San Angelo City Council 9-17-13

[0:00:00] it is now it's still 9:05 and it's time to bring this meeting to order is everybody on the left wing ready to go here this morning sir everybody on the right wing ready to go this morning then let's get this show on the road good morning everyone it is good to see you here this morning and we're we're glad we're glad you're here we will start our meeting today with prayer and we had a preacher lined up to help us he did not show so I have asked Harry Thomas if he would to come up and lead us in the invocation come forward Please Mr Harry good morning buddy I know there are better orators in the in the audience some of which get paid to uh to spread the word but uh if you'll pray with me this morning Lord give us guidance to this particular Council as they go through the issues today and help them get have the wisdom to lead St Angelo uh to a better place than it is today Lord also think about letting some of the water come to S Angelo to put some water in the lake and give us some water in these parched lands Lord also remember those that that are working for our freedoms overseas and here in the United States and give them the guidance to allow them to be successful in in their Endeavors Lord do all these things today in your name Jesus Christ amen amen sometimes I'd rather have a novice that's honest and sincere as Harry to do it than a paid professional thank you Harry our uh we had one scheduled for help us with the pledge they also did not show up so I have asked Miss Candy P

[0:02:04] to come forward and to help us with the Pledge of Allegiance you ready I am ready oh yes sir I to flag of the United States of America and to the repic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all and to Texas honor the Texas flag I Ali to the Texas one St God one and indivisible thank [Applause] job I appreciate y'all very much to help us out impromptu as it is we can always depend on the citizens to help us when we need it I would now like to make a recognition toita recognition and Darlene Luna would you come forward please look like Roger Banks is coming with her I'm just okay good morning Dar thank you let me read this and then we have a proclamation to give or a recognition of Darlene Luna Darlene Luna is a purchasing specialist with the city of s Angelo and is receiving the state of Texas procurement certification the city of s Angelo purchasing division believes that all procurement professionals should have all the tools necessary to perform T tasks that will result in the best value contracts and Acquisitions for the city and obtaining the state of Texas procurement certification demonstrates that our purchasing Personnel have knowledge of the Texas public purchasing requirements state and local procurement laws ethical standards and various methods of procurement procurement process is available to ensure that purchases of material equipment services will result in best value and the highest quality contracts a proactive knowledgeable purchaser maximizes the value of public funds by assisting All City departments

[0:04:07] in the procurment of goods and services that in turn provide quality service to our taxpayer furthermore cert certification ensures that our purchasing Personnel understand that purchasing must be accomplished utilizing the highest ethical standards in their promotion of fair and open bidding competition and for that we would like to give this proclamation to Darlene Luna who is the purchasing specialist city of San Angelo thank you ma'am you next this is your opportunity let's get a picture please darling thank you very much and there is a 1968 graduate of Lake View High School back when there was no dirt only rocks it's been that long ago I am very honored this morning to have a great large amount of children from Lake View High School and to be able to proclaim the beat the sniders day so I'm going to read this Proclamation then I want every one of you kids to come up here and we're going to find a spot somewhere up on the Das and I'm going to get my picture taken with you so let's read this Proclamation the proclamation is whereas beat the Snider Tigers is on the lips of all involved in the lake view homecoming football game and whereas beat the Snider Tigers will be shouted even louder louder as a September 27th homecoming gets closer and whereas beat the Snider Tigers will take the big blue under the football Chief field as Doug coach as head coach Doug kouman leads the Chiefs to an anticipated resounding Victory now therefore I Dwayne Morrison mayor of the city of San Angelo Texas on behalf of the city council do hereby proclaimed Friday SE September 27 213 as Lake View High School homecoming beat the ster Tigers day in the support of all of the hardworking Lake View High

[0:06:09] School students and football team and their strong and dedicated fans come forward please [Applause] yeah I don't even have a clue as to how we're going to get all these kids in here and get a picture but we are going to do it di back up against this and then we're going to have to get real close Mr Mayor hey D some of them might want to lean kneel in the front Don do either you and Marty want to get in this picture ready thank y'all very very much and good luck let's get us a tigle good luck against y'all hang in and I'll give this to Monty here e give at to Mone would you please Eli go get bu sir I was with a at a deal yesterday with Eli here he's our running back that kid there's not one spot on him that is not beat up from that game last week so you guys go get him

[0:08:50] we have now come to the part of our meeting where we take public comment both from the council and from the public let me read this so that we can set this up keep everything legal the council takes public comment on all items in the regular agenda public input on a regular agenda item will be taken at its appropriate discussion public input on an item not on the agenda or consent agenda may be identified and requested for consideration by the council at this time the council May request an item to be placed on a future agenda or for a consent agenda item to be moved to the regular agenda for public comment on public hearing items public input will be received on each item immediately following the council discussion and prior to any action on the item each member of the public should make the remarks from the podium and begin by stating their name remarks by each citizen will be limited to 3 to five minutes unless waved by a council me member for all speaking on that matter no individual will be allowed to speak more than once on anyone subject until every citizen wishing to comment has done so so let's start off with the public is there anyone in the public that has anything that you wish to bring before the city council for consideration or statement I see JB Hall coming this way come forward Mr Hall well good morning everyone this side Mr Holland anyway good morning city council JB come over here to the other side please so you got the microphone and everybody in town knows you but just keep it keep it legal tell us who you are once again I uh last time I met before the city council I had two legs but uh now I only have uh none but uh God have given me strength

[0:10:53] to to continue using my uh whatever I have for for those that are less fortunate than I am anyway my name is JB Hall I am a retired consal of a Precinct one and I started off my career as a Precinct chair in the district that we're talking about today uh look like I will end my position uh my political career as chairman of Precinct one uh Precinct uh 124 which is what we're talking about here this morning but really I came to talk to you about my uh the water bill not for my sake because I can pay pay the bill but uh it came to my concern when I noticed last month my bill was 80 something and this month is $99 so I I thought i' pull it out and start looking at it uh we found out that which is all cleared up we found out I had a water leak on my side of the uh meter so that's okay but when I look at it Mr Mayor and I start wondering about people that are less fortunate than me that's on fixed income and I noticed all these fees on here on my water bill last month for instance just say the water sewage Capital Improvement project was uh $174 46 and then I noticed there's a fee for storm water fee there's a fee for sewer based fee and Sewer usage fee and then there's one for water pumping fee by the time you put all these fees together it's around $50 $60 xray I don't call them fees myself I call them taxes they're tax and I

[0:12:57] imagine has I'm not going to get into all that but I has imagine it has a lot to do with read my lips no new tactic but uh I can see where this the this kind of water bill can cause problem to people who can't afford it and we're speaking of people on fixed income so I was just wondering Mr Mayor uh uh uh what can we what can we say about this what can we do about this what can we do to to inform the public of what we're doing here and how long are these fees going to uh going to still continue on is there a deadline for these fees or whatever the other issue because people are here to talk about sidewalks I would like to add a little bit to that uh I see a lot of my friends on the city council was here when I was uh the uh Housing Office public housing authority with the city of San Angelo uh uh and uh that was way back then so here we are talking about the same things again anyway the capital Improvement thing about our side of town out here there's a group here ready to talk about sidewalks on 19th Street well I'm here to add to that I figure that all the streets in between there that runs through the freeway and runs through the freeway should have sidewalks mainly 29th Street uh 19th Street uh 14th Street 9th Street and and there you are all these are traffic streets that I live on 9th Street and every there's there's a great amount of traffic from on 9th Street getting to the freeway uh from chadman so so I'm looking for and hope we can talk about uh sidewalks on these streets that that goes through the freeway and that's my issue thank you very much once again JB I I appreciate you come forward it's

[0:15:00] good to see you thank you as far as the water bill when things are brought forward they have to be on the agenda before we can speak to them before we can address them and I can tell you these fees every one of them are charges that are to pay debts our sewer debts our water debts our waterline debts all of these things I'm going to ask Daniel Valena to get in touch with you personally to explain these things and I am also going to ask Anthony Wilson wherever you are to put this on our web page on our Channel 17 to make some type of a public announcement out of this so that the people watching this will be able to understand these bills and understand them completely I appr there are there are there are reasons for everything on there everything has a purpose but they're not well defined JB I agree with you so Daniel if you would take care of Mr Hall and Anthony if you would put it on our webside and let's get this out to the public to make a little sense about this we'll do there is there any other public comment from any one else in the audience this morning I know I've got I know Bill cin wants to talk to us you want to come up Bill and bring your entourage with you let me give you an idea of what Bill's here to talk about this morning we are right in the middle of a HB challenge to lose weight and to live healthy so that we can all live better and healthier lives and I made a video couple of weeks ago and the part of my video was that we've got too much s Angelo mayor in fact we have about 40 pounds too much of a s Angelo mayor and I have joined the HB challenge because I'm going to try and give up some of this mayorship this also extends to everyone else in this city and HB has put a contest out that is Statewide and right now we're pretty we're in pretty good we're in pretty good standings on this but each and every citizen of this town has the opportunity to Jo join this challenge which simply says you will exercise you will work out you will eat

[0:17:05] right and you will lose weight and I've got me a new dog now I call him Walker D Plank and Walker D Plank and I are walking and we are trying to get rid of some of this mayor so with that preface I'm going to turn it over to you Bill and September and Miss Ryner and y'all tell us what you need you got five minutes buddy yeah good morning I I know y'all have a a long day and a busy AG agenda so we'll be pretty brief uh we want to do a couple of things we want we want to thank you and everybody else for the leadership y'all have shown toward this and and toward what kind of got us to this point as many of you know uh there was an an initiative called get healthy s Angelo that started back in 2009 that had the full support of city council at that time and the mayor at that time we haven't let that die there's been a continuation of grassroot efforts to do things that make S Angelo healthier uh improve access to recreational facilities get the message out Etc uh over the past 12 months just to give you an example there have been 40 organized events in our city that involve cycling running walking multisport or related items the number of people you see each day to show show up to run or walk on the KOA Loop and I'm sorry to mention that but uh has increased dramatically uh that part of it is a good thing uh the river trail again gets a whole lot of traffic we have children because of efforts uh like uh Shannon Health and Wellness with with things they're teaching uh with the school district you have children learning about nutrition in public schools and then going home and teaching teaching nutrition to their parents local businesses schools and other organizations including the city have implemented employee Wellness programs there so one of the ways that we can celebrate what we've accomplished so far and we've got a long ways to go this is a process it will go over generation but one of the ways that we can celebrate this is to win our place high in the current HB healthy Community challenge at this point I'm going to

[0:19:09] turn it over to September Summers from Shannon Health and Wellness and Stephanie Ryner the wellness coordinator with HB and let these two ladies give you the details thank you well most exciting is that we have 14,960 individuals in St Angelo we have gone on the website and registered so the word is out I think the mayor's video did its job um and people are starting to find out it's not only exercising losing weight it's just having a healthy lifestyle any I really encourage all of you to go to the website it's an easy website ww. community challenge.com and click onto the other communities and see what they're doing to load points to boost their City's uh numbers so that they can be winners either in their City size which are large or we are actually in the mid city size and currently we are third we kind of play back and forth between second and third uh parland and far which are I par land's up around Houston I'm not where sure where Houston area too so we're competing well with those guys um we've got load of healthy snack you had those all count as points um school activities we've got 34 listed uh I've contacted the school district and talked with them Jeff brigh did a a superintendent pledge all the elementary schools are loaded they're starting to put things up on the website to get points um Community organizations ignited this is where we need your help for we need a bunch more Community organizations um that's anything from Shannon hospital to HB to any organization or business you have in town There's plenty of things you can do if you go on you can download a pledge sign it upload it and add points so uh we're halfway through the

[0:21:12] challenge it started September 1st it ends October 31st and if any of you know who know me at all I'm very competitive I would like to win this challenge you want to say something about your organization you know HB as a whole they just want to get communities involved we want people to live healthier Lifestyles we try as hard as we can to have the freshest best produce and some of the best options we want kids to get excited about exercise going out there and playing with your kids that counts you can load that they can upload pictures so I just encourage the community to get involved and let's be one of the healthiest communities in Texas I think we can do it thank you thank you very much for listening thank you very much I appreciate this and I think this is something that we need to look at as a Community because just like there's too much mayor there's too much citizen too so let's get behind this and let's you know we might even win a contest too any other public comment anyone else wish to speak if you want to address us this is your opportunity so come forward at this time no other public comment do I have any public do I have any comment from the council do I have any council members that wish to pull something from consent to agenda Johnny I saw your hand first Mr Mayor now I just wanted to you know when we get phone calls we'd like to uh share it with uh the the rest of the council people but I did get an email uh just yesterday from Gary gats and Gary has been uh eyes and ears for for me on many situations but uh he's talking about here on the email that he sent me about the deplorable situation at sth and pean and I understand that there's a drainage under the access road there at 7th and Bon and it's built up a lot of trash and I think people have lived under there so and I think it's been an ongoing situation wanted to bring it to light to have either code or PD or somebody go out there and see what's going on but uh it sounds uh

[0:23:15] serious enough for him to have emailed me and and uh you know again I share everything in Open Session to uh to the public and let him know that hey we are here being doing our transparency and that's what he talks about so just wanted to throw that out thank you Johnny thank you Mr Valena did you get that sir we got it and we'll definitely get it addressed thank thank you m farmer yes I'd like to pull item number two to the regular agenda if I may to just ask some questions and I would also like clarification on public hearing and comment is item 13 going to be heard after executive session okay we will pull item number two from the consent and move it to the regular agenda agenda as far as item number 13 I see no reason to go into an executive session before we handle this but I I'm looking to the council for a consensus do you all want to go into Executive before we handle 13 or do you want to go right into it uh my idea of this because it's going to be long and possibly contentious I would like microphone winky I'm sorry uh Mr Mayor I don't know if anybody will agree but I because this item may be long and contentious and I have a lot of questions and comments I would like to go ahead and move 13 down at the end or toward the end of the uh of the regular session and and try to knock out all these other things and I think that would expedite and uh facilitate handling the rest of the issues until we get on to something it's uh more controversial and uh possibly contentious Don what do you think about it it it doesn't matter to me we're going to be talking about it one way or another so we're going to be at 6 o00 anyway whether we do it at first Charlotte what do you think about it you want to go to Executive first uh I just don't want to discuss item 13 because we've got it on before executive session because it's on Executive session as a discussion item so I'd rather have our executive session before we talk about

[0:25:19] it in public session okay I personally think we have talked this thing to death over the last six meetings and I'm ready to get through with it and get on with it I'm ready to go ahead and and get it done take care of it uh we also have a problem moving it because Marty has to leave at 12:00 and I certainly want Mr self to be involved in this so I would say when we get to item number 13 on the regular agenda we jump in it with both feet and get this thing done and over with Johnny I'm fine with it just as is Marty I'm good with it as is Rodney I'm good with it as is okay there is a consensus that we handled item number 13 in line as it has been listed and I don't see any reason to go to ex all right I will entertain a motion at this time Mr Mayor I I uh make a I move that we present we accept the consent agenda as is minus number two we're pulling number two I believe that's what Miss farmer said so that's what I was looking for anybody want to second that second I've got a motion and a second that we approve the consent agenda with the exception of number two do we have further comment from the council do we have comment on any of the consent agendas items from the public if not the motion has been made to accept with the exception of number two I will call for the vote all in favor say I I I any oppose say nay that will be a 70 now we will go to item number two on the consent which is now part of the regular agenda this is consideration of awarding RFB W 1313 chlorine bid to DPC Industries Incorporated Sweetwater Texas in the amount of $69,500 for liquid chlorine for use in the water treatment plant and for this Mr Ricky Dixon our utilities director Charlotte did you want to prep sit with you yes uh Mr Dixon all I have is just one question for the $69,500 how much Supply is that and how long uh before we have to resupply and the reason I ask in looking at various

[0:27:22] Council meetings from January 1 we have ordered considerably you know a large amount so I'm just curious as to how much tonnage I believe it's what they call represents the 69,3 this is the estimate um that we do for our annual bid for chlorine and that estimate is for 100 tons okay and it lasts about how long this is a yearly bid so we're anticipating that this will be for a year okay motion to approve as presented second we've got a motion to approve item number two for the purchase of chlorine it has been the motion has been made and seconded any further councel consideration any consideration from the public on this item if not I will call for the Moe for the vote all of those in favor of awarding this bid for cloring say I I any opposed say nay then this item has passed I would also yes Johnny I just wanted to mention that dollar amount it is within budget so we're okay with it I would also like to ask of the council this at this time since Marty will be leaving at 12:00 and there are several items that we really do need a full counsel to considered I would like to move number items number 15 number 16 number 23 number 24 and number 30 to the front these are budget items these are items that require everyone on this Council to to consider to discuss and to approve and if Council will approve if if Council will allow this by consent I would like to move these we will discuss 13 14 15 16 then we will jump 23 24 30 is there any problem with that from the council Rodney you have a problem no not at all Marty no not appreciate Mr silis Sir Mrs farmer no Mr bman No Sir Mr wadlock no okay then by consensus we will start off with item

[0:29:24] number 13 14 15 16 20 3 2430 and then we will come back and pick up 17 wegg go now move to number item 13 on our regular agenda this is an item that has kept me awake for the last two weeks and in particular and it's kept me without sleeping well for the last two to three month so I'm ready to get this deal open and get it over with the consideration number 13 is consideration of authorizing funding and payment for City Pro for the city's proportionate share of cost incurred for services pursuant to the interlocal agreement between the cities of abene Midland and S Angelo it was effective on April the 9th 2011 it was referred to as the west Texas partner water partnership and consider ation of ratifying all actions already taken and payments made pursuant two said interlocal agreement since its effective date and any action in connection there to I ask that this be placed on the agenda I ask that this be placed on the agenda at the meeting September the 3D we have been dealing with this issue Charlotte has been dealing with it she says since January or February I was made aware of this in the middle of June right before I took office right before we took I took this seat and four new council members were seated when Charlotte reported it to me we reported it to the city council as a group we then reported it to the city Administration the city Administration then was told that we wanted an investigation we wanted to know what happened why it happened and want to be sure that it never happened again and I will right now at this time say that I am very proud of Charlotte farmer and I

[0:31:26] applaud her for for discovering this and for bringing it forward and for bringing it to the public to the to the recognition of the public we told the staff at this time that we wanted this investigated and we wanted it it investigated fully the investigation was complete on the n9th on the third day of September this month we had an executive session at this time we had a lawyer and a consultant that had been involved with this from the very beginning and they spent a lot of time going over what had happened the monies that had been spent what the monies were spent for and gave us a timetable ever since April of April of of 2011 bringing us up to date so that our Council would have a full understanding and be able to make a wise decision on this uh it took about two and a half hours to do this executive session it has been my practice since I had been mayor that when we go to into an executive session at noon that we tell the people that are waiting when we will be back and when the meeting will restart because there's always people waiting that want to approach Council and have items on the agenda when we left at right at noon on the 3rd of September I said we will be back and gave a time when we got into the meeting upstairs we realized we were not going to be able to get back at the time I told him so when the time came I came back on to the floor and I said we're not through we need a another 30 minutes I went back to executive and we continued our meeting at the end of that 30 minutes we were not through with our discussion but I said we're going back to the floor because people are waiting for us and we came back and reopened our regular agenda and we took care of the regular business that we had at which time I made an announcement we are not through an executive after the regular meeting we will go back into executive and we will conclude our executive meeting and then we will come back to

[0:33:28] the floor and we will give you the results of our decision when the regular meeting was over we went back into executive six of us went back into executive and six of us waited for about five minutes one member Mrs farmer did not show up Mrs farmer did not go to Executive Mrs farmer left the building and we sent Michael Dane to look for he went down and they said Charlotte farmer has left the building Charlotte farmer did not attend the executive meeting to discuss the matter that she had invest that she had brought up and that we had investigated and brought consultants in to discuss there were six of us there that is a quorum so we went ahead and by a consensus of council members we decided that we were ready to accept the investigation that Daniel had made and a separate auditor had made and that we were willing to bring it to the floor and to the public because Miss forer was still not here we did not want to discuss it on the third so I made the statement from this Podium we will be back on the 17th of September at which time I wanted on the agenda as a regular agenda item that we will discuss and fully disclose and answer any questions and we will answer the questions and explain the investigation that was made and Mrs Ramirez put this on the agenda at that time I think was about four to 5 days later this came out in the first draft and this item was on there we said that we would deal with this today September the 17th it was on the agenda it was planned this was a consensus of the council but Charlotte farmer was not satisfied with waiting until today to handle this and Charlotte farmer wrote a memorandum and she made this public on September the

[0:35:31] 11th this went out to the news media it went out to the standard times it went out to the television stations it went out to the radio stations and that's fine that's fine this will embarrass me it will embarrass this Council it will embarrass Daniel but we can live with embarrassment I asked for this job and I worked hard to get this job and I'm a plenty big boy I can take a little embarrassment and that doesn't bother me Daniel's a big boy as well he gets paid well to take this and Daniel can take the embarrassment it frustrates me that this Council though is faced with the embarrassment four of them which were not even on the council in a in April of 2011 but everyone of these guys asked for this job so they can take embarrassment but let me tell you where it got serious my friends it also went to the Attorney General of the State of Texas this was also sent to the Texas Municipal League which we are a city member in the state of Texas this also went to the to the county attorney in the county of Tom Green this opens not only up something that is embarrassing to us but this puts you as a citizen of Stan Angelo in a very serious situation because this opens every citizen up in this town to litigation from State lawsuits that could tie us up for months and months and years and cost you untold amounts of money to defend ourselves this has gone past embarrassment this has gone into the realm of This concerns me This concerns the majority of our Council this has gone beyond embarrassment and Daniel I'm going to turn this over to you right now because uh I don't want to say anything that I will soon regret So Daniel if you would please take it thank you mayor what I want to do actually is is go back to um the as far as the investigation itself and to give you kind of a a the basis for why why the investigation uh what

[0:37:34] happened and make sure that we have a good understanding um we had a uh the city council had a meeting back on March 22nd of 2011 uh to discuss the Tri Cities partnership now this was a partnership between the city of St Angelo the City of Midland and the City of abene the discussion really the group came together to discuss the possibility of partnering to come up with possible long term water solutions for all three cities and also for all of West Texas uh the initial meetings went well so on March 22nd of 2011 the previous city manager Harold Dominguez and the water utilities director will Wy did a presentation to the city council uh the city council listened to the presentation on March 22nd 2011 they did like what they heard and decided to move forward with uh the this partnership What was decided uh was that the the city would uh partner up with the other two cities and split the expenditures three ways however the city council also stipulated that there should be uh a not to an amount not to exceed $100,000 should be spent on this project initially uh looking at video from that meeting uh it was understood also that any further spending uh which I understood the city council to to know that it was going to go beyond $100,000 however if they W over $100,000 they should go back back to the city council for approval of more money on May the 20th of 2011 a previous city manager actually let me go back the city manager was asked to negotiate uh this contract and uh that's what he did he also implemented the contract this was on May the 20th of 2011 now the contract that was signed and this was signed by three different city managers one for the city of abene one for the City of Midland and one for the city of St Angelo uh the agreement was signed in the agreement interlocal agreement between the three communities uh it was decided in the agreement that the um the of

[0:39:37] course the cities was PL the expenditures three ways the one thing that was missing from the agreement was the $100,000 threshold that the city of San Angela put in place with that said the um the contracts were signed uh one signature was missing and that was the signature of our City attorney typically what we do uh on any contract that comes through the city uh the city attorneys do review the contracts to ensure that what the city council decided uh was is implemented and included in the contract also in this case the contract was not drawn up by our City attorney it was drawn up by the uh ly Gosling the attorneys that represent the three different communities in this partnership so this was never reviewed by our City attorney therefore the $100,000 stipulation really wasn't caught it was just left without the stipulation other than the expenditures would be split three ways the contract continued as such and typically when uh again once the city attorneys do review contracts in this case it didn't had to have a signature because it was not reviewed by our City attorney typically what happens after that uh uh the purch purchasing division uh receives uh the information uh typically from the director of that department who's responsible for the contract uh and there's a limitation on whatever the amount is as far as limitation what have you is also included in the form of a purchase order to not exceed a certain amount in this case this didn't happen because there was an amount stipula in the contract moving forward uh with the contract itself the city staff did Implement uh the contract as stated uh we moved forward uh we received our initial bill on the um on December 15th of 2011 for the amount of $ 43,2 15972 now this is onethird of the amount to the other cities paid the exact same amount amount uh s an I mean ab abene and Midland paid the same amounts what ended up happening though um because we didn't have those amounts uh the amount of $100,000 uh indicated in the contract we did have the $100,000 limit mandated

[0:41:42] by the city council surpassed on May 25th 25th of 2012 at that time we had paid an amount of $15,330.00 invoice of 62,5 2738 and that's an amount that's pending payment uh which brings the amount the total amount owed a paid in owed [Music] 247,000 I guess the amounts being spent and so forth uh Miss farmer did come back and have a a meeting visit with me also initially I believe back in February so we started discussions at that point uh she had requested to review um invoices and so forth because we do have an agreement U with the three cities and this is a a confidential agreement um and the reason why confidential is because we are seeking water sources outside of our community some of these can be very controversial we're trying to make sure that everything that do in providing water for the city long term uh moving out and going out that we do keep it confidential because of the disputes that may erupt in those areas where we're looking for water so uh at that point um Miss farm and I did start started discussing this she started discussing with the staff with Mr danne also as far as the invoices Our concern of course was uh from a confidential standpoint we don't have an issue with a council member coming in and reviewing those those invoices as long as they do it in-house at cityall Hall it can't leave city hall because of his confidential nature and that was expressed I know that in listening to the allegations or reading the allegations in the U memo that was submitted to us um it was alleged that the city was trying to cover up these spendings I will tell you right now that

[0:43:47] uh as far as everything that happened this happened good 17 months before I showed up here as a city manager there's no reason for me to to want to cover up anything whatsoever uh there's nothing to hide whatsoever uh I was concerned that that was alleged uh but again uh from my standpoint and as far as my Integrity I would never do anything that would concern any type of cover up whatsoever but in this matter uh it was alleged that we were trying to cover up these expenditures uh and that wasn't the case again as I mentioned there's no reason for me for me not having been involved from the very beginning to try to cover anything up all I was trying to do was to make sure that as far as investigating this situation that I was thorough and that I was fair with all parties involved to determine exactly who was at fault if anyone was at fault and looking back as far as the uh the beginning of this whole um investigation it just started from the very beginning we do have procedure in place as I mentioned a wall ago to make sure that we catch uh an amount that's about to go over as I mentioned again that we had had the PO system in place with the $100,000 um maximum that would have been caught and red flagged and we wouldn't have surpassed that amount again the intention of the current staff that we have in place at this point I see no I I can't point the finger at anyone and say you were at fault why didn't you catch this this should have been caught from the very beginning and for that uh we do apologize to our citizens because we try try our very best to make sure that every contract that comes through here that we're very thorough in reviewing it and making sure that it's implemented the way it's supposed to be implemented I mind you we look at hundreds thousands of contracts um we try our very best to make sure that we do every single one of those correctly uh this one unfortunately did not go as planned and because of that we did have an expenditure that went above an amount that shouldn't have gone amount above again 185,000 was paid out uh once we discovered the 100,000 limitation we have put a hold on the other 62,000 that I mentioned to you in order for us to bring this to the city

[0:45:48] council to get their approval moving forward as far as how this would be paid I do want to express that as far as the the west Texas water partnership it started off as the Tri Cities the effort itself was supported by the the city council and speaking to a previous elected official who's no longer here he did Express that he felt that of course if there was an issue U he you would have understood that there was a $100,000 limitation he would have very easily brought this back and uh and discussed this with the city council uh he felt that that would have been an issue as far as getting more approval again the spirit and the intent of the city council was to move forward with the west Texas water partnership uh there was was an understanding that yes $100,000 was a limitation but from viewing the video it was understood that it would surpass that amount also uh I don't see any any wrongdoing to be honest with you as far as from anyone from this current staff uh again it's unfortunate we do I do will tell you that the west Texas water partnership is a partnership that I do hope that we can continue with um this group affords us a wonderful opportunity to share expenditures share our costs and our Resources with two other cities uh that normally we would have to take on ourself that would be too cost prohibitive for the city of St Angelo also gives us a bigger voice um with the our state legislatures uh the three different cities combined it's over 300,000 in population with more senators and more Representatives uh in that group that could give us the louder voice there at the state capital uh the resources and and the voice that we'd have uh also for for our lobbying for more money for this area uh for me is really well worth the opportunity of continuing on with this partnership the we do agree that as far as the amounts that will be spent and moving forward we will have to invest some money at this point to make sure that we invest in the long-term water supply I know that um our concern is that we're not just trying to address the water for us at this point but make sure that we are addressing water for our kids and also our grandkids moving forward we know that uh the regional F uh group as far as doing a research and determin how

[0:47:49] much water the city would need had determined that by 2060 it would be short of about 32,000 ACR feet of water so we had to do everything we POS possibly can to address the our future water needs again it's very unfortunate and I'm very uh saddened and upset that this actually happened what we're trying to do is just correct it and move forward and make sure that we continue on addressing our long-term water needs I will express to you our our our apologies to this our citizens for this happening uh we want to make sure that uh we address it and ensure that moving forward that this doesn't happen again again uh the intent wasn't there again I investigated myself we had our internal auditor take a look at this also we came to the same conclusion so again that's just a quick overview on my part uh as far as what was done and um again we thank you and and we apologize to you also I would further like to add that when this was brought forward to the council in April of the 11 I was on the council Johnny syus was on the council and Charlotte farmer was on the council and when this was brought forward to us we knew at that time from the executive that this would be a several there would be several steps to this when you are looking for water in West Texas in a drought you don't want everybody in the world to know what you're doing it was important that we have a confidential ability to go out and seek this water had this been brought back to the council knowing that it was just a start that there would be much many many more dollars involved had this been brought back to the council I would have voted to approve it I don't speak for Mr syus but Mr silvas would you have voted to approve it you know I know I would have because I know the the Dire Straits that we're in I mean we we're we're begging for water all across the state so I mean citizens have always asked us well is that all we're doing right now is the Hickory where no there's other things we're looking at we can't just depend on the Hickory that's taken close to 40 years

[0:49:53] to get here so I had no no problem with moving forward and I will also add that in the memorandum that Mrs farmer sent out she wrote in there in parentheses I am in favor of the West Texas water partnership so I feel that Mrs farmer since she said she was in favor of it in writing would have voted for it I also feel assured that the that the mayor who was the one that we had that had given the con confidential authority to go out and seek water would have voted for this it is my opinion that had this been brought back it probably would have been in a consent agenda because every member of our Council knew that this was a stage deal knew that this would take money and knew the importance of finding water so I just throw that out there I'm sorry it happened I wish it would not have happened I certainly wish this hadn't come up on my watch but we have promised honesty and openness and transparency and I had this put on the agenda for full discussion because we do not shove things under the rug this happened with the previous city manager with the previous mayor and with the previous water director all of those have now changed as has four of the seven members of this Council so I throw that out and I'm going to open it up for discussion I know Miss farmer wants to say something s me ask a question first he wants to ask you a question first I I need to ask a question first for clarification as an attorney I want to talk to Mr Valenzuela because we need to make sure what we're discussing here and what action is proposed to be taken because uh uh do you give the floor to Mr W that's what I I'll speak after if that's fine I want a clarification uh as an attorney because I think item 13 is Con is uh uh ambiguous and I don't mean I don't know what it means and I want a clarification of this so when we're arguing about this and commenting on it we know where uh where we're going or

[0:51:57] where we're trying to go uh I think the public needs to know that I have three three different agendas here two uh amended agendas uh and one final agenda and the uh the the first two agendas just said consideration of matters related to West Texas partnership then on Friday uh at the last minute we get uh uh the final agenda which has considerable language on here not only considering uh the west Texas partnership but authorizing funding and payment of City's proportionate share of cost incurred for services pursu interlocal agreement I don't know whether that talks about the uh funding in the past or whether that uh uh authorizes consideration of continuing funding even though we don't know what it is and even though they're talking about now a new stage two that I'm not familiar with it would be uh $3 million in the range of $3 million they want us to participate in uh and I don't know whether that's ratifying that or not but the language uh uh continues as expanded and it says uh and in consideration of ratifying all actions taken all actions taken I want to know what that means I assume that's actions taken by the staff and and then it also added additional language and made pursuant to the interlocal agreement since its effective date and any actions in connection there to this is very Broad and very general and I don't know what it means uh in uh there's a lot of stuff that uh that has not been brought out in the first two speeches and we'll get to that in a minute uh but the thing I want to point out is uh in Charlotte Farmer's letter to the council and everybody else she points out that there are four uh minutes that she came across of meetings uh that appear to have been modified just within the last uh

[0:54:01] relatively few days having to do with minutes that go back a year or so and they're set out the dates are set out in the letter uh and uh she cannot understand why and I can't understand why there would be current uh modifications of the of the minutes that go back over a year in time just in recent days and one was even shown to be modified on Sunday night if her information is correct and Mr Morrison has requested that we audit the uh uh the Water uh the Water Department many times and I think we need to get to the bottom of whether or not these minutes were audited uh if if this isn't such a big deal why are they asking that all the actions of the staff be ratified uh and this was a continuing problem uh it it wouldn't have it would not have stopped if M farmer hadn't blown the whistle on it and discovered it and it is a serious matter and uh I do feel like there is is there is not a cover up because M farmer uncovered it but there is there what's trying to be done here is they're trying to uh take this continuing problem that we had uh and minimize it and make make sure that it's not a big deal in the eyes of the public and and I just don't think that's the case but I I want to know from Mr Val's way first of all who who who was all participated in the redraft of item 13 on the agenda all persons the part the participants as far as the draft uh and again as far as uh changes being made uh on Fridays this happens very often sir this is this is something that's unusual I just ask you yes sir let me get to that please the as far as the Waring uh I wanted to make sure that the Waring was proper to make sure we address the previous expenditures uh make sure that moving forward that we address the uh the amounts that needed to be paid involved in this were U Miss Miss bowling I asked Michael DNE also because

[0:56:04] I was out on a different meeting at that time uh to go ahead and move forward and let's get the wording down he called me and let me know and I was good with that so again there's nothing there as far as I'm not sure what you're trying to apply but there's nothing there other than we're just trying to make sure that the monies that have been spent uh at this point that we do ratify that and make sure we take care of that expenditure which is in the contract and moving forward to make sure that we do have an amount that we're addressing uh if in fact we do move forward the west Texas water partnership and this is what this was all about as far as the minutes being modified um the insinuation and I I'm sure I know where this is going um I have nothing to do with minutes quite frankly you know that's something that uh at this point I'd like to have M Alicia go ahead and address that as far as those modifications and why the modifications are made there there is no insinuation it just doesn't look good and I I think we're entitled to have a uh an explanation of what's going on here since this is uh as important matter and uh you know we can have those presented to us today the before and the after minutes of these four or we can postpone that to the next uh council meeting but uh I'm sure you know that tampering with a government document is a felony I sure do sir I sure we never do that and and I'll tell you the the District Attorney's office is not as Cavalier about what's going on uh is is some that have just spoken and and let me tell you the reason it's even more egregious is because of furniture gate right before that when when it hit the fan and and $100,000 check was written without uh uh the proper uh safeguards and accounting procedures and there memorandums floating around and everybody agreed that this would never happen again uh and uh lo and behold shortly thereafter uh we're back on the same program with all of these large expenditures and uh uh to make it even worse what the people and the Citizens need to understand is this would have continued on

[0:58:06] indefinitely uh is if Mr farmer had not had the presence of mind to dig into this and find out about it and uh uh as I said uh there's talk of a a new phase two that I wasn't even aware of uh that they're saying it's going to cost $3 million which they want us to pay a million doar of and so uh if this hadn't been called it's obvious to assume uh that logical to the assume that we just continue to pay all those invoices without uh any city council approval and those would have been improper also Mr W since since you're bringing up uh the the allegation that minutes were changed can I can I hear from M Ramirez see what her response is in regards to the minutes I checked the um history of the minutes back to the packets I did not find a a modified date all the dates were within a couple of weeks and if there are any modifications there are administrative in nature only if it's a substantial change we would have to bring it back to council for them to review and uh approve again and we can definitely audit that and make sure that if there's any major changes from back when to now yes sir you know that we can address that and I don't have I mean that as a matter of fact we'll go and do that just to make sure that you you'll see that there was nothing there those are a year ago is that right yes sir and then would you also address Furniture gate yes yes sir I sure would as far as let's let's let let's let Mr Val you have asked questions let's let I was going to continue with my question let's let him answer the questions you have asked him we've let Alicia answer I would like him to answer the allegation about furniture gate and then we'll allow you to speak again sir furnish gate um this actually occurred October of 2012 which unfortunately was my first meeting uh here at City Hall or at the yeah I was introduced this way um uh what happened as far as agreement is a good 17 months part of that you know so you're you're you're making it sound like Furniture gate happened and then this happened you know the agreement actually happened 17 months before Furniture gate and I actually hate the the use of that word but uh as far as

[1:00:09] the the the contract and and what that was uh we did have a department that overspent and uh didn't use the PO system properly this was a totally different situation from an actual contract that was approved by the city council so you're comparing apples to oranges here on an issue that actually happened prior to um uh to the furniture issue uh again uh moving as I explained to you as far as the procedure that to be followed with a contract was not followed which is why this fell through the cracks as far as Furniture the furniture issue that's been addressed uh and at this point uh that's that's an issue at this point that we monitor on on a daily basis these are two totally different issues these have nothing in common and one happened way before the other one this one why not we're discussing at this point happened well before Furniture the furniture issue may I may I ask my question now yes sir well for clarification are you saying uh if uh if a motion is made uh on item 13 it will not be uh authorizing any additional payment past the the $63,000 check that is sitting there on your desk right now mayor we have we have some financial information uh both looking back at what we would be authorizing and looking forward uh that is available when you're ready to hear about it we want to pay an amount at this point the the amount that s there we definitely want to make sure that the 85,000 went above that we we do get approval by the council uh to make sure that that amount is ratified as a matter of fact that uh the amount that's already been paid at this point above the 100,000 that that's ratified because it is something that doesn't need to need to be paid pursuant to the agreement that we have also the amount that came in the other 62,000 also do need to uh we do need to address that also which is why it's worded this way as far as ratifying those amounts uh and then of course discussion moving forward to make sure that we address future funding if we continue with this partnership you're saying that we would

[1:02:12] address uh future expenditures at a later date you're not you're not saying we're giving a blanket authorization for future expenditures by the approval of this motion uh we have uh any can any action and connection there to basically what we're saying at this point is we're addressing the um the the pass payments is what we're doing at this point pass pass for payments okay and that's all it is at this time okay mayor may you will you will have the opportunity to address future payments if you choose and any future participation that we have with West Texas partnership we also cons can consider this is just to take care of money that has already been spent according to the the contract that we signed in April the 11th that we would be share onethird of the cost with abalene and S Angelo that's what this is yes sir but and that's very plain already action already taken and payments made pursuant to the interl agreement which was April and to 11 yes sir but you will also have we we added this language so that you would have the opportunity to direct staff for future activity so that there be Clarity at this point moving forward what future uh commitment Council wanted made then I think we need to divide this into two different sections we will divide it in one section as to honor our contract that we made in April of 11 and then we will have a second action which will consider whether or not we remain part of the West Texas water partnership so we'll do this in two um Miss Miss bowling would you please um get your input on that to make sure we're we're right on target here well you can uh do exactly what you said okay I would like to do it that way so that everyone is perfectly clear on what we're doing we are honoring a contract that we made in April of 11 that we honor this as a onethird of the partnership and then we will make another separate item to determine whether or not we remain in the west

[1:04:15] Texas partnership is everyone is everyone comfortable with that uh I'd like to CL address clarification are you not talking about today uh I'm talking about today if the council wants to to do it today that is up that is dependent upon a majority of this Council right I I do not want to do that today I'll just make it clear but go ahead Charlotte I'm sorry okay are you you ready for the floor you got it please since I've been named and tossed around and thrown out with the wash that the baby took a bath in but uh first of all uh I want to apologize to the citizens of s Angelo uh for this oversight uh for this uh payment that was not authorized by Council there indeed as everybody has agreed to on March 22nd 2011 Council uh after discussion an executive came out and I'm the one who made the motion that uh we move forward with the agreement not to exceed $100,000 and we get the revised contract because what we were provided with was an interlocal agreement that didn't have a date a term date in it nor did it have the dollar amounts and that's what staff was instructed to do and you can read all the minutes and I I went ahead and put it in my uh memorandum so that it was in there and business rocked along uh Mr Mayor I do have to disagree with you on when I advised you of it uh because I did keep the date down as I do everything and it it wasn't in April it was in June and Mr Valenzuela you stated that I mentioned it to you and talked to you about it in February no I did not uh in February January and February I was still getting reports from various peoples that other cities that our involvement with the interlocal agreement was much greater than $100,000 I didn't come to you until June after I had met with numerous occasions in opposition from the staff to view the transactions or anything referring to

[1:06:21] this because I obviously didn't know enough um when when I was in abene and the reason I'm certain of these dates is I spent most of April and May in abene I came back uh on Election Day May 11th before I was even back in town so it was virtually impossible I know I didn't phone you I think my phone records would verify that and I know when I sat down and talked about it so those dates are inaccurate uh after being told that attorney that by the attorney that information has attorney client privilege I couldn't have it uh no you cannot have access to that information or you have to request for information through executive session and I am not prepared to give you that information on numerous occasion I was running out of trust why why could I not see simple transactions and information I'm going to read uh article 2.1 City Council in our handbook and article 2.10 of the city council States in section 2.12 investigations the council May investigate the financial transactions of any office or Department of the city government and the acts and conduct of any official or employee and that includes the city manager uh even though we do not have the council does not have direct contact over the employees we can report our findings to the city manager but in uh conducting such investigation the council person may control the attendance of witnesses the production of books and papers and other evidence for that purpose and May issue subpoenas I was acting in my authority as a council member when I started asking to see these documentations and time after time again I was met with you can't have them attorney client privilage and this came from the city manager it came from Michael DNE and it also came from our City attorney

[1:08:25] uh uh according to a question that I had asked Michael DNE and he said those were the instructions from the city attorney and the other time was instructions from the city manager um I have to ask why why couldn't I see him if it was an oversight why were you trying to stop me from seeing these items it's perfectly reasonable and within my right as to our city Charter and and it just didn't make sense to me um I also disagree with Mr valenzuela's letter and Mr uh the mayor's comment to that this happened on September 3rd that they were going to talk about if you will look at the September 3rd agenda the reason I didn't attend this second executive session it was not on the agenda to discuss the actions with reference from we were there and talked earlier with the attorney and the engineer with reference to the west Texas partnership uh after lengthy discussion and um very heated and raised voices toward me and why didn't I give this up this was after Mr Valenzuela gave us a letter on August 20th August 20th and at that council meeting in his opinion although the limit was surpassed I see this as an oversight and not any will for NE negligence on the part of the administration but no discussion no Alternatives of how we were going to deal with it how we were going to apologize to the public and what's most aggravating to me where the monies were charged to to pay this debt the monies were charged to the water fund and it's somebody waved their hands back there so we know you're live and the phone the phones the lights will come back on but to charge it to the

[1:10:29] water fund we have a half cent sales tax that states that money can be used for water exploration and everybody up here previous Council staff they all know that they had several opportunities until I gave a deadline that if I didn't hear something that it would be handled publicly that I would take it to the da that is what the tml handbook instructs you to do when you have lost confidence or trust in your city manager or your mayor you take it to the DA I followed instructions I'm sorry that it's a public deal it's normal for the person that has blown the whistle it's very normal to try to discredit them and make them the wrong person I didn't sign these checks I didn't not do the proper budgeting that it said in the first agreement that uh needed to be done I wasn't the one who wasn't seeing to it that we got those budgets and that accountability and we had everything in there that we were supposed to have all I did was blow the whistle that staff and city manager are running the city without Council approval uh I've gone to Great Links uh at first this was called the interlocal agreement and from January until March April May I was referred to by numerous people from out of town say the west Texas water partnership and I finally asked in May when I get back to town I asked what is the west Texas water partnership oh oh that's the interlocal agreement the name had even changed and there's two more documents agreements that talk about the phase one and phase to and yes you're absolutely right Mr Mayor I would have voted to gone over that first phase our share to

[1:12:32] find water I truly would as long as we had the money and knew where to charge it out to phase two I didn't find out until September 3rd that that portion is going to cost $2.6 to3 million it is prudent on our part as Council to know where the money's going to come from to pay for this it is prudent for this Council to know what we got in the first phase and if you read the Billings and stuff that are in there now it was for all of the research to look at our water rights from Ivy and all the different places around that could get water to us I have a file down here this thick that has been all of the research that has been done since 1951 to find water for this city that we have paid for studies time and time again I'm through paying for things that we don't get any action from that we don't get any water from we simply paid a repeat of all the information that we have had since long before I came on Council but at least I took the opportunity to read all of this research that councils have done before me and yes I I wanted it public and yes I wanted the city man to give us some sort of idea as to how we were going to prevent this from happening again it's happened twice uh the date order in which things happen is immaterial because both items shouldn't have happened and there should have been procedures in place to begin with that it doesn't happen on all of the things that we have done whether it's the softball complex the tennis courts the swimming pool you name it every project that amount that cap is put into the computer and you know when you're going to get there this project wasn't handled the same way there can be lots of reasons but I want those reasons explained to the

[1:14:35] people and I feel only right to protect us from wrongful uh it wasn't a dismissal but for people in the past who committed the same sort of violation whether it's apple or an orange it's still spending money without approval uh I don't want them coming back on it because we chose to look at twice the amount but nobody got punished I didn't ask the city manager or the mayor to fire anybody but I wanted to see that this issue was dealt with properly and according to the laws uh call me whatever you want to call me nerd or whatever but I do read the stuff that is printed in our handbooks our manuals the tml all of the guidelines that are out there for us to read and to know what which ones we're violating I just have to ask if any of the staff or anybody else is reading it they therefore a reason to keep these things from happening again no wonder nobody trusts the government come forward and say hey I messed up you know I can forgive that a whole lot easier than I can all of these stalls and months that were going by and nothing was being done the only one that was doing any work on it was me and uh I've made it very clear from the very beginning this sitting Council minus three people weren't involved didn't know anything and I hate that for them at this time but it is something that did happen and it needs to be cleaned up I don't think that me The Whistleblower should be ridiculed punished or talked down to as I have been and because I didn't feel that that discussion was properly listed on the agenda for executive session and it wasn't anybody who attended and discussed this at that meeting you need to look at the handbook as to what section of State Statute that you're

[1:16:38] violating and the penalties $500 is probably nothing to y'all but a year in jail is something to me that's not just the find that's if they wanted to so prosecute and go forward with it and then I have to ask what makes us think this is all if this keeps happening what else is happening I've had faith and trust in staff members since I've been on Council and I am extremely disheartened that this has happened if you're going to tell mistruths if you're going to change minutes and I can tell you I'm probably the only council member and M Ramirez knows this in my laptop I've got a copy of the agenda and the contents from every meeting since I've been in office so for me to click back in my computer that nobody at the city messes with for me to click back to look for some of this and I come up alterations or modifications in minutes a year and a half a year and 10 months two years later and I made it very clear in my notation there possibly is a good explanation for it I couldn't find one and they're very well might be so I question Miss Ramirez she is allowed by law to make administrative Corrections and I did ask her would you go back and correct something administrative a year and a half two years later and she said well no not normally and the time of day that shows on my computer that these documents were messed with midnight one or two am. on a Sunday morning so if we don't have a virus or we don't have somebody out there hacking into our system somebody's doing it but my computer goes home with me every night and doesn't go back to the city so that

[1:18:42] the records could be changed in there I'm just asking for explanations it's it's an embarrassment I don't appreciate people in high Authority kind of twist in and turning the facts around to make it okay those dates are very very critical in there I couldn't have talked to Mr Valen when he said that I did because I was an abling in a hospital it just didn't happen that way Mr Mayor and that's the reason I called you when I did to tell you what I found because that is the procedure that we're supposed to do and then you didn't act on it you didn't even include me in anything that you may have found out about it uh totally closed off which surprised me and I trusted in giving the information to you that it would come to light immediately you told me on June the 14th and we discussed this at a subsequent council meeting it was brought to the attention of the of the city manager we spoke about it in an executive and we gave the city manager the authority to investigate this you told me on June the 14th is when you told me yes Sir Daniel do you want to answer any of these Mr M can I ask a question of Miss farmer yes you may because I too have every council meeting minutes for the past five and a half years okay but my question to you Miss farmer is if you did see alterations or deletions or whatever modifications did you find what it was that was changed did you I have a you got the old got I don't I have the old and what had been modified prior to and and I I can explain that I took my computer down to um Steve's not in here uh it the IT department because I was having some problems and what Steve did is he loaded my computer repped everything that had

[1:20:47] transpired from that time so that changed any document in there and that's where I got the dates modified okay so you you don't have the old minutes so to compare with the what you're alleged has been modified MRIs you do have the old minutes and you do have the modified minutes and it's just a matter of looking at both of them and and determining what the modification was I do not have the modified minutes I just have my original file well she has the modified and you have the original so we ought to be able to put both of them together that's not what I said I said at the bottom I'll stop and if you can take a look at it you can go to pick a date and when the bottom when it comes up it shows the date of the original minutes and then it slides over here in the bottom and it says date and time modified and that's where you get the newer dates who has and the time of date is there any way that we have the original and the modified that we can compare I can pull my folder which is the original and it'll have the the day that it was created as well as the any modification date please do that and bring that to us so that we have this I want to what the modifications are as well that's what I want to see I want to see the modifications if it was grammatical or if it was uh if it was punctuation then I want to know that it was punctuation or grammatical if it was a sentence or something changed I want to know that as well so pull the old pull the modified and let's compare them please ma'am Mr Mayor and my my laptop since we're one of the three most senior I it hadn't been to it so what I've got is the original also so just keep that in mind this ought to be real easy to figure out sure should and if there's been if there's been a modification we'll know what the modification is Daniel you want to continue sir sure um I do want to mention um Miss farmer did say that uh she didn't she didn't come to me in February or talk to me about this project or anything like that uh in her Memo that she sent out she did mention that she approached me on February 7th 2013 uh for uh project progress um and that's what I was referring to as far as

[1:22:49] all the times Miss farmer came in my office I have multiple meetings every day at times uh the ones I do have recorded that are scheduled are the ones that I know for sure these are the dates that we had uh at times when Miss farmer comes in or anyone for that matter I don't I immediately document the day that individual came in and talk to me I go by your notes also miss farmer you mentioned that you asked for Progress uh uh that report on the project on February 7th as far as I'm sorry June 20th no ma'am on on February 7th okay it's in your notes that's what you wrote down um the as far as the not being handed or giving you the information that you're requesting as far as invoices and so forth the only concern that we had expressed and I know you gone to to Mr danne also is just because the confidential nature of the agreement that we had with the other two cities is to just to review the information there at City Hall not to take it home with you I didn't ask to take it okay then you had access to it at any time then at that point we had the fil there you could have reviewed it at any time it wasn't about if it wasn't about taking it home why not it there then we make I asked Mr danne to put me in a corner somewhere in a well-lit office one day when he was interviewing Miss Terrell and that that was on July 3rd I believe it was um and I was told I couldn't have the files I told him then I wasn't interested in taking them out of the building that is not how I recall the conversation you wanted copies or you wanted to be able to take the documents with you and uh actually uh we actually shared those documents for somebody to another council member to look at before that July date another council member had the same request and they had the opportunity to review the documents but they weren't insisting on taking the documents they simply wanted to look at them in City Hall and they had that opportunity Mr DNE that is categorically not true I never asked to take the document that no that is true I I came

[1:24:54] in on June the 27th my orientation meeting I asked for the same documents you're talking about every one of them and within four days four days I came into that orientation meeting the very first meeting I sat and I sat with two other council members and every document was presented to me I was asked not to take any documents out of there because it was confidential and that did happen and that was before I'm not saying your deal with him didn't happen I'm saying I it's before you are claiming that you didn't get to look at them that was before you claimed that that's right I didn't get to see him until August I I don't believe you well Mr Fleming it was in the audit committee meeting and there were numerous outside auditing firm people there that it was asked in front of and Mr danne admitted that I didn't have them and he went up at that time when they asked him why he went and got the meeting the minutes the package the file and that's the first time that I ever got to look at them should I respond yes sir please when you brought it up in the audit committee meeting I told you that the documents had been available for in excess of a month and that they were immediately available and sitting on my desk as we spoke and as your written statement indicates after that audit committee we went through the documents together that's right so how could I say that they were not available and then 30 minutes later we're going through 3rd is when you told me that they weren't available August 9th I believe it was if I can look at it is the day of the audit committee meeting July 3rd that same file was sitting on my desk it's the same file that another council member just said that he he looked at on June 27th Dwayne yes sir can I say few things okay a couple things I want to talk about one on the executive meetings this last

[1:26:57] meeting before we left that first executive meeting Dwayne asked you and winky specifically if we needed to come back to the second meeting and discuss the rest of the items that were talked about and you said I said for what no ma'am you said yes you said yes and there there are other members here that everybody was here both of y'all said that we were we were not through let me me talk we were not through discussing what was going on and what was going to happen then and I want to since you're so honest and everybody's everything's out in the open someone saw you leaving before you went to that SEC second executive meeting and you said I don't want to go back to that second executive meeting because I don't want to be yelled at that's what you said to this person exactly you did and you were part so you're trying to turn this all around to where this is I'm not going to go to the meeting because they're doing so something illegal we weren't doing anything illegal in that meeting we already had that meeting in the first meeting and we were coming back for the second meeting to finish it up we did nothing illegal in those meetings nothing at all and if you would have been at that meeting which was called for your benefit we would have you would have known what we had discussed and what we were going to discussed at this meeting I don't want you coming off as as the Savior on all this thing we all knew and the the most important thing that we need to get through to everybody on this to Midland and to abing is the water partnership we we are in a partnership with those two cities and water is the most important thing on this and we're talking about these things like we want to get out of this partnership we don't want out of that partnership and I don't think you had the majority of the vote up here to get out of that partnership and stop that partnership you yourself have said you wanted to keep it going we need to just keep moving forward on this I agree they did mess up on making the payments the payments should not have been made he explained that to us in the second executive meeting that you did not attend because you didn't want to be yelled at and we went on the next thing when you went to the Press reading

[1:29:01] out of your book there this is a body this is a body and you went to the press and you did not send me a letter you did not tell me what you what you found I don't believe you told Marty I I know S I never got a letter from you that I can't I can't share more than two people out letter yes you can you well you shared it with a 100,000 people you sent that letter to every press person out here I should have gotten that letter if we're acting ethically if we're acting ethically then you should have explained to me what you were going to do out there it embarrassed the heck out of me I had no idea what you were doing you went on this this other press thing you did two interviews out there without telling us what you were going to do I think that that was an ethical violation on your part and I think you let some information out that you shouldn't have let go and you can be brought up on some charges that's my opinion at least I'm not having meetings with just four people with just four people I have no idea what you're talking about there Mr Mayor as far I'm still speaking as far as the next thing with in that first executive meeting that you were present for and winky said a while ago he knew nothing about but this is that's not true they did explain to us about the possibility of the 3 million and it's not a possibility it's going to happen it's going to be about $3 million and in order for us to get water it's going to cost us a lot of money and we really need to be work focused on getting the water we have to spend these studies we have to do these tests and we have to get water San Angelo is going to die people do not even understand how bad our water situation is and they need to understand that we need to not be fighting over $280 something, we need to be fighting for $3 million to get on with this study and get moving on down the road that's what we need to be doing Mr Mayor when he's through you through Rodney is anybody else we we take this one at a time everyone gets to talk then we come back around I've not heard anything from Mr vman Mr self or Mr

[1:31:03] silus do y' all have anything to say I'm going go to the bathroom I I just want to ask let's see you have spoken Mr self are you Mr V do you have anything okay we can start over again Mr we'll start over with you in well I don't I don't know if Rodney's three go ahead I'm sure I'm probably going to say something after you're done okay uh I disagree with some of the things you said Rodney I don't think there's any need to get into a personality conflict right here but I you you told you said that I didn't tell you the truth when I didn't know anything about this phase two I found out about phase two the best of my recollection at the last city council meeting in executive session yeah that's what I said that's what I that's what I was saying you said you said you said you didn't know anything about it earlier I think we need tell recently is what I meant I think we need to move on and I will entertain a motion one way or the other that we pay the contract that we owe the contract that we signed the contract that we authorized Harold Dominguez to sign and the contract that we have with abalene and Midland I will entertain a motion at this time to pay this according to the contract that we signed is anyone willing to make it I I'll make it I'll I'll move that we move forward with this item number 13 the way it is but having said that I and this is where I'll give Charlie credit because she and I and I remember that we had been asking and asking on the progress of this of this contract and which is true we and part of it I I take blame for it I take because we should have been a little bit more adamant about it but moving forward I agree we need we need transparency we need to hear from you guys as to what step where where we at on this contract so having said that I will uh move move to move forward with it but again with stipulation that hey whatever dollar amount is is spent from now on from today on we need to know you know I also will take my portion of the

[1:33:06] blame here because I also was on the council in April when we approved this April of 11th I also voted for this and I also did not notice the $100,000 threshold I'm at blame as well on this I take it I apologize I forgot it our manager forgot it our water director forgot it our mayor forgot it it was forgotten it fell through the cracks it was not a cover up it was a very stupid mistake of which I accept my third of the responsibility Johnny I would ask you in your motion if you would make the motion in these words just like it is in item 13 consideration of authorizing funding and payment for City proportionate share of cost incurred for services pursuant to the interlocal agreement between the cities of abalene Midland and S Angelo of effective April 9211 West Texas partnership and consideration of ratifying all actions already taken and payments made pursuant to said interlocal agreement since it's effective date and any con action in connection thet will you make that in the form of a motion yes I will but I also want to add that we get a quarterly update of all this and that is good you will I be added to that motion may I ask will any one second second that are you going designate which fund where the money comes from to pay for to reim urse the water fund Michael Mayor in the interest of full disclosure what staff would propose is Phase One amounts of approximately $262,500 that exceeds the amount that's been discussed so far there are two months worth of invoices that we're anticipating receiving soon associated with phase one for phase two uh Mr Dixon has worked up an estimate uh to participate in phase two which is estimated to span 12 to 15 months uh and includes uh some specifics that we'll get into when we're allowed to discuss confidential matters uh he's that his estimate for that amount over that time period would be approximately

[1:35:09] 1 million1 16,781 and at this point uh we our portion our portion I'm sorry very good point these are our portions and at this point we think it'd be appropriate to direct staff to seek reimbursement from kosad DC from those funds uh we do propose that the city remain uh in that Loop the city is the party to the agreement the city should remit the check that also keeps those documents in the city's files where they can remain confidential in accordance with uh uh our attorney's opinion and the provisions in the contract and we'll seek reimbursement from kosa DC uh for those Monies and we'll have to work out the details associated with that uh and then uh Mr silvus Mr uh Valenzuela was also talking about some sort of quarterly reporting mechanism both from a financial standpoint and from a a project progress standpoint so U may I ask a full approval of everything that's possible in 13 would include the 262 for phase one which is somewhat the backward looking looking back ratifying and approving and it sets the funding level for phase two at that mil1 16,000 and it directs staff to reimburse get seek reimbursements from Costa DC and to develop a quarterly reporting system for Council I would ask Johnny if you would also modifi modify your motion to say that this includes phase one only and after we deal with phase one we will come back and deal with phase two so that everything is kept completely totally separate will you modify that yeah Mr Ramirez of course you heard that I will also include in that phase one only in the amount of $262,500 add that to my motion with quarterly reports with and I think think we the motion has been made it has been seconded I just want to clarify the

[1:37:11] motion please you may um are we clear as to what we're getting for this investment I mean as it was so far there's no water I mean we're not getting any water is it clear where we get water from here is it going to be the Cedar Ridge that's above abene I mean mmer I wish that you would quit divulging confidential information this is confidential information it is it has been talk spoken up about only in executive we have a confidential arrangement with abene and Midland that we will speak of these things only in confidential settings and when you start bringing about all of these different areas that we have looked at for water you are destroying the confidentiality no sir it's been in the newspapers it's not confidential it's already out there it is confidential for us as a board because we have an agreement with abalene and Midland that we will hold these things confidential until we as a board decide with a majority of this board to allow this to be sent to the public that is our agreement that is your agreement and it is not public knowledge it is confidential and it must be kept confidential and I would ask you to stop divulging confidential information that this board has not with a majority approved Mr Mayor yes sir I'd like to make I'd like to move uh uh that uh Mr sy's uh motion revert back pretty much to what you you made it initially Mr win Mr W would you turn the microphone on please it's on okay uh move to move to modify Mr uh sy's motion to back more in the nature of what yours was which is uh deleting the part about ratifying all actions already taken Mr sis do you wish to modify or do you wish to keep it as you made it I will keep it as is okay the motion has been made it has been seconded and it will not be modified it is now time for public comment I'm going to ask you to

[1:39:13] hold this five minutes because it's 10:44 and I'm getting I'm getting to need a break so if you have any public comment let's come forward let's get this over with Mr May you mind using the the clock it's we'll we'll they'll do it they'll they'll they will honor our may I be excused for just a moment you may be excused if you would like ma'am my name is Jim Turner and this is a very important issue for a number of reasons one is the trust that we have in the people that work in City Hall and the other of course is in dealing with the water itself I'm still not very satisfied with the response I'm getting on how things work in City Hall I don't think we've got a problem with just a few bad apples in City Hall this isn't that type of situation what we have here are two areas that need to be really looked at and addressed and so far don't seem to have even made it onto the radar screen as fully as they should one we seem to have a series of systemic problems that don't have cross check checks checks and balances you have a system where things are supposed to go but you don't have an additional outside way of looking at things to make sure that that happen that needs to change at the same time we have a cultural problem within City Hall what it seems to be acceptable to have mistakes like this these are the most glaring the biggest but it is a culture of uh not doing everything that should be done and then saying it's okay there's not really much in the way of consequences that the public can see and we are treating Council and the public in a way that's not going to build

[1:41:16] trust there's a culture there on how we deal with these issues that we'll handle it we can take of it and then not bringing full disclosure to a lot of this stuff like on the furniture issue and a few others there's some questions I've asked I still don't have answers on that should have be able to have answers there's a culture that needs to get changed within City Hall on how these get dealt with that's a very tough thing to do and it's not something I can explain in a f minute talk up here but what I'm seeing is going to be creating more of the more of the same issue culture is kind of like a bad apple Barrel it creates bad apples and we've got a culture right now that is taking some really good people on having them do some really stupid illogical unproductive things and because of that we have the problems we're seeing today second thing on water no matter what we look at one of the things that needs to be clear and one of the things that we be discussed before is we need to be very worry of going with any more surface water sources surface water tends to have a very high loss lots of evaporation and most of the proposed surface water projects I've heard about are more or less taking and robbing one group of people Downstream for the benefit of the people Upstream we have to be careful that we don't get into a situation like that no matter what water source we're looking at and where whether it's north of here south of here east of here or west of here surface water is a very limited scarce resource and once we start playing in that game we are going to be creating a water War we don't need to do that thank you any other public comment I I would like to add one thing Mr Mayor come come forward JB and I'm sorry

[1:43:20] gu um I'm Sor of glad I came to the council this morning about the water cuz I knew he was going to be talking about water but you was talking about you been embarrassed about the situation and I know that that that we need to do all we can do to try to bring water because water is a worldwide issue now it's not just a St Angelo it's there a white is everywhere but my point is you said you the council was embarrassed I'm embarrassed too and I'm quite sure a lot of other people in sa L embarrassed when I haven't watered my grass for three years now and when I can't drink the water in my house and I have to go buy bottle of water that's embarrassing that's what's embarrassing to me so so I'm asking to take these things under consideration cuz someday you're going to be old as me on on on on a fixed income it might be wider than mine but but I'm trying to say is after a while we going to all be in the same boat about this water and we need to do something about have decent water that we can drink that we can smell that I can water my grass with again I thank you for the council meeting I'm sorry I can't talk about the issue that you're talking about because I don't have enough information I've been involved but carry on but always keep us in mind too we get embarrassed too thank you thank you JB any other public comment come forward please sir and state your name and you got five minutes good morning Council my name is Steve Salman I spoke to you about probably a month ago when we were talking about water uh and I support the idea and have for a number of years uh the idea of a partnership between cities of West Texas because starting in 95 I realized that other cities were way ahead of us in the search for water

[1:45:23] and it was going to be our Lifeline without water the city can't grow ASU can't grow we're going to spend the hell of a lot of money pardon my French on the most beautiful park in the world uh and not have water for people to come look at it uh I do have concerns that we're spending money uh for a probable surface water project that may be 20 or 30 years down the road if it ever happens plus the fact that we'll spend up the money for a 100 mile pipeline I think we need to be looking in the partnership for nearer term nearer future water supplies and I encourage you and I encourage City staff to do that I was on the water Advisory Board I got off the water Advisory Board because I felt like it wasn't doing anything we got what city staff want wanted us to have we didn't get anything else you have one engineering firm to build the water treatment plant that we're currently looking at that's because the water Advisory Board got one engineering firm recommended out of four or five we didn't make the recommendation the city staff made it before it got to us so encourage to look for nearer term closer Water Supplies than a reservoir that's 20 or 30 years out to out in the future thank you thank you Mr Salon come forward Billy state your name please ma'am my name is Billy dwit and I just want to say first of all that I appreciate all the work that all of y'all do and I know this is not an easy task I'm going to approach this from a little bit different point because we know s Angelo is a water deprived

[1:47:26] community and we know that we're going to have to invest money to find us some water resources I lived and worked away from St Angelo for 10 years and I wanted to come back here so I'm here because I want to be and I want water so I want to be able to water my lawn but but the thing that concerns me I guess is that almost since the first of the year I've been reading in the paper about in the city um Council agenda calling for the discipline or termination or whatever of our city manager I used to be in recruiting so I know we invested a lot of money in recruiting him to St Angelo and it I just get the impression that for whatever reason we don't want to work with him or you don't as a counsel and I think y'all need to reconsider that because we invested a lot to bring him here and when I hear us I at a previous council meeting even considering to pay Christian village $440,000 to buy property that the city didn't damage versus spending $262,000 in researching for some water I said what is the problem with this group we need water we don't need to be looking at investing money and buying land where the city didn't do anything to you know to damage that land so I and you know I just think this has been good discussion but I would have loved for y'all to have had this discussion outside of of the citizens of St Angelo I think you Mr Fleming made some good points and that's exactly the way a team has to work we have to be able to confront each other and say what needs to be said but I would rather y'all have done this outside of our hearing and worked out everything the way you worked it out here before us today I mean I wouldn't have considered that's being swept under the rug you know if Miss farmer felt like she had to go public I wish Miss farmer you had made them aware

[1:49:29] that I'm about to call the TV station and I'm going to go public because I mean I just don't think I don't think that that was necessary that's personal opinion and this is my personal comment so I just you know I hope y'all can work together we you know we voted in a group of people that we felt like could do a good job in running our city I couldn't vote for every one of you but the ones that I could you know I did so y'all get together work together as a team for the best thing for S Angelo and infighting is not the best thing for S Angelo work with your city manager because I know y'all probably spent $300,000 or more in a search for him than relocating him and his family and I'm sure he's here because he wants to be he didn't have to accept this job so let's stop putting in the paper that we want to discipline him a ter him or something try to work with him and then if he violates you know whatever his job description is then talk about that but get on with the business of managing the business of the city of St Angelo and finding us some water thank you ma'am any other public comment B Billy one thing I want to say Mr Mayor yes sir one thing I want to say thank you for that but I can tell you that the majority of the members up here have full faith in Daniel I I feel that's pretty I I think that the majority of us have full faith in him and that's why I'm so upset about this thing I truly don't think that this whole deal was a cover up I think this was a screw up they messed up and it was accounting error and it was a big accounting error that hopefully will never ever happen again but I want to move on on this deal and just let's get it done move on let's get some water do I have any other further comment from the public come forward Mr corse state your name and you have the floor sir name is Gary corse um I've been back

[1:51:34] there thinking real quick and we move forward and what's to keep this from happening again keeps coming up in my mind uh big mistake U I don't know if a provision in the employment contract of the city manager the heads of Staff of the different departments if maybe a some kind of uh clawback provision ought to be put into the powers to be at at the city level not Council y'all don't get paid very much uh stating if there's a misfeasance or a malfeasance that the city uh would have the right to go back to the previous folks and if it can be proven that we can go after their retirement or their funds and that that kind of deal in a contract would uh maybe hold their feet to the fire a little closer and if we have a transition from city manager to city manager like we have maybe the previous city manager would use a little more due diligence in watching that the te's are crossed and the eyes are dotted and that something like this wouldn't fall between the cracks now maybe it's already in the employment contracts I don't know what goes on if there's a Mr Valenzuela has to sign if there's a contract of uh that he has agrees to to become city manager of the city but moving forward it seems to me that something in that uh form would uh make uh make a look a little closer before we just say pack up and leave St Angelo make sure that everything's passing on to the new city manager in a thoughtful and correct manner thank you thank you Gary good

[1:53:37] comment and I will add that it has been established as rule already that the city manager will sign no contract period until it has been through legal staff had it gone through our legal department this would never have happened but it did not her signature was not on that contract we will never the city manager will never sign another contract without it going to Legal first any other public comment if not I want to make this clear that this is listed as number 13 which is a single agenda item we are dividing this item into two categories the first category that we are working on is that we approve the expenditures for phase number one we will come back then with a separate motion that will take us into phase number two this first motion is for phase number one to take care of the contract that we have already signed and are obligated to so I wanted to make that very clear and you have that clear in your motion correct have I done everything correctly ma'am yes so we're ratifying um and it's the second part of item number 13 so it might be helpful if you read that okay or reiterate that if you wish so what you're talking about pardon me read number 13 again no the motion that you're making if you wish you could restate it's one item what you've said mayor and you're saying that you're splitting that item into two separate motions so you've made that clear yes ma'am proceed Johnny do you like will you put that in your motion sir I will gladly put that in my motion okay we're dealing with one are we through with the comments then I'm going to call for the votee is that okay all of those in favor to go ahead and pay our contract that we are obligated to this is part one phase one only as the motion has been made please say I I I I in fact raise your hands if you're for

[1:55:38] it all of those opposed say nay okay we have six eyes we have one nay and I am calling for a break and it is 1101 part mayor if we might there's another part of this item that requires a motion which would um be for future uh funding for cities continued participation in the agreement that is okay does anyone wish to make a motion and this will deal with phase two that we continue to to remain a partner with abene and Midland in the west Texas partnership in the search for confidential water sources is will anyone make that motion I'll make that motion as long as we put in the Provisions that will it'll come to council before we make any of the payments on on that right we've already talked about that you want open section action on yeah let let's do that where it's every it's out in front of everybody on those checks that'll be better we're not hiding anything let's keep it open I agree with that do you just want a report or do you want approval from Council before the payments are made I think in order I think M Miss farmer would would feel a lot better if we just approve it or we vote we take action on each one we'll do it we realize that this is is going to be approximately 1,167 183 at least at least but each and every payment will be brought to the council for discussion and for approval before payments are made now mayor we we have approval on phase one would you like we're getting ready to make those payments would you like those payments also to come these one's been taken care of we know what the payments are we know we know what that's about we can we can deal with those in the past but in the future on phase two I think Rodney's MO is a very good one and I will I will accept that I just want to show our partners that we're truly in with them we're moving forward on this deal our most important thing that we as a council should be working on above everything is our water situation we have to get this taken care of we've got a motion we have second I'll second that motion we have a motion we have a second

[1:57:40] I ask for few for further Council discussion on this I ask for any discussion from the here here here here Mr B one of the things that that I would like to to look at also is exactly what we were getting for this million dollars um you know I being new am not familiar with the engineering per person the legal person uh what phase two involves where we're going anything about it as far as depth I I have a problem representing the people and the taxpayers when I don't know what the heck's going on um so I you know I want to stay with tri cities there's no doubt about it we need to do that but I want to see what we're getting for a million dollars I would suggest Mr vman that this be handled in executive have no problem with that because there is the importance of confidentiality so I would I believe you are right and you can make that in your motion if you would like Mr Fleming how about we go to executive and we come back and bring we'll re bring this up after executive after executive today so that we can clarify the motion yes well I think that um I know that what you're asking for is a lot of in-depth information that really our our engineer could come in and and present to you which is what we want to do on a quarterly basis is bring the engineering and sit down with council members and really give a a breakdown of exactly how the monies are being spent going forward also um and I know that the engineer um actually matter of fact we have a meeting tomorrow uh can come in and do that very specifically and and sit with you individually or with a group uh council members and make sure that that information is very clear well and and not only in retrospect in future you know where are we going where are we heading those sort of things I agree with you and he did talk to us in that last executive meeting about a lot of the we can't speak on those things but remember a lot of those things were

[1:59:41] discussed on out of that million dollars it's actually 3 million so how about if your motion says that we will bring it to open Council before we make payments and before we bring bring it to open Council to vot to to authorize the payments we will have an executive meeting that tells us exactly what we're doing is that all right with you Don I will I'm asking Don because Don didn't like how it was worded the first time like I said that the thing about it is I have no problem really appropriating a set amount of money but like I said with that I want the information that goes with it um and we have been furnished with some that in broad sweeping brush strokes but I want details I don't I don't want to uh you know pay for somebody that we can get somebody else to do for less money the same thing but let me pull my second do you want to pull your motion until we talk about an executive then come back yeah let's do that okay let's pull the motion we will talk about this in executive we will come back with exact language hold up Mr Mayor well then the item remains open the item this the the agenda item the agenda item on 13 phase two of the agenda item remains open until after we go to to Executive we discuss it we disc determin to the language that we want to use M Bing are you talking about even the first part of it well it's under one agenda item so we cannot do anything to conclude or close the item so I would just um when we come back from executive today we will close the item okay and so we've um articulated the first part of a motion that under this item but still pending is the remaining motion under this item okay fair enough let's take a break it back to order mayor yes sir I I'd like to uh propose that since it is 11:24 and we're on item 13 that at 4:30 wherever we are

[2:01:47] we stop get through the budget stuff and then have a another meeting this following Tuesday and and finish up then Mr bman if you will make that a motion if you will make that motion at 4:30 I will gladly second okay let's move on to item 14 uh this is discussion of radioactive material I would like to take item 14 I would like to take item 15 uh item 16 Marty did you are you willing to move this to the next meeting or to another date okay we will move items we've got to get Marty out of here by 12 he has a he has an important 4-Hour meeting in Las Vegas so he is booked for the next 4 days he has to go but anyway let's let's move on and let's discuss item 14 this is discussion of naturally occurring radioactive material as it relates to the Hickory groundwater supply project Ricky Dixon you're on and uh be concise and precise please thank you mayor um I wanted to come back and talk talked about this one more time uh we've done this before in the past and there new council members so we wanted to go over it one more time and make sure you know I'm still hearing some issues and some concerns uh from the public and also from members of the council so we're going to go another run at this uh today I have with me uh that'll actually be doing the presentation is Dr Ian Hamilton and Mr Rick Jobe Dr Ian Hamilton received his bachelor's of science from the St University of New York and is master of science in PhD from Texas A&M University Dr Hamilton has 30 years of experience in nuclear engineering and medical and health physics and is currently the corporate radiation safety officer for Scott and White healthc care system he has a board certified in the comprehensive practice of Health physics and a licensed and board certified medical physicist the US Navy provided Dr Hamilton starting

[2:03:49] radiation science and as a division leader on the ballistic missile sub USS Henry Clay his experience includes a nuclear engineering professorship at Texas A&M radi radiology professorship at Baylor College of Medicine and committees concerning counter no and Consulting for nuclear and medical facilities he has participated in several National level committees concerning counterterror and domestic preparedness even before 911 which culminated in several widespread reports and an annual teaching engagement at Harvard he was appointed by Governors Bush and Perry to the Texas radiation Advisory Board of which he served several years as Vice chair he was the primary author of the Texas radiation advisory board's 2011 position statement on radio nucleid and drinking water he also wrote The Definitive peer-reviewed paper on the environmental impacts of radium pipes scale removal process the oil and gas industry published in the health physics J he is a member of the American Association of physicists in medicine American College of radiology and the national and local chapters of the health physics Society Mr jacobe received his bachelor's of Science and MERS of engineering degrees from Texas A&M University in addition to being a licensed nuclear engineer in Texas Mr jacobe is a health physicist and licensed attorney in Texas he has more than 39 years of experience in Technical and Regulatory assistance in the last lensing construction operation and decommissioning of nuclear and radiological facilities this includes expert guidance on radiation risk assessments licensing and permitting of nuclear facilities environmental assessments nuclear facility closure and decommissioning plans radiological and non-radiological environmental monitoring programs nuclear facility operating procedures and management of radioactive waste storage processing disposal disposal

[2:05:52] facilities Mr jacobe was appointed by the governor per of the Texas radi radiation Advisory Board of which he served as a chair for part of his membership as a member of the national and local chapters of Health physics society and received the 2011 Richard s Hodes lecture award for innovation in radioactive waste management and with that I would like to turn this over to Dr Hamilton and Mr jacobe for their presentation and there'll be a period for question and answers afterwards thank you welcome sir uh thank you Mr Mayor and thank you members of the city council I was going to say after what you said HB this morning maybe there should be 50 PBS less of Dr Hamilton up here after hearing what uh Ricky said kindly I think maybe 50 pounds less of my uh resume I guess PhD really does stand for piled higher and deeper so uh with that uh we were asked uh to speak on the radiation health and safety aspects of the uh proposed uh drinking water treatment facility uh both myself and Mr jacobe my colleague have put together a few slides to put things in context specifically I'll be speaking to radioactivity uh for those members of the board that haven't heard this before radioactivity and radiation is everywhere we'll put health and safety in the context of radiation dose and then uh Mr jacobe is going to speak to uh some of the design features of the proposed plant as well uh I put this slide together for exactly what it says in that title radioactivity is present everywhere the radioactivity we're talking about in drinking water and make no mistake it's in all drinking water not just from the Hickory aquer it's in the water we're drinking now it is natural in origin it comes from Mother Nature like you can see here on the slide we're getting radiated all the time from radiation coming in from outer space the atmosphere coming out of the soil it's in the food we eat because the food we eat grows in the ground which is radioactive it's in the water we drink the air we breathe this table out to the

[2:07:55] side here puts it in perspective this is based on a National Council radiation protection and measurement report and it's not important that you understand what milligram per year is that little esoteric unit up there think about uh when you take a Tylenol tablet the doctor prescribes Tylenol to you that says take a tablet or two or take 200 milligrams whatever that's just a unit of dose everything in radiation comes down to dose uh so you can see here that we do get exposed every one of us just living and breathing on planet Earth to uh low levels of radiation and radioactivity every year I will point out that that radon it is averaged across the whole us you guys are lucky like we are in most places in Texas we're not getting that radon the radon exposure here uh in San Angelo it's very Trace because the nature of the soils we have here so if I'm eating that steak that's got radioactivity in it yes sir C that's yes uh the the question was when we eat the steak it has radioactivity in yes you have Trace Amounts of radioactivity in the steak that you eat in the plants that we you know the carrots whatever but again it's natural in origin okay it's not because somebody laced it with it uh radioactivity is many common things that's what I want to point out here you see here everything from drinking water to cow's milk there are Trace Amounts of radioactivity I pick these things because they're in picocuries perer that's a unit I've heard you guys speak to before everybody understand that's just the Amor radioactive something in this case the something in drinking water uh and you can see here we've even put like the what the treatment uh process would knock the drinking water down to uh if you look at this next slide same thing these are things that are all common to you that's not picocuries per leader it's picocuries per gram that is still just the amount of radioactive something that's in this material instead of it being the liquid it's a solid we have radioactivity in gyps and wallboard bananas for anybody that's been on Camp outs so thorium mantles they're hard to come by now you got to buy them on eBay nerds like me because uh they just everybody's bought them up because they

[2:09:58] are so radioactive and again the soil radioactive therefore our skeletons incorporate these radioactive materials into them um with that being said I did want to ask Mr jacobe to come up here he has picked out some sources uh that are common this is ass salt shaker what gives it its orange color just like where you get your yellow and gold colors in cosmetics say like uh lipsticks is it's been colored with uranium we pick that because these are again natural radioactive sources that the Public's being exposed to and they're drinking water supply so we wanted to Source a natural radiation here uh and we also picked this halfin steel plate if the council can see it this is how thick The Vessel walls would be in the vessels in this proposed plant and I wanted to demonstrate just what a good Shield a half an inch of Steel is for these natural Cur now this is admitting Alpha Rays beta rays and gamma rays and x-rays as a matter of fact and you can see here you can get quite a lot of counts off of it closer you get the higher the dose like anything else you get Behind the Steel and you can see here as he passes right the dose rate drops to background you're always going to get a few random clicks and again that's because these solar rays we talked about the gamma rays coming out of the stones behind you out of the gyps and wallboard the concrete aggregate things like that all right there are other natural sources Mr jacobe could demonstrate as well no salt the salt substitute that we all buy at the health food stores we have potassium in it part of the potassiums naturally occurring potassium 40 so again stopped by the steel Granite the same way has all the same nuclides in it that we're talking about in the soils and in the drinking Waters and again it is stopped by the steel Mr jacobe also has some U uranium colored marbles and again they emit the entire range of uh particles and Rays that would be in the collected media and again it's

[2:12:00] stopped by the steel so we had another demonstration we could show you with the cinder blocks but the same thing there's already nothing once we get beyond the steel except for the random counts if we put the cinder block in the way as well you know and the reason I make this point is because you'd have to go through several layers of concrete to get outside too there been concerns raised about members of the public Happening by the Water Treatment Facility again you see we're just at background thank you Mr jaob and so here are some dose calculations that I put together uh to put everything in perspective uh you can see here people are probably familiar with having pelvic or abdominal CT scans or even uh nuclear stress tests those are the doses that you would get from those medical procedures in a matter of seconds to hours if you look at what Mother Nature gives you down there at the 300 level that's the dose that we get average across the US population like I said before over an entire year uh you can even see here what a mamogram uh a screening mammogram with four Images will give to a woman in again just a matter of minutes the dose to the staff and again I will point out these are very highly conservative dose calculations I did I assumed that the vessels were completely full to the point of needing need to be changed out all the time year round and that all the radioactivity was up against the vessel walls so if a worker had to work near them it was as close to the worker as they could get and then even rounding up from there you can see that I only have 30 milligram per year in other words one tth of what mother nature would give them and I as an expert don't actually think they'll ever get doses near that high for the people that would happen by the facility I didn't even put the dose up there because it wouldn't show up it would be so small so that is again to just kind of put things in context based on this treatment facility and Mr jacobe I'd like to ask him to come up here to speak to some more things about plant features specifically mayor council I'm Rick

[2:14:08] jacobe I uh was here a couple of years ago to speak to some of these same issues and today I wanted to come back and address some of the issues that have been raised by Council uh with regard to the design of this and operation of this facility this is a uh plan view of the facility itself showing the the uh exterior walls and then the equipment inside the facility the ion exchange vessels are uh colored blue in this illustration and I wanted to just point out some of the safety features that have been incorporated into this design uh one is the masonry walls uh on the exterior of the building they provide shielding just as we were illustrating with this uh this concrete block here this concrete blocks about 6 in thick the walls on this uh treatment plant are about 12 in thick so they're they're twice thickness of of this concrete block right here there's containment sumps underneath the ion exchange vessels these sumps are are designed to capture uh a uh spill from a a u ion exchange uh vessel should it rupture and uh if it were to rupture the the ion the ion exchange zeolites would flow to those containment sumps where they'd be captured and then uh if uh if necessary they could be recovered and shipped for disposal the floors of the uh building are sloped to the containment sumps we've we have epoxy coated the floors so that whatever falls on the floors can easily be swept or washed into the containment sumps where they can be recovered and then sent for disposal these uh containment vessels these blue vessels and I I purposely colored this Shield that we used a moment ago pretty heavy I pretty heavy I worry that I'm going to crush your furniture here uh this this is a/ inch of Steel and these vessels are a/ inch of Steel I just wanted to illustrate for you how robust these uh these containers are it's not likely that that they would

[2:16:09] ever fail it's uh as we Illustrated there's not much radiation that can get through that that much steel the uh building has limited access only uh employees of the city and uh employees of wrt will be uh allowed access to the building to work on the equipment and the uh the ion exchange vessels in this building the building is monitored for any radiation exposure as our employees and small amounts of radon um Dr Hamilton was mentioning radon gas which is natural in the environment will also be natural in these vessels and it will be vented through the roof of the building into the atmosphere where where it will be diluted and and uh uh won't even be detectable very small amounts there's been some uh concerns that the plant could possibly explode or catch fire and burn down uh that's that's just simply not possible with this particular plant this plant is is very safe there's no explosives there's no flammables in the building uh there's there's obviously water we're flowing water through the building there's there's the air in the building there's some anite that are in the U the filtration vessels but uh they are they're they're in a container where they couldn't possibly Catch Fire zeolite is is a clay like substance it's not flammable nor is radium uh none of these uh materials are flammable or explosive and so um an explosion or a fire is just not a real concern there's also been some concerns expressed by the council uh that a pipe Brak could result in some sort of environmental impact or impediment we've did some calculations to look at a variety of pipe brakes and our our calculations show that if uh if the pipe were flowing 9 million gallons per day at at its absolute maximum capacity and it were to rupture just right in half so that the entire 9 million gallons is discharged every day it would take 2.3 years for that that amount of water to

[2:18:14] to flow into the nearest stream or a Royal or river and to to elevate the radiation levels above the regulatory limits and um you know I I think it's not likely that if you had a 9 million gallon a day break that it would flow for 2.3 years before somebody would do something about it I I suspect it would be taken care of within just a few hours or minutes even uh likewise if you had a 9 million gallon a day flow pipe brake rupture and the water was flowing out onto the soil uh it would have to flow for 240 days before the soil would capture enough radium to exceed the the EPA in the tcq regulatory limits for contaminants and soil as to livestock uh our our calculations would just uh uh indicate that that a a cow could not drink enough water or eat enough grass before it was taken uh to to uh to be butchered to where it could it could uh um have enough radioactivity in its muscle or tissue or bone to to be a health hazard to anyone so a pipe break is is not a I think a concern there's been some concern expressed about uh storage of uh the radioactive materials in the in the in the U City of San Angelo or at the plant and there's uh just simply no long-term liability or uh storage concerns for the city because your contract with wrt says they are responsible for the U for the uh zeolite resins they they have to provide the resins they have to take the discharged resins away and they're they're not going to be storing them in the city uh and uh the city has no liability for it the residents will be discharged from these vessels it'll be taken to a licensed little Lev waste disposal site U somewhere elsewhere other than the city of St Angelo so in in summary uh r as Dr Hamilton said radioactivity is present everywhere uh

[2:20:17] the radiation doses from the environment and from this plant are minimal uh the groundwater treatment plant as I just Illustrated has been designed for safety and there is no long-term storage or liability issues for the city because wrt is contractually bound to to haul those wastes away uh Dr Hamilton I'd be glad to answer questions if you have any Council I have one yes Johnny Mr jacobe how how many of these water treatment plants are there are there in the state of Texas just off the top top of your head and have there been any issues any you know pipe braks any anything having to do with the water treatment plans how do you have any idea how many are in Texas I don't know how many are in Texas there's a number around the United States uh and there has been no issues uh I don't know that there's been pipe braks that's not to say there haven't been any but I certainly don't know of any if there have been any pipe braks Mr Hamp do do you have any idea oh no I agree with what Rick said I mean we know that there's several of them throughout uh other states and if we if there had been a pipe break it's not for lack of looking or trying to find one we would have I I think found it but I I'm saying a major pipe break like this I'm sure they have other you know just the typical industrial issues and things like that so then then the outer walls would be twice this thick yes the facility corre and and by the way that's that's not done for radiation shielding that's just the structural nature of of the building itself okay all right but it serves a dual purpose sure thank you gentlemen I uh I have heard some things like uh once the water flows through there for a specific L length of time the the piping itself will become radioactive is there any the what what will be the piping itself that the water is running through will become radioactive you want to I'm going to let Dr Hamilton address that because that's one of his Specialties actually uh it's not the yeah the piping itself there'll be a scale that could build up depending on the temperature and the pressure in

[2:22:20] the pipes it doesn't happen uniformly through the pipes uh it could happen at uh certain areas of the pipes it would be easy to detect and again that would be uh from what I understand pigged out uh annually in other words they would uh scour the scales off the inside now most of the scale I will point out um is not going to be radioactive anyway it's uh almost like table salts brins that form scales but there will be Trace Amounts of radium in there again very low level uh has been my experience and where they have lot of experience with that as the oil and gas industry uh and again they're used to handling that all the time would it be such that we would have to move it to a disposal side or would we be responsible for that or wrt or do you even know uh wrt would be responsible for that is is how I understand it yes sir okay and again that's not even necessarily something that would have to be moved to a special landfill it would all depend on if when the brine's built up did they have any radium in them and to what level gotcha okay um one of the other things you you pretty well talked about all the all the brakes and those sort of things we've heard that for instance uh in some of the outline areas that uh when they get ready to to sell a water heater or something like that it's radioactive enough that they can't can't do that is there any any truth to that or we would we be in the same situation and in some areas of Texas where the water is not treated uh there is a buildup of radioactivity and water heaters it's documented it's in the literature it it is um usually does not exceed the regulatory limits for the the disposal of these water heaters in in a ordinary landfill or in a junkyard or scrap steel plant or something as as a discretionary uh thing some of the scrap steel companies will not take those water heaters because they just don't want the aggravation of dealing with

[2:24:22] them but but there's no health hazard there's no regulatory prohibition on it they could take them and and and many do actually uh one thing I want to go back and and and I would recommend you you clarify this with your engineer but it may be that uh wrt is uh not responsible for the raw water pipeline I I don't know for sure but even if they're they're not if you pig out that Pipeline and you have a small amount of radioactivity I believe the levels would be less than 30 PES in which casee then you could just send it to an ordinary hazardous waste landfill or or even a municipal landfill for that matter if you should choose are y'all familiar with the the process that wrt uses yes sir um from from what I've read They're they don't have a plant that is taking this much radiation out of the volume of water that we're looking at uh do y'all have any idea about the uh the coming water that we have and and and feel good about being able to to purify oh I I'm I'm very confident you know this this illustration here they they don't have a plant that has this many vessels but they have many plants that have individual vessels the size of these that uh that treat smaller amounts of water so in in water in and water out we we know that the water coming in and the water coming out uh is is is much safer and cleaner and meets all the the health and Regulatory limits for drinking water so this is a proven process the only thing that's bigger about this is you're moving millions of gallons a day as to some of the smaller plants that they have in Illinois New Jersey and Colorado and other places okay so it's the In-N-Out that he's talking about the volume would be the same per vessel just more vessels it's a scaleup question is what you're asking right okay good deal thank you yes any other questions from Council any other questions from

[2:26:25] Council do we have any questions from the public gentlemen process it's the cost of it thank you very much we appreciate that uh we needed that and uh that gives us some Assurance we appreciate you very much thank you let's move on uh let's go to item number 15 with which is a discussion and possible action on matters related to the 19th Street sidewalk project we've been dealing with this for some time Jerry c will not let this die uh the city manager and Don and Marty and I were all out there a month couple of months ago and we discussed this and looked at the different side of the street to determine how we could do this and what it would cost and we gave staff the the charge to find out what it would cost and bring it to us and Mrs farmer has put this on the agenda for discussion so give us a report please you're not going to let this die are you see I don't either I don't see it happen well good morning I'm filling in for Tim Wolf our engineer today he's actually put this presentation together but I did meet on site with you mayor and Mr Venezuela and a few other council members uh so I'm pretty familiar with kind of what we were looking at put a few of these figures together uh what we're really proposing to let me kind of start in into the the slideshow it's starting at Bryant Boulevard we're wanting to uh basically for the residents and a lot of there's there's some schools and different things in that neighborhood a lot of people walk that area and just to give you a brief kind of an overview uh it's a street that's about 48 ft wide which substantially takes up the 50ft rideway that we had have and uh so that's what's kind of made this this project um something we really need to kind of look

[2:28:26] at and see what's best for the citizens in that area and also the residents that live on that street um and I'll just get into it uh and try to make it fairly brief but kind of give you the background uh what's out there now uh teot has recently put a signal in within the last two years at the intersection of 19th and uh and Bryant and so in doing that they went ahead and put the pedestrian elements there so there's push buttons there's ramps uh things to get people back and forth across Bryant which is a pretty pretty busy street uh but as you work work your way down 19th we actually have a school zone uh that crosses through there and uh so a lot of kids are using this route you know walking back and forth there's a Stripes Convenience Store and a Taco Bell on on opposite Corners there uh and so that's kind of what we were looking at what we've discussed is uh two different options we have uh the north side that we were looking at of putting a sidewalk uh and what we're what we're really looking at there is we've got no rideway on the North side at all basically the back of curb is is uh what we own just to the back of curb and we have several houses in that area we have quite a few uh light poles we have some electrical uh poles out there several mailboxes driveways a lot of things that we're going to kind of have to work around uh looking at at the north side of the street there but flipping to the South Side we actually have two- footer rideway uh what we're looking at is doing a 5ft wide sidewalk and uh in doing the 5 foot wide sidewalk when you come up on things such as poles or uh driveways or things like that when you when you when you get there and you're looking at the Ada aspects to get you know handicapped accessible people through those areas it's it's really kind of difficult to stay within that 5T so if you were trying to keep it by the back of curb as you're going down the street and you run into a pole or a sidewalk or you know a driveway you're going to have to move that sidewalk

[2:30:28] shift it back and forth make sure the grades and there's some you know Ada slopes that kind of come into play and that's why you know when we were out there the day that we met we were kind of looking at um both sides to see what's more feasible uh I know I did a little bit of research um on kind of what had been canvased in the in the neighborhood that they had talked to before I know they talked to lot of residents on the north side of the street because really in this kind of a project um gaining probably 10t of rway is really what we're going to need to be able to put the sidewalk in and and maneuver it through that area and a lot of the residents on the North side from what I found out had agreed several years ago to give us some rideway to do that um and so really that's kind of um the objective if we were to you know put it on the South Side are those same residents agreeable to giving us some of the right by way that we'll need to to get that sidewalk in there but as you can see in some of the the pictures here this is actually uh I believe the north side starting right behind where the Taco Bell is you can see the trees and all the poles several mailboxes and things um that's actually on the North side most of these photos are of the north side just to kind of give you an idea of what we're looking at to try the obstacles to get around and also there's um of course several fences um trees but to get kind of to the end of this presentation um this is some numbers that were put together and this is only you know just a rough estimate without doing an on Ground Engineering topography to see really what we've got and how many things are actually in the way uh but here are some of the numbers to do the north side about $215,000 and the South Side uh is right at 136,000 but something too I was going to let you guys know is on the south side and some of the slides show that and if you're out there on the ground a lot of the pedestrians are walking on the South Side so there's already a beaten out

[2:32:30] path and a lot of times Ada will kind of look at that and it kind of helps to decide which side to put that sidewalk on so I don't know if uh if anybody has any questions I'll try to try to answer it best I can well I know when we met out there that uh Mr C said you know he he he didn't have a problem with the uh the South Side don't want to speak for you Jerry but uh that that that would be fine you know because most of the people did use that and from your slides it looks like there's a whole lot fewer uh obstacles that we'd have to fight that's true that's true really the I think really what it comes down to is um if the residents are willing to give us some rideway on that southide I think it that would be our best option if that's something I know talking to Jerry and when we were out there um they were going to you know kind of canvas that neighborhood again just to make sure that people were agreeable you know for doing this project and they were willing to give us some right away to work in okay do we have further councel Johnny uh yes sir somebody remind me but or Jerry or somebody was the idea was the proposal to do both sides north and south or just look at one or the other originally I talked to uh uh Bob Solace that works in our uh kind of the development side uh with the neighborhoods he had said years ago when they had done that what they were really trying to do at that time was to tie that whole neighborhood in that part of town with a overall sidewalk uh that connected everything and it was really just that North Side they were looking at at the time they weren't looking at both sides and now we were looking at really just trying to get pedestrians down that stretch of road and so so we were looking at one side you know just because it's cost prohibitive to try to do both I think further Council comment well do do you know and maybe I need to ask Jerry C or somebody with WT

[2:34:35] Craig or somebody are you guys good with public comment okay let's let's since there's no further Council comment let's have public comment at this time mayor yes sir well you got Council or public on the way up councilman vman has been in touch with me on this issue and has been instructed me that he wants this as a a possible use of the Capital Money the same Capital money that uh uh we have used for the cemetery project and so from a staff perspective uh I think he had discussed bringing that forward this this specific topic forward in October but he's already requested that we consider this item when we discuss that capital I think that's an excellent idea Mr C identify yourself and you have the floor sir yes sir thank you very much my name is Jerry C uh gent ladies and gentlemen uh Council mayor uh city manager staff you know um this 19th Street project is part of a overall uh uh revitalization program that had been started by the the Mayors uh at that time mayor laon and his group and there's a couple of you that was uh on that on that uh uh council at the time and uh during the time after that there was there was several different programs that had been set up uh to revitalize uh four different areas of St Angelo and uh they had to provides a program as to where uh tax money was shared among all of these uh these other portions of the city which was named the left out Zone you know it's uh you know that's the the let's say the lower portion of St Angelo that

[2:36:40] uh wasn't getting uh the usage of their tax money especially black she hadn't got any the usage of their tax money for about 30 years so they said these programs up for neighborhood revitalization and neighborhood uh uh to help neighborhoods grow with the city now with that Administration what they started with those programs they included citizens of St Angelo and it and it created environment with the citizens that they felt uh included and it came about there was other different programs to help uh you know Revitalize our city people got involved things were start happening and uh people were pretty happy about that but then after these people left and moved on and uh righteously they should have because they did a great job uh these things seem to have fell off the table you know these different programs have fell off the table and these programs was to set were set up to help all of the citizens of St Angelo and it was an inclusive program and that reminds me of uh pride of lions you know uh pride of lions the leader the the the the king of the Lions the might the the one that leads the pride The Matriarch uh I mean the patriarch uh when there's a younger stronger lion comes into the area he challenges the leader and once he defeats the leader you you know uh either run him off or kill him he takes over the pride and once he takes over the pride he kills all of the babies all of the Cubs to start his own bloodline and this is what is happening with this and this is terrible you're turning this city back around these people has done great amounts of work and there has been

[2:38:43] a lot of money spent to Start programs that since these new people has come on board has start started to turn this back around and it's changing the atmosphere that had been set up before it is changing and we need clarity as you uh mentioned and uh we have to have some kind of system set up as to where uh how these people that has come into these new positions uh how do they get the authority to redirect programs that has been set up to improv this city prior to them coming on board and 19th Street is one of those one of those programs and 19th Street as you know and have been talked about is one of the most dangerous streets in St Angelo and it's not just starting that uh one of the one of the members that live across the street there from where we were uh Mr Sledge has come down here with me today he's been a long time uh resident a 19 Street and he's seen plenty of of of things that were very dangerous on 19th Street and back uh back in the day a reverend doson lived on 19th Street right behind where the uh convenience story is there he and his wife lived there and she went across the street to visit one of his neighbors and as uh she was going back home a drunk driver turned the corner and speed and ran over with the lady and Drug her a half a block kill that lady nothing was done then and it's time to recognize that there are areas where I'll just say the least to uh recognize people uh those areas need to be brought into the loop and there's something that really needs to be done and we can no longer keep kicking this can down the

[2:40:46] road we have to face these problems there's a lot of problems that's uh there and uh there's a lot of tax money that's starting to come into San Angelo so tax money should not be an option because there's going to be a lot of money here and we need our share also and I thank you sir thank you very much for your time I Jerry I think the question was will y'all be satisfied with it on the South Side as opposed to on the north side well uh whichever I'm sorry go ahead uh of course we'd like it on both sides but if it's easier to put it on the North side in order to get a sidewalk that would be safe for our children and our elderly if that is the most feasible place to put it we need it there as long as we get to Southside it's if it's a sidewalk then the people that get used to walking on the nor side just just have to walk on the sidewalk you know we can adjust we just need that sidewalk program and the beautification Not Just 19th for the whole area but it right now if we can get a sidewalk now and it can be 19th and the easiest and the quickest way out we will accept that also well based upon that question yes no B based upon that the last thing I want to do is have any Cubs killed today okay I don't want and I don't want to kick any cans okay I don't want any patriarch lines killed either I I I take it that the South side's okay and and and it based upon that my move we we uh direct staff to put that in our Capital Improvement program CIP I'll second Rodney did you have a comment sir no okay I'm agreeing with him I thank

[2:42:49] you very much and I think that there's some other comments is there any public comment any other public comments need to be made identify yourself Tim whatever you do don't talk yourself out of yeah this is I won't I've got about minutes got two minutes and I has to do another this is just very quick two-minute video to share with you about 19th Street I'm Tim DAV Port herps one of the leaders with WTS and the 19th Street sidewalks are an important part of what we are trying to do here in this community because it is a place that is dangerous there's heavy foot traffic on 19th Street people walking in the street you have a lot of traffic as we know with the oil boom more and more people are coming to town that Street's being used more and more you can see even more here the foot paths that are cut into the yards as people travel along it is something where people are going to be traveling and you can see right here you get to some points where you can't walk in a yard you have to walk in the street I want you to imagine a little old lady a grandmother walking down the street bringing her groceries back doing what those young women were doing this will give you just a real quick picture of the extent of the path as it goes along the south side goes all the way from stripes and continues on uh going down well past gallilee Baptist Church this is an area that has traffic that needs to have services and we really appreciate your consideration I'm not going to talk myself out of having it so I'm going to stop the video right there I think you get the idea thank thank you any further sh it one question yes ma'am how much money do we have in the capital Improvement fund well the amount we're talking about is not in a separate fund but it is approximately 1.75 million in total minus 250 for a firet Tru minus 316 for a portion of A firet TRU minus the 316 I

[2:44:55] think was the cemetery amount so between 1.1 and 1.2 million I believe is still available to be allocated that's correct uh however I think Mr Wolf emphasized to me and I think if he were here he would emphasize to you that that the estimates for this could uh that the ultimate cost could vary depending on what it takes to get the right way what clearing and restoring has to be done for uh personally owned assets that are currently in the that right away and then ultimately of course the variability in in bids I think we're seeing concrete prices uh going up so I I think he wanted to make sure Council knew that those initial estimates were very much just estimates and that uh uh he was concerned that those prices could move depending on what kind of especially depending on what kind of assets we found in the right way that would have to be restored or rebuilt out of the RightWay the motion has been made that we instruct staff to determine these cost and bring them back is that correct Marty yep and and the second is the same yes yes Craig yeah Craig Myers WT uh when I apologize I I'm about 10 minutes late I need to pull my motion because I I I I can't stay here to vote on it okay unless you want to take the vote right now whatever you like the vote's going your you guys way if you want to take the V I know it's going but it's a context that Jerry set up that probably ought to hear but if that's going to keep I I I mean I I don't want to stop no if you want if you want to go ahead Marty pull his motion and we'll ask for another or we can vote on it V V for the motion it's up to you Craig vote on it vote the motion has been made and seconded that we send this to staff to to design and to get total prices and to bring it back and I I think it was from the south side of the road is perspective that we're talking about if there's no further comment I'm going to ask that the vote that we that

[2:46:57] we vote all of those in favor say I all of those in favor in in a opposition say Nay n i mean I know I didn't say no you didn't say no you said you said you said by yes 70 that one has passed thank you Council from Mr Myers thanks Mr Myers you want to go ahead and talk now I mean we made the motion the sidewalk is a done deal but yeah explain to us what you want to say when Miss farmer asked about how much money was there that's been a problem in the context that Jerry's talking about almost all of you Council people even the new folks uh took the time to meet with WT both before and after the election we gave you a little book and that book in it had both graphics and narratives and factual details about the neighborhood revitalization issue and we were talking about $45 Million worth of product on the ground needing to remember that the city in local new tax money has only contributed a tiny tiny amount of that less than $3 million most of that was kosad DC money which is you say how do we go ahead I think what uh I heard the mayor say about uh kneading 40 lbs off and everybody was laughing and all of that when we talk about these issues in the future the work that's been done to transform blighted areas into developing areas with so much work left to do uh there's a set of priorities that I think the council needs to take into consideration because we're going to be back you've known that for the last eight years and that is that there are things that are desirable and there things that are essential and the desirable things are like for people like the mayor and myself are well owed uh and economically okay uh we spend millions of dollars on making sure that walking pth for people that drive their air conditioned car to park them there

[2:49:00] so they can walk along a beautifully landscaped area and come back because they need the exercise that's a different thing than these people that Jerry was referring to Black Shear has the highest concentration of foot traffic in the whole city because they have the highest conent uh concentration of lowincome elderly and the highest concentration of folks who are below the poverty level and so when they walk it's because they don't have any choice in order to put groceries on their table and we spend you know without much question you know millions of dollars on desirable kinds of things that are not essential and so I'm I'm thinking as we come to you with the next issue that needs your consideration you'll remember that the people whose lives are at stake because they have to walk in the street uh you know that's a priority because the first thing that governance in cities has to take into consideration is the health safety and welfare's population not the Aesthetics and the extras that are resources and thank you for your vote it's the right time was four years ago when you approved it and you funded it you just never built it and so we're hoping that this kind of stuff you know moves into that collaborative effort that we once knew thank you may we depend upon you to keep this before us oh I it is 12:13 are y'all ready to go to lunch and do the executive and then come back and complete this marathon is that consensus of council yes sir okay let we will now go into executive session I would like to read this executive session under the revisions of government code Title 5 open governments ethics subtitle a open government chapter 551 open meeting sub chapter D exceptions to requirement that meetings

[2:51:04] be open under the following sections section 551 0712 to consult with attorney on a matter in which the duty of the attorney to the governmental body under the Texas disciplinary rules a professional conduct of the State Bar of Texas clearly conflicts with this chapter regarding the west Texas water partnership section 551 072 to deliberate the purchase exchange lease or value or real property related to one the proposed fire station two the lake nasworthy area and number three the west Texas water partnership section 551 0741 to deliberate the evaluation of the city manager it is 12:14 and I now send us into executive 209 and I am calling the meeting back to order Marty is uh Don has already said that at 4:30 he's going to make an adjournment that we end this meeting I'm going to Second him and I have an idea we will have the votes toe in the meeting at 4:30 so what we have decided to do we are now in our agenda to item number 17 item number 17 is not something that we have to do today if we don't have time so we're going to push it to the back of the agenda item 18 is also something that we do not have to do today we're going to push it to the back of the agenda item 19 is not something that is pressing we will push it to the back of the agenda so we will start with item 20 we will do 21 we will do 22 uh there's some discussion about 23 uh we will push we will do 24 25 26 push 27 to the back and wherever we get as far as the as our time then we'll start going back and picking up these that we have shoved does council agree with this do I have consensus to do it this way yes sir Mr Ward law Mr B M farmer okay fliming he didn't there's 23 push to the next uh we had planned on pushing it but Charlotte has some items AR Charlotte has some

[2:53:06] questions here so I think when we get to 23 we will discuss the question I would just soon push it but Charlotte has found some laws here that says we must do it before October one ask for a definition or an explanation because the way I'm reading it when we get to 23 we'll fig we will discuss by consensus of council whether we want to push it or whether we want to to handle it today but as it stands right now if Council will allow we're going to start with number 20 that's the presentation and possible action regarding final draft of planning document for Lake nasworthy subdistrict as prepared by Gateway planning this is by interim director AJ fber and Gateway planning principal Scott poov you have the floor ma'am thank you mayor May Council we'll try to keep it brief for you um just a brief reminder on where we've been this is a planning process that we have engaged in with this Consulting Group uh as you may recall back in 2012 we kickstarted this process uh through a request for qualifications and have been engrossed uh deeply in the process of planning for late nazworthy since around September of this past year uh what we're going to be showing you today um is some highlights from the final draft document uh which was included in your background report and is also available on our website for any in the public that would like to preview that document um we will be looking to take some final steps to finalize this project uh which will culminate in a November 5th uh presentation to you all for uh final presentation and final action um essentially ratifying and amending the comprehensive plan with this piece that we have been asked to put together uh with that I'll go ahead and bring up uh Scott poov Scott poov is with the Gateway Planning Group he is sort of leading the team if you will that was put together to carry out this project and he's going to hit some highlights for you the presentation will also be available on the website again for anyone that wants to look through that and will be available at the planning

[2:55:08] division offices uh with any questions that there might be after the presentation today with that I'll ask Mr paulov to come forward welcome sir thank you mayor let me pull this up mayor members of the council uh members of the city management team mayor members of the council and and members of the city management team we appreciate the opportunity to be back before you uh I'm going to very quickly go through this presentation the uh final report in draft form is very extensive and this is a comprehensive summary of that so I'm not going to Bel the details I'm going to go through the highlights suffice it to say our overarching approach to this was uh captured in this theme linking neighborhoods and tourism because lake nasw nasworthy is not just a recreation Lake it's also a series of neighborhoods we looked at a market-based approach but also on a preservation basis we focused on what's already working and what's incredible about Lake nasworthy is it's amazing constituency that's already out there uh we talked to scores and scores of people we had no idea until we got fully engaged how rich the activity already is on the lake whether it's directly related to water sports or community activities uh as AJ said Thank You AJ uh you have the first of three primary deliverables uh which will hopefully culminate with a proposed amendment to the comprehensive plan November 5th uh we propose in this document some some catalytic projects both public projects and potentially public private projects uh and ultimately we're going to come back to you with some recommendations on a zoning strategy to help support the implementation of this Vision that's all within the scope of our contract we went through extensive public participation you can see this map which we kept bringing from meeting to meeting and we've sat down with all of you and we'll

[2:57:10] happy to do that again if anybody wants to meet again uh but we got extensive feedback from uh virtually every constituency in town around the lake both public and private and we went through a process of really understanding and assessing their input we also went through a historical analysis of the project and at the same time we were starting our work when the parks plan was being updated so we built on the uh Parks plan team's work and we also were very mindful of some of the very tough issues uh probably the most important issue is erosion control and we've made some recommendations on some cre ways to deal with that in the report doing a Redevelopment strategy like this where you're preserving neighborhoods and attracting higher levels of development potential at the same time requires us to understand the market Dan Martin with mfas is here today Dan is a national expert in uh natural entertainment destinations I'm going to bring him up here as soon as I'm done so if you have any questions uh he can also participate in the responses but we went through an exhaustive process two steps and initi market analysis and then a refined market analysis and I'll show you the results of that in a sec but we also fundamentally needed to understand the preferences of the community who's already a customer of the lake that is local tourism is not just about people coming from out of town it's also locals using the uh the local amenity we then identified several key opportunities and in order to explain those to you uh I think this map is probably the most important we identified five major what we're calling character zones uh um up near gunclub Hill and where the power plant site is a special opportunity Zone uh on the West Side uh both on north and south side of the lake the action sports and nature and education Zone uh on the right hand side where the old fishery is located on the east side uh what we're calling in your report it says the uh Community activity Zone we thought that phrase was

[2:59:14] a little too nebulous so we're calling that the natural encounter Zone uh the between nature and education and natural encounters nature and education could be uh a uh a a an enhanced nature center learning opportunities whereas the natural encounter zone is really more just taking advantage what's already there there's a lot of good birding opportunities for example and that's a very lucrative industry where people come in they spend their money they look at what's there and they leave and then finally the Harbor Village which is the location of the Mary Lee Park also you can see in yellow the recognition of all the surrounding neighborhoods and the action action Sports Zone where you already have for example uh uh the boat races there are a lot of opportunities to expand more formally uh what's already going on uh uh mountain biking opportunities there's a great uh organized archery club uh we did an analysis of how that can be enhanced in terms of where the demand is and how the facilities could be enhanced to take advantage of that demand what we're calling the Harbor Village area and this again the name can be changed but this is where the Marine is the Mary Le Park what we talked about is is further programming and taking advantage of that location but being very mindful that there's a neighborhood right there uh next to the uh the beach we did an analysis of the potential additional activities that would be appropriate for that location and in particular we identified what we're calling the Harbor Village catalytic site and you can see here what we've shown is uh a Redevelopment potentially where the Nature Center is and we work to suggest moving the Nature Center over to the nature and education Zone on the west side of the lake where would be more appropriate uh the potential to catalyze say for example uh an opportunity for some Resort Hotel uh activity uh restaurants and and this we hope would then spur on the reinvestment and repositioning of the Marine itself but at the same time I wanted to and here's a basics of what we think there's demand for at that location uh and you can see

[3:01:17] in more detail uh what we're talking about now this may require uh a a bit of a redesign of nicker boach uh to make it both a good road for major activities uh when you have large numbers of people but at the same time it's not necessarily the best design right now for higher levels of destination activity at that location I wanted to just very briefly point out to you that we understand this is a state highway uh I was fortunate enough to to co-chair with Mark Merck the head of the tex. design division appointed by the late Rick Williamson when he was chairman of the Transportation Commission a committee that looked at what can we do with special opportunities with State roadways and balancing Economic Development needs with safety and design needs uh we work to modify the tex. project development process manual to allow for a more nuanced analysis of design on state roadways for Local Economic Development and neighborhood opportunities uh a a document that was developed by the Institute of Transportation Engineers was adopted by reference that we would use uh that we use for guidance in that design and basically the bottom line is texad is now in a position to enter into local agreements with local communities to look at unique conditions on state roadways we already have experience doing that we were engaged to a Redevelopment plan for Padre Island Park Road 100 Padre Boulevard is not really well-designed for anything other than Easter weekend uh or hurricane evacuations uh and so you can see this is the reinvention conceptually of Padre Boulevard on parkroad 100 where we worked very specifically with the tax. area office and there's the letter from them saying they agreed to a New Concept that balances both the driving needs of the public in terms of safe safety and transportation but also ultimately the ability for the roadway to better complement what's going on around it finally we just wanted to reinforce that we're suggesting some investment uh uh by any potential Redevelopment here on some buffer areas on the west side of

[3:03:20] the beach so that the neighborhood is protected this graph the hard red the red line that shows the upswing is our analysis uh through Dan Martin that there's strong demand for more hotels yes some are coming more hotels are coming on to Loop 306 but we believe that we can sustain demand for a resort hotel that could also serve as a business hotel and I can tell you without identifying any particular hotels that if there was a new hotel on the lake I would have stayed there today uh it would have been great um let me quickly move through the remaining sections and then we'll answer any questions the nature and education Zone both on the north and south side of the west side of the lake might be a great place to ultimately move the nature uh the Nature Center so it wouldn't be locked in Dan has already started some informal conversations with some Regional zoos in this part of the United States where there might be a partnering opportunity to facilitate some sort of uh uh uh additional Wildlife aspect to the natur Center uh without you having to open up a zoo at the lake which would not be feasible those talks apparently just in terms of Aging interest uh have actually gone well there's no commitments but if that's something you want us to help pursue it's something that we can further uh investigate um there's a concept for that potential uh facility down there that can be further fleshed out what we're calling the special opportunity zone is essentially Gun Club Hill and the power plant site which is now uh been sold and is in the hands of an investor who wants to develop it obviously there's a lot of different interests there jogging the neighborhoods uh the readapted use of that piece of property it's the Gateway into the lake we did some analysis of the demand for that activity folks are not going to not continue to be attracted to Gun Club Hill in that area we think the key is making it safe and attractive for both those visitors and for the homeowners that we think there's a way to encourage private investment and development to help facilitate the solution to that problem we developed a concept plan for the power plant itself

[3:05:23] and talking to the representatives of the private owners it accommodates single family better access to the lake and that location potentially another hotel uh and maybe even what we're calling the interpretive Center you can see with the orange dot on it where uh you could have a small interpretive Center about the history of the lake that could be associated with uh activities and maybe a restaurant and then the bottom center you can see the orange where there could be a hotel again this is just a suggestion to the private sector to make this really key location attractive not just for people who are going there for purposes of access to the water but who want to have a more full experience at the lake uh and when they're done at the end of the afternoon they may want to go do something else finally the natural what we're calling the natural encounter Zone this is where the defunct fishery is located uh we've got to be careful because we know there's an Associated pathway with the airport but there's already a lot of birds in the area all we're suggesting is potentially creating a boardwalk environment so that uh there would be access in for people who want to come and observe the natural Wildlife that's already there this could be a lowcost high impact investment that could be done longterm through the resources of the uh foundation and then finally in terms of implementation uh we've put together through coordination uh with the uh recently adopted Parks and Recreation plan and you can see in this document a connection to make sure that there's comprehensive cycling and Trail activity points throughout the entire uh Lake we heard over and over again from the community that that was maybe one of the most important aspects of the lake is the ability to be connected uh not just through vehicular traffic on Gun Club Hill we think that whatever happens there there needs to be some improvements so that there uh the traffic safety can be eliminated uh we'll continue to talk with staff about some options in that regard but one of the things can be done immediately is the creation of some shared low impact Trail heads with some additional

[3:07:25] bathrooms and parking there's a number of constituent groups that I think would help facilitate uh uh maybe even some Sweat Equity to help put some of that in play if there's some basic investment done by the city and by the foundation uh and and so there these are just some ideas about some low investment high impact opportunities we heard over and over again the number one issue is sanitary facilities at the lake we're not asking you to step up with any significant expenditures but I think that could have a significant Improvement especially now that the lake is very very much a national uh a national destination in so many different ways and of course we've been working with the Chamber of Commerce in terms of the marketing of the uhu of of the competitions that you have today and might have in the future um the bottom line is we're going to come back to you with some specific recommendations on potential some Special Districts and some zoning reforms we'll work with staff on those but ultimately we didn't want to get into those details until we got final validation on this comprehensive master plan and critical path for implementing the catalytic projects uh if we are uh fortunate enough to receive your validation through approval of this on November 5th then we'll work in Earnest to finalize the implementation details and we'll be done with our contract so next steps will be uh a proposed meeting with the Planning Commission uh and one more community meeting uh before the November 5th council meeting uh and then we'll provide options on how maybe these catalytic sites could be implemented through uh a public private process uh and then as I said some recommendations for some zoning uh updates that would be necessary to align the long-term Vision with the conditions on the ground so with that I think Mar I went over five but hopefully not more than 10 any questions we'd be happy to answer and Dan if you want yeah please so thank you very much we've really enjoyed this work uh what a gem um uh we're proud to be a part of trying to help you really

[3:09:29] preserve this great asset that is just so unique in West Texas thank you we do not have to take action on this today it says possible action is this correct and you're going to be back November 5th yes sir and I don't know whether there will be anyone from Lake NZ worthy that will have some concerns about what we have presented here uh it's possible that they would like some input mayor we've received extensive input from all the homeowners all the institutions all the businesses uh I can tell you that they actually are hungry for this plan to go forward because this binds them all together there's a lot of different activity out there but it's kind of random and ad hoc this really gives the constituents in the neighborhoods the Air Force the chamber uh good fellow uh all of them a platform to come together and we've used this as a way to put people together and they've really enjoyed it you obviously talked to some different people out there than I had then well I mean we people mayor people came in and they raised some concerns and when they realized what we were doing they were actually quite pleased uh actually and so we're happy to we're going to have another public meeting and anybody would like to participate and and give us additional input that would be great you're not going to please everybody but I would say I'm not out on a limb saying that 95 out of 100 people we met with in this process we're very pleased with the opportunity to partner with the public sector to take the leg to the next level council do I have comments from Council what what what's your what's your pleasure on this i' like to know the date of the next public meeting I think AJ you might want to address this but I think we're shooting for the evening of the we haven't established a date yet we're looking at a couple of dates um in October that would be evening meetings that might be easier for the public to attend rather than during the day when they're at work and so as soon as we have a date finalized we can send that out to all the council members and we'll also start advertising I would just just my opinion on this I would just soon wait on this

[3:11:34] for action until until until we have to make it and let's get all the public input so let's know exactly what we're doing that would be my recommendation I how does council feel it's fine yes let put this off thank you let's go ahead and do number 21 I think this is going to be you as well I think that would be set aside uh for action on November 5th waitting do it that sounds fine that does 21 and 22 okay we have thank you very much gentlemen we appreciate it the next one is the second public Hearing in consideration of adopting an ordinance levying property taxes for the city of St Angelo for the 213 tax year uh this reads an ordinance fixing and levying AD Borum taxes for the current tax year for the use and support of the municipal government of the city of St Angelo Texas for the 213 214 budget year providing for the assessment and collection thereof providing when the tax shall become due providing when the tax shall become delinquent providing for exceptions providing for severability providing for publication on the city operated website and providing for an effective date the property tax will be increased by an adoption rate of 0.776 per 100 which is effectively a 4.75% increase in the tax rate and I think that's I think that's written wrong the property tax rate will be decreased by the adoption of a tax rate of 0.776 per $100 valuation which is effectively a 4.75% increase in the tax rate we are not raising your taxes a half cent we are in fact decreasing your taxes by a half cent that is correct mayor um I know that even with the as far as increase in property values and so forth and that's what the effectivity we're talking about is a 4.75% increase it's not you're right it's not talking about the tax rate uh the tax rate is actually being decreased 50 cents can you tell us about prescribed

[3:13:38] Language by the state sure it's it's a it's a comparison of the effective rate to the adopted rate and so it's a benchmark rate that the the state has us Rec recognize um so the effective rate because of uh and this is it's it's a long detail but it's in your background packet that because we paid off some debt in fiscal year 13 the state thinks that in fiscal year 14 we don't need as much money to operate however we will issue the debt in fiscal year 14 and have Debt Service payments in debt fiscal year 14 so it's just a benchmark rate that hits their threshold to say hey y'all paid off some debt we think you could lower your rate no we can't lower the rate we are going to pay that debt but we are uh physically lowering the levy from 781 to 776 well that's clear it's a it's a funny language the state has us do so we are in fact reducing taxes by half cent but yet the state says that we are increasing taxes effectively effectively is the key word there pral Amounts is there any Council discussion on this we ready to adopt a decrease and an increase this is a mayor this is a public hearing so we'd ask you to make sure you ask for a public comment is there any public comment on this is there any Council comment first that's that's my first question is there any public any Council comment on this is there any public comment on this is it yes sir are you clear on it no I'm not clear at all we're lowering the rate we are lowering the rate yes we're going down a half cent but effectively we're going down from 781 to 776 which is in fact 1 half cent off May typically they'll make you include some kind of language that says you're raising taxes if you generate more Revenue even if your rate is lower and that is the situation we're in that

[3:15:43] we are reducing the rate but we're still in having more property tax revenue come in because valuations are up and so you know that in that s we've been in that situation many times in the last 10 years and each time they make us remind the public that yes we're going down on the rate but it generates more Revenue so we're raising your taxes motion to approve we have a motion to approve do we have a second second have a second any further if there if there is no further discussion I'll call for the vote on this all in favor say I I any oppos nay motion passed by 70 vote 60 60 vote that's right Marty's gone so we actually lowered your taxes a half half half a set ra values went up okay that's enough okay we were going to push item number 23 to another budget but Charlotte has some language here and something that says if we do it we've got to do it before October 1 so it's up to the council whether or not we handle this I just asked for clarification of what I was reading in the requirements and I don't want to take the chance of us not getting this done if we have time today and I I I think we have time don't we okay let's go this is discussion and possible action on matters related to the fiscal year 2134 budget to include development cooperation funds storm water funds Wastewater transfers General capital projects other items this needed Miss Morgan so before you today what we have are discussion items uh simply to provide more detail um as have been requested in the past by Council and if you'll bear with me I'll pull up we have a a substantial PowerPoint presentation however uh we have this split out into you know a b c d and e so if you want to chop these up and only take certain items uh recall uh the council ask for more detail on the Development Corporation line item budget we have that before you for item a uh the storm water fund line item budget

[3:17:46] that was in your background and available for discussion um the Wastewater transfers and information on on that and uh General capital projects which we've uh kind of touched on earlier when we talked about 19th Street sidewalks now this Wastewater fund transfer that's the pilot funds that we have been transferring from water to the general fund correct from sewer from from waste water and that is something I think we need do need to discuss because we need to stop that pilot fund if po if I can get the rest of the council to go along with me on it so let do discuss Wastewater as far as development cooporation funds how do you feel council do we need to discuss that at this time well sometime you let's do it now start off with development cooperation funds let's just go down to the list sure uh what I have here before you uh recall last time we started talking about it but the Development Corporation really has two funds that they operate out of one is the ballot fund which we pay for Community projects that are for uh that are approved by the citizens on the ballot and so uh we keep that really Crystal Clear by having it in a separate fund uh 72% of sales tax receipts are set aside for those Community projects um so you'll see here uh the main Revenue Source there is sales tax revenue uh proposed in fiscal year 14 for $5.7 million uh no other Revenue sources for the ballot side for expenditures there's a small portion that the Development Corporation pays uh out of the ballot side for City Services that's the staff that that the development operation contracts with the city for the remainder is available for projects and we'll get into that in in more detail in their line item of um and in straight language right out of the ballot uh for the economic development side of the Development Corporation uh sales tax they get 28% the remaining 28% of sales tax and then they have other Revenue sources uh proposed in fiscal year 14 total revenue of 2.3 million and we'll get in like I said we have that line item detail ready to go over uh so the main categories for their

[3:19:48] expenditures are city services which as I said were the staff um Administration and uh projects it's important to note there as you compare the fiscal year 13 budget of 4.4 million to the fiscal year 14 budget of 2.3 million uh recall that we're comparing fiscal year 13 current amended budget so that has a carryover of of projects like Blue Cross Blue Shield and items that have been approved in a prior fiscal year so this is uh what's been before the Development Corporation board and uh just to to keep it uh uh true and and easy to understand it's in the same format so you'll see here that we do it a little differently than what I just to give another perspective all ballot items are listed here all Economic Development items are listed in that last column and that estimated fiscal year 14 that's a total column so you'll see the revenue for the economic IC development side of other that I referred to there's $9,000 in interest $80,000 in um a hanger lease out at the airport L3 uh conference room rental at the business resource center um rent from the CVC and uh rent uh for the BRC so total revenue for all funds for Development Corporation are 8,1 102,000 5.7 of that is ballot 2 .3 million of that is economic development and there are several slides here of all of the uh expenditure items we can go over them in detail but again this is what was in their background so if it's a council's pleasure I can go through it in detail or you can stop me uh with whatever questions you have so earlier when I referred to Administration uh that comes that's several things so software um insurance for the board of directors and liability insurance for for the facilities um Communications expenses for the phone

[3:21:50] phone system um cell phone expenses um travel and lodging for the staff training and continuing education for staff uh food for um meetings and office supplies uh copy or lease and printing and that brings us uh to postage that's the total of all their Administration dues and subscriptions they have almost $22,000 budgeted for um various memberships uh Bank charges for Again part of administration partner affiliations this is $84,000 uh the biggest chunk of this is the ports to Plains membership of $56,000 Industrial Park expenses associated with um maintaining that uh facility Insurance uh water and sewer electricity and mowing then we get into uh some bigger expenditures here for The Debt Service this is uh for the ballot projects so uh things like paying the debt on this convention center paying the debt on um uh parks and Facilities so 1.4 million for uh the first debt issue $1.1 million oh I'm sorry $1.4 million in principal and $1.1 million in interest and an additional 1.5 million uh in principle and interest specifically for the Hickory water supply then a marketing and advertising expense to the Chamber of Commerce of $225,000 uh a bre budget that's the business retention and expansion program for 175 uh BRC expenses of $5,000 and uh downtown s Angelo the contract with them for $75,000 and the annual uh Contra Valley Center for entrepreneurial development for $5,000 Charter go ahead okay uh that's where

[3:23:56] I've got a problem is in this page uh you know to me there's a time that you really charge up the hill and and uh do everything you can to get business and then there's a time where you Glide down the hill when things are looking good and and right now in my opinion just a lot of advertising and meetings and stuff are not necessary because people are coming to us now and I I don't see it as necessary plus that first line I was looking in past budgets and in the 09010 we cut that uh 225 that's there we had 275 and we cut it back to 175 and I see that it's managed to inches way all the way back up there again and I was curious as to why uh because I don't didn't understand it and then I also needed an explanation on the insurance uh I understand the insurance um there's there was something in the insurance there with the dno insurance for the board of directors what what is that about I mean do do you have insurance on the council members does anybody know I'm Bob snan interim director of Economic Development I believe the Council insurance somebody can correct me on this I believe the council is self-insured through the city's program uh CA DC we require separate insurance because they are a separate Corporation they're not directly Associated they're associated with the city but they're not they don't fall under the city's Insurance umbrella we don't have insurance we have insurance that's available to us if we want to pay for it this is this this is directors and and um it's not Heth Insurance directors and what's the o stand for it's it's basically Professional Insurance that if you get health insurance no sir if you get sued my

[3:26:00] mistake my mist or if the board gets sued this is to protect the individual board members for Max uh they perform as in serving in that capacity and I had one other item as far as the uh chamber I don't believe we ever went below the 225 I can go back and look but I I pulled it from the budget packet from 2009 2010 and we did cut it to 175 and I remember the discussion because uh it was a pretty heated one but uh I was just curious how it got back up there and now we're paying the Downtown Association and amount also and I just just am real touchy about this particular fund half cent sales tax to me is for voter approved items uh and the oh the other thing was the electricity the maintenance of the softball uh before there's an amount and Michael you may have to remind me what that Ma maximum is that we can charge the cad DC for the maintenance of the sports complex so how does that work yeah I don't believe there's a maximum so there's no minimum you mean no there there wasn't there was what they have been doing though is is reducing that amount each year so it has actually the amount of Maintenance dollars that have been going to the sports complex or to other items they worked on those have been decreasing and you may be able to say how much that is per year Morgan can it's 50,000 per year been it's been reducing 50,000 per year so this would be the last year uh that we would do that one that was and that was not a um that was not prescribed by the ballot that was a that was done as a separate uh uh Economic Development uh motion I think that was that came before Council and Costa DC there is a second one that's for Parks maintenance that increases 2% per year that is a voter

[3:28:04] approved one to to make clear Miss Miss farmer there are two maintenance items one of them ballot approved and another one that was approved separately the separately approved one is the one that's declining by 50,000 per year it just appears in looking at the budget we are eating up a lot of the funds with admin expenses and I just uh really would like to have an explanation of how that U Economic Development Council contract when we we reduced it down to the 175 and now it's right back up there again so I just kind of needed to know that and those were items that I objected to so there were I'm going through my notes here but there were three uh items that came before Council and I do not recall the date but the three items were the chamber uh and at the time it was it was actually in in excess of the 275,000 I believe they were looking at some County funding at the time as well and it was reduced to the 225 the um downtown Angelo was approved at the same time and there's a we are in the fourth year of a 5-year contract with them for that $75,000 uh that's to to goes towards paying the salary of the executive director and like I say that's that prates me as to how that all came about but it it uh it's we're in I believe the fourth year of a 5-year contract what about the what about the chamber contract what about the chamber I'm sorry yes it's been at 225 ever since I've been associated with Costa DC okay so uh is it for a term five years we we renew that one annually annually so or we review it and and uh uh review it and renew it annually so it will be coming up uh beginning of the fiscal

[3:30:11] year thought the chambers was up in July well I I stated what I needed to State on that that it just seems like the overhead and admin uh keeps going up and that eats away at the half cent sales tax and to me the whole purpose that it was put there is to provide uh amenities to our city that we otherwise have not had the money to provide you know the sports complex the Tennis complex the uh swimming pool project the spur Arena the new barns um all of the things that uh we've never been able to do until the half cent sales tax so I I hate to see the admin to keep inching up there and we do don't we pay the Downtown Association and some other part of our budget no we no at one time we paid it out of the general fund but a couple years ago we put it on Costa DC correct and that's the same way sport plan that used to be paid out of general that was the thir three or four years ago Herold heral cded that need to be in Co DC those were all my questions that I had on that winky do you have questions yes sir I have a number of questions and comments uh I'd like to analyze the director's uh liability insurance situation of 20,000 or 12,000 whatever it is it's hard to interpret what's on the budget but uh let's think about this um I I think if the city were um willing to provide these people a defense if they were sued by some outside third party and I can't understand why that might be but I guess it's possible you know have the city provide them a defense but if they do something wrong uh you know let them let

[3:32:13] them be responsible for their activities uh and uh uh I think we ought to consider doing away with that that charge that's just my opinion as an attorney uh we don't we don't have that I'm not sure why they should have it although I realize there might be a little different liability situation under the law uh and their different legal entity also but uh uh that's just one that's one of many objections I have and thoughts and I'd be interested to see what everybody else thinks about the the the director's Insurance uh a couple of other items I think are unnecessary or are these lobbyist uh fees $559 from tmcn and Texas High Ground uh I think some of members even of the coasta DC have a question about the effectiveness of the expenditures of of lobbyist uh we have Mr Drew Darby here who's our representative uh and uh you know for San Angelo in this district and he can Lobby effectively uh I just I don't think those are necessary uh the wind the w we we were paying $10,000 for wind energy uh membership and uh wind energy is going down the tube and we lost our wind energy plant here because uh wind energy is uh not proving out to be what it was uh it was made out to be uh I I think the uh Chamber of Commerce Economic Development contract is way too high I know it was a long time ago when I was on the council we gave the Chamber of Commerce $50,000 a year uh uh it's clear to me and a number of other people I talked to including either even some on the coast of DC that pay in the Chamber of Commerce $18,750 a year when we've got you Mr snan could be argued to be a duplication of effort and I believe you have two

[3:34:16] other people in your office do you not are those positions filled no sir I do not I have two I have two vacant positions yeah okay but they budgeted for uh one would be um the What's called the economic development coordinator that person uh is in Char is the executive director of the business incubator uh they are also our staff representative to the uh Concho Valley Angel Network and then what other what time they don't spend on that in that position then they're available for economic development work the second position would be an analyst position basically uh that would do um the the basic economic development type functions and uh it's I I believe there was something that was done back in 2004 some an analysis of uh Staffing requirements for for the Development Corporation that I think came to to council it was in some some background information that I was reading that said that it put put a value in the neighborhood of $400,000 at that time for Staffing for uh the Development Corporation so um and there's I don't know that the we have an actual final approval on our our staffing at this point I think that's part of what we're talking about now I do as I read this budget and you tell me if I'm wrong it uh it budget for three positions the on weting for three positions that's yeah and my my position also is uh and I believe you testified earlier that that you're you're looking inward rather than outward more so or maybe that was the uh chamber of commer said that because we got people coming here in Fairly substantial numbers because of U of the oil boom and so uh you know do we need do we need all of this effort uh for economic development uh now as opposed to what we would have used

[3:36:18] needed two years ago and and my idea is uh and some I think would argue that that we don't need this uh and so my idea would be to trim that 225,000 back sum and my ID would also be not to provide the $75,000 in total for the downtown uh uh uh it says economic development services but it's a it's a events coordinator also I've heard and I think uh uh an argument could be made that uh the downtown people who that benefit should be U uh willing to bear at least half of that and uh you know to me that's really not Economic Development when you talk about downtown um uh downtown planning um for the for the merchants that are down there you know that uh that that's not Economic Development as I as I understand the term uh I I notice here that there are a large number a large number of large amounts of money having to go uh with um training and workshops and all this kind of stuff one here is for $18,000 for three staff T Tec High Grands training downtown associ ation Mexico and events board development sales tax training te Tec workshops 3500 I see 25,000 on that at a minimum and maybe more uh you know the private sector has adopted uh to market conditions and we we and as a lawyer too you know to keep our uh our licenses we have to we have to do training every year and uh uh we don't we don't travel all over all over all over the place going to these things

[3:38:21] much anymore we use webinars and I think that money could cut be cut way back and employ the use of webinars uh like the business people do around in the private sector now and also attorneys do it almost exclusively except the person who wants to take his wife to Las Vegas once every few years may go to a seminar out there but uh I I just think uh that needs to be looked looked at and there a lot of other things that be could be cut back uh but uh oh one one other one that I have a real problem with is a standard times 20 and under 40 event sponsorship for n $5,900 uh I don't think that's Economic Development and um I think that should be cut out totally and th those are the main ones I have right now at least the larger ones I understand the Downtown Association that's $775,000 that is a contract that we made with downtown some time ago and that 75 and the city the it was that was coming out of the general funds it started at 50 then it went to 75 and then the Downtown Association matches that 75 am I correct at least sir yes at least yes but they have they have an obligation to match the funds and it's probably been two to three years ago that we took that out of the general fund and put it on close to DC but that is a budgeted fund by contract that's correct sir yes so that's 75,000 Downtown Association uh I don't know how long contracts run but that's something that we are by contract obligated to fulfill until the end of the contract so that's the reason I asked last council meeting when these contracts came due and y'all were going to get back and let us know because I didn't know some of them are outstanding at this time that's there are there are a couple the internal ones

[3:40:24] are outstanding at this time the the um staff services that's the one with the city the um uh cono Valley Center for entrepreneurial development the incubator that contract is still outstanding and then the neighborhood and family services so they're the internal contracts with the city that are outstanding um the the um chamber contract has been approved approved through the end of this fiscal year uh fiscal year 2013 so that one will be coming up for Renewal uh and we'll we'll we'll be writing a new contract uh first of the fiscal year Dwayne the 75,000 I was referring to and it's all lumped in together I understood that was most dra all of Mr D vasque salary and I I could be wrong about that but that's what I've been told it is it is all and I was going to add to uh Mr Morrison's comments that uh you know Dell Velasquez is the president of the Downtown Association but you know I've seen I mean that is my district Winky and I've seen uh the events that that are happening down there that this organization adds life to so if it's still under contract I'm okay with but if it wasn't working then I I think I'd be in in in in uh in your uh way of thinking now but I have seen things uh coming up and things happening that because of of that organization so I I don't have any problem with it you know I I remember how dead it used to be out there and really it uh Brena gunar and and Del Velasquez and Company and they're doing some viable things I I I just want to had to speak up for them so yes I I understand that and I agree with you Johnny there things are happening and that's a good thing and it brings dollars to US it truly does on the other hand you have your people who pay all over town who pay that half cent sales tax that maybe don't participate in any of the activities downtown and but they're helping to pay for those

[3:42:26] activities it's a great thing the half cent sales tax from 200000 through February of 2013 we've brought in over $77 million is a number that I believe Mr Valenzuela got for me in February of this year and I just want us to be very cautious as to the admin expense and how we spend the money because it's the people's money that's all I'm asking so when we get to duplicating expenses here and there that we need to remember that and maybe it's not as necessary as we think it is I can't speak to the um necessarily to the some of the marketing aspects of it John Dugan is here from the chamber he can he can fill you in on those um backing up for a minute though to looking at um looking inward instead of outward I believe was was the way it was described we have a a strategic plan for the Development Corporation that that looks out uh into the future and uh is intended to create a Economic Development that's sustainable we we continually hear with the oil boom yes the oil companies are coming someday they're going to leave and if we don't continue to do this is my opinion but if we don't continue to do some economic development efforts when the when the oil companies leave at whatever time that is and whatever level that is there's going to be gaps that are not filled because we haven't continued uh the search for a diversified uh local economy I'm sorry I don't understand that uh well in other words we have Target Industries the technology industry for example um uh agriculture transportation of goods uh different industries that we are also targeting in we're not targeting the oil companies they're coming on their own so those

[3:44:29] Economic Development efforts are not being concentrated on the oil companies they're being concentrated on the other Industries well I think as somebody else said and what I'm trying to enunciate is uh that we've got the oil boom right now we got all these people coming in here and really we don't have the water and the infrastructure so uh it would seem to me this would not be the highest peak time of need uh for economic development it would be a low peak time and uh when and if the oil boom uh discontinues then then that would be the time to accelerate but not now so I guess we just have a difference in philosophy and and it's you know the uh it's this Council uh is is uh it's it's it's your within your scope of your authority to to give us that kind of guidance on what we should be pursuing so I do I do understand that reasoning though I mean I you know as far as diversifying Economic Development uh you do have to pursue that understand what you're saying to councilman but as far as diversifying I I understand what Mr steeman is saying we can't just sit back and rely on oil and gas will continuously come in sooner or later that will go bust we need to make sure that we start working on the foundation right now to ensure that we will have other industry coming in also so that's something that at this point we definitely need to make sure that we address we can't just ignore it at this point we need to make sure that we have that foundation in place and let me just add Mr Mayor that uh Economic Development if if we don't continue down that path I mean we can't just sit back and just hope that something happens I mean it's we've got to continue every day every year to look at something ahead of us uh we heard a report just last week from a gentleman down south that there was with that oil F down there I think we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg you know it may go bus tomorrow but you know what that's what they were those folks uh the naysayers down there were saying hey this isn't going to last and I tell you what their revenues have gone through the roof uh

[3:46:33] the the development that's happened down there and I and I see this we're we're just barely touching uh uh the surface of what's what's to come so to say that we just need to pull back on economic Economic Development I totally don't agree with I think you need you need to keep on reaching out looking out to to see what we can bring our way so that that's just my opinion that is the the Strategic plan that we adopted uh was to pursue those other Industries like I say oil and gas is is just one of them we're not doing a lot of pursuing of that right now but we are trying to concentrate our our efforts in other areas I would make the suggestion since your fiscal year is about to end you end on September as well yes sir I would make the suggestion that you take it back to the Development Corporation the suggestions that Mr Ward law has and y'all discuss this as a board and you determine what has what you need and what you don't need and let them know that the council is not real happy with all of your expenditures and bring it back to us with a with the list of the things that you might be able to eliminate some of the reductions you might be able to make make and let us look at it and and make a decision Don did you have anything um one of the ones that I didn't didn't understand is is planting and surveying for the contract Services Industrial Park as we sell property at the industrial park um one of the things that we do with the smaller tracks is we plat them as we sell them uh and then that we typically would survey out a parcel to sell it so it's just part of the real estate transaction and that's recoverable uh it can be it depends on how the contract the real estate contract is written well the council agree that let them take it back to Costa DC look it over tell you tell your board what the what you've heard here today that that there's things that need to be reduced and then bring it back to us if you've got some recommendations we can look at

[3:48:35] them one at a time I think it would only be fair to point out too that that Costa DC particularly on these membership uh uh partner affiliations the board has instructed us that we need to start reporting success to them success rates to them and return on that investment so uh the Costa DC board is is is well aware of of these same considerations and they've given us that same guidance so let's move on then if it's if it's all right let's move on to storm water and let's hit this one all right thank you thank you Bob mayor yes sir if I may while Morgan Works to bring that next level up uh Miss farmer had a question for me during the break and I believe Morgan has an answer for for that question if if if you care to go there uh the only other one I want to talk about here is a Wastewater this pilot program that's the only one I'm concerned about and if we can push this to another one it would tickle me to death but I'm just one vote would you say that again I'm sorry to understand you I'm concerned about this next one I'm concerned about the Wastewater pilot I do want that reversed but that's really the only concern that I have on this list I'm I'm satisfied more or less with the rest of them but we can go down through each and every one of them if that's what counil wants or if Morgan has an answer you're talking about the question she had about whether this is legal or not if she's got an the wording and and if she's got an answer I would love to hear it if Council doesn't mind well I'd like to hear it I mean if we don't want to do anything illegal and if if she has an explanation I'd like to hear it as well if anybody knows Morgan knows sure I have some information before you um the the budgeting manual that for Texas City's uh is put out by the state com controller the last time that uh she updated this document was in 2011 and of course this is our guide for where we start looking for

[3:50:36] interpretation on the law and and what's allowed for the budget uh and forgive me this isn't formatted in the big font size we like for the for the viewers at home but uh I highlighted this section here to show uh how the budget law speaks to how we can amend the budget um they it's worded a little there's some legal ease here and what it says is the city council however is not prevented from making changes in the budget for municipal purposes through continuing education and um the certifications that that we get in the finance office what they interpret that teach that is is that we may amend the budget at any time in the fiscal year for any reason as long as it's tied to Municipal purposes so I first started with this guide here um you'll see there's a footnote here and that is referring to local government code 102 I might have already skipped over it but I have that local government code to pull up as well to read exactly from the code will it work that I I believe it works for me if accounting is comfortable with it and you've answered my question and where you got the information there there's the there's the statement that you seen right there yep that's the one that I have in yeah in this section right here the governing body May authorize emergency per purchases that's in Section 102 about emergency expenditures that's not about amendments to the budget per se this later section down here which says changes in the budget for municipal purposes Section 102 2.010 this um and I'm sorry I can't figure out this new software to get that part off but this chapter does not prevent the governing body of the municipality from making changes in the budget for municipal purposes for municipal purposes so the state law really allows us to amend the budget at any time for municipal purposes throughout the fiscal year thank you I appreciate it Mr Mayor

[3:52:41] yes sir uh I think as long as we don't change the amount of the budget on on say the storm water fund uh I'm comfortable with putting that off till the next meeting and and spending some time on it and I don't think we're all all going to go to jail and and U uh I'm I'm just I'm comfortable with it and I would like to put that one off possibly then just for next year's budget the storm water fee that we asked when we first got it that if we could give it three years track record is this the third year track record and then review to see if we were right on The Mark with where we place the fees or if those needed to be reduced in next year's budget just take a look at it well I can I can tell you right now it increased $16,500 from last year you talking about expenditures though but I understand that but I'm talking about when we set that fee three years ago we had no earthly idea the money generated or what you know expenses and stuff would be and we set a goal that at the end of three years we would look at it and review to see if we needed to adjust that fee and we're at that end so I just want us to remember to look at it it we'll need to look at that fee not only for routine budgeting purposes but for consideration of its appropriateness for sources for bigger Capital issues and so I think that's what you had in mind isn't it Daniel yeah okay and I don't see that this is important to our budget discussion that we have to discuss this today it it's not important in the short term but it it is important because uh it's how we get that storm water activity done and it could be a funding source for other activities which are Council priorities but I'm the only one on the council that ever voted against the storm water and I voted against it twice so I don't have a pro I don't have

[3:54:43] a problem doing away with it or or minimizing it down to to a minimum amount so I don't have a problem bringing it back but if I remember correctly both those votes were six1 vote so if we don't have to deal with this today I just didn't bring it back deal with it that's F it's fine let's move on to waste waterer and even back you're right as farmer it is three years been 2010 there was a federally mandated that we go this route but even it may have lost its Gusto as far as you know us needing to collect this much money money and if we can back down a little bit on it I mean I you know I have no problem with it but you we can talk about it we go back more detail next time around let's move on so for item C the waste waterer transfers we wanted to give some explanation of of what the pilot is and why what Authority that is taxed um just very briefly was what it was what it was that a payment in Le of taxes is when the general fund can re coup expenses uh from nonprofits or government entities or Enterprise funds like the Wastewater fund to compensate for property tax that would have been paid if it were a taxable entity uh municipalities are permitted to retain a reasonable return from other funds to support general fund uh revenues so uh the in 2004 the water pilot was discontinued per city council Direction no action was taken for the $500,000 Wastewater pilot at that time if we looked at a calculation of the old methodology of how pilot was arrived at we took uh the property that was owned by the fund times the current tax rate and that computed pilot was how we calculated that every year so if we took Wastewater assets as they are on the books today at the tax rate that we adopted today uh the computed pilot that we would ordinarily under that methodology charg to the Wastewater fund would be over 680 ,000 of course we only budgeted

[3:56:47] $500,000 that amount has been flat for some time so a computation would show that we're actually charging the Wastewater fund $180,000 less than um accepted methodologies recommends sorry am I going too fast no you're fine but I've got a few things I need to add so I'm trying to figure out a good time to do it just jump on in there well can you go back to uh history the F oh there you go no action was taken for the $500,000 Wastewater pilot at that time was that the way what the transfer from Wastewater was at that time correct yes it wasn't 550 I'm sorry in 2004 it was 555,000 okay so it peaked at over 550,000 correct and it's been worked down since then but it's been flat the last several years correct okay and we have not computed the value of the assets and and done that taxing uh that quasi tax methodology in a number of years we went through a when we had our previous audit firm web and web we went through a a discussion with uh Mr web Wy web and he said that because we we controlled both sides of the transaction that it was we could not call it pilot pilot uh is something we might do with PHA we don't control their side of the transaction so that could be a pilot transaction but because we control both sides of the transaction we had to call it a transfer so at that time we had both the accounting side saying don't call it transfer don't call it pilot in your financial statements and we had on the political side somebody saying I don't even like that so uh what we did was we complied with the order that we had at the time which was to do away with the water and we stopped using the tax methodology for computing the amount we froze the

[3:58:51] amount and we've worked it down over several years there for a while and it's been flat at 500 cents uh uh do you have more to follow Financial impact all right I'll leave it to you so since yes Mr Mayor can I say something yes I think we had most of this discussion the last time and I think you and ated and some of the other council members indicated it was just a question do we get rid of this pilot fund over one years or two years or something else and uh I think that's where we're headed and I I don't know how much more discussion we need uh characterizing what it is because we're hope we're going to get rid of it and that's right and that's my next slide I just don't I just don't like for people to pay the water the Wastewater fund and then have that money put in the general fund I mean I think it ought to stand alone I would like to see it brought back back as an ordinance that we get rid of this pilot get rid of this transfer from Wastewater to general fund that's what I would like to see and if you'll bring it back as an ordinance that we get away that we do away with this pilot we do away with this transfer then the council can discuss it at that time and we can say yes or no but instead of just going we know what it is well we want to eliminate it and but the authority by which we would refuse that is by amending the budget ordinance and that would require that we reduce the Wastewater expense but also reduce the general fund Revenue so there would be some which and then we would also have to reduce general fund expense so there's something that has to be cut from the general fund budget to make this happen and so what staff would in put before you as an example is that we could reduce the Wastewater transfer for example one one option would be to reduce it $100,000 every year for 5 years and the authority would by that would be adopting the budget ordinance with a lesser amount so since the fiscal year 14 budget is is already adopted at500 ,000 and without immediate opportunity to reduce general fund expenditures by 500,000 an opportunity would be to reduce it $100,000 every year for five years and we're at fiscal

[4:00:54] year 19 we would have Z budgeted for that item I would like that brought back in the form of an ordinance with some with some uh maybe with some different choices where we could increase the general budget 500 where we could cut something bring it back to us and let us look at it and we can make a decision at that time if it's not an Amendment to the ordinance I don't know what what the ordinance would read we'll we'll get with legal on that is that a problem with that Council but an amendment with choices yeah bring us back and we'll tell you which world we want and we may choose to go this 5year plan that may be what we choose to do we may choose to do it all at once we may choose not to do it at all but we need some options so that we are not paying for Wastewater and it going into the general fund we we'll work up some options bring something back and then we can make the decision and when make the decision then you will know what to do what do we want to talk about General capital projects other items is needed or we want to move on to 24 talk to me Council 24 let's move how about let's take about a 10- minute break and then we'll start over to about 3:30 on 24 it's 3:19 we are back it is 3:35 I bring us back into open session we have now got to item number 24 which is des discussion and seeking Direction and approval of city council related to the allocation of $812,500 in contingency funds identified in the proposed FY 2013 2014 budget Miss Marley good afternoon mayor council member city manager uh just as a little bit of history on the 27th of August you asked that um we develop a pay plan that would utilize the 812 953 that was identified as a contingency fund figure in the proposed budget for next year uh there were also some additional things that Council had asked that we um tried to implement in this process the

[4:02:59] first one was to uh come up with a living wage of $220,000 and so what that amounted to was lowering or doing away with our five lowest grades with the city grades 6 through 10 and we created a new grade 11 for that uh the other thing was there were a list of specific jobs that had been identified by different departments that were um difficult to fill based on the fact that their starting salaries were so low those included the dispatchers our Deputy court clerks our Deputy Court Clerk senior and our peace officers uh that are um throughout two different departments uh the other thing that was asked for us to do is to make um any necessary changes after dropping those last five grades if you recall I said that we had some folks in grades 10 who supervised grade eights and when we made them all grade 11s those would um be supervisors and employees making the same amount so we try to fix those the last thing that we did then was um to determine what we would raise the minimums by uh equivalent to whatever size pay increase we could um Grant based on the funding available and this would also fund those vacancies so that as we hired new people into the vacancies uh they would come in at a higher rate of pay in addition to those criteria Council decided that they wanted me to come up with a um percentage that we could give to employees who earned less than $45,000 per year um based on the fact that they would um either meet or exceed expectations during the evaluation process they also asked or you also asked um for me to come up with some sort of a pay increase in a flat dollar amount for those employees who earned more than 45,000 at that same council meeting we also had if you recall $125,000 that was identified um from the ambulance fees to fix the fire step plan

[4:05:05] that we have and the fire chief had created a new plan where there was one step for each position and um so as part of that we would also apply those same criteria for giving raises to those people in fire since they're not covered by the meet and confer money that was set aside so um for the fire employees who earned less than 45,000 they would be entitled to the same percentage pay increase that we would come up with and those making more than 45,000 would be entitled to the flat dollar figure as well whoa now generally um in November each year I will come before you and let you know how the insurance premiums are working out for the upcoming calendar year as we were going through this process and we recognized that the budget was going to be um a little tighter than normal uh HR decided let's take a look at the insurance as best we can try to get a feel for where we are um with anticipated premium increases for next year because if we have this money I wanted to let you know that um there may be an increase and I thought let's go through that exercise and see what we can do we um only had claims data through July uh at present so it's a little bit difficult to calculate because we still have five months left in the year we're starting to see the trend tick up on claims um and we've been hit with a few uh big claims in the recent uh as recently as the last two weeks so um doing a very premature estimate we are expecting an increase somewhere in the neighborhood of 448,000 across all funds which uh 34,40 would be general fund and I only bring that to your attention to keep in mind while we go through this process with the uh

[4:07:07] different pace scenarios what are you doing why I keep doing that all right um when I started this process we um I'd actually identified 10 different scenarios they um ranged in varying amounts of increases in half percent increases um or half percentage points and in the end there were only three of them that I could make all the criteria that was asked for by Council and stay within the dollar figure and those are the three that we're going to discuss today and if you would I'm going to try to go through these three um fairly quickly and then we can talk about them when I get to the end of them if that's okay with Council the first scenario uh we would accomplish all of the council requests that I went over a few minutes ago at a 2.5% level and the dollar figure is uh shown there on the screen 348,000 5% pay increases for off fire and non- Civil Service Personnel under $45,000 and that uh has a cost of 35976 and then um a $490 pay increase to all fire and non- Civil Service Personnel over 45,000 and that would come to 10 14,660 which would leave a balance of the um contingency Fund in the amount of $55 and you'll you'll uh split that with council is that right okay we get an increase um scenario two um through the same drill but we did this at 1.5% uh increments or percentage level so uh doing all the council requests at 1.5% is 323 8.95 uh 1.5 for everybody under

[4:09:12] 45,000 and then giving zero pay increases to anyone over 45,000 that saves 273 545 in contingency by doing that and the final scenario is to accomplish all of the requests by council at the 1.5% level to give a 1.5% increase to those under 45,000 and to give a $490 pay increase to those people over 45,000 and that leaves 168 881 in contingency now I thought I would add these screens to show the impact of what happens by um adding the proposal for insurance to the scenarios that we've just discussed and under under scenario number one uh this one is the first option is just for the city to take on the responsibility that 340,000 uh find it in general fund find it in self- Insurance Fund somewhere um the next option under scenario one would be to use all of the rainy day fund and offset that 340,000 by the 185 341 that's in the Rainy fund leaving a balance for the insurance of 15513 uh if we took that increase and split it equally between the employees the retirees in the city it would result in a 3.5 3.4% increase in everyone's premiums the last option under scenario two would be to increase uh have the increase split between the city and the employees with no rainy funds rainy day funds used and that would result in a 7.5% increase for the city the employees and retirees um under scenario 2 it was a little bit different because there was

[4:11:16] more money left over in the contingency um obviously this first option is still the same where the city would take on that 340 as and from from elsewhere and leave 273,000 uh in the general fund balance or we could use the 273 545 to offset that insurance cost leaving a balance of 6693 5 um we could take the 66935 from the rainy day fund and that would leave 11846 in the rainy day fund or we could increase the employees and retirees at a rate of 5.8% in insurance premium increases or not use any of the rainy day fund and um have the city increase of 53,54 and the emplo employes would increase a 1.5% increase over their current premiums and I apologize for going through this with detail but I just wanted to kind of explain it um so this is the last slide with a bunch of numbers on it the um third slide here or the third scenario options would be to leave the 168 881 in the general fund balance or offset it or use it to offset the um Insurance prediction and um we could use the um the rain the um offset I'm sorry the 168 to offset the 340 would leave a balance of 171 599 that we could take from the rainy day fund leaving 13742 in the rainy day fund um or have an increase to the employees and retirees of 18.75% over their current premiums or not use any rainy day funds and increase the city and the employees and retirees and that would result in a 4% increase in their

[4:13:19] insurance now I am not expecting any decision today on insurance I'm not prepared to even discuss that we um as I mentioned it is premature for us to to try to do that but I wanted to just kind of get a philosophical feel from you on whether or not you wanted to try to have money set aside for this um and if you wanted to take it out of the uh contingency that was identif IFI for pay raises now um certainly the um if Council were to approve us to be retroactive in deciding these pay raises we could wait till the next meeting to do so um otherwise a decision wouldn't be needed today on pay raises so that we could make the first paycheck in October so I would ask for any questions at this point I like scenario one that's what I like let's have some Council discussion on this Don Lisa what happens with the monies that is left from the time the fire marshal retires till the new Fire Marshal is hired that every time a position is left they aren't immediately having a hire what happens to those monies well it depends on whether or not it crosses fiscal years or not but it just stays if if it is if it is not if you don't cross a fiscal year and the and the vacancy is created in the same fiscal year as the year you fill it the money just stays in that Department's fund as I understand it good answer goes to help pay off the leave payoff associated with the uh departing employee um and uh to the extent that it exceeds that amount it it results in an excess budget and that closes to fund balance in other words there's a small little profit in there that goes to fund balance if if that situation results in that excess of budget over expenditures wouldn't it be smart if if we looked at that year toe and and let

[4:15:23] it roll over to help for help us for our pay increases absolutely those kind of things are possible that money is still there it's just it's gone into that fund balance am fund balance it's not a designated amount for a designated fund exactly it's undesignated it's just there for a rainy day although we only have a little piece of it right now that we call rainy day fund but uh that amount is available for Council um utilization right I like scenario one also looks like we're about to have a list of the rainy day fund doesn't it well depends on how you look at other things we've live we've had it for what three weeks now so so in scenario number one it's U 100% increase in their salaries and employee and retirees have zero increase in insurance premiums the city will absorb that are you going to do the rainy day fund or without the rainy day fund in scenario one I'm going to have to give up my rainy day fund because I'm not going to burden I'm not going to give them just a little bit of increase and then take it all away on insurance I I I that makes it 3 four three I like that I like but I've enjoyed that rainy day fund for the 3 weeks we've had it how much interest did it earn do you it's probably made a dollar I do have a question yes sir on the the impact of adding that insurance that 340,000 explain to me what you meant by that 480,000 general fund because employees work in different funds and they pay towards the insurance some of them are not general fund employees so since we are talking the $812,000 is only for the general fund so I can carve out those people from the insurance when we're talking about how much money we would need from the a12 okay do we have further counsel comment on this if we went ahead and approve the scenario one just as it is and then you come back in November then we can

[4:17:26] determine whether or not we use the rainy day fund that is correct and it would continue to draw interest we can't we can't give them a little bit of a raise and take it all of it back on insurance I I can't do that uh if someone wants to make a motion that we approve one of these then we can move on down the road I'll move for scenario one I'll second that we have further Council comment do we have comment from the public mayor yes sir I'd like to express special appreciation for HR for looking ahead on this issue they didn't just want to blow the raises by you without giving you a heads up on insurance yeah and uh they worked the weekend in order to work those scenarios up so it's reality special thanks to them for going to extra mile I appreciate it and it is reality I mean it is what it is and we have to take care of that as well I have a motion and I have a second Tim did you want to talk yes sir you got public comment yes sir okay Lisa if you'll leave that okay good looking at the the pay scenario and I don't remember what it was I think it was 2.5% uh increase for employees under 45,000 with the uh it's just back and forth isn't it yeah that's it that's it right there1 okay 2.5% and you're looking at a possible 3 . 4% increase on your city employees on insurance they're still taking a loss and if you're looking at employees that are making over 45,000 you're going to give me 400 I'm just saying me because I'm one of those over 45 but at 490 and then you're going to decrease my salary 3.4% I appreciate the gesture in in in scenario one and and your your attempt to not take away but this scenario in essence takes away uh Chief I think the I think council did not make a commitment one way or another on insurance at this point we have not made a commitment yet okay but we know that it's coming okay and also and I talked to Lisa about this earlier if later on in the year if we find that maybe we do have some budget

[4:19:29] money where we can increase these we can make a budget amendment and we can increase salaries if we see that we need to we have done that before we have made midy year and uh I'm committ I'm committed to bring absolutely I just knowing looking at the potential scenario saying I saw the same thing and and then with the potential scenarios that she had available for scenario one it was concerning to me because all every employee in the city is going to lose money they're going to make less on their paycheck than they did if we go with the insurance increase I don't think you lose cuz if you get a $490 raise two and a half of two if you get your bulk raise of $490 a year and then you uh one point what is that two 23% on the Insurance it be a lesser amount it was 3.4% it may balance out you're right no it doesn't go ahead but it's better and have the insurance go up more than your increase and I mean I would just point out that we are also um continuing with our wellness program and um I'll I'll give a plug that we're doing our health screenings during the month of October so there's always the chance that we're going to get health here um but I think we need to be realistic about the costs that are going up with insurance so how about I think it's wonderful that rainy day fund is there and it can stick around even if it's only 3 weeks it can stick around till I come back I was going to say Chief I think we saw the same thing you were looking at thinking the same way so and you know and and that's my concern is I I've been in the city 24 years I've been here when we got a pay increase and Don will remember and then the insurance kicked in or something kicked in and we lost money and so I mean and 2.5% I can't speak on everybody over 45 but if you want to keep my $490 that you're going to give me and put it to those people under 45 bom means go right ahead cuz $490 does nothing to my budget for the year so uh again I can't speak for all the people over 45,000 but you'd be I'm more than happy to give mine back thank you Chief Miss Marley I would like for you

[4:21:33] to continue to work on this yes sir and if there is a way to fund this where they do not have an increase in insurance I would love to have it that way that would always be my goal as well okay we do have a motion in a second all of those in favor of scenario one please say I I all oppose Nay put a 60 on that M Ramirez all right we have now moved on to the holiday schedule uh we've got about 35 minutes until Don calls a halt to this do we want do we want to talk about this or do we however this shouldn't take me just a minute should it no no sir let's go ahead let's go ahead and do the consideration approving the FY 201314 employee holiday scheduled and in the action in connection there too Miss Martin yes sir I do not have a a PowerPoint presentation for this so it'll be very quick um we have 11 paid holidays by policy each year for our employees and um we have uh been asked to put those on a fiscal year basis as opposed to a calendar year basis and so uh in conjunction with the budget we'd be interested in making sure that you're aware of what holidays we have if you recall there are times when we'll come to you in December when the county picks an extra day and we'll approach Council to see if they're interested in closing this is to try to eliminate that from happening if we look at the holidays early enough in the summer for the upcoming fiscal year then we do not have to present that to council so I'm not asking for any different holidays I'm just saying that in the upcoming fiscal year we would keep those the same as this past fiscal year I see no problem there some of them want to make a mo some of them want to move that we adopt this I'll make a motion that we adopt this tentative I guess holiday schedule I mean you could change it but I do have to ask have you guys ever looked at some type of floating holiday no sir um we um we tried to add an extra holiday at one point in time but it was it's expensive to do and and

[4:23:36] we were it was not approved but um certainly if you want me to go back and I'm looking at that Veterans Day Monday November 11th you know it would be nice to have Monday that Monday in in in uh in December prior to Christmas you know you got that Tuesday and Wednesday when I throw that Monday and have a very long weekend I'm just throwing that out right and and again you know that may be something that the county will de set you know think about for the upcoming year but because it's in the middle of the week we didn't see a reason to do that this year okay I'll second you second but I always hated when Christmas I got off Tuesday and Wednesday and then the next year I got off Wednesday and Thursday and yeah yeah and I was on call a lot of time so I couldn't take off any other time too see that's why some typ of floating holiday would work yeah in any scenario really well the I I think you'd probably hear argument about taking away the Veterans Day holiday because that's a brand new holiday that we just got and it's you know that we have a lot of military support in the community I would hate for us to do away with veterans personally no I agree with that we've got a motion we have a second are changing the year also fiscal year they want in the request they're requesting we change the year as well to do it on a fiscal year basis as opposed to a calendar year basis you want to include that in your motion Johnny no I don't yeah I will I'll include that in my motion will you include that in your second they approve any other Council discussion on this public discussion did you have something else no it you said tentative schedule but it's tentative until you approve it and then it would be final so we're then it becomes un tentative yes all those in favor please say I I oppose Nay put a 60 on that one thank you V all right we have a discussion and seeking Direction by the city council to

[4:25:40] the watering of city parks do we want to handle that or do we want to push this one let's handle it 31 minutes rck let's handle it discussion and seeking direction of city council related to the watering of city park Sports Fields Santa Fe golf course Fairmont cemetery and you are not Shane Kelton I'm a little smaller tell Chief Vasquez I'll take his $490 to okay good afternoon mayor and city council city manager wanted to visit with you all about watering obviously with drought level three possibly right around the corner uh we would like some direction and as you can see in our first Slide the purpose of this presentation is to receive direction from City Council on irrigation practices of turf and trees for City maintained parks and sports Fields uh the Santa Fe golf course there was some interest on trees on Santa Fe golf course and of course Fairmount Cemetery as well as we move towards and into drought level three of our current ordinance the areas for discussion uh that we're going to need some some direction towards is the uh Texas Bank Sports Complex the uh St Angelo Soccer Association those fields off of glenner Street uh what we classify as double A and A sites these are the newly constructed High visible highly utilized sites the most uh invested sites that we have in town uh we also need some direction for our other sites we have many of our sites that uh do not have irrigation or have irrigation that have been turned off for quite some time to conserve water and those are a lot of those are B and E sites uh and then of course with Santa Fe golf course we need some uh Direction with that as well as Fairmount Cemetery of course the reason for supplemental irrigation uh is to sustain a healthy landscape and safe playing surface for the enjoyment of our general public to minimize of course if you keep that Turf

[4:27:43] there and that plant material you can minimize soil erosion and excessive weed populations uh also to avoid the replacement cost uh from plant injury or death due to Drought stress uh trees can be quite expensive uh Turf goes for about 45 to 50 cents a square foot installed so it can get quite expensive especially if you have a lot of Acres that you have to replace currently the parks department maintains a total of about 15 555 Acres 356 of those acres are in parks close to 200 acres are in sports fields of those 555 Acres approximately 292 Acres have viable irrigation systems out of those uh 292 Acres 150 acres of the irrigated sites have both an underground traditional irrigation system as well as drip irrigation now I do want to note that the drip irrigation on these sites are not on every tree so when we have gone in in the past uh over the past 10 15 years and renovated sites or we have a newly established site uh those trees that were already established mature trees did not receive irrigation not because we didn't want to a lot of it had to do with the funding of the project itself so with lack of funds we were unable to provide that drip irrigation throughout those uh those areas so primarily it's to new plantings if we had new shrubs new ornamentals new trees that we planted that's where the drip irrigation uh was put in so that we would be successful uh with those plants and currently we have approximately 173 Acres that we're irrigating and again it goes back to those double A A sites the highly visible highly utilized sites uh in including our Sports Complex Santa Fe golf course on the other hand has about 36 Acres of turf and Landscape that's irrigated and

[4:29:48] Fairmount Cemetery has roughly 57 Acres now we pay an average of $420 per th gallons for that water when you do the calculations it cost my budget approximately $114 per acre for one inch of water so for every week that we are in a dry spell that we are going out and putting out water and we we're based on our ordinance we have to put out less than an inch uh we or an inch or less that inch would cost me roughly $114 an acre when you look at the requirements for our our Fields our parks and whatnot uh and you look at that one in per week we can estimate about 28 to 56 in needed in a given year again that's depend on rainfall it's depending on use uh it depends on the quality that you desire if you look at uh on average we probably look at probably around 38 in uh for for a lot of these sites especially in a drier year in a wetter year we could maybe be looking at some like 25 or 30 inches that we would have to add with supplemental irrigation if you use 38 in that cost is approximately 4 $1,332 an acre per year for those sites so our Texas Bank Sports Complex it would cost roughly $238,000 a year for water at the current water price for the parks with viable irrigation systems That's not including sassa the s s Angelo Soccer Association they pay their own water so do the leagues but for the other areas the 194 Acres I would need about 800 $40,000 in my budget Santa Fe golf course would need about $156,000 a year to put about 38 Ines of

[4:31:51] water on it and Fairmount Cemetery would need about 247,000 as you can see our annual budget is far from that the Texas Bank Sports Complex is close to 41,000 our Parks is 207,000 or close to 208,000 and Fairmount cemetery is 15,00 000 and I put a note in in the Fairmont Cemetery because I have a lot of concerns about that site as well that budget of 15,000 only allows them to water about two to three times a year it takes roughly $6,000 to $6,500 to put one inch of water over that 57 Acres so given the fact that they only have 15,000 I think last year they may have had 22,000 you know in one month they would have spent pretty much their their entire budget so that's a concern on our end especially as managers of those budgets so there's an obvious deficit that exists in the water budgets for all these sites trees are a huge concern not only for you but for myself and our staff uh we did a a recent assessment we have a total of about 3,400 trees in our parks and sports fields we have about 12% of that is under quite a bit of stress is what our assessment is today and we found another about 2% are dead so that'll be a lot of work that we'll be doing this winter time taking out those dead trees Santa Fe golf course has about 352 trees we found about 10% under severe stress at this point and about 1% that are dead Fairmount cemetery on the other hand has close to 1,600 trees in that 57 Acres 6% under a lot of stress and 3% dead on that side are these figures before or after you you did the removal that's a good question these are after after this is this week's actually

[4:33:55] last week's assessment of our all of our sites so this is after all of those so that's an additional oh 60 or however many trees that were taken out along the river uh as well as several that have been taken out at Fairmont Cemetery as well as other parks that we've been taking out so it is a huge concern but uh so those areas as you can see this is uh Firefighters Memorial City Park where we do irrigate and continue the irrigation we certainly don't have quite the stress on those trees and our turf seems to be staying alive it's not perfect but it's it's enough and we put out less than 1 in per week uh during of these dry months for Sunken Garden where we do have irrigation at the site but to be on the conservative side we've chosen to take out a a pretty large percentage in terms of how much we're watering you can see that we're getting hit pretty hard uh obviously this is a this is not just this year this is over the course of the last two to three years at least from the standpoint of a drought uh in fact when I got here in 2006 about the only year that I really enjoyed the rainfall was 2007 uh and that's when everybody made a bumper crop with all the crops around here as well since then we haven't had that great of a year uh and of course the last two to three years have been horrible another picture at Sunken Garden uh where we have dead and and stressed trees again system turned off Harmon Park this is located close to close to 14th Street off off the river uh that's that's a picture of a cypress tree right by the creek again becoming stressed and these pictures again were just taken within seven days of today and again that system is off because we do wanted to we wanted to conserve water focusing on those areas

[4:35:58] that we had most recently renovated in the high-end facilities and again here's some pecans in that same park and then of course we have those areas listed uh uh within our documentation with no viable irrigation at all uh and you're seeing quite a bit of stress now some of that stress is species specific we're seeing we're having a hard time with some of the juniper trees especially in Fairmount Cemetery uh I did have Texas A&M come out and take a look at it the extension service we sent samples off for both insects and diseases they came back both negative um and after discussions with Mr begno and others uh we pretty much concluded that it seems to be a continuation of this drought that's causing that that issue but I was afraid that we were actually getting hit with something different uh uh in some cases along the river we have had some that that have received disease um hypox and kaker has come in throughout uh which is a disease basically that comes in after a stressed period like a drought uh but those are normally secondary problems our big issue right now of course is the drought so issues related to irrigation trees of course we have the water budget funding deficits that we just discussed the funds for increasing the amount of drip or traditional irrigation systems in our parks where we would find those funds for the parts the installation the feature maintenance cost and the labor for future maintenance there's also limitations on making changes to existing systems a lot of times the Hydraulics of that system will not work correctly if you go in and start capping irrigation heads or changing things within the valves or the lines or the wiring and things of that nature so there are limitations there initial stress on the trees from ditching during and immediately following installation of systems basically what that means is if you choose for us or to pay for someone to come in and put a drip irrigation system

[4:38:02] in let's say long Santa Fe golf course there is going to be additional stress on those trees no doubt because of all the ditching that's going to take place what we need is a commitment then to have water for at least 60 to 90 days that we can place as drip onto those trees so that we don't lose them as well and then there's an increased amount of course of water following any increase in what we do from the standpoint of areas that we water or the amount of drip that we're going to use and where that water is going to come from who's going to pay for it options for trees along the north side of the river I know a couple of weeks ago uh maybe even two meetings ago y'all discussed bids that were brought to you uh for putting that drip irrigation uh all the way from Concho Street to First Street that was on the Riverside of Veterans Memorial Drive past Irving as well as all the way to Concho street through the old nefs area that bid was for 154,155 bids for the golf course from South AB Street to borgard Street was 142,00 again that's a very expensive Endeavor but it's the most efficient use of that water of course placing it right there at the root system of those trees second option could be a quick coupler connections uh I'll show you a photo of that here shortly the estimated cost for parts and installations would be close to $14 to $1,500 per quick coupler this is basically going out and putting faucets so to speak that you plug in into the ground and then with water hoses dragging them from One Tree to the next expensive very labor intensive uh again lacks water use efficiency just because you're basically letting water run rather than it be through a drip

[4:40:05] system another option is drip irrigation from thg tanks we're currently utilizing that method it's slow we have two tanks right now uh I do want to thank the fire department they're letting us use some of their light duty staff as well as other departments that have offered uh for us to use uh their staff members to help with that we also pay labor ready uh workers to come out and help but we have basically drip irrigation hoses that we uh put around those trees around that drip line of those trees uh we can put about 250 to 500 gallons each time uh for those trees uh we can get approximately four to eight trees per day through that system right now we're currently focusing our efforts from Irving Street to First Street and uh what I told our guys is to focus primarily on the most stressed trees that we have in that area with that system lastly we can utilize the existing irrigation system that was most recently installed from cono Street to First Street again we're primarily talking about uh again the nefs area um just east of Oak Street West of Oak Street uh west of Irving Street um I'm sorry chadburn and then uh a west of Irving Street along Veterans Memorial Drive that does not include the golf course uh they do have a system in place we did a rather quick ass assessment of that system uh here within the last month or so uh we estimated it would cost probably 60 to 75,000 to get that system back into shape there are problems with heads valves wires that have been cut uh problems with the controller uh there are things that would require not only the money but a lot of time to get that repaired especially from a staff that uh uh that

[4:42:10] that we're lacking within the parks department one good thing about using the irrigation system that's put into place now we're talking about an a underground system but that is heads that pop up and shoot above ground okay it does limit the tree stress from the standpoint of no ditching but it is probably the least out of the of the options in terms of efficient use of that water not only that but uh the public perception is going to be quite the issue especially if we hit drought level three and of course we need to consider future water and maintenance cost as well as labor issues for that this is a picture of the quick coupler connection that we would be using for hose connections these are the two tanks that we're currently utilizing to put drip and water around trees in problematic areas so the questions that we have as a staff is do you want to continue irrigating City sites that are currently receiving supplemental irrigation do you want to increase or decrease the overall number of irrigated sites if we enter into drought level three do you want to continue irrigating Park systems Sports Fields Santa Fe golf course or Fairmount cemetery and number four what adjustments will be made for the deficits in the water and maintenance budgets for All City sides and again these are the areas of discussions that we mentioned earlier at this time I would entertain any questions that you may have hopefully I can give you a good answer would you flip back to that prior one please sir yes sir the options is this the one that you're looking for

[4:44:15] um no I think keep going for the questions yes I'm sorry is that the one sir yes okay well I'll just State my preference because I've stated it before the answer to question number one continue irrigating the answer my answer is yes um I don't I I would like to [Music] increase overall irrigation but I'm not sure that's uh I'm not sure we're able to do that at this time so I think my answer to that one would be no uh drought stage level three uh I haven't looked in the at the ordinance in a couple of weeks but under draft Trad is level three uh it does allow for irrigating uh trees I looked at that today councilman and and yes it does have a notation about drip but it does also say that it has to basically come through council's approval so my U the way I understood it was once we hit drought level three at that time y'all would need to make a decision on how y'all want to handle drip irrigation from trees whether yall will allow it or not I'm not sure I totally agree with you but anyway it's PE for itself but uh uh I I think we I until uh let's see is that is that at 12 months worth of water yes yes sir yeah I think you have to look at the season you're talking about um and the critical season would be next summer obviously because we' probably be okay if we just get some rain um I would I would like to continue to water during draft level three for a while uh next summer only I well up through next summer depending on how much water we have of course course and then um as far as the adjustments everybody's going to need to State their own preference but

[4:46:18] uh we're talking about more money than than we've got so uh you know to me there is some argument for requiring certain departments to have or certain areas to have their own water budget but uh but on the other hand it isn't accounting fiction and you're just moving money from one one area to another other one hand to another and so uh I I think that we've got to save the trees at the Fairmount cemetery and the Santa Fe Park C course and maybe some other areas that some other people have focused in on and so um uh you know my recommendation would be that we for for a period of 12 months and and and or until further notice from the council that U that those two items and any other any other area is that Council deems appropriate that we that we wave a budget for these areas uh you you you made a good point which was uh that the budget water budget for the Fairmont Cemetery would need to be in the hundreds of, range and we don't have that kind of money and and all was allocated was $14,000 and that's that's they Minimus and and is is is not not effective to do anything and so either our options seem to me like are either uh give them a waiver uh or just forget just forget the water and then let the trees die and and I'm not for that you certainly bring up one good a really good point about season uh we're very fortunate this year as compared to last year going into drought level three and that we're further along down the line uh our requirements that we talked about from the standpoint of 28 to 56 in a year of course will lessen as we get into those cooler temperatures and instead of kneading one inch per week or wanting to put out an inch per week we

[4:48:20] may be being looking at an inch every two weeks uh possibly an inch every 3 to four weeks from that standpoint again that's an assessment that we make as we see how much rainfall we get and how the temperatures go right and one other important point I don't I can't speak for everybody else but I get the feeling that the council is not interested in spending a bunch of money and putting in a drip irrigation system in Santa Fe park right now since we've already got the other system that's in existence and also you pointed out the stress depending on the time of year you do that uh I just don't think there is U the interest in in replacing that system we have and I would rather personally limp along with the system we've got down there it looks to me like the trees you're using the the system you're using around the golf course is doing a pretty good job right now the trees look pretty healthy to me in the in the main it's it's sporadic and the reason why I say that uh two Pro Management has that contract and their focus primarily seems to be at the greens the te's and the approaches anything outside of that area has not received any type of irrigation and that's where most of our loss has been uh currently with the some of the direction that y'all had given us we are watering uh basically uh around Veterans Memorial Drive every Saturday I have one of our guys out there uh until noon uh basically watering that whole area all the way to the Pro Shop uh but it's not the entire course it's just in that that one zone along the river no I understand and that's for the purpose of protecting the trees none of us are concerned about the golf course right now uh I'm recovering golfer myself and played in college but we just don't have the water and they don't have they don't have the money to afford to pay us for the water so the golf course is going to have to suffer at this point in time yes Johnny do you have a comment Roger I just uh you know I've always been a proponent of a tree of trees I love trees I've never walked driven by a tree that I didn't

[4:50:23] know you know I just couldn't help myself from thinking where it needs pruning so it's just something that's in me I've always really enjoyed trees but uh my question is uh going back to the Santa Fe golf now are you talking about the trees along the Santa Fe golf course course you're not talking about the golf course itself is that right from which from which standpoint the watering the watering standpoint yeah currently we are watering the golf course with the current system uh once a week they they are also watering their areas but we also have staff going down there usually on the weekends once a week that's watering those zones that primarily cover along Veterans Memorial Drive but there are additional areas you can look through that golf course and see that's receiving very little if any irrigation at all but some of his dollar figures initially were talking about watering the entire Golf Course those dollar figures you're talking about not are just they're not correct correct and that that that leads to my next question is I remember before T Pro took over when Mike dasas and them ran that place I mean they struggled every year to to keep you know to bring funds and to water so now corre what's so different between them when they used to have it now T Pro I mean are we we have a contract with t Pro and and they're responsible for certain portions of things so it's all under that contract and you know there's nothing different that we still struggle with water it's you know we've tried to give them the opportunity to bring in additional revenue and you know you were here when we did all that contract so there's all kinds of things there and then going back to the uh the 352 trees there at the golf course how many have we removed if the the ones we I want to say it was 29 it was it off the golf course I believe it I believe it was somewhere around 29 to 32 that were actually off the golf course you know I really and and and I'll end I'll end it with this I don't believe we need to let

[4:52:26] trees die you know I I realize the Heat and stress and all plays a big part but even the ones that some of the ones that died along the river if they were disease related that's one thing but if we let them dry up you know that's that's sad you know and there we are years later having to remove all those dead ones so it kind of like you know we're just being uh reactive to the situation where you know we were a lot better off years ago when we should have been you know thinking about saving some trees and we didn't and uh so you know as much as I I I do want to save a lot of trees I mean we got to think about us humans that you know need the water but I mean we can kind of balance it out and save some and do the best we can I mean I'm okay with it I'm just again some of the dollar figures that have been brought forth I mean I think they they're they sound they're very high they're very high but I you know I'd like to save as much as we can I'm talking about trees but again we've I think I'd rather drink the water than give it to certainly understood we might be better served actually to have the staff come up with some possible solutions and present that to for the city council members rather than you know trying to come up with something that'll work right now actually go back to the drawing board just look at every solution we possibly can uh you know present those to the city council members and see where we can go with there the intention today was very much that we're ahead of the curve because you're not in three yet but we don't want to Spring that on you at the last minute but we also want to point out as Roger said that staff has continued to water this we haven't quit I mean as far as the trucks running that's been going all since this spring so the real issue was to try and get some guidance from you as to where you want us to go because at the end of the day when this budget ends this year you know how much money we have in the budget for watering so that Sports Complex it's not going to happen you know unless we get some additional funds in there secondly if y'all are in

[4:54:28] general thinking the drip is is too much of an investment we can do more research on for instance the quick couplers which would allow us to move hoses I know that's labor intensive but that may be the best approach at this point because it lets you Focus that water so you know I'm kind of hearing that I don't think youall like the large amount of money on drip so let us scale back onto that other one do some more specifics and even look at those specific parks where we may be able to do it and not try and argate the entire park but try to put in some quick couplers where we can argate trees specifically and if that's kind of the approach that I'm hearing then we'll do that very thing that Daniel said and bring it back to you yes no yes where are we on the water supply I mean we're I know we're close to level three but maybe Ricky could are we still at 15 months I've heard 16 15 well well Ricky's coming up here does uh Fairmont have any kind of of sprinkler system or they have both the traditional and they've been trying to increase the the amount of drip that they have on the site especially on any new trees that have been planted but even on the existing trees and we've actually looked at where those trees are located and we've even identified certain locations that we seem to be receiving more problematic type of um issues with trees uh there are certain zones that we've identified because when we did our assessment we did it by blocks out there and if you've been out there they're they're in blocks uh and so some of the things that we're going to be doing as staff is going back and looking at okay maybe we should focus more on those blocks look at the species that are in those blocks and try to do that type of thing but use the same typ and all I need is a number of months that's all I need we just a shade over 14 months okay thank you we're through with this one yes sir let's if one other just real quick you

[4:56:31] know we we showed y'all some pictures of the trees that are stressed out in the peripheral parks along the river uh just real quick we we would like y'all to Direction on those trees as well too uh where we have actually shut systems completely down and we are starting to see Sunken Garden Park along the river further down as well too uh you know we hear trees you know we want to save trees uh are we primarily focused along the river in in Fairmount or do we want to focus in Sunken Garden do we want to focus further on down the river into Harmon Park and places like that as well that's another Direction I think that we would like to have as well well uh begner I think would tell you that you want to uh to the extent you can try to save those stress trees and if we start getting some rain in October that would probably might even tied us through the year and so you just don't want to prematurely quit watering trees that you might save uh if you just go a little bit longer nursing them along so uh all I can tell you is what John would say and that is try to go to that go the last uh uh degree in in uh and try to save those trees and and maybe uh we get a good rain and and you know they're saved and we and then we'll get through the next spring let's try and finish up this this agenda we are really running out of time thank you thank you Roger the item number 27 is consideration of nominating candidates to serve on and adopting a resolution nominating candidates eligible for a position on the board of directors of the Tom Green County Appraisal District for the 214 215 term of office Mr Ramirez yes sir I have listed the five candidates currently on um the board right now this is just to uh give you a heads up we can postpone this item until the next week in case you want to nominate somebody else for the position you can allocate your votes to all five members or to one member it's council's um desire I personally don't have a the

[4:58:36] these these five men that are on here now are good candidates and I personally don't have a problem with staying with them and if Council will agree just divide our votes between them but Council discussion uh so move we have a motion we have a motion we have a second that we divide our votes equally among John begn John Khan Russell D'Or Lewis Gomez and Bob Raves any further discussion public discussion motion has been made that we equally divide our votes between those five men I will ask for uh approval all in favor say I I any oppose Nay put a 60 on that one consideration uh possible action on matters discussed in executive closed session we go back to item number 13 that we spoke about earlier and we did one half of this and determined that we would pay the debt that we owed thus far we are also talking about the additional item of going and becoming a member of the West Texas partnership as as we discussed this in Council there were many questions that were brought out by Council and many questions were good questions and we need to be sure that s Angelo is getting its third of this partnership Daniel and I are to meet in Midland tomorrow with the abene and the Midland depart the Midland Area the partners and we have a list of questions we're going to ask them so depending on the answers we get tomorrow I think the consensus is that we want to remain in the west Texas partnership that there is definitely advantages to being in this but we also want to be sure that s Angelo is getting its onethird of what we spend so we have decided that after Daniel and I go to the meeting tomorrow we present these questions we get the answers and then next meeting next meeting we will we'll put it on the agenda we will discuss this and we will make a decision

[5:00:39] okay everybody agree with that let's move on then to item number 28 29 consideration of approving various board nominations by Council and designated council members public art commission Lorie Franks this is smd4 to a full term April 20015 Zoning Board of adjustments Lewis roor smd5 to an unexp unexpired term January 20114 do I have a motion to accept these motion to approve is submitted second I I have Charlotte has made the motion and Johnny has approved it do we have any further discussion do we have discussion from the public if not I will take the vote all of those in favor say I I I those in oppose say nay motion carries 6 to0 item number 30 is consideration of nominating a city council member to serve on the PCH to Plains trade Corridor Coalition and I have requested this the ports to the ports to Plains uh quarterly meeting will take place first week in October in amarilla at this current time Charlotte farmer is the is the Des the design or the board member for this uh last September we had a real it was a real sorry detail when Charlotte took this away I had been the board member for six years Charlotte took it away uh I guess the long and short of it is that I want back and at this time Charlotte I'm going to give you the opportunity to resign and nominate me as the board member I hope that's the way you do it that's the easy way and we'll move on well Dwayne I've been on what 10 months uh of a twoe term it's a two-year term duly elected um I'm not willing to step down I will at the end of two years but I've not done anything wrong I have attended the meetings and you served for 6 years prior on the board and I I don't know

[5:02:44] why I can't have the two years okay then we're going to go into all of the sord details that happened last September I didn't want to do this I didn't want to bring this up I didn't want to air dirty laundry but uh Mr Mayor yes can we just take a let's just took the vote yeah let just let's just nominate and and go let's let's don't go there let's let's have a motion then I I'm going to move or nominate you as our remove remove or remove uh Charlotte and uh place you nominate you you are a current mayor and you have done an excellent job and did a previous excellent job on this uh port to Plains Corridor Coalition so I'm going to nominate you as a as a member or a nominee or board member board member for this portter Plains Corridor that that's my that's my nomination do I second that do I have further counsel consideration do I have public consideration the motion has been made that Charlotte be removed from the portch to Plains board director and that I be placed in the bo portch to plains as the board director for the city of San Angelo do I have public comment all of those in favor please say I I I all of those opposed Nay Nay n raise your hands eyes raise your hands we have a 4-2 vote Charlotte has been removed and I have been established as the ports plane board member uh we can Don do you want to make the the motion to adjourn or do you want to go back and pick up all these that we pass items okay let's have future items announ uh consideration of future agenda items what does everyone have well Mr Mayor uh there some items that we brought up earlier that that got overlooked uh and I'm still not clear where they are but uh that need to be

[5:04:46] discussed having to do with the budget and I don't know if we can carry these over I hope we can one of them was the workers comp incentive for $220,000 which we were told was not in the general budget and I don't know where that comes from and then there was a cell phone increase for 63,000 of V Bureau increase of 100,000 and an Arts Council increase of 63,000 I don't mind talking about those next time but um I just want to call it everybody's attention and make sure that we can okay did did we want to meet again next Tuesday could conclude the agenda that we started today yes I'd like I'd like to get it over with Johnny I'll have to check I've got something but see if I can toggle it around so don I I'd like to meet Johnny if it would I don't think this it's going to take that much time it shouldn't take but a couple hours yeah if if you can go morning or noon and then we can go from there okay Charlotte next week that's fine winky when next Tuesday uh what what time what do y'all say 1:00 2 o00 the chamber is available in the morning only not in the afternoon pardon me the chambers is available in the morning but not in the afternoon how about 9:00 Monday 9:00 Tuesday morning and we will conclude and finish the rest of this agenda and can did you want to put the budget stuff on the this coming Tuesday or the next regular no it can carry over till next week next regular yeah next next week no next week next week yeah okay then he needs to add that the items he was talking about the budget stuff on the next week and then we will conclude our agenda no I want to add it you want to add one I want to add an item for the next regular session not next Tuesday but the next regular session uh I would like it to be discussed in executive session their Royal

[5:06:48] project and I would like the the presenters of that project that we had the last meeting if we could try to possibly get them there and discuss we need to move forward on this and and do something we haven't done anything anyone else have anything you want to add I have one item I want to add to the executive and I want it worded just exactly is this it is the policy of the city council that stewardship of the public interest must be their primary concern and that all me all of its members shall perform their duties in accordance with federal and state law City Charter city ordinances City policies including the code of conduct and the code of ethics violations of such law or policy undermine the public confidence and the Integrity of city government and the effectiveness of the city council as a body and I would like to see that on the next executive because I think we've had a breach of contract uh a breach of conduct and a breach of Ethics that I would like to discuss as a council is there anything else that needs to be added then Don I'll accept your motion sir move that we adjourn second we have a motion to adjourn and a second all in favor say I I nay we are adjourned it is 441

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=cz08JT3A3Zw