i realize although an unconventional suggestion

[1:01:55] the caliber as i said of the homes that will be relocated will be by will be far higher in terms of taxable value and assessment so when we talk about that just to give you an idea um between 150 and 250 000 um homes so not something that's necessarily in keeping with um what's there presently which as we know is nothing but when we talk about the surrounding areas well these because you are working with bob solis my question is is this a project that is income verified or is it going to be traditional mortgage lending purchases um i would i would say that that's up for um that's up for discussion that's not a conversation that bob and i have had um so i'll let him comment on that uh mayor it's not a requirement to do income uh qualifications for any of the incentive programs uh but although we could do that that'd be up to uh would be willing to work with the city mayor um for whichever direction that we felt would be the most suitable i'm i'm fine either way i just want to make sure we're discussing the vision everything just trying to get a picture of what you're doing obviously yes ma'am housing is one of the important parts of our strategy um i i think it's terrific that you've gone out and cleaned up this piece of real estate i can't wait to leave city council meeting this morning and drive out there and take a look at it i wish that you would mayor i wish that everybody on this call would take we're about uh one minute from the mcneese convention center um and i think that you will be extremely impressed um and i feel that even though we may or may not depending on whatever

[1:03:58] you know you guys want to recommend take part in an incentivized housing program in terms of affordability these homes will be offered at a price per square foot that um is unprecedented in terms of the quality of the homes so it's going to afford something for the community that as we all know we have a housing shortage right now in san angelo right so i'm not proposing that you help me build bentwood but i am proposing that you help me um build a vision that is going to i assume be repeated um and copied in the future because it definitely is something that's going to be unprecedented and it definitely will be noticed um as something that the city of san angelo was willing to invest in and i would like to remind we do have uh we do have a uh down payment closing cost uh program uh to get people into homes so uh maybe we may be able to partner with the lease on this on that program that would be great and i also am working with a local bank the bank of san angelo who's funding my project and they are excited to partner with me in helping to assist with mortgages as well okay uh do i have i why was uh baptist memorial willing to let go of these houses uh mayor they are um redoing their entire um community they have been purchased by a company um a corporation um that is separate from how they've been owned before and so part of that development plan is that they have um decided to partner with skg engineering to build um a brand new community basically because it behooves them to do so

[1:05:59] so it's a situation where i don't want to call it recycling but that's kind of what it is and i would welcome anyone on the council or anyone on this call to tour any of the homes with me each one has been identified and each one will be inspected by the city of san angelo but i think the caliber and quality of these homes would appeal to anyone on this call these are large ranch homes um not typical of the area okay and i think that these you know large bedrooms large closets a lot of amenities obviously they'll have you know they'll have all the features that would appeal to someone interested in buying a single family home in another area what we're doing is we're encouraging them to move to this area um and i think that my vision complements the vision of the city in terms of the infill incentive program that is why i'm asking for your support do i have any additional questions from anyone on council uh tommy mayor tommy hebert uh single member district one uh for full disclosure um i also sit on the board of trustees of uh baptist memorials alisa is correct this is a win-win and i did check with theresa that i do not have to recuse myself from this discussion um this is a win-win baptist sees this as a win for them for all the reasons she has stated they are uh we we on on that campus are undertaking a remodel a refurbished um and this this is a win for us to get these get these homes into elise's hands um they are well constructed homes um they are nice homes um but it it just doesn't fit within the plan that baptist has

[1:08:00] on a go forward basis so um baptist is very excited that this has come up and able to to work with alisa and hopefully maybe have some other areas around town even though it may not be with alisa specifically but have some other areas around town where a project like this might might also uh be initiated so mayor with that if you are ready for a motion i will make a motion um to approve the amendment to the infill incentive program i have a motion do i have a second harry thomas single member district three i second that motion with that um we will take a nay vote anybody opposed to uh approving this amendment on this specific project with none opposed motion passes seven zero we will move on to item b consider awarding awarding es-07-20 friction seal for pavement preservation to pavement restoration incorporated in the amount of 679 805 budgeted fiscal year 2020 and authorizing the city manager to negotiate and execute all related documents lance you're on morning council mayor mr valenzuela hope you guys are doing well today we have before you today an item on some pavement maintenance that we're asking you guys to move ahead with and i had a little bit of computer issue this morning so i'm kind of running on a different system can you guys see my presentation okay yes all right so what we have before you today is the opportunity for us to install a a new product that we have not done here in san angelo it's called gsb friction seal and so what that actually is it's an emulsified gilsonite and so that basically means that it's like

[1:10:02] an emulsion with asphalt materials with a gilsonite rock and i know a lot of you guys are probably thinking what in the world does that mean lance and that's why i kind of just breezed through that really quick but what that really means is it's almost a mixture between what we have been doing conventionally with the sealcoat added to something that we have already done here in the city which is the ha5 if you guys have been out to see the ha5 you know that that product has been a very good product we've done that two years in a row now and we have actually had very good success with it and what this gsb friction silk product does is it uses some of the aspects of that ha5 because it has polymers and emulsions that have to cure out a little bit differently but what they do is that they actually have mixed that with the more traditional type of a seal coat so they actually apply a seal coat material or a surface to that it actually takes that curing time down considerably and so what what it how it differs from it is you guys well know is that sealcoat which just so as a side note we are starting to apply today with our annual silcoat is that is an emulsion liquid that is actually heated up and so when that emulsion comes out on our regular sealcoat it's it's a hot mix it sprays as a hot item and then very soon after that then we actually go through and we apply the rock and as you guys recall with other presentations i've had that that rock on top of the hot asphalt allows that to be drivable within a 30 to 60 minute time period between the start to finish but what that does do though is the traditional seal coat when we have these hundred degree temperatures in the summer it actually does reactivate that asphalt material because of the heat and so that is one thing that we have actually been tasked with recently is trying to find some some different technologies that have a little bit better ride quality have a little bit different to allow some options here for certain roadways

[1:12:04] now the ha5 product how that differs is it's not heat based it's more of a chemical suspension of that material so when it sprays that material out it actually has to cure and so what happens is the water evaporates out and so over a period of time of about 24 hours that material actually then cures out to form the surface and so it does not have an aggregate added to the top of it but actually has the aggregate somewhat mixed into it very finely and so that's the difference is what sealcoat versus the ha5 is and how gsb verified difference from that is they are kind of combining those two technologies so what they actually do is that they provide the asphalt mix that's suspended chemically that gets sprayed down and then immediately in the same machinery right behind it they actually add the aggregate and it's a very very fine aggregate almost like a sand and so that sand goes on top of it and what that does is that accelerates that time so that way they can actually have it cured out and about and drivable within about three hours and so it's almost taking a little bit of both the ha5 concepts a little bit of the traditional seal coats concepts and kind of blending that together and so what you're looking at is that excuse me went backwards there so here what i have is a couple of pictures of what our silk coat looks like and so as you guys can see we spray the oil down right behind it we have a different mechanism and a machinery that puts the aggregate down and then on our ha5 you can see how that machine basically looks like it's a single pass it sprays it on and as you can see the picture that does not have the machinery that's it sitting there curing and allowing that moisture to come out and then what i have here is to show how that gsb looks a little bit different so if you see the the blown up picture of the machinery you will notice that in the very front of that machine you can actually see the darker black material being sprayed down and then just a couple of feet behind it you can actually see the

[1:14:07] the gilsonite rock that's being applied and so what comes out of that product is a very darker material it does allow access to it in the emergency within a half an hour to an hour but within three hours that roadway surface is drivable and so as we are continuing to move ahead here in san angelo one of the benefits that the gsb has is that it actually has a quite a bit wider range of streets that it can be applied to and so we're looking at three different areas that we're going to be applying this one is the 14th street from chadburn to maine the other one is rio concho west and then the other one is the green acre subdivision north of lakeview heroes drive and so what we're asking you to do is to prove the 678 thousand 805 dollars for the installation of this gsb friction seal and i will tell you that one of the one of the drawbacks that we've had about some of the other products is that they have to be applied to a very much newer roadway and so where sealcoat can be applied to anything one of the other projects that we have looked at in the last year or two can only be applied to maybe five or ten percent of our roadways because of their condition this gsb friction seal actually opens it up because it will actually be able to be applied to as much as maybe 50 percent of our current roadways and so it has a has a lot better range of classifications that it can be added to and so that's one of the reasons why we wanted to actually put this pilot program in test it out see how well it does and then we also too will be looking at still other other avenues in this year really bringing it back to you for other options for our sealcoat so if there's any questions i'm open to those who else is using this new product that we've been able to visit with to understand their issues concerns or support for this new program sure sure mayor we actually have visited this being placed in our some of our sister cities

[1:16:09] engineering and operations we actually went to midland and where they were actually applying it it is being applied in the midland odessa area as well we had invitations to go to other locations here in texas we chose not to go to those because it would have just been kind of a repeat but we have actually been seeing it applied and has been applied very successfully in multiple locations here in texas as well as the entire united states last time we approved a new concept as well and i know everyone looked at the final product and thought it was really great tell me about why we're not using that new concept versus this new concept sure mayor we we actually applied that uh pilot test of the ha5 last year it was very successful successful enough that we actually applied a second round of that this year and that has been completed and one of the differences that product has is that it has to be placed on a fairly new and a roadway that's in fairly good condition and one thing that we have seen is that a lot of our roadways are actually already beyond the point to be able to apply that material and so we are actually looking now at other products that have a similar a similar parameters as far as how it behaves not necessarily being heat-based emulsions but having the the asphalt mixtures and the polymers and this this gsb friction seal has those same characteristics to it but because it has the aggregate added to it it does change how that rock can be applied and so it actually widens the range of roadways that we can apply this material to so where the ha5 we may only be able to apply to maybe five or ten percent of the roadways here in town because of their age and their condition this product can actually be applied to a much wider range of roadways it has very similar

[1:18:12] characteristics in terms of the warranty period the wear period and it's just a different product as far as how it's packaged and if i could kind of explain it in kind of a layman's term the the sealcoat product is almost like pouring a hot wax onto something it actually goes through and it finds those different areas it seals it off through that but then heat will reactivate that these other products that we're trying like the gsb friction seal and the ha5 is almost like pouring up a can of paint out that paint will actually spread and fill those holes but once it has cured out it's cured out it's not going to be reactivated unless you do something chemically to that and so they're all very similar products in that they are payment restoration products but this is is much more closer to the ha5 product than it is to a sealcoat product do i have questions from council for lance plants one last question from me so the finished product of this compared to the finished product of the h85 i know we the cure time on the h85 was supposed to be 24 hours did it really seal up in the 24 hours or did it require longer um time to solidify i think that typically we see that it cures out a little faster than the 24-hour period i don't believe that we had any areas that took more than 24 hours and and typically they just like that 24 hour period to make sure that it is good and sealed um i know that in some instances that product can be driven on within three to four hours if if an emergency arises and even be able to walk on it you can walk on it within a a couple of hours and so i don't believe that the ha5 necessarily took any more than 24 hours i think on most cases it was less

[1:20:13] and and what i mean by that is we they applied that to you know from seven in the morning up until three in the afternoon and then those streets were opened back up the next morning at the seven eight a.m time frame and so if anything they they beat the 24-hour cure period what the gsb is is offering though is that they apply something in the morning up until lunch even up until the afternoon those roadways can be opened back up the same day for traffic okay all right any other questions for lance on this item okay if not then may i have a motion to approve the 679 805 for this um from this seal friction silk program mayor tommy hebert so moved tommy's in a second by lane carter are there any opposed to accepting this award with none opposed motion passes 7-0 thank you council thanks lance next item is item c discussion consider revising the ordinance covering hours for house to house door knocking under the infant merchant permit and we have teresa james on this thank you mayor teresa james city attorney this item was requested to be presented today to discuss whether or not we should make any changes to our ordinance regarding solicitation so i first want to go through what our ordinance currently says so julia i think she's waiting for someone to do this so currently that we have a solicitation ordinance that's in our um code of ordinances and like all of our code of ordinances there is a penalty provision related to that um the hours of

[1:22:15] solicitation currently in our ordinance are 8 am to 9 pm and there is a license required for solicitation and itinerary merchants that are not transferable or assignable and cover only one individual next slide please there is an application process you have to file a sworn application with the police department there's a fee associated with the application as well as for replacement identification cards and these licenses have to be renewed every six months now when we're talking about these solicitation ordinances generally what the issues that come up are really first amendment issues there's a number of supreme court cases that say that this kind of activity constitutes speech and as a result we have to be careful about any kind of restrictions we place on it now you can place time place and mana restrictions even on speech if you know it's meeting a public need or public concern what the courts have said regarding the timing of sales is that if you restrict it too much you're essentially limiting the speech to a point where it's no longer available to people um so currently our hours of solicitation are that eight a.m to nine pm that duration of hours i'm assuming was chosen when this ordinance was first drafted because that has been approved by the courts as a valid period of time um some time periods that have not passed muster are in some court systems some of the um district courts in the federal court system the um dawn to dusk has not been sufficient um daylight hours has not been sufficient anything less than 9 pm has not has been found to be insufficient and really what the courts say is that rather than placing governmental restrictions on this activity the best practices is for each individual to place a sign on their house stating they do or do not want solicitation i even saw a sign during my research into this

[1:24:17] that said no solicitation unless you're selling cookies to still allow girl scouts to come by houses so um i'm certainly willing to look at any kind of changes we want i would request though if we're going to make any change to our solicitation ordinance you give me some time to look at the ordinance as a whole there's been a number of changes in constitutional law that will affect other provisions of this ordinance it's actually on the list of those to be updated but with that i will take any questions okay well i've had many people very concerned about the late hour someone knocking on their door and i don't think most people want to put a sign in their front door that says no solicitation so for me it should be an 8 am to 7 pm time frame i think that gives everybody plenty of time now if you're telling me from a legal perspective we can't do that i at least want us to take a look at that and see if it can be approved and not create any legal issues i just don't think anyone should have to have someone knocking on their door at eight o'clock at night i don't think someone should have to have someone knocking on their front door at nine o'clock at night i think that's you know very intrusive into people's lives just as the courts are starting to um get more aggressive about controlling robo calls you know the knocking on the door is a robo call and the same people come to your door over and over again and leave their cars knock on the door just think it's unacceptable and so for me it's about trying to figure out how we can modify it and for me it's about modifying the time frame and so to me it's 8 am to 7 pm that to me seems like plenty of hours for someone to create free speech opportunity and try to sell something but i'm open to counsel putting in their

[1:26:20] perspective or their ideas i certainly agree with you a mayor but i would say this harry thomas single weber's three that we've got to comply with whatever the courts are saying you know i don't like it either i i don't want to have to put a sign up that says no solicitation uh and i'm certainly tired of the robocalls i got a half a dozen since we've been on console this morning uh i i do anything to keep those individuals from uh bothering this household at inopportune times uh but i also know that we've got to be careful that we don't go against what the court says so other comments from council tommy mayor tommy hebert single member district one tree says there's something that has prompted this that would be helpful for us to know about or is this just something that's kind of been part of the as you norma in your normal review of different ordinances and so forth um i've had concerns about our solicitation ordinance for a while because the way that the law at the supreme court level has been changing the most recent years so it's something that's on my list to go back and review and have my staff look at anyway um the hours issue came to me recently and i'm assuming it's because you know there's a lot of solicitors at doors right now for a lot of different reasons and it's just the time that it came up but i don't know mayor gunter if you want to add anything to that i just i would like us to look at that time frame and see if it passes the supreme court rules and regulations and if it doesn't i would like a recommendation from you about some way we could modify the current ordinance to better protect individual homes from a constant knocking on the door and are you okay with us looking at the ordinance as a whole right now and bringing that back it'll take a little longer to bring it back if we revise look at the entire ordinance to me it's about the hours

[1:28:23] i don't have any specific thing relative to the other items on there to me it's about the number of hours allowed elaine you were gonna make a comment yeah i know i've got uh it's not so much of the actual hours just because of daylight savings and standard time but it's more i've got more phone calls about people knocking on doors after dark and that being a security risk another in the summer time the sun goes down laters and it's light outside up until 9 nine thirty um but in the winter time it's dark by 5 30 6 o'clock and after hours knocking people are at home some people alone and they're just kind of scared of who's at the door who's trying to see if you're there or not mayor uh tommy hebrew single member district one uh just as as input from one council member um theresa i would like for you to review the whole ordinance i am fully supportive of harry lane the mayor talking about the the time frame i i'm a 9 a.m to 7 p.m kind of person so that and that may not pass muster at all but i'd like to have a full review rather than you just if you have concerns about the entire ordinance i'd like to have a full review and then you come back with your recommendation which would include the time that's just my input any other comments for teresa before we move to the next item teresa do you have guidance in terms of what we're asking yes ma'am okay all right with that we will conclude that conversation and we will move into item d on the agenda item d is the following consider resolution allowing the suspension of certain ordinance requirements regarding parking right-of-way encroachments and signage during the statewide issue disaster

[1:30:26] declaration related to the kobe 19 pandemic and we have john james on thank you mayor this is an item as as we looked around and we've seen a number of other cities look at some similar kinds of issues and so we took a look at basically as you read suspending some of the current ordinances uh just in you know minor respects recognizing that businesses have been negatively impacted what it does is just relax three different ordinance requirements to accommodate more flexibility for businesses during this time the first thing it does is eliminates the prohibition on obstructions within the right-of-way without city council approval so right now if you wanted to have like an outdoor seating area like shown in this picture it would have to come to council and get approval by city council what this would do this resolution would allow for an administrative review so it would speed that up we would still ensure things like ada accessibility you couldn't block the sidewalk such that people couldn't get by public safety access those kinds of things it would all still be reviewed by staff it just wouldn't have to go through that extra step of going through the city council just a couple of other pictures from some things that we've seen in other cities some examples of this both including the picture on the left where you see basically like a downtown sidewalk area but then also the picture on the right is actually out into some of the parking area in the street so this would allow any of this but again it would have to be reviewed uh for public safety and and all of that a couple of other pictures again uh in the one case on the ride is actually closing of a street now i just show that as an example but actually closing a street we do have a separate process for that so if

[1:32:28] businesses wanted to do a temporary street closure that that is a separate process uh the second thing this item would do is eliminate the prohibition on using required parking spaces so right now we require any business to have a minimum number of parking spaces so for example if they are required to have 30 parking spaces they can't use those for anything else whether it's outdoor seating outdoor display of merchandise and so what this would do is relax that a little bit we know that many businesses have reduced occupancies because of covet 19 and so if a restaurant for example can only have 50 percent of the seating you know it makes sense that they don't necessarily need 100 of their parking and so this again would allow with just an administrative staff review businesses and restaurants to use some of their parking area either for outdoor display for a retail store or outdoor seating for a restaurant and again this would be reviewed by all the relevant departments basically our what we currently have is a site plan review committee that would be reviewed just some other examples again uh putting picnic tables out in a parking lot ideally businesses would do something like on the right with a little bit of landscaping some screening and shading for the customers and even we've had actually one restaurant already approach us about this putting tent like this in their parking lot to have some outdoor seating and so we think this would be helpful for those restaurants that may want to do something like this one thing i didn't mention in both of these cases the other thing that it does is allowing retail or restaurants expanding into this space it gives them that extra space to separate tables for social distancing but also for retail it gives them more retail space while being able to still accommodate the distancing and then the third thing this would do

[1:34:30] is allow some additional temporary signage without having to go through the process of assigned permit it is it would be limited to just signs related to covid specific things like curbside pickup you know call this number for delivery uh those kinds of signage we've seen quite a bit of that around town uh technically a lot of what you're seeing out there is in violation of our sign ordinance uh we have not pursued any enforcement on that but this sort of cleans that up while we're in this uh pandemic situation we would basically waive those requirements for the duration they would still be subject to any rules that apply to things like traffic visibility or safety and so if somebody places a sign in a location that we believe is a traffic hazard for example we could still enforce on that and have them move that sign just a couple of other examples of some signage these are are from other cities and then as i mentioned uh for the first two items at least they would still have to submit a plan showing the layout so that we could ensure you know fire truck access other emergency access again ada pedestrian accessibility kinds of issues and this resolution suspending these ordinance would be effective as long as either occupancy limits or the disaster declarations are in place with that i'd be happy to answer any questions i have many comments to make on this number one i support the sign issue in terms of being able to use these temporary signs because i think people do need to be able to talk about pick up and call in orders but i have major concerns about some of the pictures you showed relative to the great pictures cut and paste from the web very nice but they have nothing to do with san angelo in terms of the width of our sidewalks and particularly when you're talking

[1:36:32] about those pictures that you show those are historic almost all those areas are in downtown areas our sidewalks aren't wide enough to accommodate ada and putting tables out like that so you've got a problem with that number one issue in downtown is always about lack of parking so you cannot take away street parking because that is primarily the only parking that's available and number three major traffic issues an accident pro when you start taking people and putting them in parking spots on the street you're just opening up the door to a major problem with accidents because when you start bringing people out into the street you start bringing kids out into the street and we all know about kids getting up and running around and then finally what we also know is i get numerous amount of phone calls from people that say there's no occupancy limits on outdoor seating but no one is paying attention to social distancing and outdoor areas so you've got that as a control issue so i would say you need to do a lot more work in terms of presenting to council some specifics in terms of how we would look at this but i'm and parking lots there aren't that many parking lots downtown and so again you got to worry about the amount of parking available i wonder if you had any conversation with del velasquez who heads up our main street program in the downtown area i have not no we need to do that and so i am saying that you need to do a whole lot more work what you're presenting today is two big picture downtown has to be relooked in a different manner then you're going to talk about shopping centers or businesses off of nickerbach or sherwood way there's a totally big difference between those in the historic downtown area

[1:38:34] and so um got real concerns about that do i support allowing people an opportunity to do more outdoor to increase occupancy absolutely but what i hear from many people is particularly in the downtown area the occupancy issue isn't the issue in most cases um their occupancy maximums still aren't being matched meaning many people still aren't dining out so perhaps that's happening on sherwood way perhaps that's happening on knickerbocker perhaps that's happening on sunset it's not happening in the downtown area so i need a lot more direction from you and specifically on shopping malls which are owned by somebody and i think you're going to have to work with that somebody for example george alexander if you're talking about knickerbocker what is he willing or not willing to do in his parking lot i mean this is too big picture not enough specifics we got to get a lot more detail on all of it with the exception of the signage issue and i think the signage issue is very important and we should move forward and separate that from the rest of this proposal and allow for you to work on the issues as it relates to signage but on the other i can't support what you're putting forward mayor i have tommy hebert single member district one i have a couple of questions for john um john um i know uh you were just using as examples some of those pictures can you talk us through a little bit um perhaps about um the approach you all might take um to maybe uh address some of the mayor's concerns so that maybe we could give you a little clearer direction here yeah again that this was written broadly

[1:40:40] on purpose to to give flexibility because we're we're not sure how any individual business would propose to do this i think the mayor's ride in the downtown parking is a concern and the sidewalks aren't wide enough in most places to allow for some seating area but there may be some areas where a business could find a way to make that work again we we would not approve anything that prevented minimum sidewalk accessibility as required by the state and the ada and so they would have to work out something in terms of the parking areas in the street or in the right of way that's something that could be removed uh staff kind of went back and forth i think we where we came down was well allowing that flexibility uh would be helpful but also recognizing there are some concerns so if that's a concern of the council then of those three things i presented taking out the item of the right-of-way or at least not allowing it in on-street parking areas that's definitely something we could do um regarding the parking lots on private parking lots again we think the flexibility for businesses allowing them to do this it doesn't require them to do anything but it allows them that flexibility to use part of their parking lot as i mentioned we've already been contacted by one restaurant who would like to put up some tents and establish an outdoor seating area i think what we've heard from a couple of restaurants is there are people who perhaps are avoiding going out to eat because they don't want to go into an enclosed space but might be willing to sit in an outdoor seating area and so that's i think it's allowing that flexibility again if if you all have concerns about specific items you would like to see addressed we could write that in our concern with doing that was basically tying down that as soon as we do that then some business

[1:42:41] or restaurant may come in to want to do something that doesn't meet those rules and then we have to bring it back to you all to tweak those rules by keeping it broad we give the flexibility the staff to review it and as i mentioned any one of these proposals would be reviewed by public works engineering police fire planning permits you know all of those departments that review any development it would just avoid the extra step of having to take it to a city council meeting i can tell you you just cannot use parking spots on the streets in downtown san antonio it can't be done too many ambulances too many fire trucks too many police it is a major concern and we cannot be using the streets for tables outdoor seating you can't do a major major issue and as i mentioned that that specific item could be we could we could take that out very easily to remove that particular piece and harry has a comment or question yes just a couple of comments uh i happen to agree with the mayor of downtown is is not the place to try to move some of these things to the sidewalk or to the street we don't have enough parking as it is but i also would like to say that i don't want to put the language in there that's too tight i want to give john and the staff some flexibility so we don't have to bring this back every meeting to talk about it but i would would that would take out the the parking spaces i do not think that that's a that's appropriate uh for any of the restaurants downtown we just do not have enough parking spaces as it is let's do one the first thing i strongly believe that the signage issue is an issue that we could accept and i think businesses need that so i

[1:44:44] think if we separate the signage issue from this and approach it from that perspective we could do that piece of it my also concern is i'm not so sure that was then a couple of weeks that we're not going to be looking at occupancies changing and going back up again as well as some other issues so the timing on this seems like we're a little down the road and by the time we get this approved in a second reading we're going to be at a different stage in occupancies based off of governor abbott's recent comments mayor this teresa james city attorney this is a resolution so it is going to be waiving those requirements right now so it won't have to come back for a second reading and the way they drafted it is it stays in effect through the occupancy limits and through the declaration so even if the occupancy limits change it still retains flexibility for businesses to have outdoor seating during the pandemic with hopes that more people will come out to eat if they have seating outdoors so it's it if the governor happens to go on friday up to 100 occupancy in bars and restaurants then this would still maintain the ability for them to use parking lots for instance um for outdoor seating areas where they don't otherwise have it billy um that was going to be my question mayor if we could um allow the signage uh portion of it and the ability to have outdoor seating excluding sidewalks and in the street because you know when we're like out of the box ideas this in fact may enhance um opportunities for some of our restaurant owners that they can do something and as long as they're presenting it to the planning department and we go through the whole process that john stated of the fire police

[1:46:48] everybody having the opportunity to review this i guess i don't have a problem with leaving those two opportunities there looking at outdoor seating not on sidewalks or in the street and also the signage okay so what we're saying is we're going we're not going to have use sidewalks for outdoor dining nor streets for outdoor dining and we are going to support the signage um issues um and then allow people to expand their outdoor dining as long as it doesn't include streets and as long as it doesn't include sidewalks which are two primary downtown issues and with that you'll have to work with individual owners of properties within shopping centers etc to figure out each individual person's willingness to allow their parking lots to be used for additional outdoor dining and i think it is great to allow people to expand their outdoor dining as long as we stay within the conversation we've just had but i want to clarify what you just said teresa so originally we were talking about as long as these declarations were out there and occupancies were reduced this would only be in play as long as those limitations existed well these are in place as long as the governor has an emergency declaration in place so you know he goes up and down with his occupancy levels and what restrictions there are if for instance he decides you can go to 100 occupancy on restaurants but we're still under a health declaration or emergency declaration in the state then this would still remain in place and of course it's only approved by resolution so if next meeting you change your mind and you want to redo it or get rid of it we just have to do another resolution one reading to remove these loosening of restrictions i think this has to be very specific towards the occupancy

[1:48:50] not the declaration okay because the declaration is the following cdc guidelines wear a mask we don't want this to be in place when there's a mass border still out there this is about occupancy um the other thing that i'd like to point out is we're talking about restaurants but this applies i believe john correct me to commercial establishments as well so people can put displays of commercial goods they're selling outside as well to allow more spacing as john said in stores um is that also prohibited in y'all's thoughts on sidewalks so having racks of clothes on sidewalks will we allow that or no as long as again i think you have the room for ada guidelines and i mean you've got to be very aware of the ada guideline issue we cannot allow those to be infringed upon and billy do what single member district 6 i think we already have that i don't know whether it's according to ordinance or not but we already have displays of clothes racks of clothes on the sidewalk and um i don't know some of them that i've seen is not necessarily ada compliance you couldn't get a wheelchair through there correct tommy tommy hebert single member district one said wouldn't we be if we say no dining on sidewalks wouldn't we be excluding some people that are already using sidewalks today for outdoor dining well there are some people who have given permission and they pay a fee to put tables outside their restaurant it is speed driven and they have a permit to do that yes that that's allowed right now in order for someone to do that they have to come through city council so that that will not change so if a particular if you take that piece out

[1:50:53] of this resolution and a downtown restaurant for example thinks they can make outdoor seating work there's they still have the option to come to city council and get approval of that so that's how some of those downtown businesses that already do that they have already gone through that process through city council so they would not be impacted should we exclude sidewalks that's cool because they have a permit tommy they paid a fee to do that okay we in the past we've been very aggressive about making sure that they have a permit to allow that okay thanks okay john do you have the direction you need yeah i think so i guess the question is are if if your intent is to actually approve this with those changes or if you want us to bring back a revised uh resolution at the next meeting it is is council okay if we say to him the following changes there will be no uh street uh no use of streets for outdoor tables dining etc there would be no unless was a permit in the downtown area additional tables or chairs because of the lack of width of our sidewalks that we would allow [Music] businesses in other areas to continue to work with you in terms of using sidewalks and or parking lots based off of ownership of parking lots and sidewalks and commercial shopping centers and that we would approve the um signs to be put out for pick up and or orders to go billy uh billy dewitt single member district six uh mayor you know that could get so confusing and convoluted i would suggest that we just um let john take what we've discussed here today and then at the next council meeting

[1:52:56] bring back the revised resolution can we do that sure we can is that okay with you john yeah that's fine as i mentioned there is one restaurant that's ready to go with some outdoor seating in their parking lot they would just have to wait another couple of weeks to do that but yeah that's not a concern with me other than that all right so you'll bring it back to us at the next city council meeting all right on that on the next item is seven follow-up and administrative issues of which there are none except if council has any announcements that they would like for consideration for future agenda items billy uh mayor you know given all the issues that uh we're having with sudden link um i would like to have an agenda item you know in the near future to discuss what if anything we can do um about this i am getting so many calls and as i understand the state of texas is responsible for the franchise for cable providers and i know we're sending letters to suddenly but are we making complaints to the state of texas about what's going on can we petition them to you know try to get other providers into san angelo if if we can't absolutely can't do anything then i think we need to be up front i i know we were going to try to get someone in san angelo um i know we can't have town hall meetings but we're going to try to get some one-on-one meetings with high-level representatives for sudden link i hadn't heard anything about that but we continue to get comply i do i don't know about anybody else but i get an awful lot of of complaints and um about suddenly you know just um without any explanation bills going up by 40

[1:54:57] a month people are trying to call in and find out why the increase in their bill and they're on hold for hour and a half and then they get hung up on so lots of complaints and i would just like to see us put this on agenda and understand what if anything we can do at this point about our lack of sudden link service well number one billy just to be clear uh it's they're private businesses and so another company would have to come and say we decided we want to come to san angelo and be a part of the cable business here in san angelo the state of texas will not be working with us to find another cable provider cable provider will have to choose us in terms of additional service but what we are doing is sending to the fcc all the complaints the letters so that they're fully aware of a citizen's negativity towards the service that they have daniel you want to add to that mayor yes we have been sending off to the fcc but also i know billy mentioned state we also have been sending letters to the public utility commission of the state of texas um and we do receive them initially we received a couple of hundred we also did a survey that uh we had thousands of respondents you know they were really upset with the services being received i know that i did visit with the vp and uvp mr horton uh with a sudden link for our area and he is willing to come down and present to the city council and answer any questions of what the citizens may have and the idea initially was to once we reinstated the meeting at the mcneese center where citizens could actually come in and voice their concerns directly to the gentleman uh that we could do it then of course we've been meeting by zoom uh unless we do some type of a uh we change it up a little bit to where he comes in and talks to us by zoom and we may have a list of questions that we we could ask them that could be satisfied maybe satisfy some of the concerns of the citizens that have we may go that

[1:57:00] route as well because i just don't see us really meeting at the mcneese anytime soon so uh i would say that this invite him to a zoo meeting we can develop all the questions that we need and and and ask him all those questions and see what he can tell us i think we need to prepare a list of those questions ahead of time so they have them and then we can do a zoom meeting with them and it could be done as a part of the city council i'm assuming but i think we do need to let the citizens know we're following up on all the letters and complaints that they have and i agree mayor because right now it looks like and what i hear from uh residents is that we aren't doing anything but collecting letters so i think it would be great if we could have mr horton on a zoom meeting okay gary i i i'm gonna follow up on a couple things that's been said uh i agree with billy we have get we're getting an inordinate amount and i'm sure every council member and the mayor you are too probably daniel amount of these people that are really being put on hold for hours at a time try to get a resolution on these things i i think if this vice president really was interested in in helping us instead of just answering questions he would find a way to to figure out how he can make the customer service better for altis uh for sudden link and and you know basically the people are being told by a lot of these uh people when they actually have conversation with them i can't do anything so i mean if to me that means that the company itself is really not interested in helping the customers in san angelo now i don't know about any place else but if they can't do anything then it's really tough for the citizens to feel good about uh the cable provider and i i can feel the

[1:59:04] frustration because i don't go anyplace or that i don't hear somebody ask about sudden link and it's just it's it's too much having come in and answered the questions is one thing but i suspect that that's not going to solve the problem well we can ask that he be prepared to present to us his plan for improvement on the we can come up with five key issues three key issues and say we need you to come and be prepared to talk to us at a zoom meeting on the following things number one quality of service we can come up with those items but i think we need to ask him to be prepared to answer the questions that our citizens have brought to us in terms of all quality consistency pricing service etc we do have a list of the complaints that have been submitted by our citizens as well we can draw from those the main questions that have been asked the biggest concerns that have been addressed and we can prepare to ask all those questions as well directly to mr wharton but i think your idea is pretty good too mayor to make sure that he presents also a plan maybe also a timeline for those improvements as well uh then basically put his feet to the fire make sure that they are addressing those concerns and that we actually do have hopefully a solution here in the near future i agree completely he needs to develop a set of metrics with timelines that we can we can hold his feet to the fire absolutely teresa yeah i just got a message from brian that said we have 86 8 600 um responses on our online survey um so that is a significant number of folks and as daniel said we can certainly conglomerate them in some way to figure out what the primary concerns are but i'll also say that i

[2:01:06] know that um people in other communities in west texas also have similar concerns and there's a few of us who were talking about some solutions that aren't government solutions but that are solutions that individuals can take with regards to suddenly to help them get some redress because as we all have talked about that the state has taken franchise authority away from us so we're kind of limited but there are still individual actions people can take if we're in conversations to figure that out and would we teresa be prepared to share what those individual actions are because i have people calling me you know their office is not open so you can't drop your payment off you mail your payment in they send it back to you saying it's not an acceptable form of payment so then by the time they get that worked out they've got a real huge late fee you know the least they could do is open their office from eight to noon so that people that don't primarily operate with um checks or debit cards could still pay their bills i mean that's a basic you know we i don't know i'm i'm really frustrated with them link so i apologize no i think i'm not ready at this time to like discuss any of those options individuals can take because we haven't finished running down those trails yet but we can certainly do that in the near future customer service but just to get this on record it's also the speeds that people are getting if they're paying for the 200 they're not getting it they're paying for the 400 they're not getting it i was even told by one of the sudden link techs that don't even bother getting one of the the one gig because no matter what you're going to pay you're going to be doing a speed test and getting it at 400. so you know you know the max that you should ever get is the 400 plan and you're you're lucky to even get that so if they come out and do the speed

[2:03:09] test well they're not false advertising lane that's one of them the other is the [Music] dollar amount there's a lot of those issues so um everyone's correct every one of you each of you council members have expressed your frustration from yourself to your citizens we got to deal with it and let's get a zoom call organized but let's get the key questions that we want to ask him for him to be prepared to discuss with us together so that it's a productive meeting okay all right is there anything else you know one of the items i'd like some sort of an update on as well is the census you know we haven't heard anything about what the city of san angelo was doing in terms of the census count um could we just have an update is there a program not a program is there what is there what is happening with the census okay yes tom make sure i'm on here uh i think we need to do some preparation brought this up with daniel we need to talk about seating capacities for this fall and winter what we're going to expect to know there's a lot of different events and functions um are they going and they're going to use school facilities municipal facilities state facilities we need to kind of go down this line and put a plan because a lot of these sell tickets and season tickets and i know a lot of the universities are preparing for a 50 capacity on an indoor event um what are we going to prepare for and like a thing i have talked to several people that said i've got season tickets at different events what are going to be the regulations we move forward i just think we need to start a base discussion with whether that be county city or whomever talking about football games university games you know high school games everything on what's going to be something that we can anticipate for you know q4 of this year and then q1 of

[2:05:13] next year just kind of to get it out i don't even know if it's if anybody else has had these issues but there's a lot of them that have come up that said we need to be looking three four six months out what we're going to be regulated for good point tom okay we've got a lot of homework to do with that may i have a motion for adjournment mayor tommy hebert single member district one move we adjourn and tom thompson is second to back anybody denying adjournment with none seven zero passes we are adjourned see you next tuesday

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=DmRQSYJRd24