San Angelo City Council 9-18-12 Part 1

[0:00:00] [Music] Good Morning. Let's call the meeting to order. And we will start this morning uh with a prayer from Reverend Reverend uh Ruben Metaf of the St. Angelo Cowboy Church. Good morning. How about that rain? It's all right. Let's pray. Father, thank you this morning for an opportunity to just live life. And then Lord, we want to ask you to help us. We're a needy people. But then Lord, this morning, I pray as this council meets that Lord, you would give us divine wisdom and knowledge that comes from you that we would understand what your will is and that we might honor that. Father, this morning also I pray for those that for our needs. Lord, we we know there's a great agenda today for water. And Lord, we're we're pleading to you for that that you might help us with that in the form of rain. And Lord, we thank you for that. So help us today. Uh help this this group, these people. I pray Lord that your blessings would be upon the work that they do today. And we'll thank you for that in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you very much. You take a picture of me doing the

[0:02:07] pledge. We have any children at heart that want to come do the the pledge with me? Okay. I'm a big boy. I can do it. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas. One state under God, one and indivisible. Great job. What? I'm listen. I'm ready for all the nice job. And God, it's a hard group. Okay, fine. Every week you clap and tell them how well they did. Okay. This morning I have a recognition uh that I'm pleased to get an opportunity to to pass on. So, Miss F, how about joining me up here? AJ Favre, who is our planning manager, has been named to the American Institute of Certified Planners. The AICP is the American Planning Association's professional institute, providing recognized leadership nationwide in the certification of professional planners, ethics, professional development, planning education, and the standards of planning practice. Where's it? Where's the part about dealing with council? Um, to become a certified planner, APA members must meet certain education and experience requirements and pass a written examination. AICP certified planners carry a high mark of distinction because they are required to meet rigorous standards, maintain their expertise through continuing education, and serve community interest. Congratulations. So, I have a certificate here for Miss Fabre in the planning department. Thank you very much.

[0:04:09] [Applause] I would be remiss if I didn't thank all of my supervisors and my co-workers in the community and economic development department who've been very supportive through the process and some of which have helped me study things that I wasn't so up on such as storm water management and things of that nature. So, thank you to all of them as well. [Applause] Need the water. [Music] Let's do some like leg wrestling and stuff. The left versus the right. Okay. At this time, the council takes public comment. Um 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 the 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. Is there desire by council to move anything or I'd like number three, mayor. Three. Anything else? Okay. Um how about a motion? Motion to approve the consent agenda polling item number three, please. Second. Second. Okay. And at this time, let me uh bring up the public for anything that's not on the agenda or the consent agenda. Public comment at this time. Good morning.

[0:06:14] Good morning. Uh this is not on your agenda right now. It will be next month. First of all, I'm sorry. I'm Jennifer Bogs um with the planning commission. Um, and I'm going to go ahead and apologize for doing this this month as opposed to next month, but we are not sure of the availability um, next month to be here to comment. So, yesterday we approved a zoning item concerning the St. Angelo Soccer Association complex. It's very simple zoning, you know, put some signs up. Something that came up in that process though was an issue of public safety. And it is my understanding that what we approved yesterday will also um allow the city to raise the the height of the fences that are on the street the Glenna side of the soccer complexes. And what we really wanted to do was encourage you guys to um join us in encouraging the city to go ahead and raise the height of those fences. Frankly, how however many signs we put in the soccer complex, you know, sure that helps people be able to see it. It stops people from trying to make a U-turn in Glenna. That's great, but it doesn't mean anything if a child chases a ball into a street and gets hit by a car. It's 40 to 45 miles hour on that street. Uh particularly where the soccer complex is. And we feel like public safety is a paramount concern. We think that that is it should be a paramount consideration in the comprehensive plan. And we just wanted to encourage you guys to take that under advisement and to join us in encouraging the city to take that into consideration next as well when you see this case next month. Okay. Questions for us? One question for you. Okay. What's the financial capability of the St. Angelo Soccer Association to take care of the soccer fields? I honestly do not know. You'll have to ask them that next month. Um, as far as I understand, this is a lease with the city. So, I'm I'm not entirely sure whose responsibility it will be, but I know that the gentleman that presented to us yesterday was from the city. That'll be perfect. Thank you very much.

[0:08:16] I appreciate it. Thank you. Other public comment at this time. Okay, she's running from public comment. Okay, very good. The consent agenda, then I'd like to call for the vote. All those in favor of the motion to approve with the the removal of item number three, please say I. I. I. Any opposed? Item number three, the consideration of authorizing the city the interim city manager uh to execute an an a grant agreement accepting the Federal Aviation Administration's uh fiscal year 2012 multi-year grant estimated at $4 million uh for which $444,44 will be the city's portion in matching funds. Mr. Silvis, how about helping us out? Lou, I was just looking at this the other day and I just needed clarification. The estimated 4 million of you and then the matching part that we do, but as I look in the grant, I mean the paperwork itself, whatever you want to call it, uh, I noticed that there was a there was a total of $5 million in the agreement. So, that that's where I was confused. Uh, let me pull it up. It was broken down and then there was I believe it was page seven if I'm Do you have your hard copy with you? You don't. Uh, city clerk has it. Okay. I wish I would have had mine pulled up. uh estimated funding the federal it says federal 5,74,000 and then it talks about an applicant 563,000 other 467,000 for a total of 6 billion105 that's where I was and you're page 707 uh well now I saw it on seven I'm on 10

[0:10:22] now that that's the first numbers that came to mind right there let me see part three oh that was the Yes, that was the application, sir. The difference from the 4 million was applied in grant number 32, which was last year's. So, this this was for the whole project for the terminal. So, the first 1,74,000 came last year, FY 2011 in grand number 32. Well, it'll be a million each year for the next four years. Is correct. Is that correct? Well, but the total I mean that's 4 million plus 444,000 on our part, but the 5 million is a total total project. Yes, it's 5.1 million total and that was the application that was made for the terminal project. However, the FAA gave us a little over a million last year in FY 2011. So, the remaining in a multi-year is coming now. Okay. And that's where I was confused. Estimated 4 million, but then I say 6.1 millions, right? That's all I needed. Thank you, Mr. Silvas. Are you satisfied? I am satisfied. And so, would you like to make Make a motion for approval. Thank you. Second. Okay. I have a motion and a second. One, two. And so, let me call for this vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Okay, let's uh move forward then to the regular agenda. On the regular agenda, our first item this morning is a presentation and update from downtown St. Angelo's Main Street program. Presentation is from downtown St. Angelo's President Brenda Guner. Good morning. Good morning. I think I got it.

[0:12:47] Good morning. Um Brenda Gunter, downtown St. Angelo, president and acting executive director at the moment. So um I'd like to begin with certainly we continue to attend all of the meetings that um city council KOSA DC um city um and all the other economic development meetings that pertain to downtown. But what we'd like to talk today about is some of the other things that have occurred in the second quarter. One being, as you're well aware of the first lady's tour, which was in May. The important part about that is is that um St. Angelo is the only city in the state of Texas that we're aware of that has ever received all three awards, not only in one year, but ever. And so we're proud to say that St. Angel exhibits one of the best private and public partnerships that I think exists in the state of Texas. And um the important part to remember there is that no city can ever accomplish those goals and those awards without a strong partnership between the city government and the private sector. And so we thank you for that support and we thank all the the public um the private people who have helped make St. Angelo a hero. We believe in the eyes of the state of Texas when you have the first lady of Texas attend the meeting and when she gets ready to leave she says I'm so sorry that I don't have more time to spend because based off of that video St. Angelo is a city I would have liked to spend a lot more time in and seen all the wonderful things that exist in the downtown area. So I think that's a great compliment once again to the city of St. Angelo. Brenda, let me ask you real quick. Where those signs, those designation Texas treasure, where where have those been placed? We were are working on those signs. Now we have a text. They're not up yet. They will be. We're going to get um a sign that four locations we believe and that has to go through textile. So we'll be working on those. However, there was an ad run in

[0:14:50] Texas Highway Magazine that announced um in June the actual all three awards for the city of St. Angelo. So um it has been made a pretty big public statement. In addition to that, we will be running a series in Texas monthly in the month of December which will be not only editorializing St. Angelo and those awards but also the supportive merchants have purchased um ads in that magazine as well. So we intend to have a very strong presence in the month of December. Thank you. Also in the month of May we had a loft tour. We continually talk about the importance of downtown residential living. We had um over a hundred people attend the meeting. Um the loft tour, it was a tour of seven buildings. Some of them have obviously been um showcased before in a loft tour, but there was great interest in the development on 30 West Boulevard, which are the new loft apartments that I think you've seen um several um articles written about. Um, we hope that there are some other projects in the works and so we continue to work on the idea of downtown living. We know that's a key component part to the success of downtown. In addition, we applied for an AE grant. We applied for $100,000 to the um A Foundation, the state of Texas. Um, generally it takes three to five years, we've been told, to even get passed on to the national level. We were awarded that as an opportunity to apply for the national level. We don't we have not heard back from them yet. They reduced our request from 100,000 to 50,000. But Fred Hernandez was shocked that in the first year of our application that we were even forwarded on to the national level. So, we have some hope that we will receive that grant and that we would like to apply to the downtown streetscape based off of the original streetscape program that was presented and approved by council due to lack of available monies under the tears

[0:16:52] program. It looks like it will be a project that is much in delay. And so, we're reanalyzing the streetscape program, looking at opportunities to do small pieces of that so that there's some movement forward on that. Um, as you're aware, um, Shannon pulled a lot of their buildings and properties out of the tax role. So, when you take a $17 million tax role hit, the TEI funds reduced dynamically, in fact, 50%. So, there's something less than $68,000 a year in the southern tiers fund for application towards a lot of the programs. So, that's had a big impact on our streetscape hopes and plans. Um there is progress being made on it, but not to the level that we would hope. We're also looking at three other opportunities that we hope will will be some additional funds that we could apply. If we had a wish list, the first thing that we would look for is certainly un um bearing the power lines and second replacing those existing lights on Chadburn and replacing these with a little um more pedestrianfriendly lighting. So those are the things that we're looking at right now. and and the sidewalk, excuse me, and the that and I should say that those sidewalks as a part of the freedom grant will be done and all of the bad uh uh sidewalks handicap will get taken care of. So, that has been the priority that is being done. That has not stopped that process. It's just the enhancements that have become a problem. Yes, Brenda, you know, me representing downtown, you mentioned Shannon pulled buildings out the tax. How many buildings? And I always assume Shannon didn't pay any taxes anyway. So, they did to the level of how many buildings are we talking about? I don't know the number of buildings. I know the dollar value of those buildings that were pulled. You know, Shannon is not just one big Shannon. There's there's the nonprofit piece of it. And those buildings and properties had they had been paying taxes on that to the point that there was a 17.3 million I believe total value

[0:18:55] of S Shannon properties that were pulled off of the tax roles and pulled into their nonprofit. Wow. And that was approved sometime earlier this year. So that had a major major impact on the TEI fund because that was almost 50% of what was being put into the southern tiers fund. So that has a dynamic impact as well as several other buildings like the Coca-Cola buildings that have been pulled off the tax roles. So we've had a big hit in the southern tiers for funds. As it relates to the executive director, we posted the job um early July. We kept the job posted um till the end of of August. We've received about 20 applications. Six of those we believe are viable applications that we will start the interview process on in the next 10 days. Um and then the final issue that we've worked on is the Roosevelt Hotel. As you also know that was a Shannon Hospital property which they had purchased primarily to prevent the homeless and the vagrants from getting into that building as they own the parking lot behind it and many of their employees um had been harassed by homeless. So they had bought that property for that purpose was to protect that parking lot. They had no intention of really doing anything with the building and so consequently they were looking at perhaps um destroying that building and and we as a downtown organization felt very strongly that that would be a negative for downtown particularly because of the location but also the historic aspect of that building. So, we worked with Shannon and I will say that downtown St. Angelo is the proud owner of the Roosevelt Hotel today. Obviously, uh with the funds that we have in downtown St. Angelo, we don't have the opportunity to actually do renovate that building, but we have um are working on several projects to take that building and get some progress started on it. Number one, we applied

[0:20:58] for a Brownsfield fund grant. We've not heard back from them. And a Brownsfield fund grant is a grant that in fact will come in and remove all the environmental issues from that building with the expectation that they could pay for up to 80% of those costs and then the other 20% we would be responsible for. They sent um two engineers here the uh first part of July and have done an environmental assessment of that building. We've we do not have that report back, but in fact, they have have taken care of that. We're also working with the city. Ron Lewis came in and take um walk through the building to see if there would be an opportunity for the prisoners to help clean out some of the trash and additional things that are in that. We hope that we can and we are working on several people who've contacted us that would like to develop that building. There's no progress on it right now, but um I repeat, our intention is not to actually develop it ourselves. We don't have the funds, don't have the capability, but think it's an important building, important location that um we think needed to be preserved. Okay, if you take a look at the local sales tax allocation for um second quarter, the city of St. Angelo picked up 11.4% or $569,578 over and above the previous year. If you look at our Main Street um area, you'll see that we um had $253,942 in um sales tax revenue, which was $11,151 less than a year ago. But a year ago, we had a $72,590 drop in sales tax revenue. So, we're starting to anniversary that huge hit. And so, that was down 4.2%. 2%. In the central business district, we

[0:23:02] were down 5.2% or $4,081. And again, compared to the drop from last year of 77,000, again, we're starting to anniversary those numbers. We will say that um not that we're anticipating bad numbers in third quarter, but several things certainly have happened. Number one, you have the McDonald's um on North Bryant Boulevard that's being closed for 30 um for 90 days. And knowing the amount of volume that a McDonald's does, you can be assured that it will have an impact on our sales dollars, sales tax dollars and third quarter. Our mixed beverage tax summary, if you look on an annualized basis of which only the first two quarters would be reporting, the city of St. Angelos's uh first and second quarter dollars represent 57.5% of last year's dollars. If you look at uh central business district, it would represent 64% of the dollars and in the main street 59%. So it basically is saying that with those sales, those mixed beverage dollars that we would continue to improve in the mixed beverage tax summary dollars this year versus last year. on the quarterly mixed beverage. Um actually looking on a quarterly basis, the city of St. Angelo in the second quarter picked up 12 um 2% over last year's dollars of 68,000. The central business district picked up 41.1% over last quarter's last year's dollars and the Main Street District picked up 26.6% over last year's mixed beverage dollars in the second quarter. It would reflect that in the Main Street district, the mixed beverage tax dollars now in the downtown area represent 25.5% of the total mixed tax beverage

[0:25:10] dollars. And if you look at that compared to last year's second quarter, we represented 22.6%. So, we're continuing to pick up a percentage points in the amount of liquor tax dollars being created by the downtown district. If you combine the retail sales tax and the mixed beverage tax dollars, you will see that the city of St. Angelo had 11.5% increase over second quarter last year. The central business district had a 20% increase over last year and the main street had a 6.3% increase. So when you combine those two, we're starting to show a positive increase over the dollars from the previous year. If you look at the the real estate um properties that have changed hands or had improvements, there was a residence on 428 West Concho Avenue that sold for $130,000539. You had medical offices that sold for 212,500 on East Harris Avenue. There was a $17,000 improvement to the location at 109 South Chadburn to uh improve bathrooms to code and that building also sold for 125,500. The next slide is a slide that we've shown you before and the only reason we're showing it today is in previously we did not have a value of that building. We knew it had sold but it had not yet hit the record. So, just to go on record of saying that it sold for 212,500. Um, certainly the graphic that shows their vision for it, um, I'm not sure that will be an accurate vision for the project going forward, but the project at this point is going forward and we're excited about the opportunity between a bed and breakfast, restaurant,

[0:27:13] uh, private room, etc. And once again, the opportunity to to use a building that is closed today for future use. So, we're excited that that's moving forward. And then there was a remodel at 401 West Towig for $2,500. And then the Angel ISD public project of $775,000. And then improvements to the Fox Broadcasting Building, Catalan Steakhouse, which is in the Clarion Inn Hotel, a $40,000 remodel for their restaurant in that building. and then $75,000 adding a conference room to John Sutton's building at 117 South Irving. And then the new construction on West Highland of 790,40 on new office class A office space on Highland and $2,500 in the Shannon's Women's Children's Building at 2011 East Terrace Avenue. That is um obviously a small remodel in second quarter of 2012. Um the total business starts and expansions were eight. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I just have to ask but all these remodels and sales, how does it apply to the downtown or what your report? What what significance? Uh number one, it's activity num in um so any activity is better than no activity. And most people when they're spending money to improve a project intend to use that building and whether it is simply to uh meet code. Obviously code has to be met. So you either meet code or you get shut down. So the the important part is that they're doing it. Second of all, in most cases with the price that people are paying to um buy these buildings, no one's buying them to leave them empty and sit there. Obviously, the intent is to do something with that that business and we would rather have the opportunity

[0:29:16] to have a business create sales tax revenue or liquid tax revenue than an empty building. That's what I was getting at. Okay. And as you know, when we first started this project, one of the big conversations that constantly came up is how about all those empty buildings in downtown St. Angelo? When you take a look at the development that's happening, in most cases, you're looking at development that's happened by the small business entrepreneurial ship. And that, as we know, is a key component part to St. Angelo, Texas. It's not about the big corporations. It's and not that they're not important, but a lot of what makes up St. Angelo is a small business. And anytime we can add new small business, we're ahead of the game. Okay. Any other questions? Um, net gain of businesses was six. Next gain in jobs 18. Volunteer hours logged 1,800. uh from 2005 until second quarter of 2012 we've had a cumulative reinvestment of 62,55942 again that goes back to say that if you look at that our our downtown business district were a whole lot better u today having spent $62 million instead of the constant deterioration because that's the other thing you start looking at if there wasn't small investment. There'd probably be continued deterioration and then you'd have a largecale um business district that was way behind the eightball and probably a very difficult time to get it up and running again. As it relates to the finances for um downtown St. Angelo in the ordinary income expense our our budget was 123,283. We came in at 118,983 with a difference of 4,300. The big difference is the $5,000 corporate which was booked in second quarter which is actually going to

[0:31:19] happen in third quarter. So it's just a shift in that. So if you add that $5,000 in, we would be $700 over and above ordinary income or expense. If you take a look at our expense structure, um January through June, we had a budget of 101,1 10179.8,000 and our expenses came in at $78,473 making our net ordinary income of 40,59 against a plan of 19,800. the two big areas of of of differences between budget and actual. One is in the events category which is primarily a category that a lot of things are put into so that this report isn't a 20page report. One is the 10,000 sorry one is the $10,000 that we had budgeted for the pocket park. Um none of those expenses were booked through second quarter. They will be reflected in our third quarter. Um the same thing the $5,000 corporate ex um sponsorship that we had which was originally planned for second quarter is now going to be in third quarter. So that's 15,000 of the 19,000. And then there's just some of the u marketing um dollars that will be shifted into October as well in in third quarter. Question for you is what your salaries you would think would be down. So what's tell me because um this is second quarter which is through the month of June and July is when Janora left. So they're not because through June we had actually those people. I have a question. Yes. Speaking of events, uh I have heard this is just rumor that we are going to do away with any street events out there, closing of streets or that's the direction we're going in. No. Anybody? There's been a we had a meeting with um I the police department, the fire department, the emergency services

[0:33:21] department to discuss street closures because as you know or don't know maybe that more and more people requesting street closures and the one big issue was Chadurn Street because that is the street of which the emergency vehicles use and so when you start closing off Chadburn Street then rerouting emergency vehicles, fire trucks and or ambulances becomes a big issue. So, we had a meeting to discuss how to handle that. Um certainly one of the questions that comes up, do you stop doing street closures? Our decision is not to not do that, but to look at how we make sure that we also don't get in the way of fire trucks being able to get through there, ambulances being able to get through there. And the result was that there, for example, the event that happened on September 2nd, they kept a 20 foot wide area that was open. Although there were barriers at the ends of the streets, those barriers could easily be moved and those emergency vehicles could come through fast. There is concern on some people's part that when we close the streets, for example, when we close oaks that it has a negative impact on the museum attendance and on the U for concho attendance. So there there are questions. I mean anytime you close a street, you you lose parking, you prevent thorough traffic. I mean so all those issues have to be discussed, but our intent is not to stop doing events. Our intent is not to stop closing off streets, but we also have to have a vision for how you do that, how successfully you do it. And you can't do it in a boxed off mentality. You got to look at the big impact on everybody and make sure that you've looked at all of those issues. And you know, in the past, those issues might not have been so obvious because we didn't do it so often. We're doing it more often now. Other people are complaining. We're trying to address all those issues and make sure that we don't hurt anybody, but we're in the business of helping get these events done successfully.

[0:35:24] I agree. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Okay. Um, let me ask you one question. Okay. This is um I'm looking at the when we set up the business resource center. Mhm. We talked then about office space. Right. Okay. But at the time you had office space already rented. Correct. So it didn't make sense really to ask you to move into the business resource center. Correct. But you are economic development. Correct. Question. So you fit nicely into that package. You have since leased other office space, correct? What's the lease term on that office space? Monthto month. But if you two things, number one, if you take a look at the business resource center, uh I think we have 300 square ft. We we basically have room for a desk in that space. And second of all, one of the key component parts of a downtown or a main street program is the idea that you are there to support a lot of the private business people and that our success generally tends to be that we are we are not the government officials. We are there to help the private citizens walk through, talk through whatever. So the idea was is that we don't want to be just looked at as part of downtown San I mean the city of St. Angelo government, but as somebody who can just walk in our front door and talk to us and that we can help them in the process of of u being on their side in working with the city. A flip side to that though is we're one of your donors. Correct. Okay. And so the idea that there would be uh rent income or that that could be an inind type of donation would be very helpful for the taxpayer and and the fact that you would be there and I'm you know I'm a member of the angel network which is a private entity that is that's

[0:37:27] housed at the business resource center and so you have different entities there. The small business development center is really an ASU function. you have anyway I leave that as let's not try to solve the problem here but let's at least acknowledge that it's a disi a discussion worth continuing okay and you'll note that one of the issues on um the financials is certainly the difference in rent um our expense today is no more than it was in the previous location but in addition to that our budget reflected being in that um uh business resource center earlier on in the year so when you see the differences in rent it's because We budgeted from I think April through December to pay the monthly fee that was associated with the business resource center which we're obviously not there yet but um it's budgeted. Okay. Well, I again what I'm looking for is a continued discussion. Okay. Wanted to bring up the subject. Is there anything else to ask questions about? Okay. Thank you very much. The next item on the agenda is the status update and discussion of Avenue P drainage remediation project. Presentation by city engineer Clinton Bailey. Good morning. Good morning, mayor, council. Let me find my presentation. What I'd like to do uh up front here is quickly go through give a little background on this project. Uh where the um problem is located, the steps we've gone through to get uh to where we are now designing the project about to to bid that and and hopefully construct it in the near future. I know that we have people from the neighborhood um here um and I believe we have a few non-English-speaking um persons in the back that may need a little help

[0:39:28] understanding the [Music] presentation. Starting off with the uh the neighborhood. This area where Avenue P runs through this neighborhood is generally bound by Avenue N on the north, Bryant on the west, South Chadburn on the east, and way down to Avenue Z close to the Contra River on the south. It's a true neighborhood. When you talk to the folks in this neighborhood, there are many generations of families that have um that have lived there. There are some of these homes that have the fourth generation of a family living in them. Most of the homes were built back in the 40s and 50s. And talking with people, they've seen as development has increased in certain areas, the increase in the runoff through this neighborhood from way back when before Bryant even existed when there wasn't much of a problem to um now when the area upstream's been just almost fully developed and there's a pretty significant problem. So long history of flooding uh dating back decades and really there are dozens of people during a um a big rainfall event that are impacted uh by water coming through this area uh either running through their yards or in many cases running into their homes. So how did this project come about? How did it how was it prioritized? Going back to our 2000 master drainage plan developed by threz free threzen nichkels where we analyzed the 57 drainage problem areas in St. Angelo prioritized ranked the top 25 based on amount of flow disruption to uh traffic emergency response routes history of flooding structures that sort of thing. Avenue P ended up number two on that top 25 list of problems. So, what have we done over the course of the latter part of last year? This year, the council has talked about making streets and storm water a priority. Uh,

[0:41:32] on the heels of um discussions with the council, we had a public meeting uh with the A Avenue P neighborhood back in September of last year where then city manager Harold Dominguez, myself, Councilman Silvis were in attendance. We listened to the concerns of uh the citizens in the neighborhood. We talked about options for addressing the drainage problem, options for funding. Really had a good meeting. Uh there's some people that had some serious concerns, beat us up just a little bit, but the end of the meeting, I think that u they were real happy with what they heard. Following that up, we had a city council discussion uh late last year um during the presentation on capital planning projects where we had talked about dividing up a $ 1.7 million pot between streets, storm water, and some emergency access vehicles. Um, we presented five the top five drainage problems and the council decided from that presentation that the Avenue P project would be funded $700,000 out of the 1112 budget and about a million out of the 1213 budget. So, for those that haven't been in the area when it's raining, uh, I have a pretty good log of of photos. Um, this is Avenue P looking back west toward Bryant. Uh, if you look back in the very back, you can see the covert structure underneath Avenue U or underneath Bryant on Avenue P right here where the main concentration of flow comes across into this neighborhood. Now, we got here after the water had gone down just a little bit. I've seen this actually completely covering the yards in this area. This was back from uh 2007. This is an alley just south of Avenue P. where the flow splits and again you have flow in the front of the homes and the back impacts in both areas. Uh this is a photo taken uh October, excuse me, August 13th last

[0:43:35] year when we had the the big rain event. This is 10 Avenue Q uh which is at the intersection of Irving and Avenue Q um just south of Avenue P. The flow currently turns u more toward Avenue Q to flow down a drainage channel that eventually ends up in the Aoyo. But here's the same vehicle uh two days later and you can see the debris in the grill, how high that that water was flowing through there. And again uh damage on the side of of this house, erosion of the the foundation. And this is this is typical of some of the areas through there. Uh this is a newer um home in this area. This is the garage. And here's Councilman Silva. You can see the water line on the wall right here um was probably about 15 in deep or so in that area. So where's all this water coming from? The overall drainage area contributing to um this problem area is about 450 acres. If you look at this large area just west of Bryant upstream, this is about 381 acres that contributes to flow that discharges at Avenue P under Bryant. And as you can see, a lot of this area is developed. We have Angelo State University, we have neighborhoods, we have um businesses, restaurants, um Bryant Boulevard, but at the same time, we have large areas that are not yet developed that could potentially further impact this area. So, through our new storm water ordinance, we're looking to um try to get that development to develop wisely with detention and not discharge more than they're currently discharging. So, a large area, a lot of imperous area that has been developed over the years has caused the problem that we see today. At this point, I'd like to turn the presentation over to our stormwater

[0:45:38] engineer, Tim Wolf, to give you a little bit more more specifics on the project and project timeline. Good morning. Hope he scared you enough. He brings you all the doom and gloom and I'll bring you a solution. So, what are we going to do with all this water? Well, we're going to take the majority of it underground. Take it all under Avenue Avenue P. Um, it's going to start right there at Bryant Boulevard where it crosses through that that culvert, go underground and all the way down to the other side of South Chadburn. It's going to have to make a little jog, go diagonally a little bit, and then discharge on the other side of South Chadburn into it's vacant land right now. Um, we'll get an easement through there and dig a little swale or a ditch all the way to the Red Aoya, which is just off the screen off to the right there. It's about 2,300 linear feet of storm drain underneath Avenue P running that whole distance. At the end of that, there'd be about 300 foot open channel down to the Redoyo. Uh there's nine inlets on all the crossing streets picking up drainage that are from the local area right there picking up all that drainage. Uh carrying that to the storm drain underneath and then um like I said it will turn across Chadurn Street discharge into that channel. This is that culvert right there at South Bryant. Um that is a six barrel uh 3x six. There's it's three foot tall, six foot wide boxes and there's six of those. So you can kind of get an idea of about what kind of water is flowing through there by looking at that. And we're going to have to take that underground. So you will start from that point right there. Correct. And this is the east side of Bryant. Correct. Correct. Yes. This is right. The photo is taken right there from Gunter Street which is that first cross street and it will go underground before you get to Gunter right there. That's Meoranada on the correct far right right across across Brian over there is Mhorinada.

[0:47:44] On the timeline on this uh hope to have design complete in about a month from now which allows us to start advertising for bid in early November. Uh we could then open the bids and award it a month later from that in early December and hopefully start uh construction in mid to late December. Uh might have to push it till January just to get a new start on it. But uh late summerish, early fall is project completion is what our expected timeline is from now. Tim Horland, are there any were there any discussions about storm water capture that this may be an opportunity to think about it? There is a uh regional pond supposed to go in in the redo right downstream of this. Okay. So, this would flow directly into that. Okay. So, okay. Yes. There there's there's basically no room in this section of of the project to capture this amount of flow because it is a quite a bit of flow. Okay. The pond is the one that Steven Brown talked about. The idea of that was that is that what we're talking about? I believe so. And and what we're looking at here with this project is being able to intercept about a 4 inch rainfall event. And just to put put it into perspective, that's about 700 cubic feet a second of water or about 10 times the amount that's flowing through the equalization channel currently from the pumps out of the South Pole. Just to kind of put it into perspective, we'd captured it anyway. So I I can see why I see what you're saying. This just more efficiently gets it through the neighborhood. Right. Okay. Other questions? So, I'm trying to watch you guys. I have a question. How Tim or Clint, how are we doing as far as the A utility lines, Verizon, whatever's out there? What a are five, I guess, sewer crossings and

[0:49:55] uh this will be below most of them and it'll be pretty deep. So then you have and I'm just guessing Ben Fickland, Hill Street, Irving. How is that going to impact? I mean, are we going to have to shut down a street at a time or how what is the what's the idea? We'll work the construction phasing so that every all the residents have access so that emergency access is still available through that area on those intersections. We'll try to get through those as quickly as possible. Um, additionally, we're we're working with the property owner across um South Chadurn right now uh to secure that easement. Uh Mr. Dane and I met with um adjacent business owner and had talks about um putting this system through there and they're looking at purchasing the land. So, we've made that contact. We're working through that process as well right now and we'll be concluding that fairly soon, but we'll have to phase the construction such that uh we have minimal impact to the traveling public and those residents. This is a a large underground coververt and um we're going to have some disruptions. Sure. A large hole in the ground, but we're going to try to minimize that and work with the residents directly as much as possible. How deep would that hole be? Well, it it could be upwards. Right now, we're looking at uh the bottom of it somewhere in the 10 to 12t range in places. Other questions? Thank you for the update. I appreciate it. Okay, it is uh right at 10:00. We're about to get into several items that are planning related with planning manager AJ Fber. So, how about a short break now and then we can stick with all of those. Just as a note, you may want to remind those some may have walked in late about the water. Yes, sir. We're going to hit that. Thank you. Um Mr. Hurstfeld is referring to the fact that right before the meeting started, we made sure to announce that the item concerning water and the stage three drought item will be uh discussed

[0:51:59] at length after lunch. So, we think we'll start on that discussion roughly at 1:30 if you've come in after that announcement. Uh, you might feel free to go and come back after lunch. Obviously, you're you're welcome to be here for every item, but we just want to make sure you're not sitting there all morning waiting for something that's not going to happen until after lunch. Thank you. We're going to take a break at this time and we'll reconvene in in about 15 minutes. Call the meeting back to order and start with item number 14. And this is the first public hearing and consideration of introduction of an ordinance amending the standards for visual clearance on corner lots. Presentation by planning manager AJ F. Good morning. The request before you now is an amendment that's being proposed to the section of the zoning ordinance in chapter 5 that refers to and establishes a vision clearance triangle. Um, on the first slide here, I have an illustration of what that vision clearance triangle refers to. And in our ordinance, it is established in article 510 as a 30-foot minimum distance measured from the intersection of two street side property lines. And the purpose of this visual clearance triangle is to, of course, provide the appropriate visibility for both motorists and pedestrian activity approaching an intersection. It helps enhance the safety of both of these types of traffic and to reduce the points of conflict at key intersections. And it also allows visibility and the availability to determine stopping distance or maneuvering um techniques based on what the motorist is seeing as they approach that intersection. So, it's a very important standard that we have and it's one that we maintain that should be kept in our ordinance with one exception that we are here to discuss with you today. And that discussion is an exception in the central business district which is located in the downtown sector of our city. Here on the slide, we have an excerpt of the chart from section 502 of the zoning ordinance

[0:54:02] that establishes all of the numerical standards for each commercial zoning district in the city. And if you'll notice, the central business district in this chart is exempt from the requirement for a minimum front yard and in most cases also from the requirement for a minimum side or rear yard. The background memo talks a little bit about the history behind this and the technique of historic downtown buildings as being the type of buildings that you see built to the street. These are usually in areas that are again older in nature, have a proliferation of sidewalks, and have more pedestrian activity than maybe other parts of the city. And as such, our ordinance does again currently allow an exemption in this central business district zoning area from that minimum front yard. However, our zoning ordinance does go on in section 510 to then require a vision clearance triangle for these same properties. Um, as you know, the downtown area of our city is very largely developed and so we don't have a proliferation of construction and infill development, but recently we have had a couple of projects that we have discussed with individuals in the city for building new buildings in the downtown area. And so it is now that this has been brought to our attention. We do recognize the importance of vision clearance triangles. And again, we are not suggesting that these be entirely exempted from the central business district, but rather what we have come up with in discussions of looking at the downtown area, looking at some of the key intersections in downtown, and looking at some of the signalized intersections is coming up with some criteria through which we could exempt certain intersections and certain corner lots from maintaining this vision clearance triangle and allow them to build in a way that matches the rest of the downtown area. and that way they enjoy the same type of development that these other individuals have enjoyed in the past when they've built these buildings. The slide that I've brought up here is one of the intersections in downtown. This is at Chadburn and Koncho

[0:56:05] Street. And this is an intersection that has both sidewalks in place and is a signalized intersection. And so you can see that with the sidewalks in place, there is still some ability for vision clearance where you can see oncoming traffic. it is somewhat restricted as opposed to an intersection where that vision clearance triangle is met and that building is backed 30 ft off of this intersection. However, because it's also a signalized intersection, the motorists and pedestrians traveling through these intersections don't have the type of control that you would have in a non-salized intersection. They are told when to move forward and proceed into traffic and when to stop and wait. Hey Jay, back to that intersection. Please tell me you're not going to propose we cut down those trees. No sir. Okay. No, the trees are trees are not part of it. Trees are great and they can stay. Uh this is another intersection you may be familiar with at the corner of Koheim and Washington Street. And in this location, you do have a building that is built completely to the property line. And if you know from going through this intersection, you know that without that signal in place, you'd have a very difficult time seeing oncoming traffic coming down Washington Street as you're sitting on Koenigome Street. So again, the signalized intersection is particularly important for these areas where the visual clearance is lessened as opposed to other types of intersections. And so as we studied the downtown area, there are 46 intersections in this central business district zoning area, 21 of which are signalized. As I mentioned earlier, there are also a great number of sidewalks which are in this area. Sidewalks are important to us in looking at this analysis because again they help hold the line and preserve a buffer between the street edge and the buildings that are being built at that location. So the exception that we have worded with the assistance of our legal staff is to allow an exemption for corner lots that are at signalized intersections only. We don't feel that it would be a safe thing to allow at a non-signalized intersection

[0:58:09] and that have unobstructed sidewalks at least 4 in and I'm sorry 4 feet rather in width between the street edge and the proposed building along the two street property lines for a distance of at least 30 feet from the intersection. If approved, this would allow individuals to come forward to the city and looking at building infill development and and that sort of development in the downtown area. And if they meet the criteria of being at a signalized intersection where we have a way to control the traffic and the stop and flow and they also have the sidewalks that are at least 4 ft in in width that are between the building and the street again maintaining that buffer that allows the vision to go across the sidewalk. We don't allow those sidewalks to be obstructed. Uh we would allow an exception for those individuals. Again, this would affect 21 intersections of the 46 intersections in the downtown area and would allow this infill development to match very closely the type of development that is already in the downtown area. And so with that, I will open it up for any questions that you may have. So you're talking about the central business district only only only. It is the only zoning district where we already exempt them from a front setback. All right. So, if I were to open the central um the streetscape the streetscape plan and look at it and if I had the dimensions on it, would it fit this criteria? Would it work? If you start putting bushes, I know they've changed it, but if there were still the potted plant areas and they were sticking up, would it still fit? Right. Right. The the height and the location of items that are above 3 feet tall are located in such a way that the visibility is still maintained. Okay. The 4 foot number is a concern to me. So, we just came up with the four feet because that seems to be a standard width for sidewalks. All sidewalks must be at least 36 in or 3 ft wide for ADA standards, but 4T seems to be a number that seems to be an industry standard

[1:00:10] for sidewalk widths. Okay. But so does that mean though a building could be as close as 4T to the you know to the corner? Um I guess I'm I'm sitting here closing my eyes and and thinking of Fuentes, thinking of Meyers Drug, thinking of different, you know, different corners. I don't think any of them only have a 4ft sidewalk. Most of them have much wider sidewalks than that. Um, in the case of a new business coming in, we would require them to, if they wanted to take advantage of this opportunity, put that sidewalk in. However, again, we're fortunate in this district and that most of the sidewalks are already in place. I was going to say four feet. Well, it takes 5T for two people to walk side by side down a sidewalk. Otherwise, it's straight. So, it takes It really takes five feet. And you can certainly alter that width. That's fine. That's that's from building houses. I mean, I've learned that in architecture school. So, so even that's close to the and that's very close to the street, but it's one more foot and that's what it takes for two people pass safely by each other with traffic next to them and things like that. And so, it sounds like that's an item for discussion that you may want to actually alter um the number for. Well, for me, you want it much larger. I want it to be larger than four feet. I like the concept and I'm supportive. I just I'm not sure I like I think we took maybe the least restrictive um I'm not sure I like tack forward but most of the sidewalks in the downtown area actually measure between some are between 10 and 15 ft. So they're very very wide. I'm trying to visualize the 41 intersections that you're talking about. I don't see any that would be less than that. I mean am I well of the 46 only 21 are actually signalized. So th those would be the only ones meeting the criteria of having a signalized intersection. And then within those 21, a requirement for sidewalks would be in place. And just in looking at aerial photographs, which is

[1:02:12] somewhat difficult in some of the areas, it appears that almost all of the 21 intersections currently have sidewalks in place. But I mean, a fair amount of this is discussion about what the setback would be if someone wanted to build toward that corner. Correct. And the argument that we're hearing is that there seems to be some bit of contradiction between you don't have a front setback, but then you require me to have a visual clearance triangle. Okay. But I'm simply saying, you know, there may not be one in place now. Okay. But but it could become in place if we're depending on what we require. And again, I'm supportive of the concept. I'd just like to see us require more than four feet uh from the building to the street in the process. So the spur building may be a building that could not be built. There's a there's an overhang. If you look it up on Google, there's an overhang. It's within 4T of the of the street. I'm just trying to find examples. Is it down at the floor at the Is it at ground level or is it above ground level? No, it's it's columns that hold up an overhang. They're pretty thick and I don't think they would work under this new ordinance if it was being built. Um that's one example. Are you talking about even businesses making changes or adding something to the front of their entryway for example to kind of block the vision or that could apply? I would I would imagine that most of those entrances are probably not at the corner of the building, but they certainly could be and it would apply to them as well. So I can go out and add a big old sign out there that would block that. It wouldn't so much be a sign, right? You're thinking an awning, an overhang, something of that nature. Yes, it would have to meet the same requirements. Well, I I I guess just thinking of one building. I mean, uh I'm drawing a blank. Uh Brenda mentioned it the the old hotel Roosevelt. Roosevelt. Yeah. That they bought. I mean, on the side access, I guess that's on Campus Street. I mean, is that that building's actually built all the way to the property line?

[1:04:15] It does have sidewalks on both sides that But one is narrow, isn't it? the one is narrower than the other, but the narrower one, I believe, was measured at seven feet. Um, and the wider one was closer to 10. Okay. Well, let's just take the opposite side of that. And and again, I I just want to you know, we've got Western Printing over there. Uh, you know, they've got that's a narrow they're built up to that. And it's a very, very short narrow sidewalk. Correct. Correct. But it is over four feet. And I and I I guess I don't want to I'm a little worried what's going to happen right there if if and when they do something different on that building. Right. We did we were unable to find any examples of where the 4oot limitation would affect anyone in the downtown area. So you you think that that's at least 4 foot right there? Yes. Yes. Okay. All right. That's the narrowest one that I'm really familiar with. And we tried specifically to make sure that we weren't overlooking anything that would be a problem. And that's my only concern. I'm not in disagreement with the five foot. I just don't want to create a a hindrance on on an existing on that on existing property for future development on that. Sure. Well, even that weren't able to find is a key statement right there cuz Right. If you know of one, I sure don't can't picture it. Right. And again, we just utilized the aerial photographs in doing so and and measured, but we weren't weren't able to find any. But this is going to also keep trees from being planted within 30 ft of a corner. Because a tree is taller than 4T, it does block view. Correct. Um, that's what it's going to do. And and but what they'll do is they'll place the tree four feet away from the curb right now. That's what they'll do. And so I I'm saying, well, for two people to walk by each other, you need five feet. Then the tree grows a bit. And then I guess they need to take that in consideration. But I mean, we can't go under five. I think five has to be But you want bigger numbers. I want a bigger number. What I would like to see you do, even in light of what and especially in light of what Mr. Herszfeld said, "Well, it's 21 intersections. What I'd like to the ordinance to be is is as wide as the

[1:06:18] smallest existing U sidewalk measurement is." You talked about Western. Yeah. Western, you know, if that's six feet, let's not be Let's make sure we go at least to six feet. And I mean, that would be my perspective. I don't want to hurt anyone that's in in an existing environment, but I'd like not to let it be any smaller than than currently exists. Uh or something along those lines myself because to me it's the safest thing to do. It doesn't hurt anybody and and it allows for us to get people on the sidewalks by each other and so forth. Anyway, that's my own perspective. Doesn't mean it's the right perspective. just that would be mine that let's not hurt anybody but let's be as wide as as as is currently in place. We can study that between now and the next meeting and for your second reading have that specific number for you. So this AJ this ordinance applies to everybody else. This applies to everyone within the central business district. But I'm talking about outside. I saw some other districts that resial not in other districts because all other zoning districts have required minimum setbacks. It would only be the central business district and it would only be the 21 signalized intersection. Correct. And what what brought this up? Again, we've had a couple of projects that have visited with us about maybe some infill development and it seemed to be a contradiction in terms to them that we did not require them to have a setback, but then we did require them to have a setback from the the intersection. Mr. Morrison, did you run this by the downtown association? We have not. No. I think that ought to be the first thing you do is to get their input on this. They're the ones that's affected by this. We can do that also before the second. I' I'd make a motion to put this off until you get some good figures and get their input on this as well. They're the ones that will be affected. Okay. So, your motion is put this off until we get a setback. I don't have a problem with 4 foot. I think that's I think it's fine. 4 foot is great, but if

[1:08:20] you want to get a minimum of what we've got, that's neither here nor there. I wouldn't I wouldn't want to make an ordinance today and vote on something that's going to be restrictive that they are opposed to. And I think the people that work and live and have the property down there ought to be ought to be consulted and have a say so in this. So, I would say let's put this off until you have spoke to them until you get their approval on it and get some firm numbers and then bring it back and we can vote on it. That would be my motion. Okay. Sorry, just ran from upstairs. Um, we did uh before Janora Young left, we did discuss this. Um, and downtown St. Angelo is supportive. It's still really just a motion to table. Um, yes, it's a motion to table. I mean, one says that they did not were not consulted. One says they were consulted. I understand. You know, I'd like I'd like to have some clarification on it. This the setback at Western Pring is going to be around six feet. Okay. Okay. Just I'm measuring on I understand and that'd be great. So, so then my number would be 6 feet. Okay. And AJ, it's not a timesensitive it Well, we're trying to get this taken care of ahead of the timeline for this particular project. So, they are asking us to move forward on this rather quickly. Will it impact that project? Yes, this decision will impact that project because they are planning on building to the property lines and it is in a signalized intersection with the appropriate at the at the moment. Mr. Morrison doesn't have a second. Would somebody like to put a different motion forward or what? What? Where are Well, Sean, if if you're making the point that you did visit with downtown and they're okay. Did you did you I mean, yes, AJ is not the liazison to the downtown Angelo board. So, I do fill that role. Um, and yes, I did talk to Janora um Young about that. In addition, the president of downtown St. Angelo is on the board of the property owner that is looking at uh building the project that will be held up by this. Okay. So, she's very very aware of the I'll make a motion to approve uh with a

[1:10:24] ve a change from 4T to 6 ft uh as is with one change 4T to 6 ft. Okay. I'm going to second his motion. Okay. And I've got one last question. Uh Sean, when you talk to downtown, does that mean they in turn talk to all the business owners downtown or what does that mean? Um no sir, not necessarily. Um we simply forward information about what we're doing in downtown to downtown St. Angelo either through uh the board chair or the staff, uh excuse me, the executive director. So it's really their kind of decision at that point on whether how they distribute that information to their membership and to downtown business owners. Okay. Part of the reason I'm seconding this is to allow the project that's in place to be moved forward. And I'm trying to be very consistent with what's there for western printing, not do anything more restrictive than that, but also to allow as much visual access as possible and the ability to get by people by on the sidewalks. So I I know from retail background that four feet is not enough, right? So and so I'm definitely would want more than four. And so that's what I'm I'm just I'm just really concerned that that I mean we're we're kind of guessing and you're looking at Google and doing that and that that's what I don't like. I mean if someone wants to run out there with a tape measure and see what it I just don't want to hurt an existing building that's there. I mean that that's my take on this thing that I mean I can support 4T 5T 6T. I just don't want to hurt anything 11 in. Hey a little it's a little over six but that's a real estimation if somebody just go run and measure. talking about that side street, you know, the college. Make [Music] a just make a motion that it is not less than the existing, you know, it's 6 feet or um not less than an existing is that already I assume that was already on the 21 the case that if it's already there that if it's already there it's unaffected. You want me to do that? I said if you would make a motion that it

[1:12:27] it is 6 feet or not less than uh any existing building on the 21 intersections. Okay, you've covered it. I mean, you don't hurt Western. You don't hurt anybody. I changed my motion uh Alicia to 6 feet or not less than what is already existing as of this date. Not more than not less than. Not more than. Not more than. Yeah. It's not more than or not more than the any existing building on the 21 intersections in question. Then you don't hurt you don't you can't hurt Western. You can't Right. Are you tracking with that? Yes, we are. And AJ's pointing out we probably need to we can get that number for the second reading. But I I would want to point out that staff has been as liberal as possible, as pro business as possible with the small number. If we go with a larger number, that limits the number of people who can take advantage of this. And I just want to make sure that that that's clear. I think I'm clear on that. I just I don't want our buildings to set it up where our sidewalks in downtown. I mean, your idea is that you're going to move people on foot around downtown. I don't want to put a sidewalk in place where people have to side, right? So, you know, I I don't think that makes sense, Mr. Morrison. And I would like for you to go to the downtown association, the whole group, and not a director that has left. and and present this to the group and get a majority vote to be sure that the downtown association approves of this because they are the ones that are affected by this. They're the ones with the Well, you still would have that opportunity at a second second reading. They they can review it anyway. Paul, you made a motion. I'm going to second that motion. Is there further discussion up here? Is there public input on this item? Let's go ahead and call for just clarify the motion, please. The motion is that uh the motion is that the ordinance or the proposal be accepted as presented with the exception of changing the 4-ft number to a six-foot number or a a number not to be larger than any

[1:14:36] existing building currently on one of these 21 intersections. So in other words, if it's 5T and 10 in, then that's the number because we're not going to make them go to 6 feet as of today's date. And and Western printing needs to be measured to determine what that is. So no one would be hurt in this process. It's all I want. I guess that's how I guess you can create an I'll call for that vote then. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Okay. Get us a number and let's go from there. Make sure we don't hurt anybody. That's that's what I think is a hard number and I think they'll be able to do that for the second reading. Okay, let's move to item number 15. On this item, we're asking the council for permission to enter into a contract with the Gateway Planning Group for the late Nazworthy plan. My presentation is very brief. It's simply a chronology of where we've been with this project and and where we have left to go. Uh starting in December, we had a review committee that was formed to review the submissions from the different consulting groups for the RFQ asking for a plan for Lake Nazworthy. And that process continued through January and February when the council gave permission to staff to enter into negotiations with this group. In the months of March and April, staff and the consultant put together a finalized scope, refined that and negotiated it. And then you may remember in May, I believe it was May 15th, uh myself and Scott Pollikov from Gateway Planning came forward and presented that scope to all of you as well as the figures for the scope that was presented. Uh the committee, the selection committee that is did recommend to council to approve the scope and at that same meeting in May, the council did direct staff to move forward with the project and put together a contract. Uh we have since done so that contract has undergone review by our legal staff. It has been approved and it's also been signed by the consultant. To remind you, the uh final figure on that contract was

[1:16:40] $298,150 plus expenses. You did suggest to us in that meeting that those expenses be capped. And so the consultant um did work with our legal staff to write in a cap for the expenses at 12 a.5%. Um that project is again planned to be funded from the late Nazworthy trust fund. AJ, could I interrupt right there, please? I want to clarify that this is not from the trust fund but from uh investment proceeds in excess of what has been spent from those investment proceeds. Uh legally we can't spend the trust fund itself without going to the voters. And so the clarity here is you're not spending trust fund money. The city is not proposing to spend the actual trust money but investment proceeds which have accumulated beyond what has actually been spent from those proceeds. So this is allow money which has allowed to be spent from this source. Thank you. That was very well articulated. Um and so yes at this time we have that approved contract and we are simply asking the council for approval for the uh city manager's designate to sign and execute that contract. comment. Okay, Mr. Morrison, when I first heard about this and the pres presentation was made that we were going to spend in the excess of $300,000 of lake board interest funds to fund this study. I thought that it was a very serious waste of lake board interest funds money. Since that time, I have received calls from about a dozen lake residents and they fear that their property values are going to rise to the point that they won't even be able to maintain their residences. And they have told me, everyone, that they think that this is a serious waste of lake board interest funds. So, I will stay with my original. I will not support this. I do not think it's a good use and a choice of of money. And the residents that live at the lake have told me the same.

[1:18:44] Okay. Thank you, sir. Okay. Uh the $300,000 is a concern uh for some residents. Uh that's 335 that is um that is interest money pretty much. It's it's investment proceeds and and it's a lot of money. It will it will raise their their property values because it will raise the activity at the lake. It'll raise uh I mean commercial investors will be able to to invest on parts of the lake. Uh it will be more desirable to live at Lake Nazworthy and because of that property values will go up. That's what I think our job is as a council is to to maintain property values or increase property values by increasing uh the desiraability. Uh it also falls in line with our vision statement. Uh in 15 years, 2027 will be the most desirable midsize city in the state of Texas. So it fits our vision. If we're concerned about the $300,000, let me suggest that we move the Lake Nazworthy trust fund to something like the health foundation. It would take a vote from the voters, approval from the voters. If you move it to the health foundation, $12 million generates I mean maybe we'd move part of it, but we can generate $300,000 extra dollars a year very easily. U so if we're concerned that we're not spending our money, right, let's be concerned about how we're investing our money and make that money back within a year. And then there's also boat ramps that I my constituents are asking me, they're saying, Paul, that the lake is down right now. Let's fix those boat ramps. take some of that interest and they're saying don't spend on gateway, but we have more money sitting there. I would say you're right, we do need to fix those boat ramps. Uh maybe spend 300,000 on those boat ramps while the lake is down. There are also rocks that are starting to surface that could be marked right now while the lake is down. There's things we can do uh and and spend some of that money from that fund uh to help out the lake. And so it is a

[1:20:47] related subject. I think though that the value of this gateway planning is tremendous and uh it would we would be visionless to say no to it. Okay. I want to add to something Mr. Alexander just said. The fact is when property values go up that's a good thing. Property taxes is what folks are concerned about. And the broader your tax base is, the the the more you have flexibility to lower the tax rate. And you don't pay more taxes if your property's worth more, but your tax rate is less. And so you that's the thing that we need to be careful of here. Of course, you're going to try to improve the value of properties by bringing in more jobs, by bringing in more investment, by bringing in more companies, uh, and and more activity. But that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to hurt those people in that process. We're doing the same thing in downtown St. Angelo right now. We're increasing property values. We're we're incentivizing and and planning and and it's the same thing and it's what you you have to do to to help our city. Okay. Are is there other input from council on this item? I I did have a question on clarification on the funding and Michael, you just explained, but explain it to me again. It's not the trust fund money we're touching. Good. That's a good point. The the trust fund earns interest and I'll come back to that. Paul made a good point about the limited ability to earn interest because of state restrictions on what we can invest in um earns interest and 90% of that interest can be used for maintenance in in accordance with certain restrictions. To the extent that that 90% has exceeded what has actually been used, we have gathered that that money and placed it in a reserve in the water fund. So that money is set aside. It's available for uh spending in accordance with those

[1:22:51] restrictions and we've set that money aside. uh the actual trust money we we cannot spend and so that money still resides in a separate NASA lake Nazworthy fund um but this is from those excess that surplus of earnings over expenditures and you have where is it and what a water fund but where where am I going to see it it's in the water operating fund in a reserved fund balance area and it's actually not in that book you're looking at it's and what is that balance reserve fund balance I don't know that number off the top of my head when we set it aside. Morgan, do you know that answer? The city council approved a budget amendment um in a prior fiscal year, I believe it was in 2011, to take $865,000 out of the Lake Nassworthy trust fund. No, sorry. No, we did not take any money out of the trust fund. Sorry, the earnings in excess of the trust fund. And that was allowable expenses that could be taken out of the trust fund. and you trust earnings and used for improvements at the lake. Still with Mr. Well, I was just going to say that earnings I mean interest or to me interest from that truck from that fund from that lake fund is still lake money. You know, that's the way I I'm interpreting it. But you're you're looking at $1 million balance right now on that. Uh this money is coming from another account. The some excess earnings that that 11 million earned. Uh in other words, that 11 million we invest and it it generates interest or investment income. And uh for example, if it earns $100, 90 of those $100 can be spent for maintenance and capital issues uh associated with lakes and river systems. That that's a that's an oversimplification. The the ordinance specifies much better than that. But of that $90, in the past, we have not spent all of that $90. If we

[1:24:58] only spent 80, then there's $10 left which can which still can be spent. What we've done is gathered those little pieces and put them aside because we knew this was a couple years ago when there was beginning to be a push for let's uh however you would characterize that push to more effectively utilize a a city asset or an asset within our community. We knew that there were going to be expenditures that needed to go with that. And if we did not set those monies aside, they would be lost and remain in the trust fund and they could not be recovered and utilized for those expenditures and we'd be looking at spending money uh from water operating or from general fund or something like that instead of this uh legal use of these investment earnings. So my question again is Morgan or somebody what is the balance in that? I got it. I found it. the beginning balance 865 I gota okay the the trust fund has 11,596,000 so 116 million the I'm looking for 865,000 was moved out of the trust earnings into an operating fund so we could spend it on improvements about I believe 125,000 has been spent to eight on boat ramps and items that were approved by the council out at the lake and the remainder is still available for allowable expenses. So 700,000 in change. Correct. Cuz I don't even remember that conversation from the last time. You know, it was a prior fiscal year that about us using this interest excess fund. I don't remember that. So now you're bringing it up. I kind of was teeter tottering on the fence about using this amount of money for this gateway. Uh but I'm I'm I'm speechless. I I don't remember that first conversation about it being Well, we went through we went we went

[1:27:01] through a a lot of this information during different discussions about the hillside issue and where Bunny could come from on that. and we talked about Mary Lee Park and whether there would be any type of development there and so I mean we have had the discussions. It doesn't we we discuss a lot of things so it's not it's not remarkable that something would be hard to remember. Um Mr. Morrison. One of the further comments these lake residents told me when we talked, they said, "If we've got that kind of money that we can spend in this fund, then let's get rid of the salt cedar and let's get rid of the mosquite and let's clean that lake out since things are low. Let's use this money in a way that it will benefit the whole city instead of sending $335,000 to a company in Fort Worth that's going to make us a pretty little book." And I agree with that. If we're going to if we've got money to spend in that lake fund, let's use it on the lake for the benefit of the entire city. And this 335,000 as a study is not good for the benefit of the city. This this is not a study. This is zoning. This is that there are five people that have wanted to spend million dollars or more on that lake that have come to me and all five are not successful. All five can't do it because the zoning is bizarre. It's parks and they want to know if I put my building here, what's going to be next to them. I mean, I don't I don't know that because it's not zoned. It hasn't been thought out. The rest of St. Angelo has been vision planned, zoned, and this is not this has not been planned. Okay? This is the only part we haven't planned. It needs to be completed. And it's just something we have to do as a city. This particular group, Gateway, knows how to do it in such a way that we can maximize tourism, commercial development. They're very good at that stuff. And our next agenda item, in fact, is going to be looking at downtown St. Angelo, what they can do for downtown. So, we have to do this. Let's just do it right. Uh the the the part of doing it right probably cost us about 150,000 versus uh just kind of doing it halfway so that we did it.

[1:29:06] We're we want to be an exceptional city. And I think this is what we need to do. Okay. farmer. I think it's clear and obvious that if you drive around out at the lake and and the way things are laid out, it's kind of squirly and it's kind of crazy and you deal with the lay of the land and the water and the levels and the commercial and the residential and it's it's pretty squirly out there and we we have an absolute pearl uh with the lake being at the city, but it needs to be developed properly. If you look at other developments and zones in the city, they're developed properly by professionals who take everything into consideration. And for the last 50 years, what we have done out of the lake, and I'm not slamming the staff for the planning department, I am not. But it has been done as requests come up to let so this person do that and this person do something different. And we have a squirly development sitting out there. But to meet all of the regulations, water conservation issues, and development issues, we need to have the professionals lay this out and let's go about it properly. That's what the money is for is to the benefit out there, the interest earnings to be spent for the benefit out of the lake. And we need the professionals to do this. Okay. Do we have public input on this item? My name's Jim Turner. Uh just a little bit of historical clarification. Any changes you make to this fund, and you're using it properly here, but any changes you make to this fund have to go back before the voters. This is part of the city charter. This like NASWorthy fund was updated not long ago so that we can do better investments, but even there we're limited to those investments that are rock solid safe and can guarantee that

[1:31:09] we have a trust fund going forward. Second thing is we do need to have a plan out there. The question is not whether we need a plan. The question today is is this the best plan that's likely to come up. That's going to have to be something you decide. You can't leave this just kind of sitting there waiting for somebody to come in on a kind of a peacemeal basis deciding what to do with this area, that area, and the other. There may be a better way to do it. I don't know that. I know that staff and other people have been looking at this for a while. Some ways we've got a very late start on this and we waited longer probably than we should have. This probably should have been looked at back during Rudat. which is what 20 years ago now and it was mentioned as part of that process. Nothing happened until recently. So if nothing else, the planning is overdue. The question is not whether we need the planning. The question is whether or not this is the right planning to do that and that's going to have to be your decision today. Thank you. Thank you. Other public input. Good morning from the council and mayor Bob Bankster. Um, I'm just a little confused here. Later on this afternoon, we're going to have a discussion about water stage three restrictions. Uh, I've heard people complain who come that they're having trouble getting their boats in the water because of the low levels of the water of the lake. Water's being released to get into the water system. And we're talking about spending $300,000 on a plan when we might not even have a lake if we don't get some substantial rain and put water back into our into our lakes or our reservoirs. So I I don't Okay. Thank you. Okay. I need a motion on this item so that we can move it forward. Motion to

[1:33:11] approve. Okay. Second. I have a motion and a second to approve as presented. I'm going to Mr. Z. I have one more comment. Uh if we're going to fund this gateway through the interest funds, I mean state it that way. Don't say to be funded from Lake Nazworthy trust fund. You know, that's what it says right there in black and white. So that's where um I think my I need a clarification that the actual that that is is that the case that this Mr. Dne said it twice now. This would be the third time that he's saying I said as presented I should say as presented uh for the clarification that this is coming from the investment account investment proceed. Okay. So I'm changing investment proceed from the trust fund and second second. Okay. One more question for clarification. Gateway is coming in and we're going to pay them $335,000 and they're going to give us what? Okay. what what this is about. Miss Favre at in the previous discussions back in May said that our our planning department has ideas about how to do this but is but does not feel that this is in their wheelhouse. This is not something they want to put the plan together for. And so they looked for organizations that have uh done this in other communities and created a development process for bodies of water. Uh so that could either be a river area. There's the area in Oklahoma City for instance that was uh produced by this group. And so what they did then was come back and say we're going to bring these groups in, interview them, and through a committee process decide which one seems to make sense to help us develop the lake where we have commercial areas. So that for instance where that u electric plant is is being uh de you know is being taken apart and sold off and that's been uh annexed into the city and it fronts on Nickerbacher. what's the best way to develop all of

[1:35:15] that part of that new part of the city? Uh, and then what do we do with the parks that are there now and the park plan that's been put in place? How does that roll into this? What do we do for the residents? What do we do for the commercial development? And where should that commercial development be? So, it would be then a a um a project of here's what your zoning ought to be. Here's what here's where different parts of the area should be zoned commercial. here's where different parts should be zoned residential. Uh here's how your transitions ought to take place. All the kinds of things that we do in comprehensive planning and all of the kinds of things we do in in uh our zoning processes to say then let's now go out and and remember this was a big part of this why we chose this company. They have the relationships with developers from other communities and other projects to make sure that we don't only have some idea of what the plan is, but we have the relationships to bring that developer to this community so that we start with the opportunity to do some things on the lake that make it more economically uh integral to what the city does. We have two jewels here. One is the river downtown and we're doing all the right things with the river. The other one is the lake. We're not doing anything differently on the lake than we than what we've done for 50 years. This is trying to move the lake process forward correctly and bring in those relationships so that we end up with something that that helps us economically be developed and helps us uh continue to be the place people want to come from central and west Texas. And and that's what this is about. And there's one thing I'll add. This this process will be have a high amount of resident uh well no it has a high amount of public input. Public input. So so it's not just residents out there. It's public input. What do you want this to be? There's there's the walking trail the issues there. There's the there's the horseshoe. There's people there's people live all over that lake. They all

[1:37:17] have different issues and there's people, you know, from within the city that want to talk this they're they're going to be talking to us that the planning process will involve our citizens and there was even a plan that put forth. It was one meeting. I said, "No, we're not going to have one meeting. We're going to have lots of meetings so we get this right." So that's why it's it's an expensive plan because we want to do this right. We want everybody's input. And the people on Joy Road, they have thoughts. We want to know what those thoughts are. How do we integrate with Joy Road over by the beach? How do we do that? this this company can do it for us. Need to let Mr. Silvas have this back and then I'm going to call for the vote. I would just wanted uh to be reminded of what they were bringing to the table. Okay. I have a motion and a second to to approve this as presented with the uh one caveat that it's clear that the funds to be spent are from the investment proceeds from the like Nazworthy TR trust fund. And so at this point, I'll call for that vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Nay. I'm going to oppose it. Okay. We're four to two on this vote. At this time, I'd like to go to item number 16. This is the discussion, update, and presentation regarding the status of the downtown master developer. Presentation by our planning manager, AJ Fver. I believe we had a couple of council members ask for an update on where we are with the master developers. So, I've prepared a very short um report for you and also just a a line of chronology as to where we started and where we are at this point in the process. Um you may recall back in October of last year the downtown development commission was formulated and established by ordinance which you passed and in 2011 um the end of that year in December a draft plan for the downtown area which is intended to augment the existing downtown chapter of the comprehensive plan was compiled by staff and presented to the downtown development commission. We also had a

[1:39:20] public meeting to present this to the public in January of this year. The downtown development commission asked staff to proceed with developing a draft scope of services for an RFQ that would be published. The downtown development commission reviewed what staff had prepared in February and in April that RFQ was published with a due date of June 7th. Uh the week of June 7th we discovered that only one submission had been received and so we did extend that deadline to June 21st. I will mention that we sent out um 32 packets to specific companies that had had experience in the master developer concept as well as publish it in on a number of websites um that consultants routinely pull RFQ and RFP requests from that deadline again was extended to June 21st and at the 26th meeting of the downtown development commission we distributed the submission information that was received and the DDC set a date of August 28th That date was set for their next regular meeting and also for an interview of that submission. Um the three consulting firms that together put together that submission. On October 28th, the downtown development commission did interview that consultant group. Uh it was a very lengthy, very lively discussion and at the end of that discussion, they did make a recommendation that this group be selected for the task as master developer. On September 25th, uh approximately, staff will begin discussion with the DDC to propose and refine a final scope of services. And at that point, once we have a final scope of services, that can be uh priced out and negotiations can begin. Council, if I could add, uh it was concerning that we had only one response. Um but rather than throw it all out, uh the the group decided to go ahead and meet with the the the proposal uh the people who had submitted the proposal. And I I guess I could characterize that as a very positive exchange. I think the that uh downtown

[1:41:23] development commission felt very good about the proposal and that's why they directed staff to make some progress. Uh really in summation, what I'd say is we're trying to work up and uh a scope and a price tag uh so that we've got a package that that group can make a recommendation on and bring to council for consideration. And uh while it's never moves as fast as everybody would like right now, I think that uh the commission feels like they're in a good spot with this proposal. And the question is, can we can we tie up some loose ends and and uh bring a nice package to council that council can be on board with? Yes, M. Farmer, could you uh AJ tell me what the vote was the DDC on who they're recommending? It was unanimous. Thank you. I'm just there's an obvious point and I'm I'm not sure why it's not being brought up. The group that submitted is the same group that we just hired for Lake Nazworthy. They have an have a relationship with St. Angelo and I think they can leverage the two possibly in the future. Um they're super smart. I didn't ever think that it'd be a I thought a master developer would be one person. It's it's a group. Um and so it's quite different than I envisioned, but I see some synergy here. And so we're quite lucky that they submitted a proposal because they're a very talented group of people. You're right. They they did actually submit a package uh jointly with Catalyst Urban Development and NE Development, both of which also have St. Angelo ties, and that was one of the u recurring comments from the DDC members was they did like hearing from people that knew our community and seemed to have some knowledge of what it was that we needed here. They did very well in pres in their presentation. Mr. Morrison, my question would be why do we need

[1:43:25] them? Uh we heard Brena Gunders report just a while ago of the the the amount of building and buying and all of the wonderful things that's going on downtown. All you have to do is drive down through downtown at night to see the tremendous growth and things that have happened in the last two years. Why do we need somebody to come in and tell us what our local boys and girls are already doing? We know what we're doing. We're already doing it. We have success. We see it in our taxes. Why do we need to pay some group to come in from Fort Worth to tell us what to do when we are doing it already and are successful at it? Why? Okay, Mr. Hzville. Okay. when when y'all they're going to go through all this process and they're going to bring us back and present to us what what's some of the deliverables they're going to bring to us just roughly in this case in the discussion with the downtown development commission there was um a large chunk I think of the conversation was talking about investments the um techniques of of having both horizontal and vertical development and this group was very vocal in saying that they wanted to make sure that their involvement as a master developer would not preclude them from also investing in the downtown area. Um so part of their um part of their deliverables to us will be based on some of the data that they've already started collecting and and presented to us at that meeting. Really targeting the areas of downtown that need to be revitalized and trying to determine what is it that's keeping that from happening. How do we put together a package that will entice someone with the um adequate financial backing to come in and actually do the project? um how do you go from idea to reality? Bridging that gap. And so they have established relationships with both lenders in the industry and also developers. And this um group that they've put together is combined of not only planners, people with planning backgrounds, people with

[1:45:27] financing backgrounds who know how to go out and find money and grant monies, and also a group that is a construction-based group. So the three of those together um sort of run the gamut from conceptualization to reality of a project. And so what we anticipate they will be bringing us largely is those types of projects. Where are the key projects and helping us put together the package that would actually get someone to come in and break ground in a building that has maybe been largely vacant for years. I I I think one of the keys that you'd said, and correct me if I heard this wrong, but they're going to be either hopefully bringing money, bringing people that have money, or finding, you know, going out there and have trying to solicit people that have money. Correct. Am I correct in that assumption? You're correct. Or bring their own money. That was one of my That is a So I Exactly right. That to me is one of the keys that that I think we're looking at is it's it's uh they're they're going to going be going beyond the people that we know that you know that the people out there know um hopefully on the aspect of looking at some new money to come into this town. So, okay. Thank you, Mr. Silvas. AJ, I guess the question I had and I too from there from the very beginning assumed that a master developer like Paul said I thought it was a one person but now I find out it's a group but financial impact none at this time expenditures would be part of a contract process. Do we have any idea what financial impact we're looking at? You're asking my questions. That's that's what I'm I'm trying to okay plan for these kind of expenditures and uh that what I'm being told I have the same kind of questions what's going to be delivered and what are we going to have to pay for it and uh as kind of an outsider from a planning perspective I have those questions and and it really depends on what it is we want and so that's where we are now if we were to

[1:47:29] make this presentation today we'd say well that depends on what you want what scope do you want so we're working with them going to have be having discussions with him to determine what is it we want the master to developer to do for us and what will our what will that require us to bring to the table in the form of financial or other consideration. So we don't know yet but that is an issue for us and that's in in my mind that's something we have to have worked out before this comes back as a recommendation. And again, it says the staff will begin discussion with the downtown development commission to propose and refine a final scope of services and to discuss pricing. So the committee's not through doing its work before it comes back to us. Can we throw this price idea into the mix with it like Lake Nazworthy what they're doing out there? I'm just throwing that out. I'm just kidding. What do you mean by throw in the mix? Well, we're paying them 335,000. Could we not add this to that price? I well I think for clarity sake AJ help me if if I go astray this is the group doing the Nazworthy work is one of three partners that have made a proposal for this master developer so they're not the it's not a done deal that we're going with them with Gateway well Gateway is one of three partners the partnership made a proposal and uh Gateway brings the again I'm counting on guidance Gateway brings the planning expertise. There's one that one of the partners has the uh master developer expertise. Financing expertise and exactly financing. And there's one partner that has the construction expertise. Okay. And uh Gateway will have a presence or a a footprint in St. Angelo through this other contract. The other two, one has family ties here, the other has actual projects on the ground here at this point. So there is for two of the three there are solid San Angelo connections and and really what we pay and what we get is yet to be determined

[1:49:32] based on what the commission wants and what this partnership's expertise and interest uh lies in. And that's a concern for me too. I don't want to see a I'd like to see I suggested $5,000 and everybody laughed, even my own folks. So, I guess it's going to be more than $5,000, but uh we'll just have to see what it is they think the interests are. It could I I don't have a clue. It depends on what we want them to do, but it is a consideration. I have one question, Miss Farmer. With three different groups combining as one to oversee, you know, to do this the DDC. Is there a contract in the contract the three different companies responsibilities? And what happens if one of these companies drops out, goes belly up, goes elsewhere? How does that affect us? I I just need some clarification, right? We we're not yet in the stages of formulating a contract, but that those responsibilities would be spelled out similar to the last item in which the contract we provided had the detailed scope of service. You would have the same sort of uh format for that. Okay. And they would all be contractually tied, the three of them, to the project. Okay. Mr. Hersfeld. I I I guess just just want to maybe my perception of of that while there may be potentially some outlay right up front for the city and in paying for some services. I mean, I guess my expectation is that, you know, they're going to bring cash and so it will, you know, there could be returns to the city via sale of properties, the Edgewater property. It could be returns to the city again via uh you know you know permits and fees and and property tax increases and not property tax but uh the the property value increases. I mean so you know there's there's a multitude of returns a piece of land becoming something more than a piece of land is is new property taxes. That's correct. So anyway that that's just kind of my perception of how I see it. Now with all that in mind, it

[1:51:35] needs to be you know all you know budgeted and and properly paid for with a proper again coming back to this return on our investment. So but uh that's what my expectations and hopes are when we get to the end product of this thing. Okay, this is a discussion item. Are there further questions? Thank you. Thank you very much. Let's move to item number 17. This is an update on the self- insurance fund and consideration of authorizing the health insurance premiums for the calendar year 2013. Presentation is by our human resources director, Lisa Marley. Good morning, Mayor and Council. Uh, what we wanted to do today was to give you an update on the self- insurance plan and how that has worked for us over the years. And there's a brief background that I'd like to share with you to start off with. Um if you recall last November when we met with you about our self-insurance on the health program uh you all awarded the um Etna exclusive provider option with community as the um in network service for our plan. That option allowed us to um reduce the premiums for last year and that provided additional savings to the fund. Um at the last council meeting there was a slide that was presented um that showed um a budget amendment that we had done earlier in the year and there was a little bit of confusion about that and I just thought I would address that while we're discussing this option. If you recall last year um when we did the budget we had not finished the negotiations on the self- insurance

[1:53:39] plan and so we had budgeted based on the $16.50 50 cent premium that we had the year previous um when we were able to go with the EPO and uh we were able to reduce those premiums to 1320. So it was incumbent on us to do a budget amendment to show that we would have less revenue coming in than we originally thought. um whenever revenue is changed then we also need to exchange the um expenditure line items and because the um new EPO was predicting to have quite a bit of savings our consultant wanted us to see 6 months worth of claims to make sure that that was in fact a reality and at that point um once we had that data we did put in the budget amendment to reduce the revenues and the expenditure so I just kind of wanted to clear that up for the group uh last December. Then uh if you recall, we received uh ERRP money, which is our early retirey reinsurance program money. That's a federal program that allows us to um use that money to offset premium increases or um claims expendit expenditures. Uh also last fall we started our employee wellness program with health risk assessments and health screenings and that was uh conducted for all employees that were covered by the insurance program. So here is a five five-year history of the self- insurance plan. It shows here um and I just went back five years because I had that data easily readable uh readily available. But um you can see in 5 years ago our balance started at a little over $103,000 and at the end of the year we had raised that to a little over 500,000. Well the next year we took a pretty big hit if you look at those numbers and as a result of that the following year we evaluated it and decided to close the city pharmacy as a

[1:55:44] result. the following year. Then we started off at 321,000 and at that point we outsourced the city clinic and we saw the money starting to grow from not having that additional expense. Now for this year through August 31st, you can see where our fund is where it's sitting right now. So, it has has grown significantly as a result of what we believe is the wellness program and our employees being healthier as well as um the great savings that we're seeing in claims through our program with community. Lisa, I have a quick question. Yes. Just by looking at that slide, how does the ending balance in '08 519 jump up to 581? That's a good question. Back in those days, we because we had our own pharmacy, we would see a rebate that would come back from the pharmaceutical companies. And so after the end of the year, if those dollars came in, they would have to be applied to the balance. And that's why we could start off higher. Lisa, did was the blue book the source of these numbers? Yes. Uh those are likely uh year-end audit adjustments. You'll notice that the reality is that your ending balance from one year is the beginning balance for the next year. um what she's done is pulled those from our monthly reports and those uh don't take into account year-end audit adjustments because they haven't occurred yet. So that was the example she gave was one of those items which would have been one of those year-end adjustments. Right. And that's a big one in '09 from 167 to 244. So that's absolutely uh one of the biggest audit adjustments that occurs has to do with runout. We book a liability associated with claims which have occurred before the end of the year but don't get paid because the documentation the the claim paperwork doesn't get submitted and satisfied until after the year end. The the

[1:57:48] industry calls it run out. It's it's just a an accounts payable type liability at year end. Mr. Alexander. Uh, one of the many downsides to a city manager leaving is that all the discussions you had with them also leave and and and Harold had a really good memory. He had a really good understanding and I had some questions for him and one of them was how big is this fund? How big do we want this fund to end up? Because the bigger the fund, the more stability. What is our fund goal? Michael, do we have one? I mean, Harold and I discussed it in philosophy. You know, we think I don't remember a per a goal set, but well, what you have right now is a fund which has approximately $7 million a year in expenditures based on that those GFOA, Government Finance Officers Association uh guidelines, you would want u a 60 to 90day fund balance uh to account for uh variations in activity. There was a a big standard. It's a very normal standard for run out to have 90 days. Yeah. But there's a there's an advantage to having a bigger fund. And I and I I guess we're hit with so much information that I forget the details when it's a year out. Well, there is an advantage to having a big fund. Well, yes. Um it let me kind of finish laying that cornerstone. uh 90 days that means 90 days worth of expenditures which is approximately one quarter of the annual budget for the year. So one quarter of 7 million I think is about 1.75 million that's 90 days worth of expenditures. Now that's that that available fund balance we would want net of liabilities otherwise it's not fund balance and so the runout is already taken out of that. Uh if you have $500,000 worth of runout, we book that as a uh to the extent that it qualifies as a liability, it's booked as a liability. To the extent that it's not yet a liability, we book it as reservation of fund balance

[1:59:50] or designated reservation of fund balance. So we try to back those liabilities and potential liabilities out of that fund balance. So you have a a net pure fund balance. That's what fund balance is. And so 1.75 million would be our objective and uh with a 90-day fund balance and uh Okay. And and to answer your question about the advantages of having a larger fund balance, that issue comes down to our stop-loss insurance. If you recall when we discussed that last year, we can lower insurance rates. That is correct. Exactly right. Yes. For our for our stop loss. So there'll be a a discussion from council about how big we want. 1.75 may be a a goal, but we may want it to be higher. Correct. That's a good point. The that GFO, that's just a general guideline and it's very much a fund balance target ideally would be t would be uh tailored based on the activity within the fund. Uh the general fund is very seasonal and the property taxes don't come in until the second half of the fiscal year. Water, our water fund is very much that way. uh very seasonal with weak performance in the beginning. So those kinds of funds you would want to to be on the high side of that fund balance. This one is has not been that seasonal. And so there there's not necessarily a seasonality uh element to determining this fund balance, but it very much does go to uh protection that allows you to decrease the co- insurance you buy. And it's also if if you talk about a rainy day fund concept and you had to choose a fund that's already there, this is a pretty good one because it can really hit us hard in a single year with a rate increase and we could soften the blows at this with this fund, right? Um at the same time, you got to be careful that you don't set yourself up in a position where what what you do is pass on tough decisions because you don't have to make a decision, right? So

[2:01:54] you right and you got to remember all of this is taxpayer money. So at some point at some point you're holding on to a lot of money and and should you be giving it back to them or should you be offering more services or better services or so there's a lot of discussion there but anyway this has been a a good discussion. Is there any other question for Miss Marley on this item? Well there's a little bit more. Oh please let's look forward to that if I can. Just one of the one of the thoughts on that is I agree we need to look at the fund balance but you know one of the the things that I was interested in is a rate stabilization you know so we don't have get hit with a huge one and so the the goal would be to have the fund balance at a reasonable amount where you know just say next year you know we we come across and now we for whatever reasons our loss whatever it may be that we're going to go up well you know I I don't want to just pass the buck but at the same time instead of having to double the rates, you know, we can ease into it and use some of that fund to bring that down and, you know, and and make the shock a little bit less for both the employees and for the city. Um, but then the goal would be we would have to work our way into it, not just kick the can down the road. So anyway, that I'm glad to see this is moving in that direction. Amen. So, I mean, to your point, 167,000 wouldn't much help if you had a bad year, but a million6 could sure be some help if you had a bad year. And so, that makes this makes this good stuff. Now, if you notice that the bottom of that screen, at the bottom of the the last ending balance, this does not include the ERRP funds that we received, which was the 343,000. All right, Lisa, let me ask, go back to this slide. Does the have you kept track or has the wellness program made an impact at all? I mean, what what's going on there? That's a great question and very timely. Um, we are just now starting the um

[2:03:57] second year of doing the wellness screenings. They started last week. They run for eight weeks long and employees will be coming over here to the convention center to get their health screenings done. So at this point we had our baseline from last year and by mid November we will have all of the screenings done and we'll see how we've stacked up against last year's numbers. So that's a very good question. All right. So had we not made these changes to our plan design last year with going to an EPO um then the city, the employees and the retirees would all see an increase in premiums this year of 16.4%. So by us making the changes to that plan, we have have had a great savings to our premiums. I I I think that needs to be emphasized that introducing that competition 16.4% on 7 million would have been in excess of a million dollars in increase born by employees, retirees, and the city or or some combination thereof. So I think that the plan change that that was introduced last year and implemented has yielded tremendous benefits to all stakeholders in this plus we wouldn't have the fund balance we have now. That is correct. That's true. So based on our experience with uh claims this year and on our normal trend with insurance, if you recall, Holmes Murphy described that to us last year, the fund is going to require a modest premium increase uh to offset that trend. Now, there are several ways that that could be accomplished. We've listed three here. The first one is a shared cost between the city and the employees, which would be an equivalent of 2.5% for the next year. And these are the premiums here. I know that's a little hard to see. Um, but it it um would cause the city's contribution to go up from 357 to 366 per employee per month. And it would also um show

[2:06:01] dramatic or fairly dramatic increases across the board on the other tiers. So that is one choice. Uh the second choice is uh that the cost go completely to the employees and the retirees. In that case it results in an 11.8% premium increase which are these numbers here. And as you can see that really starts to jump up there um pretty significantly. And then our third option is to utilize 142,000 out of the ERRP funds. uh this would mean that there would be no increase in contributions for the city for the employer for the employees or for the retirees across all tiers and again that would remain uh all of the premiums would remain the same. Now, if you remember, the federal statute for the ERRP funds allows us to use that those monies specifically to reduce premiums or to um uh help in claims payments. Now, we met with the insurance review committee again and we've shown them this information and uh they support staff's recommendation to utilize the 142,000 out of the ERP. That'll still leave us 201,000 to go to your point, Mr. Hersshfeld, of you know, next year we would have to come up with another 142 to start off with where we were if we were to increase premiums next year and we would have that money in the fund to cover that. So, at this point, we are seeking your permission on how to move forward and our recommendation would be to utilize the ERRP funds. We do have a bit of a limitation on those those fundings uh or those funds to take place before the year 2014 depending on how the elections go and whether or not selfins or the um health the um Obamacare healthcare reform continues to stay on as planned.

[2:08:06] If that goes into effect in 2014, it may be that we will see so many dramatic changes to health insurance that we would not be able to utilize those funds. They're very specific what it has to be used for. And if there's changes that occur based on the federal law, then we might not be able to use them. So our suggestion would be to use them before 2014 if at all possible. If if we see some kind of a change in the year that might cause a restriction, then we uh could consider some kind of a mid-year funding strategy change that could flow through council in the form of uh direction and a budget amendment. So, uh while that threat remains, u I think we do have some options for addressing it if we see a problem. I mean, we I agree with you. I think it's something that should be talked about when the time comes. Sure. So, questions, comments. Okay. What else, Miss Marley? That is all I have. Thank you very much. I need a I do need a decision. You're You're asking for action on premiums, right? I'll make a a motion for approval of this item and second ERP funds. ERP funds. Yes. Second. Okay. I have a motion from Mr. Silvis and a second from uh Mr. Hersshfeld to use the $142,000 from the ERRP funds uh and leave the contribution from the city and from the employees where it is today. Is there a further question on that? Is there public input on that? Let me call for that vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Okay. Good job, Miss Marley. Good job. Thank you. This next item is number 18 uh requested by council member Farmer has to do with a discussion regarding the dental benefits for retirees and cost of living adjustments for retirees. So, Miss Farmer, thank you, Mr. Mayor. In uh uh visiting with constituents, I

[2:10:12] discovered and I I did not recall or remember this that the benefits that we do offer to retirees, they are offered the health insurance as same as current employees with the exception, they do not are not permitted to participate in the dental. And I did not recall or nor do I recall what the difference in the breakdown or why the dental was not offered to retirees. And so I wanted the opportunity to discuss this and to discuss why and and in light of that we just used uh the early retirement uh the ERP money to help us reduce or to maintain premiums for all of the employees. uh I don't want us to forget is because of that benefit that plan we shouldn't exclude our retirees in receiving some of the benefits that the others are getting and I wanted to know what the approximate cost to us would be to add the dental back in for retirees. That's what I wanted to discuss today. And then the next item that I wanted to discuss was the cola to the retirees and an explanation as to how that worked and how the retirees are looked at for increases in their cost of living in their in their retirement income. Okay. All right. Um, I did pull that information for you and um, we have 224 retirees before the age of 65 and for there to be uh, for the city to pick up the premiums for that dental coverage, it would be $40,911 per year. And then if we wanted to offer it to the post65 retirees, there are 232 of them. And the premiums for them would be $42,372 $372. So for about um $83,000 a year, that coverage could be covered um for

[2:12:18] the premiums. And what that doesn't account for is whatever the claims would be. There wouldn't be any way to predict what that would be um for 450 people. I don't know. Do we know why we I mean they received it prior to us changing the plan. Is that not correct? That's correct. Yes. Do we know why that we didn't include it in the new plan? Uh no. When when a when an employee retires um they're offered health insurance, that was how it was originally set up in the um statute or the charter or ordinance, whatever it is that that offers that to retirees. But dental was not included. Um quite often employers do not offer dental insurance to retirees. Um we did do a survey of our sister cities and um it's about let's see there were eight people that responded. Six do offer it. Two do not. Nobody funds it. They offer it at to retirees but have the retirees pay for it except for Witchaw Falls who does that. Um, many of the cities uh cut off the benefit at age 65 if they do offer it to retirees. Um, but you know, there's no I I couldn't find any reason why we don't do it. But to answer your um inquiry about using the ERRP funds for that, ERRP funds are merely for medical, not for dental. So, we wouldn't have that as an option. It would be something that would be coming out of our fund balance to pay for that. Yeah, I understand that. But because of the issue of a retiree program and then here we just not don't include our retirees. We benefit from that program for them but we don't include them in the dental plan and I I I couldn't understand why and I don't remember or recall why we removed it this last goound. Well, it's not been in effect for a

[2:14:20] number of years. We haven't had dental for retire 2000. Uh probably. I I'm not sure. And I just wanted some feeling from the rest of the council, just some discussion as to how they feel about it. I'm just trying to get my hands around the number. About $15 a month per retiree. Is that about right? I'm I'm Yes. 1522. That is a lot less than what it really costs to go to the dentist. Dentist. I mean, they the older you get, the more your teeth fall apart, the more you need a dentist. And $15 is not a bad price to have insurance. Correct. So, and and if you remember with what you just said, um I mean obviously those claims are going to be coming to us, that's not accounted for. Are you saying our dental program is self insurance also? That is correct. It's not a reinsurance. I'm sorry. It is not self-insured. I beg your pardon. So that this is basically just a a policy insurance. That is correct. So, you know, so what what about letting them buy into our program similar to COPRA or such? Well, per se, that's what she said most of those cities are doing. What she said was they're letting the retirees into their system. what she said most but they pay for most of the cities are not the 232 folks in our system retirees in our system that are 65 or older would not be included in most cities is what she said but she said the 224 retirees that are below 65 are included in most of the cities that she studied or got feedback from but as a pass through what you said you're saying to them you you can pay $15 a month and be part of our insurance buy uh and it would certainly be to their advantage and so that's I'll be right with you. Isn't that correct? Isn't that what you said? Yes, that is correct. Okay, Mr. Morrison, will our insurance company allow them? We will have to we will have to check on that. I don't know if they'll have any age requirements, if

[2:16:23] they will be a mandatory cut off at 65, but we will check that if you want us to look into that. But we could start looking now before January one the premium year starts. Absolutely. because the timing is perfect. We're going to be having our open enrollment in November, so this will be the perfect time to do it. Lisa, yes. No, I I just have the question. The reason they you cut them off at 65 is because then what? I don't I don't know. I mean, Medicare doesn't Yeah. Medicare doesn't cover any kind of dental benefit. No, they don't. It It goes into effect at Medicare goes into effect at 65. And with Medicare coverage for dental insurance, whatever they cover in dental, I'm not sure. I just know that we don't guess. I have no idea. But but again, the thing bear in mind what you're the the liability you're taking on is if you let them in the system, which which I I think should be considered, but if you let them in the system, they're paying so much for the premium. if they are having problems and they have claims, the claims come into the system. It's an outside insurance buy. So, the insurance company you're with would be on the hook for paying those claims. But how that comes back is and how that impacts us for how that comes back for all employees and for those retirees and all that if you decide to do it is the the next time you go out for insurance for dental insurance, it's not $15.22 22 cents a month to cover it. It's, you know, $229 because they're going to raise the premiums enough. So, that's the balance that you're that you're wanting to think through is do you want them in the system or not and and so forth. So, I'm just I'm bringing that up. It's not it's not going to be a gift. It's going to be, you know, they're in the system now, but it whatever their claim experience is will affect what it costs to have dental insurance for existing employees and retirees, whoever you let in the system. You're just playing the devil's

[2:18:24] advocate because well, I just want to make sure it's all clear. It's a discussion item, so I'm just trying to give as much information as possible. Okay. Okay. other on the on the cost of living uh question I Michael be addressing uh council member Farmer how how in-depth an explanation would you like a brief explanation on cola on the cola and the reason I wanted to bring it up just for discussion because uh this is pretty complicated the stuff that I have received from TMRS uh it it's complicated to understand and I think without slide views and how it affects us the city if we tried to look at what we could do through the retirees, you know, through COLA for cost of living. Right now, the only cost of living, the way I understand it, that they get is through the CPI, the consumer price index when that changes in small adjustment, but the city never does anything to increase the contribution to the retirees through the CO. Is that correct? Not entirely. Okay. the city elects uh a participation level or a benefit level in TMRS and there are some statute uh statute or uh controlled options that we select from. Okay, let let me tell you what I'm after uh in looking from listening to constituents and listening to staff as to how the cola and the retirees is affected in their cost of living and their retirement income. I've gotten mixed signals from staff telling me that well the TMRS representative has to come to us to increase that amount and TMRS telling me no that the cities may choose to grant a COLA increase. What I would like from this meeting and just discussion to hear from the other council members is for that to be worked up to show us with slides that each council member has the opportunity to review and to look at as to what our options are u uh at any kind of grant or increase to the retirees the city of St.

[2:20:29] Angelo retirees in their cola plan. That's an excellent request and we can work that up. I understand that one. Okay. It can't in fairness to you and the retirees and employees, it can be very complicated and it's a little uh not intuitive the way some of it works because of statutory limitations. And so we'd be glad to work up I want to make this clear to existing retirees the plan out there. Our budget for the year is set already and this isn't something that would take place immediately. This has to be studied as to how it impacts the city in our budget. But I want those numbers worked up now and as to look at them now. No problem. Thank you. And the other council I really would like their opinions. I think it's informative. I agree. Thank you. I mean it's informative. So then we would decide what we can or can't do, but it would be based on data because I don't I don't recall in in my tenure on council that the uh call of the retirey plan, how that works has really ever been explained or that I understand it. And um I I think this council needs to understand so we can plan forward. Do you want a comprehensive discussion which could take a long time or do you just want to look at restoring the cola uh benefit which existed before a few years back? That's really what's generating the discussion among retirees. I'm not looking at restoring. I want a comprehensive study and what we can do. I don't want to restore blindly what you know was removed out there. No, but you want to know what that would cost. That's what you're really wanting to know. That's what we will orient the presentation around getting back where we were, what it would cost, and what it would take in a way of council action. Absolutely. No problem. Okay. Thank you. Okay, Miss Marley, it's my opinion that this next item is going to take more than 14 minutes. Um, what do you think? Um, I'm I I have a hard cut off today uh at noon and and then coming back afterwards. So, if it's okay with council, what I'd like to go ahead and

[2:22:32] do is break now and then come back after executive session. Well, you could take 20. 20. Uh, don't mind taking 20. Public discussion on item 18. Okay. I think what you heard was everybody agrees with what you asked for. No, I said public discussion. Ah, I don't mind that at all. Of course. Is there someone that would like to give public input on item number 18? Okay, Miss Farmer, thanks for the help. Okay. Okay, I'm going to skip item 19. I'm just trying to keep an eye on it's 11:47. I wanted to be sure and shut down just a few minutes before 12. And so, um, the I'm going to skip over to item 20. And this is the se second public hearing in consideration of adoption of an ordinance levying property taxes for the city of St. Angelo for the 2012 tax year. Presentation by our budget manager, Morgan Trainer. Good morning. Good morning. You'll recall last time we introduced a tax levy of 78.1 cents per $100 of valuation and that's a half cent reduction on the property tax rate. So today is the second public hearing on that. Okay. Motion to approve. Second. Okay. Okay, I have a motion to approve and a second uh related to um in to adopting the um property tax rate at 78.1 cents. Okay. Is there public input on this item? Further questions or comments from council? Okay. Call for the vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Okay. What's number 21? 21 is landfill fees. We discussed that months and months ago and this is implementing landfill fees and then we did an update here a couple of months ago. We uh uh just need to increase those fees based on regulatory uh operating and other issues which are putting that upward pressure on.

[2:24:35] Um this conversation goes back actually into the previous budget cycle and is not really the same conversation as all the other fees which discussions which are going to follow but nonetheless has a similar impact if you're paying the fees. Okay folks, you like to try to do this in 10 minutes? 9 minutes. Nine minutes. Yes. Let's uh get started, Mr. Dixon. And if necessary, we may, as Michael said, all this is before you today is the amended fee schedule to implement those rates that y'all talked about on June council meeting. U the laundry list that he talked about of the unfunded u expenses that we have out there and I don't really have a presentation. It's just the amended fee schedules for as they recommended at that time with a stepped approach. recall that we we had originally talked about an increase. Uh what came out of that meeting was a stepped approach. Okay. And so you're saying though we didn't adopt it. We just said here's what we want it to look like. You're bringing it back and saying now adopt it. Yes, sir. Because uh that was a concept and determination of uh amounts kind of discussion. This is implementing the ordinance which authorizes those fees. Okay. This has nothing to do with my water bill. This is just the landfill. Is that correct? That's correct. That is correct. Well, your your comprehensive utility bill has on it a trash collection fee and this affects that fee. Other people call that the water bill. Yes. Although it contains water, sewer, u trash, storm water fees. So for a h residential one single family residence it will go up 21 cents per month. The first year it goes up 65 cents. The second year is 21 cents. Okay. We as council I guess need to get

[2:26:42] accustomed to the comprehensive billing city's comprehensive billing. I had a citizen call me last week and he referred to it as that and I didn't know what he was talking about and it was oh you mean your water bill and that was my mistake. Well, I'm struggling to remember that but in fairness you know we beat Will Wy up a lot with water rates and in fairness to him there are other things on there that we pay. So I'm trying to be fair to Will, but I'm having trouble not calling it the water bill also. So the $6.32 that that's per ton at the landfill. What that will go up the residential rates first year go up 65 cents per month. The second year will be 21 cents. An additional 21 cents. All the fee schedule had to be amended to implement those increases that y'all had talked about. And where does that say on the in the ordinance? Is it on there? I saw a bunch of numbers. So, I just didn't see the 65 cents or the Well, let's 65 cents is the change in the amount. So, you'll see a number that was $8 and change go to $8 and change plus 65, right? I just see the 21 cent increase. I guess I need to add them all up, huh? I think we've gone through all of this. I think this is the matter now of saying you did all the work. you told them what to do. Now, here it is. So, um I'm going to make a motion that we approve this as presented and try to move it forward. Second. I have a second from Miss Farmer. Further discussion on the item. Public input on the item. Call for this vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Okay. Item 21 is behind us. And now 22 through 28 are are to run together. Um, and I I don't need to forget uh 19, but I know we can't get that done. Going to do 22, Morgan.

[2:28:49] Uh, Mr. Mayor. Yes, sir. On items 22 through 28. Yes, sir. Since we've got a brand new manager coming on next month, we just gave back a half a cent of property tax reduction, which will amount to about $180,000 total. And now we are talking about fees that will approach $250,000. So we just gave our citizens back a half cent of property tax reduction and saved them 180,000. And now we're coming in the back door and we're increasing freeze fees to the point of 248,000. So we are actually increasing what our customers, our city player are going to pay by $70,000. I would like to table every one of these 23 to 22 through 28 until our new manager gets here. Let him look at these things and see if he is in favor of fees that are actually charging our citizens more than what we just gave them back. These need to wait. this it's too early to talk about these well I respectfully disagree because property tax is across the board to every property owner automatic and fees a lot are user fees the select folks who use or have an alarm system you know that's not across the board um um they're individual yes they're fees but a lot of times they're selected user and I I don't see it as the same okay I'm Not sure if I understand this correctly, but I believe I do. I think you've already voted this through. I think this is a formality uh finishing up the budget process. So, what am I missing there, Mr. Dane? This is like the previous discussion on landfill. We've had the conceptual discussion. These are the numbers we want to see. Uh in this case, like the landfill, the numbers you said you wanted to see, we've implemented in the budget. However, authorization to collect those fees doesn't exist. That

[2:30:53] authorization doesn't exist until the ordinance is updated. This is updating those ordinances and creating that authorization. Mr. Morrison, the point I'm trying to make is if you don't want to do these fees, then you need to cut services $250,000 or the budget is not balanced. I would just like for the new city manager to look at this before we make these increases. We've got a new man coming in. He's sharp with numbers. I would like for him to look at this and he approved these things because he's the one that's going to have to live with it. But he also would have to figure out $250,000 of other revenue somewhere else or he'd have to figure out $250,000 of the cuts. I don't like to give our citizens $180,000 back with one hand and then with the other hand charge them an additional 248,000. I don't think it's fair to our citizens. Mr. rehearsal. I I guess just a a question on this is that you know is this something we have to literally address today? Mr. Dane, that would have been my question. Councilman, can we put this off for a month, two months, and not really have because if I remember right, even the budget that was presented had a little bit of a surplus. Correct. You're you're correct. There's a surplus in the in the budget as it was approved. And so it is not imperative that these fees be collected right away. uh uh at the enhanced amount. And so there is an opportunity to for council to delay. It will cause those revenues theoretically to be lower than budgeted, but with that surplus, you have some wiggle room. There you go. And I guess one other aspect on that is that, you know, here we're looking at drought level three and so we're already going to be hitting people with increased water rates just because what it is. I think it'll be a it'd be nice to maybe push this out just a little bit. I'm not saying a year. Just give give us a little bit of breathing room here. My opinion is we're going to have to hit them with higher rates because this is revenue. I mean, we don't switch our from one bucket to the other, but I'm just saying it cost it cost our city uh you know, when an ambulance takes off

[2:32:56] and picks up somebody and and they charge insurance company, insurance company pays the ambulance fee. This is not ambulance fees. It's not in there. No, this is not annual fees. But that is going to be a separate discussion as directed by council. Okay. But we're still as a let me say it a different way. As a council, we have been pretty much united in the thought that we're going to redirect our expenses to the user who is gaining the service and that our tax we want that's one of the ways we've been lowering our tax rate. Maybe franchise fees and other ways, but that tax rate is skyhigh. It it makes it hard for somebody to come into San Angelo and make an investment into our city as a as as an investor and a business or even a homeowner in some cases where the where they're the their values have been adjusted to what real values are. Um we've got to get that tax rate down. We got to press it down and this is one of the methods we do it. It's just I'm not in disagreement with anything you said but to me this is a in my opinion this is a question of timing. That's all I'm saying. And I think okay I don't it's 11:58. We're not going to get to resolution on this item. And so let me ask that we come back and reintroduce item number 22. Further the discussion, get a vote made about tableabling it and all those kinds of things. It's 11:58. Let me take us into executive session at this time. Come back with item number 19 and then 22. At this time it's 11:58. I'd like to take we are taking the council into executive or closed session. Executive session is uh available under the provision of government code title 5 open government ethics subtitle A open government chapter 551 open meetings subchapter D exceptions to the requirement that meetings be open section

[2:34:57] 551.072 to deliberate the purchase exchange lease or value of real property section 551.071 071 to consult with an attorney on matters related to the Tri City Water Initiatives and SE section 551.087 to uh discuss any uh financial or other incentive to a company related to conducting economic development negotiations.

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=q20kJUF5w1g