San Angelo City Council December 18, 2012

[0:00:00] Heat. Heat. [Music] I'm going call the meeting to order. We'll start with prayer. We we uh our pastor has has not made it. So, um let me ask you to bow your heads and follow me in prayer this morning and and we'll start the session. Lord, we thank you for days like this when we get to come together and serve others. And uh and as we enter this Christmas season, we hope we all wear the servants's heart uh that we've seen in example. God, we thank you for all the blessings that you bestow on us. We ask you for rain and we ask you to sustain us and to help us do our best for this community and we ask your blessings on our community. God, we thank you for all that you provide. And we pray for those who are in pain or who are in grief as this uh season approaches us. We ask that you uh take care of those things that are on our hearts and on the hearts of those in in our country. And Lord, we ask today that you ask that you bless us with uh with discerning hearts and uh and an ability to to do our best. We ask that you bless this special meeting with our guests today and we we ask that um all here are are blessed as we move forward. God, we praise you and we love you and we ask all of this in your son's name. Amen. Amen. Okay, let me uh meet these two young

[0:02:04] ladies for the pledge. Okay. I'm being joined this morning by Sarah Ma. She's in fourth grade and Marie Ma. She's in fifth grade and they're at Angelo Catholic School. I pledge algiance 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 flag. I aliance to thee. One state under God one and indivisible. Good job. [Applause] We do not have any proclamations or recognitions this morning. So, let me move us forward to public comment. The council takes public comment on all items in the regular agenda. Public input on a regular agenda item will be taken at its appropriate discussion. Public input on an item not on the agenda or consent agenda may be identified and requested for consideration by the council at this time. The council may request an item to be placed on a future agenda or for a consent agenda item to be moved to the regular agenda for public comment. Let's uh move forward with those items. I know of two six. Okay. We'd like to pull that to the regular agenda. Correct. Okay. And then we have one more item that uh since it wasn't in the packet, we're going to table for for a future agenda item. Okay. And I I'll have to look to

[0:04:07] see which item it is. That would be seven. Okay. So, we'll pull six to the regular agenda. We're going to pull seven and table it until a future meeting so we can take a look at the contract before we vote on it. Okay. Mr. Mayor, if I may under public comment, um I realize that Connecticut is a long way from St. Angelo. I truly do, but it just tells me that anything can happen any place and anywhere. You know, I plead to citizens out there at this time of year that we practice living in a much kinder nation, being aware of our our neighbors, our fellow man, uh an inkling as to what their problems are and being a kinder and more gentler neighbor and being there for folks who may have problems and to stick out a hand, a helping hand. I follow on what my neighbor right here is always saying is we just need to be kinder and gentler and maybe more aware uh of what's going on out there. And if there is a need for our school officials and sheriff officials and police officials to get together here in St. Angelo and talk about problems that we may have to prevent an occurrence that has happened. I I encourage a leader to step forward and maybe organize such a group to look into to help us recognize the needs here in St. Angelo. Thank you. Okay. Other public comment. Motion to approve consent agenda ex pulling item number six to the regular agenda and postponing item number seven. Second. Okay. Call for that vote. All those in favor, please say I. I any opposed? Okay. Um let's move now to the regular agenda. But we will first uh what we do is go to the special agenda and then we'll we'll go to the rest after that.

[0:06:13] Okay. Today we have a joint meeting between the city council and the downtown development commission and uh that session starts now. And the first order under that uh under that agenda is uh to open the session, call it to order, and then move on to item number one, which is the discussion and possible action on matters as listed below relating to u an agenda item PL-01-12, a request for qualifications seeking to retain a master developer for the purposes of overseeing development within the downtown development district, and any action in connection there do. So, let us start from there. We have presentation from uh planning manager AJ Faver. Good morning, mayor, council, downtown development commission members. As you can see from the special agenda, we have three items that we're going to ask you to consider today. So, I'd like to start by just um emphasizing what those items are. Item A, of course, is talking about the qualifications of in the proposed scope of services by catalyst development. We do have Paris Rutherford joining us this morning from Catalyst Urban Development and he will handle that presentation first. Uh please keep in mind that after that we do have items B and C and those items are both to ask you to consider authorizing the city manager to do two things. One of those being to execute the letter of intent. That letter of intent was sent out to the members of the city council as well as the members of the downtown development commission prior to the meeting. So hopefully you've had a chance to review that. And then lastly to authorize the city manager or his designate to begin negotiations with the firm. So we have a lot to do in a short period of time. We are limiting ourselves to 90 minutes. And so with that, I'm going to ask Paris Rutherford to come forward and we'll start with item A. Um and he can talk a little bit more about how we'd like to handle the question and answer session as well. Thank you. Good morning. Merry Christmas. I'm Paris

[0:08:16] Rutherford, principal of Catalyst Urban Development. I'm in Dallas, Texas. Happy to be here. Nice to see everyone. Um, we appreciate the opportunity to come together and talk about something we think is very important, which is uh the the ongoing uh momentum and development and redevelopment, reinvestment in your downtown. It's an exciting subject, and we'd like to kind of jump in and kind of go through it with you, take some questions afterwards. Um, we we've been asked to prepare an agenda here. I'm sorry. Obviously, this is not something I'm very good at. So, let's let's back up a second. Yes, sir. Uh, Mr. Cummings, Mr. Edwards, one of the things that we have to do from a protocol perspective is call your meeting to order. And I I dropped the ball on that. So, so we're going to uh step back, probably not ask Miss Faver to start over, but but at least go ahead and call your meeting to order and then let the gentleman carry on. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh, as co-chairman of the Downtown Development Commission, I call our commission uh to order uh in concert with the city council. Okay. Thank you, sir. You don't even have to say Merry Christmas again. You can just carry on. I'll say it again. uh we you know we've had a few meetings with the commission leading up to this and I think uh in their wisdom and in that discussion everyone decided it was a good idea to come together and kind of run through some of the thoughts and ideas that we had with you um so we appreciate that opportunity so we're going to talk a little bit about kind of who we are where we're coming from um and something we think is very important which is what the role of a master developer is versus a vertical developer I think it's critical as well as the role of the city uh we also put some information together related to our initial observations on downtown itself. Um I've got a family connection that is my wife is from here so I'm here a lot uh and we've over the last say 12 13 years have looked at your evolution in downtown compared it to what we're doing

[0:10:17] around the country and there's some interesting things we'd like to share with you from that standpoint. And then uh we were asked to kind of run through our proposed scope. Um I believe you all have that in front of you or maybe have reviewed that up to this point. We'll run through that as well. Um so first and foremost who are we um and kind of where are we coming from? Uh Catalyst Development we are a development company in Dallas. Um our background is in finance uh economics planning. We're very diversified company and the team that we've assembled here includes NE development and construction uh who uh Andre Nicholas is here behind me. Uh you may know NE. They have a project going out at Sherwood in the loop right now on an apartment project under center construction. and we currently uh together have a project under construction in Dallas uh that we're working on together. We have we have a good relationship there. We're excited to bring that to bear to the city. Uh we also have um uh gateway planning um to assist us as we if we need some assistance in areas of uh land use or zoning things like that. Uh I don't see much of that frankly up front, but we can talk through that. The important thing here is that we work together with the city in working through a program, a regimen program, uh that gets us into issues of teeing up projects. This is you've done a lot of planning up to this point. Some of that planning I think is pretty good, which we'll talk about. Um but what I what I think is missing right now are specific projects. So um talking about specific projects um we have worked all over the country in environments like this and environments that are much larger um and we have done a lot of financing say over the last few years uh we've closed on over 90 transactions or so in the last 24 months. Um so we we know where the capital markets are at currently the kind of projects that uh that it's favoring and we have done a lot of interesting urban mixeduse work. I'll show you some of that as we get into it,

[0:12:19] but that's our specialty. Uh, NE, as I mentioned, has got a project has done multiple projects here in St. Angelo. Understands the local market here from a construction standpoint, development standpoint, and I talked about gateway. So, what are the roles? What are the roles of a master developer? When we read your RFP that you issued, we saw that it was fairly open-ended. Um, and one could read that by saying, well, it's open-ended. come in redevelop downtown and the reality is there's really two different efforts in that. One is positioning the horizontal that is uh what are the projects determining uh through an underwriting process what projects are and then once those are determined what role would the city play if any in that going through kind of the difficult effort of of interacting with some land owners and seeing well we may have determined that there's a perfect location for a mixeduse project that has some housing and retail and this is the right location but if the owner has no interest in participating or selling their property doesn't matter and I think in a market like St. Angelo, that work needs to happen upfront before you can motivate and induce a vertical development, vertical investor to come in. Realistically, some of that work needs to be done. Certainly, we're doing that in other communities uh in Texas and outside of Texas and have done that successfully, which I'll show you. So, again, the role of the master uh developer is to orchestrate a strategy and then help bring folks in to implement that strategy. We may be a part of the vertical uh development as well. Um but the the important thing is that we're kind of putting that strategy together up front. That's it's critical. The uh of course the the city works with us works with the master developer to kind of ready the marketplace uh helps from a detail standpoint. um you know if there are um a special if there are some relationships that need to be formed between the city um and a vertical developer we would talk through that how to position that properly so the city the city's getting the kind of the best thing you know bang for the for the dollar uh in each one of those um

[0:14:23] instances the vertical developer brings their expertise and their capital as simple as that so if the city says here's our strategy this is what we'd like to do we've underwritten the market we think there's an opportunity for X, Y, and Z. The vertical available goes through their own final process to determine, yes, we agree with you. We're ready to go. Here are the terms that we'll do that on. If you know, if it's something that's complicated or for instance, if there's some land that the city owns or something like that. Um, or it may just be as simple as that, you know, we're we're we're marketing to them. Uh, they come in, whether it's us or another group, identify that project, and it's just off and running. and the city is really just facilitating the process as it would any normal market-based development going through permitting all that kind of stuff. So, what are some projects that we catalyst have been involved in that manner both as horizontal and vertical developers? Uh, I mentioned a project that we have going with NE right now as our general contractor. Uh, that's in in South Dallas adjacent to the VA hospital. Uh, it's in a very difficult area of Dallas on Lancaster Road. It's a $30 million project. It's under construction right now. you know, that had five different sources of funds. One of the more difficult projects I've ever worked on. Um, and that's because the average median income down there was $13,000. Um, so you could not, uh, go through a traditional finance environment to get that put together. So, uh, we leveraged a lot of different creative source of funds to make that work. We currently have about a $60 million project under development in Los Kolinus, another area of Dallas on a train station. It's mixeduse residential retail and office. Uh similar project uh in in terms of the use adjacent to a hospital in a medical district in a town called McKenna which is just north of uh of Dallas. Uh similar efforts in a downtown environment in a city called Garland which is just east of Dallas. I could talk about some of those later uh further if you'd like. And some very well-known projects at least in um in North Texas. uh uh Addison Circle,

[0:16:27] Legacy Town Center. If you've been up to the Dallas area, you may have seen some of these areas are well known for their shopping, well known for their housing office. They've transformed the marketplace uh since the early 90s uh based on the delivery of uses. And I think while these areas may be a little bit different from St. Angelo in terms of the scale and size of the market, the intent behind downtown and what I've read in your documents isn't. It's to have an active, interesting urban streetscape with lots of things to do. And you know, I've seen a lot of momentum in the last few years. There's been interesting things, Celely Flats, etc. coming in, and that's all great. Um, but I think there's a few pivotal projects that will that can help pull all that together. So, it's working a little more efficiently as as a place, and it's not sort of spotty in certain locations. Ultimately, we believe that a strong downtown means a strong San Angelo in general. That doesn't mean there aren't very important areas outside of downtown in the city. There are. Um, but the one thing that you really have going for you in my opinion that sets you apart is downtown and the university, Uptown District, Midtown, Houston. Uh, again, we've worked all over the country on urban mixed use, streetscape based projects. You see some of those projects that I'm flipping through here. So, as I start was starting to get into as it relates to St. Angelo itself, you've got a good development framework that's in place. You have some nice historic buildings. You know, a lot of that holds together pretty well. You've got some neat retail. Um there's been a lot of activity in restaurants um and kind of entertainment, if you will, that's happened, I've noticed at least over the last 10 years. That's all positive. Um and it it feels like it's at the tipping point. That's my sense. Um, now there's not one one single entity that's going to have interest over downtown other than you, other than the the community at large, the city, because you have fragmented ownership, multiple owners, and you know, even if you have some large owners like the hospital, um, their interests are going to be different in some cases than the overall interest of downtown to make that a an even more viable destination. So, um, that's that's one point. The

[0:18:32] other point I'd make, of course, is um that as I said before, even though you have a good development framework in place, um and you've got a good what I'd call operational framework in that you've got some good businesses and and uses that are already working well, they're not completely pulling together in the way that I think they can be. And and one way to do that is to get more folks living downtown. So, we have a nighttime population. and um you know the fact that we have a university so close by. It's a few minutes away. You've got a strong millennial generation that's coming up. We're trying to retain uh that intellectual capital here in St. Angelo. Um at least that's what I hear when there's discussion. Um well, we need to make sure we're catering to their interests and desires even in a place, you know, even in San Francisco or even in Denver or New York or wherever um where they're trying to do the same thing. They realize that, you know, the house that their parents grew up in or their grandparents isn't necessarily the environment that someone who's getting out of college wants to live in today. Well, the nice thing is you all have an environment like that that's starting to work. And the more we can attract that kind of energy into downtown, the better it's going to be, I think. So, as I mentioned before, we read through your your prior planning, uh, looked at the projects that were generated out of that planning, and by and large, I think it's been some good thinking. Um, I think there's some good projects. You know, I think this is more theoretical, uh, in terms of where the locations were. They may not make market sense specifically in terms of their specific locations, but I think the the goal of creating an anchoring series of districts in downtown is a good goal. and the and the nature of the uses that were contained in those uh in those project ideas, I think we're good. Uh the issue there and one thing that we can help provide up front is what I'll call a market implementation filter. Um it's one thing if you have planning with a capital P and it says, you know, we want to do something, we want to have some different uses in here. It's quite another if you're trying to get that

[0:20:33] financed, if you've got a housing project or you have um some restaurants, exactly where those go, uh what the land basis needs to be for that to work, who the developers going to be vertically to go forward, who the operators are. Um I mean, all that is critical and it doesn't get solved through high level planning. So I I do think you need to have a a market filter um to take some of those ideas and and bring them forward. So I'm going to run through a few slides right now. We did some quick analysis ourselves uh just to get a better handle on things. Um this I will I'll preface this by saying uh we'll need to get in, you know, if you choose to move forward and investigate this further, we'll need to get into a lot more detail. But this is the kind of thought process that we like going through. Well, first and foremost, uh as I mentioned before, a benefit of of downtown is it's the regional core of the area. It's it's an identity point. It's something that Coleman doesn't have. not the scale. It's something that many many communities in the region don't have. They don't have the gem, I think, that your downtown is with the river, etc. And you've done a great job uh in recent years of of trying to continue to enhance that. You know, there's a range of densities. Uh there's a range of identities within downtown. As you come off the the highway and come in, you've got some typical development that you might see that's very different than the historic core. um and that that you know drives different identities and different users and interests and why someone would come into downtown in the first place. You know the infrastructure capacity and where infrastructure is is important to look at. Good news here is it's a simple grid system. You've got infrastructure in place to accommodate new investment. That's all positive. Sometimes there are situations where that's not the case and there's a large area um that's underutilized or underserved. Well, in fact, the deal that we're working on right now, we had to uh we had to construct about a nearly a $2 million uh piece of infrastructure because there hadn't been infrastructure built in 60 years, 70 years. So, it was far under capacity. So, the fact that you all have infrastructure in place is

[0:22:37] another positive uh that that you offer the marketplace. We also always like to look at what does what do public entities own uh versus private entities. Um, so what you see here in yellow are uh is land that is privately owned. What's in light blue and blue is land that is publicly owned. And of course you've got the the fort and all the great things around that. Uh the art museum and sometimes there may be fragments of public land that can be assembled with a private effort. Um and it writes some of the cost down potentially or makes it a little bit easier from a timing standpoint. So it's important to look at that. It's also important to look at the fragmentation of the ownership. Uh what this map is showing you uh in dark are properties that have lots or blocks that have lots of different owners on it. So if someone wanted to come in and have say one block under a single ownership, it would be very difficult to assemble those blocks because you're talking to five, six, seven people, it just takes one of them to say I'm not interested for that deal to fall apart. So you got to look at, you know, the nature of the of the ownership and the difficulty of the land assembly. And you know, you can see in red that there are some areas obviously around uh the contra retail uh zone that you know that would be a difficult area to kind of put together uh in a larger block of ownership just given the nature of of the smaller lots that are in there. But if you go not too far north of there, there are there is some potential um because the ownership is simple. Doesn't mean that those owners would want to do anything. Doesn't mean they'd want to sell, but certainly we need to to look at that. So we you know this is really for us but we start looking at lots that fall out from that. The other and critical um is the assessed value of that land. Um that doesn't mean this is market value because we all know that um you know this this data came from uh the the appraisal district um site and and and their database. But, you know, we all know that um we want to have our tax as low as possible and we probably think

[0:24:40] that our property is worth more than you know than its assessed value. Um but with that said, it's a starting point. So everything that's in dark here, you see zones that are um you know that have a higher assessment in value. Well, of course, the reason why that's important is if the land basis is real high, makes it difficult sometimes for a project to work. So, you know, if we have a a a particular block that we'd like to see redeveloped and it's in a location that the owners feel like, uh, boy, we have a perfect location, we have all this great land value, may be difficult to make a project work there. So, that's why it's important to think through that. This is interesting from the standpoint of St. Angelo, when we looked at that data um and looked at what was performing from a tax base standpoint versus what wasn't performing, there are zones in downtown you see in red here grouped um where you've got performing tax base and there are large zones in green that appear not to be performing too well. The assessed value for instance of the improvements, the buildings may have a zero value to them or something like that. Well, that's clearly an area that if you're the city and that's the only hat that you're wearing, you're going to look right in on those green areas and say, "How can we get that back on the tax roll in a more meaningful way?" Doesn't mean that's the right location, but you'll see in a second when we make a composite analysis starts pointing you in the direction uh of where projects might make sense. But so part of that though is public land, right? And part of it is nonprofit oriented ownership, right? That's right. Yeah. uh other impacting features. Um obviously you've got some uh you know some historic sites both nationally as well as locally. Um obviously there's flood plane. There's things like that. Normal things you'd look at um that are gems currently in downtown um and would need to be mindful and respectful of those gems and and any kind of new reinvestment that would occur uh around them. um your your locally designated historic

[0:26:47] districts. It's terrific that you have them because it it gives us as an owner, for instance, u uh a sense of comfort um that anything that would happen near our investment would be done of a level of quality that would be consistent with what we're working on. So that's that's all positive. Um you know, so this is really an internal slide. It's more theoretical, but when you start layering those things together, well, theoretically, there are blocks in downtown that theoretically would be easier than others to develop based on pricing, uh, the the number of owners that are, you know, that are present on the site, the difficulty, the complexities related to developing and investing on those properties. Well, now we get into some of the fun part of of you know where projects would start to make even more sense. We like to think about a place like downtown as having series of identity subdists. And if you think about it, it kind of makes sense. There's the retailing on Koncho. We know there's some restaurants and cool retailers, Egamyers, etc. You've got the area around the art museum and um and the fort. You've got the area around the hospital. Each one of those zones has its own identity, its own anchor, if you will, its own reason why people go there. And right now, it may not be completely obvious once you're there that there might be some potential to strengthen each one of those subdists. Uh but it's obvious to us when we look at it based on our own experience. And then uh you know looking at uh particular shops, stores um kind of ground level pedestrian anchors if you will um where office locations are basically um activity anchors uh where that lays out in the context of those identity zones. So that starts pointing to theoretical locations to look at um which you see hatched um as well as kind of circled in in uh in these ovals. you know, the ovals say just from a pure gut check market standpoint, there are some decent locations out there that would help anchor some of these zones. Uh the areas in red uh are kind of the the end

[0:28:50] result of that analysis that I just went through with you. Again, this is all theoretical needs to be looked at in detail. Um but we like going through that kind of analysis up front. First of all, just to say, are there opportunity sites just at a high level 10,000 foot? And it seems to us, yes, there are. You know, I can tell you we're we're working with Fort Worth currently on their downtown, doing the exact same thing we're talking about here, trying to figure out ways to induce reinvestment whether we're involved or not. And we went through a similar analysis in Fort Worth. Um, and there were no opportunity sites. There are a few, but they're out on the periphery because the land is so expensive, right? We don't have that situation here. That's a positive. And um so you know there's a case where uh you've got some potential there that you know some some of the larger areas in the region uh don't. So you know what is market supportable? We think there's a concept um that builds on uh the anchor of Shannon um and a medical district concept that was in your planning. We that's we think that's a good idea. What are uses that can go with that? Well, there's assisted living and residential uses that work well. medical office buildings would need to have discussions with Shannon on what their game plan is moving forward, what their business plan is, if you will, what their goals are, um, and how to better position their assets um, with new investment. You know, they've got a lot of parking lots out there. It's great for their customer, not so great for downtown. Um, could there be a strategy that collects some of that parking into a parking facility um and opens up land for some of the uses that I just talked about that makes a linkage back down, you know, closer to Celely Flats, etc. Those are the some ideas that start cooking for me at least. Same thing down around the art museum um and the historic area around the fort. Unbelievable assets, national assets. Um and yet some of the land that's around there doesn't feel like it's, you know, meeting um that potential. Well, that's clearly some land to look at. It's quieter, probably decent location for residential, a

[0:30:52] certain kind of residential that that doesn't want to be right in the thick of things, you know, where streets are being closed down for special events and things like that. You know, you've got an office building, uh that foundation office building in Irving and Concho that's, I guess, starting construction. That's great. that was that was a key site um that had potential and opportunity. But you know there's some anchoring uh projects that could happen over there that start to connect the core downtown into the west side more conventional retail area of downtown in terms of the pad sites and such. So another thing that we've noticed here is you know there's already kind of a grassroots movement a gorilla movement if you will that's happening in downtown. we want to support that that this can't be a big corporate effort uh that feels too controlled. Um so the fact that there's already some neat things, funky things that are happening that's absolutely positive needs to continue on should do everything possible to promote and support that. And then of course you've got the other side of the community that's lived here a long time like my in-laws. Um and you know they may have a certain feeling about downtown. You know, well I remember what it was like in the 50s when the men shop was there and well it's not there anymore. I wish we had that man shop and say, "Well, that's not the market anymore." Um, but but have you been to the restaurants recently? Have you been down there when you went to the art museum? Well, yeah, I have. And, you know, we kind of like that. Well, would you ever consider uh, you know, having your friends, you know, do you have any friends that would would consider having an in town place to come experience some of that? And they may come in from their ranch or something. Yeah. You know, that's an interesting idea. I mean, that's that's the classic population, if you will, downtown. And we'd want to have some products that appeal to that mindset. And then hugely important um is ASU's growth and and the millennials, the young folks that are coming out of that. We we know of folks that are coming back to St. Angelo after they've been in parts, you know, way out across the country. They're coming back because of the lifestyle, the affordability, the simplicity of of life compared to other areas. That's all a positive. So, how can we retain more of that talent right out of school? And and do we have housing currently in San Angelo that appeals to them? We do in

[0:32:57] some areas. Some areas we don't. Is downtown reflective of that kind of energy? Sometimes, sometimes not. Well, the answer there to to continue to build a strong downtown is that answer should be absolutely. Absolutely we do. May not have to be a lot. Maybe 30 units. Um but we need to have more offerings, I think, um to to continue to appeal. So when someone goes to Austin, they say, "You know, we love Austin. It's cool. St. Angelo is pretty cool, too, though. We've got good live music and there's some neat places to go and I don't have to go to Austin to live the lifestyle that I want to. So to make all that work, um, and we can get into some detail afterwards in in discussion, there's, you know, that what I just talked through was the art. The science is making it work. Um, there are a lot of special tools, which does not mean that the city has to write a check to do some of this. Um but there are tools uh that are available to the city um that are unique tools. Uh new market tax credits for instance the city could go after an allocation of new market tax credits to get some job creating uses to land here. We may designate uh downtown as a special district where we could collect pools or of employers for uh for better insurance rates for instance on health insurance or business insurance something like that. There's a lot of interesting ideas that all the city is doing is helping to facilitate a thought process to to kind of get some things going. Um, you know, then there's special financing, etc. There are some projects I would imagine that would be difficult to get done from a pure market traditional finance standpoint and the city could assist in that but but I would think given the the scale and kind of the nature of things that they would have to be incredibly strategic projects that may have public components to them or not may have you know certain policy goals that would need to be attached to them to to make work. So finally in wrapping up before we get into discussion um we put forth a a pretty I hope a pretty clear um action plan if you will of a process that we would go through and I think there may

[0:34:59] have been some confusion maybe up front about again what the concept of a master developer is um generally speaking if you put an invitation out that says we invite you to come to St. Angelo, come on in, develop it all. Well, the first the first question that I would ask is what's your plan? Okay, what are you offering? Do you have asset? Are you offering land? What what do you have? Or is it just a pure market effort? And you may come back and say it's pure market effort. And you know, we may have some other things, too. But come on in. You know, we're we're a nice community. Make something happen here. The first thought I would have is, well, what's my opportunity cost of working in St. Angelo versus in downtown Fort Worth, right? Yeah. And and that's where the dialogue needs to happen. And I believe you need to tee up projects so that we can go whether it's us, whether it's NE, where it's a combination of us, whether it's whole other groups that we know that we brought in and have done and all those other projects that I showed you that says here's a deal. Here's an opportunity seems to meet your needs. We've already done some underwriting. You go do it. You go research the market yourself, but this thing pencils and you know, here's here's how it would work. That's what we're proposing up front is to run through that kind of a of an analysis. So you can see in the phase one implementation action plan there's nine items in there that we would run through. This is in short order. It's weeks. You know, there's discussions with some property owners. There's obviously some discussions with you all and staff. Um the the degree of public input needs to be thought through. That's that's all great. But in terms of actual work effort, it's not a long time to to get through that. Um after that strategy plan is put together, well then there's positioning that plan, taking it out to the marketplace. So we're having discussions at beyond ourselves with other investors that we know um whether they're here local or not. Um that does exactly what I described before, which is here's a package deal seems to meet your your desires, your interests. What do you think? Let's come down to St. Angelo. Let's have a conversation. That's that's really what that process is for is is positioning the horizontal

[0:37:02] for vertical investment. And then the third phase is vertical construction projects like the office building that's coming on that you know is breaking ground. And you know that's there's a role that the city can play may be completely private. Many times uh what's lacking in a city environment in particularly in a master development process is when someone approaches the city and says you know we'd like to get an incentive package from you. We'd like you to do X Y and Z because we're willing to come invest our dollars. And the city says okay well let me go through the package. And there may not have been they may not have gone through that process before. Sometimes it's good to have someone from the outside if we're not involved in that project that says, you know, let me run through that package and I'll give you some thoughts that helps you negotiate and coordinate with those vertical investors. So, so we're making sure that the city's making a wise decision uh comparatively speaking. And then finally, there probably will be some infrastructure that needs to be redeveloped as part of some of these projects. There's a construction management process. I know you all have some of those folks in house. that's fine. But that is the fourth phase. So that's kind of the the process that we would run through and realistically within the next few months after Christmas, three months or so, uh we would be done with the initial part of that that has teed up some project ideas that could be taken to the marketplace. So that may have been different than when you all let the RFP that said come in and just do it. Um it's kind of breaking that down into a more scientific process and that's that's what we have here before you. So with that, take your questions. Appreciate it. Okay. How is it taken to the marketplace? Oops. How is that taken to the marketplace? And then when it is taken to the marketplace, is it in the same inventory as Fort Worth and some of the bigger cities that are developing, they throw in uh you know, Garland and St. Angelo just off the cuff. Is it part of that inventory? So, who are we getting in front of? And and I'm asking questions like that. One of the issues with St. Angelo and it's not St. Angelo,

[0:39:05] it's anywhere in the United States outside of a major MSA. Um, is what's my exit as an investor? So, I have the opportunity to invest $10 million in this project that is in Chicago or that I know is kind of where it is. It's big. There's a lot of critical mass or that same amount of money in downtown St. Angelo and and say, okay, that's right. You have these two opportunities. Let's say they're both getting making the same rate of return theoretically. Well, then the question is, how do I get that return? Am I going to have to own this thing for 50 years because no one wants to buy it? Right. Well, in Chicago, theoretically, someone would want to buy it. So, when you go up to this is not a a situation where the market is New York. I don't think the market is first and foremost St. Angelo city folks that are in in the city that may have, you know, investment opportunities that they see. um regionally state I don't think this is anything like uh you know going up to uh you know the folks in New York or on the west coast and looking for investors out there is not that. So that's kind of location of where I think the likely investors uh would be coming from. We we are included in that. We're not too far away. Um the second part is the way that that's done um is we would interview uh some uh brokerage houses uh to work with us to get that message out. And part of the questions we would be asking them is what you just asked, which is, okay, how you going to do this? You're just going to go to ICSE and just blast this with everything else that you have, and St. Angelo is going to be a little side note, and your real project is is here in Houston. You know, we'd ask those kinds of questions. And you've got you do have a real estate community here, albeit smaller than elsewhere, but there are some folks on the ground that do understand uh who you know, who's out here. um and they would be natural folks to talk to right away um so that we could together determine who that marketing team is to go out and have that have that dialogue. But is that make does that answer your question? It's getting there. Okay. Part of part of the I guess from my perspective anyway, part of the background is that some of the ones that

[0:41:08] we're familiar with doing some type of development, it's always there's always somebody locally involved in the process. But but if this if if this works, it's a catalyst. It's not it's not taking over a process per se, but it becomes a catalyst in the process. What what what I think we're hoping for is through a plan development uh district and through the hiring of a master developer, what we're doing is trying to get more of the local things connected so they're not working independently uh or or against each other and looking for opportunities that way, but also looking for opportunities to tie them to others who do development so that the um it's maybe from a devestment or a um diversity standpoint, no one is taking all of the risk uh for some of the projects that that need to be taken on or could be taken on. So the projects can can be larger or a project could be larger than the appetite of of a group here. um and looking for ways through uh going with a master developer. You're really as a a a a big part of that is looking for the network of uh developers, people that in the horizontal development or vertical development part of your presentation uh could partner with or could, you know, in other words, it's not looking for a group to be uh come in here and and build this and build that and and invest uh tens of millions of dollars in St. Angelo only. If that happens, great. But I don't think that's really what it really is is saying, look, we're getting, you know, this building done and then a few years later, we're getting this building done. But when you look on your map, one of the key things

[0:43:11] about St. Angelo and it's downtown is the river. And and if you look at what you proposed, it it has no tax income. It has a lot of available space. Some of that is city land. And so there's an ability for the city to to play in the development game. Um, and I don't, you know, I don't know what all led to this, but maybe the flood, uh, in the 30s led to everything moving away from the river a little bit and and then now maybe that leaves a lot of opportunity for that to be uh something that truly is u attractive uh to investors in Midland, investors in Lok, investors in Fort Worth, investors uh and so forth, but investors here too, just not all of not, you know, no, you you very well said. I agree with everything you said. Um, and I can tell you that the the key there is that when you move out of the region, if if you've got if you've got a local partner um that is putting in 25% of the equity or something like that, that says something, right? You're not coming in from outside. You've got a local partner in place. That gives you a sense of of comfort. you know, sometimes once they see the opportunity, they kind of wish they didn't have a local partner, you know, but that's that's probably phase two to three down the road and they can kind of, you know, pick up and move on from there. What the other side of that is we're not necessarily looking at tens of millions of dollar investments, maybe in some in certain instances a $300,000 investment in a particular store or restaurant. The question is whether currently, and I don't think this is happening as well as it might right now, is when someone comes in and does that here, is there a coordination on on the whatifs that could be happening right around the corner from them to make that corner operate a little bit better? I don't see that right now. And and I think I left that out um and should have made sure I I stated that also. It's also a very important part of why we thought a development commission was in order is this coordinated planning

[0:45:17] planned development district that that we don't accidentally keep something from happening that could happen because the pieces don't fit. Well, imagine I mean and you know all the great growth that's happened on Sherwood down in the south in the last few years. Fantastic to see that. And I remember when I first started coming down here, people say, "Well, we haven't had new development in decades and blah blah blah and it's just St. Angelo's not that kind of place." I think that's not true. We're all we're all the same people generally in Texas to a certain degree. I mean, we watch the same programs, read the same information, you know, I mean, there's there's similarities there. So, what you might see on the outskirts of Austin can happen here, and it has. You've seen that. Um, but at the same time, we need to also learn from other environments where that sucked some of the life out of downtown. The nice thing here is that that hasn't happened entirely. May have back in the 60s, but it hasn't happened entirely. You see some life and activity happening in downtown. So now it's kind of striking a nice balance. So if we say let's look at all the small businesses that exist in St. Angelo, it's it's that is not too large of a list to go through and call and say which ones of those are location specific. They've got to be in an area of high visibility or they've got to be adjacent to something. You can we can go through that and then the remaining eighth of that list um you know there could be discussions with key ones in there that says you know when's your rent up? Let's talk about why it would be good to be in downtown and all the benefits you get. Imagine the concept of you know when someone goes to an executive suites for instance they go in there they're they're essentially a small business and they're getting common services right they're meeting some of their answer the phones uh pick up the packages etc. If you take that basic concept and expand it out to the footprint of downtown and you say, how can downtown itself be the place where it is more efficient as a small business operator to do business in downtown than it is out on Pick a Street or in another city. Uh that doesn't mean that you have to give the freight away, but if there's a new project that comes in, maybe

[0:47:19] there's some some small meeting space small that is a part of that project, particularly if the city is is being asked to uh participate in that project. say, "Okay, well, we need to have 5,000 square feet of common meeting area that's available to everyone in in downtown." And that's going to be right if and that would be applied to a project that's right in the core. Well, if I have a small business and I and I see that I may be able to bring my operating expenses down by some creative insurance program or something like that and I and I see ASA has some other services like this and amenities are available to me, that would change my mind in terms of reapping my lease elsewhere, I'm not big on cannibalization. Um, you know, that would be moving people around. But on the other hand, like I said before, I'm a firm believer that the stronger downtown is, the stronger the whole city is realistically because it's the identity point. You know, we don't have interstates. We have the university in downtown. We have the the the base, you know, and then great stuff, great neighborhoods that are around, but but those neighborhoods are based on those anchoring districts, right? So, we got to make sure those anchoring places are strong. And the only way they're strong is if they got jobs and things to do after after work or at lunchtime and and housing goes with it. So I I agree with everything that you said. It makes that's it's good thinking. Okay. At what part Thank you. At what part or what stage did you or the group consider policing visibility and our crime structure? To me, to have the ideal community is to be able to walk from Concho Street after a little bit of shopping or say a meal and be able to walk over to our new performing arts building in a nice leiserly stroll without the fear of gangs or any kind of drug trafficking or visibility of this. So, at what point did y'all consider the policing of that and or the possibly of the location of our police department or are do you feel we're doing a pretty

[0:49:22] good job in the downtown area or does that need to be beefed up? And I'd like to hear how you feel about it. My my question coordinates with hers. I was at your presentation at the downtown commission meeting and you talked about a connectivity principle in which you have a business here, a vacant lot here, another business and that is that's a scary walk. Okay, now you can address hers and mine at the same time. And there's a whole bunch of more slides like the ones that I showed you that get to this exact thing. I'll I'll answer your question by telling you some experience that we've had exactly like that. The It's a coordinated effort. It it is not something where you would come in and say the solution is with the police department. That's not the solution actually. Uh because if anything, if you have an overpresence in place outside of the cost of that, if you have an overpresence, that puts people off too. Sometimes it's kind of a a police state feel and and you know, it's you got to strike a nice balance. What I've seen work uh successfully and and this is in the context of of if you've been down to the south side of downtown Houston, there's an area called Midtown. I worked on Midtown. Um, and when we first started that was called the third and fourth ward of Houston. It was a horrible area. Um, just north of downtown Dallas is an area called Uptown. If you've been through there, it's the hot real estate market. Has been for 15 years. I worked on Uptown. And before Uptown was Uptown, it was a blighted, horribly crimeridden area. Property values had tanked. It was a result of land speculation through the 80s. Everybody thought they had high-rise office building sites. out of town owners, nobody was mining the shop. So, by coming in having a careful strategy of filling in some of the gaps um and building projects where you had critical mass of activity, you felt safe, nice streetscapes, it all looked pleasant and nice and there were cool things to do. As that grew, it became self-p policing because you had eyes on the street. You had folks living there, folks working there, shopping, restaurants, etc. And you know, there's been tons of of study of this. There's a

[0:51:25] guy named Paco Underh Hill. He's a retail guy. He's interesting to read. Um, but has has actually gone out with video cameras and looked at how people shop environments, whether it's downtown or malls. And they've noticed that if you have a 30 to 50 foot vacant storefront in a mall, people will will not walk past it. They'll just intuitively walk to the other side. It's where the activity is. Well, imagine that and and multiply that by 10 in a downtown environment where you're not contained. you know, it's outdoors and you've got a whole block where nothing's going on, you're going to feel not so good about that. Particularly if you see some, you know, graffiti or whatever. So, the key on that is to is to focus in on anchoring districts. That one slide that I had where we talked about the medical district, the arts and entertainment area, the retail area, really focus in on that and fill in those gaps with key projects. That'd be the first thing I'd look at. Um because once that happens, you can walk in that area and feel good because it's contained. It just feels right. And um think about where people are parking. So they're not parking over, you know, on the vacant lot area, you know, and then walking by that to get to the museum or something. You know, it's interesting. There are so many nice little gyms here or there in downtown, but then a half block away, it completely falls apart. You know, behind Agamires, for instance, down between it and the and the river is just nothing. and know there's parking lot and stuff. Would anyone ever make that walk from there to the art museum and feel good about it? Probably not. If there was an a strategic infill development that occurred on that location, you'd feel better doing that. You're two blocks away. It's not far. It's it's a two-minute walk. Um but right now, you wouldn't do it because you're having to bridge a big psychological gap to make that work. It's not going to happen. So most of downtown successful downtown development I find is all in the the art and science of the psychology of people that are coming down and how good they feel as they walk around. They feel satisfied with the dining experience they had the the walk to the car what they're looking

[0:53:28] at in the streetscape along the way. Does it feel blown out and you see tumble weeds going across the street or not? And I mean you all have done good job I think in the last few years in particular of starting to write the course more in the direction that we're talking about than say 10 12 years ago from my memory. I don't go back further than that but um so there's already positive things in that gorilla movement that I mentioned that's already starting to happen. It just needs a little more assistance in my field. Now, at the end of that long answer, um, sure, you can look at crime statistics and if there's a a key storefront and you've got someone if if you have the budget for someone to be able to walk the beat in in in, you know, in key times uh, of the year and shopping times or something like that, great. Sure. We we did that in a project called Addison Circle. We thought that would be real important. We didn't need it and and they closed that up. The city did after a couple years because they didn't need it. it was already working well. The streetscapes were intact. They held together well. You know, folks were walking around, they felt comfortable. Um, and what's interesting about that is when you have that kind of an environment that feels owned, you know, there's people that are minding the shop, they're paying attention to what's happening out on the sidewalk, it's wellmaintained. Well, then the folks that the wouldbe folks that would want to come in and do something not to do, they don't go there. They just don't. They go elsewhere. Now, they may go behind the building if the parking hasn't been thought through. Okay, that needs to be, you know, thought about. But in general, they'll go somewhere else where it's easier to to commit a crime than than an area where there's focus. So, downtown organization, you know, typically speaking, they'll be um a public improvement district or something like that that will help fund additional resources beyond what the city may be able to muster at a particular time. uh they may uh you know keep up the maintenance of some common areas, some planting strips and things just to keep the overall feel up. The nice thing about St. Angelo is it's not that big of a place. You know, this is it's the scale of a of a master plan community, a small master plan community. It's not

[0:55:31] that large and you have a decent tax base that's out there. So, you've got the tools to be able to put together. I'm not saying it's going to turn into Sundown Square, you know, that's huge. It has millions and millions of square feet of office. Um, but it certainly can be in the if you've been to McKenna, if you've been to downtown McKenna on the north side of Dallas, I don't know if you have, it's very nice. They have a historic courthouse square, you know, there's about six blocks in there. It's fantastic. Um, you certainly can achieve that. You already have a lot of that. It just needs to be held together a little bit more, you know, and I don't think McKenna was planned at the time like St. Angelo was when the the uh the horse and carriages, you know, the streets had to be wide enough to turn a whole mule train, you know. It's it's a different economy up there than St. Angelo was. But with that said, that's part of the appeal of St. Angelo. I've got a question. Mayor Sus, let me ask you this. You know, you mentioned earlier that we as St. Angelo, as far as progressing forward, you know, the downtown area and what you said, we're doing okay. these pockets, these void, these voids that that were out there, I guess they they are a detriment to our moving forward. Uh I guess my question is why, you know, we're always trying to sell St. Angelo and we're trying to do improvements downtown, the river. Now, why why aren't more these more of these investors just wanting to come in here and and setup shop? What what what are we doing or not doing to allow that from happening? Well, that's part of this initial effort is to prove up what the market potential is. Right now, someone looks at St. Angel and says, I like it. I'm from there. But if I'm going to invest X dollars, you know, I want to have as much certainty as I can that that's a good investment. Um, and that doesn't say that San Angelo isn't a good investment. But at the same time, whoever is is approaching them to say, "Put a million dollars in here." uh we feel pretty confident that they have another opportunity to invest that in the oil fields or you know or in land somewhere on a ranch or in Fort Worth whatever and and the issue there is uh

[0:57:37] is there a professional real estate industry that's on the ground in place in St. Angelo that has identified potential and taken that out to the market? The answer is no. I've never seen anything come across my desk um of an of a a development opportunity in St. Angelo. I've never seen anything I've been in in Texas since 93. So that's that's a part answer and and I think the other answer is um I don't politically I don't know where the city's been. You know, has the city been an active partner with the marketplace or has it seen well the market will kind of do everything on its own. We all we have to do is just sit back and watch and and if anything we need to regulate it with a stick. You know that which most cities are like that. I have no idea whether St. Angelos or not. I guess not given what I've seen happen in downtown. But, you know, if you have a combination of we're a regional center, you know, we're 100,000 plus people. Um, we but we're not a part of a of a big metroplex. You know, we're in West Texas here. Um, there's no, you know, there's no uh, you know, regional interstate that's going by, you know, kind of stuff that shows up on a brochure. Um, you know, when someone sees that, especially if they're not from St. Angelo, they're not going to get it. You know, they're Why would they look at St. Angelo? It to them it just blurs together with Eagle Pass or somewhere else. Not, you know, not that I don't know why I thought of that. That sounds familiar there. You know, maybe they read a news announcement that your city manager came from there, but um but does that does that help answer? But I the other part of your question that also was interesting where I thought you were headed was we're doing all these things with the river, but we've got some holes and that's holding us back. why aren't we focused on those holes? And I would say, absolutely. Why aren't you absolutely? So, I guess my followup would be if we need uh a group such as yours to come in and really help us sell St. Angelo. But, and if we never did, if if we just shut this thing down and then go forward, we would struggle uh to even make it more viable, would we

[0:59:41] not? Or you're saying we're doing okay, but it's already happening. I mean, there is a gorilla movement out there. It's happening. You know, you've got forces coming together to make it work. Mo, if you look at where it's working well, you've got good owners and operators that are right in there and they have their particular goal. They they're civic-minded, you know, but ultimately they're kind of focused right in on where their investment is and you see it and it's working well. Well, what about two blocks away where that's not the case? And I think that's where the assistants need to be. It's not that it we're at the edge of some cliff and it's terrible. It's not. It's got it's much better than it was. I just don't think it's meeting the full potential that it can. And you know, even a place same population, Denton, uh another I happen to live up in North Texas, so sorry for all those references. They have a university not as big. I mean, ASU is not as big as North Texas. Um but they have a downtown that's pretty close to the university. Um and they, you know, that university has a strong music program. um and they've reached out to the university and figure out ways to come together where that in that case the music program has filled in some live venues um in their downtown and it has transformed Denton that used to be just a tumble weed place when I when you'd go through there now it's awesome when you go in there's things happening I'm not saying that's a solution here but there is a solution that involves the university I think in some manner um combined with other aspect w with you know your healthcare providers and and small businesses is and then the shops kind of that feed off of all that. Those are all solutions. Um, but I I definitely don't want you to think that we're saying you're in trouble. I don't think you're in trouble. You're doing much better than many folks, you know, areas of your size around the country. I just think you could be good. in a much better position to find or know where the financial investors are in this type project. And to discuss this type P project and the favorabilities because of those contacts than say we are locally or even our local bankers would know locally where

[1:01:44] to go because you're in a better position to know where this type money is that's out there for investment. Correct. Yes. Let me help y'all. Mr. Morrison, how long has Catalyst been in business? Uh Catalyst, we started Catalyst in late eight, early nine uh in the in the context of uh kind of where the economy was in real estate at that time. Uh my former company, Woodmont Investment Company, I had an elderly statesman partner at that point. We had teed a bunch of stuff up. We were executing, had done some good things. Um and at that point, you know, I saw an opportunity. uh we took it and we've you haven't looked back since. When when how long has Catalyst been in business? Uh since uh February of09 and I've been in this business since 93. You showed us several pictures of several different things that were going on. Were those projects projects of Catalyst or were those projects that that you or someone else that now makes Catalyst did under a different company? Uh some of those projects were were projects that Catalyst is executing. the first several that I showed you, the rest of them are the projects that I personally worked on in my career. So, Catalyst is really a very new company, less than three years old. And the projects that you showed that you have shown us development very a very small minority. Those are actually catalyst companies, but they are companies that were done under a different company name. Yeah, that that's accurate. What's interesting in related to your question um is we all know kind of where the economy's been right um all of my friends places like Traml Crow you know they went from thousands to tens of people um so in the face of that we started a company um in the face of that time and since then we've closed over a billion dollars in development in in you know refinance and in new construction and you know and we've got about 110 million under development currently. You said a billion. Yeah,

[1:03:46] I was thinking a million and I'm just getting started. A billion. Yeah. So, we we've been extremely successful in this time period uh because I think what we bring to the table is a little bit different uh than the rest of the of the marketplace and you know, we took a risk at the bad times uh to to start us. So, yes, you you are right. We're a new company and we're we're proud of that. Also, we haven't got to the dollars and we'll I suppose you've got some slides on that, but let's say we issued the contract the first of the year, the first of the first of next year. How many dollars an estimate would our taxpayers owe catalyst? Give me an idea of what where we're going to be financially in one year. Sure. Are you going to go into that? I'm happy to. Then I can hold that. I can hold that. Let's hold that. Let's see what else you have. Okay. Still have a few more. I see St. Angelo. I see our glasses half full. I don't see it as half empty. I agree. Uh and we've got two bankers in here right now that are leading bankers in our community. We also have some some entrepreneurs in this council that in this area that are heads heads above a lot of people. I also have a lot of faith in our realtors. I have a lot of real faith in our in our investors and our insurance and our entrepreneurs. So I see what we have in St. Angelo. I think our glass is half full. And I remember downtown St. Angelo when it moved in 1979 to the mall. That's when St. Angelo died because a lot of our major stores moved out. It happened in a year's time when they went to the mall. I have seen in the last five years uh there there's a a 100% improvement would not be a good figure because it is just exploded. Yeah. I think that our bankers and our entrepreneurs and our investors and our real estates and our developers have done a tremendous job and I think they're on the right path and I really can't see what you are offering us that is any different than what we have already done and you spoke about Shannon

[1:05:48] in the parking garage. Wonderful idea. Shannon told that to us six months ago when they came in here with the plan. They already have a plan of a parking garage. You talked about t uh the different things that the city could do. We're already offering tax abatements. We're already offering tax incentives. We're already offering infrastructure incentives. We already have a development corporation that will look at any business that will come through. We've got bankers and developers and real estate agents that are doing exactly what you propose to do. And it's not going to cost us. And I wanted a figure, you know, that's why I asked you about the dollars. I wanted a figure to compare. It's not costing us those figures, but yet we are getting what we want. So, I I I'm just not sold on on anything you're doing that we're not already doing and that it is worth the taxpayers money. I appreciate that and that's, you know, I understand that sentiment makes sense to me. Um, all I can tell you is kind of what we have to offer and that is uh our experience in making areas that are working or areas that aren't working work even better. And you know, I showed you a few. I think you all have checked our references. You've talked to places that we've interacted with. They've I I presume they've come back positive, you know, and said, "Boy, they added a lot of value to our effort." But I can tell you one thing for sure. Um I wouldn't be here had the successes that you've already experienced had not occurred, I wouldn't be here right now. Um because sometimes, you know, you got to kind of think through an opportunity where you know you can add benefit, you know, you can add value and make it work even better by working with the folks that are on the ground. That's why I'm here. If not, I'd be working on a redevelopment in in a in an environment that, you know, has a much much more critical mass kind of behind it. Um, to some of your other points, you are absolutely right that you've got a good stable of folks on the ground. Absolutely right. The fact that you have bankers on a commission, the fact that you have a downtown commission in the first place is huge. That's important. One of the first things that we would do after we had kind of teed up some some project ideas to kind of, you know,

[1:07:52] bounce off, if you will, on brainstorming, one of the first things we'd do is to meet with your local bankers, is to meet with the local real estate community. Talk about those projects with them and say, "Have you thought about this?" Some of them will say, "Absolutely. We're just in with the city six months ago." We said, "Okay, what's your implementation strategy?" And they'd say, "Well, we're going to come in. We're going to set up a parking district. We're going to sell bonds. we're going to get that, you know, that garage going. And then we'd say, "Okay, have you thought about maybe positioning that garage uh this way this so you can get a little more efficiency and and bring in some residential product. Oh, and by the way, you know, we've closed a ton of transactions with HUD recently, all market rate. Um, and they have interest in in communities like St. Angelo because they see the future in it. How about leveraging some of those uh insurance back dollars to to go with that garage so you're getting a better bang? Sometimes unless you've gone through that dozens of times, those ideas don't pop up, you know, and I think that's part of the benefit is just best practices from around the country that we've been involved in. And beyond that, that's what we offer, you know, is is creative thinking. And I think the places that we've worked on speak for themselves. Mr. Hzfeld, excuse me. I'm excited about where we stand. Um, I think we do have a great corral of people here sitting in front of us representing the community uh in in all the the districts and areas that that Mr. Morrison is talking about. But with that said, I mean, I agree. I think that we need one step more. And I believe that uh and I'm I'm very pleased with your presentation. I'm happy with the presentation. I think it uh it it is that one step more that can help tie all this stuff together. One of the key aspects that I see bringing it together. I think you guys hit it is, you know, there's there's there can be funding in St. Angelo, but there may not be funding enough whether they want to spend the entire aotment. Maybe it's just a 10%, a 25%, but just it's a piece of the pie. And I think that's a that's

[1:09:54] a fair thing. So I I see one of the great advantages of what you bring is funding, is financing, is partners, is players from outside the community. And I think, you know, when I look at some of the some of the uh the growth that happens outside of the city and other in the some of the metropolitan areas you're talking about, that's what you have. You have a lot of money that's coming in from from other areas and and it all depends upon, you know, how far that is. But, uh, I think that's a good thing. I think this is a this is a very very positive step. Um, I would like to hear from the commission. I really would I would love to hear they've been going through this work for what 6 n months and I would love to hear y'all's opinion on this thing. Okay. Let me let me recognize two council members and then bring the commission on board. And so, Miss Farmer, well, let me clarify something and and I I know that uh a couple of people on the commission know that I understand. I was not intending to insult you that you didn't have the monies to fund. You do know that I understand you may not have the funds, the percentages to handle a project of this size and peacemealing it is not the ideal situation. So what I was simply suggesting is there's a larger source of funding and maybe a one source for everything. And I think you as the commission recognize that and I do applaud you and I agree with everything he said and yes I'd like to hear the commission more people being interested means more possible business for local bankers. Yes, Mr. Alexander, you know, I enjoy this topic because my degree is environmental design. Uh, so it's kind of an architecture and environment on an entire block and then I went to Angelo State University and almost got my MBA and I had one prof together. Well, they do go together. This is the, you know, the epitome of how they do go together. So, I really enjoy this. Uh, I wanted to

[1:11:57] respond to Mr. Morrison. He and he can hear me. He's in the back. He can hear me. You know, developers amplify positive trends. And so, when a trend is positive like it is in St. Angelo and we're almost at the tipping point. This is the point at which we want to make it attractive to them and and we we do that. It's an evolution and we want to achieve what I call runaway. It's it's our brain is an example of runaway. It's huge compared to other animals. Peacocks have this beautiful set of feathers. Those those are runaway processes in nature, but we do it in business as well. And if we can achieve a runaway, then what we do is we lower the risk and we increase the opportunities to the point that St. Angelo is a a place where people it's an attractive place to invest. Okay. The more attractive it is to invest, the more monies we see come in here. But our own money you we I Alvin uh whoever that lives in San Angela can invest into our own community and also make money. So this is good for everybody. Uh but it takes an outside help and expertise from somewhere else. We need the inventory of minds and we need to expand it beyond our city. And this is where you come in and attract outsiders to help us and invest with us. It's all about making money and improving our economy and quality of life and and downtown vibrancy, you know, spills out. It's all about that. This is this is right down the middle for for our city. This is going to be very very productive. Okay, Mr. of us and then I'll just real quickly I have family in Plano and I have visited the Dentons and McKennis and Allens and all that and I've always ooed and aed and wondered why will we ever get there. So, you know, we're here and so be it. So, okay, let me ask the commission to to weigh in and help with the discussion. Uh, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm Jim Cummings and I'm one of your co-chairs of our downtown development commission. Uh, you know, all of your questions and comments have been very, very good. Uh,

[1:14:00] I don't know how many of you have been to Greenville, South Carolina, but I was there a number of years ago, and as I stood there along the river that runs through their downtown, I thought to myself, this could be St. Angelo. What they've done with their retail and their and their residential uh development along that river, it it We have ever much as as the assets they have that we can develop. Mrs. Farmer hit it. Mr. Alexander and your other comments have been well said. I was in the banking business for 40 years. Best banker I ever worked with, Jim Raymond. Absolutely. And I think Gary Cox exhibits the same strengths. But what we need at this point in our life in St. Angelo is what this man and his company can give us. It's the networking outside of our boundaries to where there's capital, whether it's on the East Coast, the Southeast, upper Midwest, West, I don't know where it is, but he knows where those folks are. He knows how to network with them. He knows how to sell St. Angelo. Not saying that Mr. Raymond couldn't do it or Mr. Cox. It'd take him a longer time to develop that network. He's already got it. so that he positions us to move forward and to really show progress for our city. Mr. Edwards is our co-chair. I'll ask him if he wants to make a comment. If not, this wonderful commission that you've got and I'll ask them to come forward if they have a comment or not. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Can pull your mic up or you or or you can let Mr. Cummings be the spokesman. Whatever you'd like to do. I just want to give you any opportunity you need. Good morning and thank you for having us here today. I didn't come u to speak to you, but now that I'm here, I will. Um the glass is half full. Um and we've come a long way in a comparatively short

[1:16:06] period of time, but we will not do it by ourselves. uh that what has taken place is positioned us to let these folks take where we've come and take us where we want to go from there. Uh I think our commission um pretty unanimously feels like that this is a good thing and we endorse it and support it. Thank you very much. I'd like to just um I'm not so involved with the banking and so on, but I am very impressed with what our city has already done as far as planning and talking to the community about what we want in St. Angelo and putting together what I have at home is a notebook this thick of all the work that this that the city employees have done and uh a whole lot of they've done a whole lot of great work and I think what uh Mr. Rutherford's group does is help us take all that good information and where we don't have that expertise of knowing how to bring groups together and how to draw on outside investors or outside work and and how to plug in. You know, there's a lot of expertise that he and his company have that we just don't have access to in our community. uh we have the the love and the the energy to really want this done. And if we can get someone like him or his group to come in and channel all that energy and put it to work and coordinate, fill in those holes and really make the project um a wellplanned project rather than just a haphazard even though our hearts in it not well done kind of project is how I look at it. So uh Mr. Roth, maybe you could kind of talk about at some point the plan that we already have all the work that the city's already done and what you're intending to do with that to help us all tie into that as

[1:18:12] well. Okay. Um assuming that everyone has had an opportunity to say what they'd like, I I'll bring him back in. Okay, sir. Yeah, as when we were first talking um in the beginning part of this uh presentation um you know we have gone through your plans um and the general ideas of making strong connections between your anchoring districts. That's that's key. Um, what I think hasn't happened in there is is going through an inventory of the real estate that is underlying those connections and then looking at the market and and how and areas within that underlying real estate, how that can plug in together with the marketplace. What I've noticed in St. Angelo is there's been a phenomenal uh process that the the local banking and and real estate industry has done in getting a lot of things happening out on the edge. and you see, you know, some nice retail pad sites and power, you know, big box stores and things like that, that's all great. It's good for the economy. Um, but if you but if that lowhanging fruit is what I call it, um, is allowed to occur within downtown, it erodess the fabric of downtown. So, it takes you into an an area real estate that is unique and that is urban reinvestment, urban development, mixed use, etc. That that is an anomaly. uh doesn't happen too often and you all have some buildings that you're working off of. But the key there is to match up specific locations with specific users. The we're not going to know who those users are necessarily with before we sit down and have a discussion with the folks that Mr. Morrison was talking about. um we need to have that dialogue, but I do know that uh you know whether it's uh bringing uh Roger Stall back into Addison Circle after the initial phase was done and he put his headquarters office building in there and we had them transform the way that office building plugged into the residential that we're working on that made that place work. Uh same thing by bringing Traml Crow into downtown Garland. Um you know similar deal in in a place called Dodto. So I think it's it is leveraging

[1:20:14] relationships. I would like to bring up uh if you don't mind Andre Nicholas who is our uh partner here um in in the process uh because both of us have interest as investors in St. Angelo as well and I think Andre wanted to make a few comments as well. Good morning. Thank you for allowing us to be here. Andre Nicholas with any construction. Uh simple question. How many projects uh in the last 5 years has St. Angelo developed downtown St. Angelo between 10 and $30 million one excluding the city hall. Yep. Excluding the city hall, excluding the hospital. Uh like it was spoken. Yep. Uh the bankers do a great job. uh there's limited uh resources for them. This is where we come in where we have the network. We have the ability to bring finances developers also we are ready to put our money where our mouth is. We uh feel like St. Angelo has what it takes and we're willing to put our money there and it's going to take somebody to kickstart it so the domino effect can happen and that's what we're here for. Okay. Thank you. We want to make sure we're underwriting that project properly as well so that when they put their money in it's it's placed in a position that's that's proper and is going to make money for the city as well as uh as our group. So that's part of our role too. Sir, you've basically gone through the proposed scope of services. Uh and the next ask really is item B, the letter of intent uh authorization, and that needs to take us to the the point of what we would be getting, what the letter of intent covers, uh those kinds of things. So let me ask you to move us forward. Yeah,

[1:22:16] we've tried to keep it pretty simple. Um, and I will tell you this that, you know, if we were um a planner and we were coming in and and your RFP was for a consultant to come in and put a plan together, uh, my guess is that's probably a $2 $300,000 fee. It's a lump sum amount paid over, you know, maybe a 14 16-month period. That's not what we're proposing here. What we're saying is, uh, we are interested as investors, developers with NE ourselves to look at a deal in St. Angelo as well as marshall the resources of others. Um so we know there's some underwriting that needs to happen. So what we're looking at is to go through that initial process to determine what those deals deal or deals are. Um that's over a few months. Um that's about $68,000. Uh which we think is you know we're taking risk on the other side. Uh that's basically covering costs essentially um to to go through that underwriting and the market related work. Um, you know, there may be some additional amount. I don't see there's going to be much more than that. Um, you know, but if, for instance, there's some hiccup or something in zoning and we need to engage an attorney, there may be a few more thousands uh that that you can see that we put in there. Um, so that that te's up a a vertical development opportunity. The second piece of that then is to take that to market. Uh is to put the marketing plan together, work with your local realers as well as regional uh brokerage houses. Um and then go out and market those projects whether they're for our own account or for others, working with others, going in and talking to some regional developers or even local folks. Um that's a process. We don't know exactly where that is right now. So we put that together uh really as a retainer at 10,000 a month. My guess is um that I mean frankly at the end of the initial process if it doesn't look like there's a project there we're not moving into phase two realistically it doesn't make sense right I don't think that's the case I think there is an opportunity um but to answer the question you know you'd be

[1:24:18] looking at about 68,000 over the next several months um and then let's say until the first development agreement is done at 10,000 a month let's say that takes 90 to 120 days to kind of negotiate and put together. Okay, that's $30 to $40,000. Um, you know, then beyond there as it gets into a vertical project, I don't know what that project is. So, I can't forecast that, you know, what that would be, if there would be any additional expense or not. Our goal is to try and be as efficient as we can. From uh the perspective either of the commission or or from your perspective, Mr. Rutherford, walk us through the taxpayers's investment and rate of return or not necessarily rate of return but but where does the taxpayers's return come from? Okay. So so uh we spend $68,000 or $75,000 or whatever on this phase one. We decide there's not to be a phase two. That money has sunk costs uh because we've decided there's not a phase two. uh maybe we've learned something and gotten some value from that. But but okay. But if we go to phase two and we start through a horiz horizontal development positioning process somewhere in there, there's money being spent with you 10,000 per month and a consultant fee if there's a sale and so forth. But there starts being a return for the taxpayer uh as projects are developed as as properties are brought on the tax roles as so I want you to walk us through that part of the process. help us help us understand how we're taking care of the taxpayers's money. Well, and that's and that's good and we are absolutely all for that. Um, of course, uh, the the first part at the end of phase one is you've got a strategy plan in place whether you choose to move forward with us or any other group. You have a strategy plan that's in place that is that is fundamentally based on the market. Good or bad, it's based on what we see. Uh, I can tell you how, you know, implementing a project in one of the worst areas economically in Texas right now, the area I mentioned before in South Dallas,

[1:26:21] if we can make a project work there, we can make a project work just about anywhere. Um, so I I am a optimist glass half full type person, too. So, to answer your question, the first part of that is you've got in a sense a business plan for the next several years on particular deals to go after and there's and and we've kind of teed things up so that maybe the local real estate market takes it from there and runs with it. that would be great. Uh maybe we need to jump into that second phase and continue to assist. That's fine, too. So, so there's a a tangible product um that's outlined in that scope that has some market work. It's got essentially a business plan related to projects up front. As we move forward into a deal, um that's where the taxbased generation comes into play. So, for instance, in that difficult project that I mentioned before, that's a $30 million project. That's a $30 million value that's hitting the tax roles um in Dallas. Um you know, we in that case, you know, uh we were debt constrained on that. Only 51% could be in debt. Um so there's a lot of money that's going into that project. But in terms of value and the impact that's making on the on on its surroundings, you know, it's it's a huge value. Uptown Dallas has generated now nearly $4 billion to the tax base. That all came from a strategic plan upfront. Can I quantify exactly what that is for St. Angelo absolutely on when we get into it and start looking at what the uses are. Uh that's that's not hard to do and that would be a part of the the initial phase. And then finally with phase three and four um that's when we know exactly what the project is. Let's say it's a you know Andre mentioned uh he used the term you know $20 million project. When does that happen in downtown? I know he's got a thought in the back of his mind where he came up with that figure. Um, but if you look at a a let's say a a you know medium-sized mixeduse project that occur that could occur on the river for instance, um you could be looking at something in that range of investment. And you know, if you're looking at a rate of return and you've got $20 million of value that's hitting the tax roles and you've got 70 $80,000 of strategy work that that goes

[1:28:25] into that, you know, that's that's not a bad return on those dollars and how I think, you know, think about things. Okay, Mr. Morrison. So, check my math here, please, sir. Okay, I'll get my calculator. I'm seeing an initial lump sum of $68,000. Mhm. I'm seeing 12 months at $10,000 a month. For 12 months, $120,000 for a total hit to the taxpayer of $188,000 with a possibility of another $20,000 in miscellaneous expenses. So, I'm looking at through phase two, I'm looking at $28,000. Did I do it right? No, I'm I'm thinking phase two is probably about six months. So, it's not a full year, I don't think. This $10,000 per month, does that start on month one or does that start on month six? That starts at the end of phase one. So, you have 68,000. Then you start my guess is that's in the 3 to six month range. 68 and 60. Something like that. Okay. So, we got 128 plus a possibility of 20 more. $150,000. Mhm. is what we're looking at for one year. And who pays this? Is it the city? Is are it invest? Is it our investors? Who who pays this money? The city. The city. The taxpayer. Correct. Taxpayer. So, the taxpayers are going to get hit for $150,000 in one year's time with a hope of an with a hope of a return on investment. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Mr. rehearsal. Uh, could I ask Mr. Dayne where would the money come from just like to know where the what checkbook? It come from one of those grants over there. No, just I'm just teasing. Which bucket? We have not set the money aside for this yet. We have gone in uh with the idea that we would uh try to put a package together

[1:30:28] including resources for and this type of thing plus others when we knew what the scope would be. What kind of scope are we looking at? What kind of objectives would we have for this entire project? Uh then we would be able to determine what kind of resources were necessary and then what where they would come from. How does our commission see as to where the money would come from to pay for it? Pardon me? The commission, where did you perceive the money to come from? I'll ask them straightly, Mr. Cummings. Without qualification, the city council has the checkbook. So, that's we'd be looking to you. Well, there is another checkbook. Uh there is a half cent sales tax economic development checkbook. Yes sir. Just off the cuff knowing nothing about what their entire budget is necessarily right now. And and let me say one thing. Um and this was brought up here in St. Angelo. We are we are so far ahead of some other communities. One of which I lived in previously that spent $300,000 just to come up with a master plan. and then multiples of times the 10,000 per month for a master developer in their city. So what's being put in front of you is very economical in my view. Thank you. C can I ask what we're I'm a little confused on how this is going. What to me what we're trying to do is what we're looking at is approving phase one. Is that a correct statement? I think what you're being asked to approve is um is for you all to come in and get into the details on a specific scope that nails out exactly that. We've we've been asked to outline in the letter of intent, you know, how we see a process going. So, you would be approving the general process. Um but, you know, if you all came back to us and said, you know, we're just going to get into the initial phase here. Uh we need

[1:32:31] to work out exactly what that is and we'll come back and look then we're fine with that. I mean again we're this from our standpoint the end the end run here is for us to determine a vertical project that we can go forward on and we're both sharing in the risk of the underwriting expense. That's essentially what this is. At the same time we're helping you with non-project related larger broader ideas that that capitalizes on our experience. Um that's that's why we think it is less than you'd see in other situations. But you may come back and say you're not going forward past phase one without authorization of council. That's all fine with us. However you want to do that. Um but I've given you a scale of what I think it probably is over the next year. So really what we're what we're looking to approve the item A, B, and C is to is the scope uh approve a letter of intent and then for negotiations to sign a contract uh with Catalyst. Okay. And so then uh am I correct in that? Right. Um understand from a staff perspective, the first thing that we're trying to accomplish today is to make sure that both the groups that we have here are looking at the scope and telling us what needs to change with it or if it is acceptable as is because we can't move forward without knowing that everyone has the same expectation. Once we've accomplished that and we're asking you for that direction, then we're asking you to give us the permission to enter into negotiations so that we can both work with the consultant and negotiate a contract and work internally and determine where we need to identify money sources for the project. So, so let me go ahead and take it from here and say uh I'll make them can you need to go ahead. I need to make one thing clear. Yeah, you said some for authorization for staff to execute a contract. Correct. I believe that is not what's in front of you to negotiate. Okay. That's correct. It's basically the letter. We we would not be authorized under these actions to execute the

[1:34:33] contract before we came back. Nor would we be interested until we've identified possible funding sources and cleared those with you. We we need to come back for contract ultimate contract approval and for approval of funding sources. Okay. I'll go forward making a motion to approve item 1 A, B, and C. uh and in moving forward with phase one. Okay. With and I will and and I'd like to go to phase two, but I'd like to kind of get a heads up to know we're here where it's a go nogo type question. And so I do so you want to revisit right before phase two after phase one. But that could be a right and I but I'd like if it's feasible and it it the go no-go looks good then we need to then I want it to continue forward. I Okay, hang on just a moment. I'm going to get his clarification. Okay. So, what what I got was a motion that approved items 1 A, B, and C. Uh but on the scope of services specifically restricted it to phase one of the scope of services. Okay. Is that what I heard? Can I make a suggestion that we we can make phase two an option that we execute or approve. Therefore, they can negotiate on it, write the contracts, but they can't execute it without our approval. So, it allows go with that. Okay. I can second that. I can do that. But you can even clarify that phase one is anywhere between one and six months or Well, it's as presented. As present. Okay. Okay. Now, I have a motion that we approve items 1 A, B, and C. um ex ex uh see fully accepting fully accepting phase one and allowing the negotiation for phase two but not the moving forward with phase two without specific uh permission after phase one. That makes sense. Okay. I have I have a

[1:36:39] motion and a second on that motion. Do I have any further input from council? Mr. Morrison, before I am willing to to spend $150,000 or even $68,000 of the taxpayer money, and before I know where the city staff is going to get this money, where it's going to come from, how they're going to pay for it. I'd like to I'd like to put this off to the next meeting and and read this. We've just seen this. I'd like to study this a little bit. I'd like to talk to some people. I'd like to talk to some investors. I'd like for Michael and the rest of the city staff to get us some absolutes on where the money's coming from, how we're going to pay for it. I see no reason to jump in this thing today when we don't have everything before us. Okay. So, I'd rather I would rather wait on this. Okay. My motion stands. Further uh further input from council. Well, it's my understanding though, we're not executing a contract. It's a letter of intent and so all his questions will be answered because we're enable we're giving them permission to go answer those questions. Okay. And I don't believe all of these professionals that serve on this commission uh would be ready to move forward had they not consulted with various investors and other bankers and their their professional expertise out there. I'm ready to go with their recommendation today. Okay. a whole lot more brain power on that on this level of stuff sitting out there than there is a nothing personal against any of us, but we recognize what you do. I know where I am in the world. Well, you know, there's going to be some people out there that say this is big city thinking, big city economics. We're inviting outsiders to come in and take our money. That's what they're going to say. But we what we're doing is creating opportunity for our own citizens. We're creating a bigger tax base so we can lower our tax rates so that you don't get taxed to death. Uh we're just creating opportunity. That's all we're doing here and I think it's a good move. Okay. Before I call for the vote, is there any further input from the commission? Okay. Is there any public input? Happy.

[1:38:51] Good morning. Morning, mayor, council, Mr. Balenuela, commission members. I'm Tommy Heert. I serve on the Baptist Memorials board of directors, Baptist Retirement Community. I don't know if y'all saw in the paper several weeks ago, we have committed to spend $22 million in the north end of St. Angelo. If I if I noticed correctly on some of Mr. Rutherford's slides, Main Street, I think, was the third a third leg. That's correct. that was was was within the I am extremely excited about this just simply from the standpoint of we have spent the past three or four years as a board looking into this in terms of what we are going to do on our campus. We are going to expand our campus to include and make it a full continuing continuum of care for retirement communities for me for my generation. Bapt uh the boomer generation. So I am extremely excited about this. I would love to have a conversation with Mr. Rutherford as to how we can partner with what he's going to do with you all. Mr. Valins later, we hope to be meeting with you soon. So um I am extremely excited about this and hopeful that you all will grant your approval for this. Okay. Thank you. Further public input on this before I call for the vote. Okay. Call for the vote. Clarification. Sure. We are voting to negotiate. We are not signing a check today. Okay. Mr. Is that correct? Yeah. Mr. Morrison, we're we are taking action uh regarding the qualifications and proposed scope of services. Okay. We are giving the city manager uh authority to execute a letter of intent with Catalyst Urban Development. and we are authorizing the city manager or his design to begin negotiations with Catalyst Urban Development. Okay. Okay. Call for the vote. All those in favor, please say I.

[1:40:55] I. Any opposed? Okay. Thank you. The motion passes. Let's call for a break. Well, let me first adjourn. Let me first I'll ask you to adjourn your meeting. Let me adjourn this part of our meeting and then uh move us to a break. You want them to also take a look at Oh, yes. Yeah. That's why you're here is to make to make me help me do my job based on their recommendations. Their recommendation. Okay. So, not so important that they have to take the vote today because it's seen as they already took that vote or it wouldn't have come forward. Correct. Correct. It wouldn't hurt just to make sure we have all of the pieces laid out. So your action is also confirming and accepting their recommendation as well. Okay. Now they made the recommendation as part of their presentation though, Miss Bowling. So I'm um perhaps you could just state that you accept their recommendation and in doing so you then Okay. For the record, Mr. Cummings, Mr. Edwards and commission, we accept your recommendation. uh have taken a vote to uh uh approve what you've asked for and uh at this point would ask you to adjourn your meeting so we could move forward. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Okay. Uh for the Downtown Development Commission, uh I would entertain a motion that we adjourn. Motion. Motion's made. Second. Second. All in favor say I. I. We are adjourned. Thank you. For the viewing public who may not have caught or heard, I missed it. The commission that we're working with today, council is working with today are members appointed by this council and selected by this council to work on the downtown development corporation. And uh it it it's with great pride that I feel that we selected this particular board and uh was very very picky because we selected each of you because of your expertises to guide us and I thank you. Super. Okay. Let me

[1:43:00] uh call this uh this joint meeting uh to adjournment and uh uh and ask that we take a break at this time and we'll gather back up in 15 minutes. Let me call the meeting to order. Start us with item number six from the consent agenda. This item was pulled and placed on the regular agenda. It's the consideration of adopting a resolution approving an assignment of the December 4th, 2012 lease of the West Mezzanine in substantially the attached form in the city hall building for office space by and between the city of St. Angelo and the San Angelo Performing Arts Coalition. The item was pulled by Mr. Morrison. So, Mr. Morrison, I don't expect any presentation on this. We we've beat this horse to death. It's been voted on and I know it. But I feel that the public I feel that the taxpayers are getting the short end of the stick. I do not think this is a good contract and I simply wanted to vote against it one more time to express my disapproval. So I call for the vote. Okay. I need a motion to approve. Motion to approve. Right before we call for the vote. I have a motion to approve. I'll second item number six um which is the resolution approving an assignment to uh SPAC for the west mezzanine. Okay. City of Paul St. Angelo. I have a a motion and a second. I'll call for the vote. All those in favor please say I. I. Any opposed? Nay. Okay. Thank you. Let's move on to item number 11. This is the first public hearing in consideration of introducing ordinances amending the code related to the animal control and fees. And we have a presentation today by our health services director, Sandra Vier. I knew the name. I just wanted to get the title right. So, good morning, mayor, council, Mr. Vanzella. This has actually been kind of long and

[1:45:02] coming, but we finally um are here to present. And I'll just go ahead and go through the the amendments that we are proposing today. This is what actually we're trying to do. We're repealing 350 entitle empoundment of an animals and replace with um just one that's called empoundment, but still the same article number. We are repealing section 3.412 412 adoption of animals and replacing with same section number adoption of animals uh sterilization requirements with section 3.413 adoption of animals by individuals section 3.414 adoption of animals by res qualified animal rescue organizations and section 3.415 adoption fees as well as amending article 1.0000 00 which are the fees animal control services fees by adding um and we've just divided them out A, B, C, and D. Um for individuals, the qualified rescues um previously sterilized animals in um non-microchipped and previously sterilized and microchipped. So we're just actually just putting that concrete into the amendments. Okay. So the fees themselves are remaining the same. These are remaining the same. They did not change. We just broke them down. The language is just being clarified. Is that right? Yes, sir. Okay. And then we added the microchip fee. We did not have it uh in the ordinances. So, we're just adding that that one section 1.301 for the chips. Um article 3.50 the empoundment uh proposed amendments. Section 3.501 501. The general provisions allow for the empoundment of the animal. First and foremost, allows for the redemption of such animal or allows voluntary relinquishment by the owners. In addition to authorizing any animal

[1:47:04] running at large to be impounded first and foremost and making it unlawful for a dog, a cat or a potbellyied pig to be running loose um when they are off their property. Section 3.502, 502, the empoundment period is set for three business days for an animal that does not have a microchip or a tag or seven business days if that animal has a chip or a tag. And this one actually is in a response to some criticism by several people because we were taking a little bit too long in the current ordinance in trying to locate the owner. So, it was taking months versus we're trying to go ahead and just wrap this up as quickly as we can. Section 3.503 redemption of impounded owner identifiable animals must provide proof of ownership, current registration, have current rabies and proof of alteration which is sterilization. Exceptions to the alteration to the sterilization spay meters, pay the unaltered fee and that is still still currently still 200. So we're not changing that. Obtain the waiver from the health director. We still do that. Um if we get a letter from the veterinarian for whatever health reasons um that they have that they cannot sterilize the animal and this is an addition consideration may be given if the animal is registered in a national kennel association and that would only be invoked twice per owner and that is something that um the board our animal um our ASAC members came up with that's just an addition section 3505 Five states that an animal is eligible for adoption after the prescribed 3 to 7 days stray hold and section 3.506 allows for the immediate release of the animal if it is owner relinquished. So as soon as they sign them over um the animal becomes um adoptable and those are the empoundment proposed amendments for that. Okay. I just go on to the

[1:49:06] amendment to the hooking I think. So, I think we may take these all at once. If someone goes back and and asks that we vote on them separately, we will. Okay. All right. Adoption proposed amendment. Section 3.412 states that no animal shall be eligible for adoption unless it is altered. And that is, you know, we're not taking that away. So, we're we're leaving that. Section 3.413 adoption of animals by individuals allows for an individual to adopt by submitting the payment of adoption fees. The ordinance amendment allows for an individual to request a different veterinarian to perform the sterilization upon which adopter is responsible for those additional fees to the vet. Section 3.414 414. Um we've added the um adoption for qualified rescue organizations. Again, establishing a qualified risk organization to be a 501c3 um allowing a rescue organization to request a different veterinarian um and makes the adopter responsible for the additional surgery charges. This section requires the rescue organization to microchip an animal prior to their release. So if they take it without us release without us microchipping before they adopt it out, they also have to microchip the animal or allow us to do it either way. Section 3.415 adoption fees. Again, we did not change them. We just added the sections. Um for individuals staying the same, 50 for cats and 85 for dogs. The same for the qualified risk organizations. A previously sterilized and microchipped animal is $15 and that just includes the rabies in the city tag and previously sterilized non-microchipped animal will add that $13 microchip fee to that. Okay. Section 3.415 allows a qualified risk organization to negotiate their own pricing with a vet of choice and allows direct payment for any of cost incur incurred. And that was something that we

[1:51:08] needed to add. We were allowing that. We just put it down on paper. The section also states that if a contracted fee for sterilization surgery changes, so a vet changes their fees, it will result in an automatic increase or decrease to our adoption fees. So that way we just um we just have to cover the cost of the surgery. Okay. And the adoption fees proposed changes. Again, we it's it's just stating it what was in the ordinance section 1.30. 3000 the individuals the qualified rescues sterilized non-microchipped and the sterilized mic non microchips. So it's the same fees and then we just added the microchip fee again which is $13. Okay. I'm looking for a questions or a motion on this. Okay. Mr. Morrison, tell me Sandra how our adoptions have gone. It's been a year about since we jacked these prices way up there. Have our adoptions gone up? Have they gone down? They have essentially stayed the same. Um, actually, I looked at those yesterday. Um, in the 10-month span from January to November, we have adopted uh 1,255. So, that's essentially about the same. How many have we euthanized in that time? That's that's a lot. Euthanized 7,294. How many? 7,294 in a 11 month. Can you give me that same figure for the year prior to jacking these prices up to a double amount? I do not have those figures, but I believe they are probably relatively the same, but I can get those to you. I will get those to you. I've still got a problem with the way we jack those prices up because if you get things so high, that's why we are euthanizing 7,300 animals per year. Well, there's 10 I'm sorry, sir. I'm sorry. To my way of thinking, if you cut that adoption fee from 50 to 85, maybe to 30 and 50, and if we could save some animals lives and

[1:53:12] not have to euthanize many, looks to me like as a community, we would be ahead. If we do that, then therefore, council will have to subsidize the cost of that surgery because we're not making any money. The $65 for the surgery that we charge goes directly to the vet. making making money is a wonderful thing, but when 7,300 animals are unnecessarily making any money, you know, that's that's a different argument. We make zero. So, what she's saying is council will have to allocate more money to their department in the budget process. They all make sure I let you finish. Sure. Okay. Um the number the prior year, this was 10 months worth of data. Yes, sir. Okay. So, the number the prior year was a little over 9,000 animals. This is 7,200. So I would I would also agree with you that it's going to be roughly the same after a year's time. So I would I would say that it looks like the changes didn't have any impact. Um but other questions on her pro on her just a comment. I did not know until after the fact, but I I never get a good comment on the animal department as Rick knows who I usually call him with all of them. But I did get a really favorable comment. A person, a a family member, I did not know they were looking for an animal and they could have gone to a pet store. They chose to go to the animal shelter. Very pleasant experience for them. They bought and went through all the steps of the holding and the pet being u fixed and picking up their pet. It was for them, a young couple, it was like picking up out a baby in the in the store shop window, but they were very complimentary of the staff and nobody out there knows them. And we have a lot of beautiful animals and, you know, we just need people to be aware that we do have and we have a lot of purebred ones as well that that show up and, you know, they just need to really go out there and and they could really find a really nice animal. I I I want to concur with what she said. I mean, we we've only adopted two in the past year from the

[1:55:14] shelter and and I can't adopt anymore. I'm not going to let any more in my house. But, uh, I say that, too. I've got six cats. But, anyway, I know my kids will, but Dad. Okay. So, anyway, uh, that is it was a good experience. It really was. And that is a compliment to staff out there and changes and Yeah. and and what's going on and how y'all manage and operate and run the facility out there. And and I know none of us like euthanasia. No, we don't want to do that. But it goes back to kind of this whole thing. It's about us being responsible, us being, you know, responsible for the assets that we have. And one of those assets is animals and don't but you know, as many laws as we want to put as all these other things, it's not going to change things. But uh long story with that I'll motion to approve item second. Let me make sure that I 11 A B and C as presented. As presented second okay thank you question Sandra question. Oh I'm sorry you know speaking of you youth euthaniza euthanasia putting them down. You know, one of the first uh trips out there to the shelter was I got to witness one of those. That that that wasn't the most pleasant. No, it's not thing I've ever seen. But uh uh how are we assume our incinerator still out of order and we're and then Republic Retway is picking up the the animals or That's correct. We no longer using the incinerator. That's correct. Uh it was going to be very costly to fix or to buy a new one. So, one of the great things about that is that uh Sandra's been able to save and Julie on a lot of gas expenses. So, for instance, at the end of the year last year, Sandra was able to do some improvements out at the shelter things where you've got rusting cabinets that are falling apart. They were able to replace those with stainless steel. So, they're able to utilize some of those cost savings to actually do some things

[1:57:17] that they didn't have money to do out there. So, yeah, we had like a $30,000 natural gas savings. So, we were able to do a little bit, you know, of the maintenance things that that really needed to be addressed. So, and it it does take a tremendous person to put down an animal. And Julie, I tell you what, uh, man, you are awesome. I mean, I hate that it has to be done, but I saw you in action. I'm going that has got to be one of the toughest things to do. So, thank you for what you do. So, okay, Mr. Alexander, and then Mr. Morrison. However you want to do it. All right. Mr. Morrison had already had one one bite of the apple, so I was acknowledging you first and then back to him. Okay. Um, well, I just think we're we're missing for me, we're missing some changes. We're missing something and I and I've been wanting uh to discuss it and get it to the council. Uh, it's one of the best ideas I've seen because it didn't come from me. It came from other people. Uh, but it was well accepted on the Facebook page and and let me tell you, people online, they get after you when they don't like something. And this was accepted. So that's pretty good. Is that And I want to see a city tag program that is microchipbased. If you want to do it with a regular tag, that's fine because I don't think we I think Rick said by law, we can't force people to microchip their animal necessarily for a city tag purpose. Uh but I want to see this because they don't lose their tag. I I got uh these um uh the miniature collies and their head's so small. a collar is not staying on that dog. It has so much fur. No, you got to choke the dog before the collar is going to stay on. So, there's not going to be a collar on that dog. It'll come off easy. Uh, so that's not going to happen with that dog. So, it's an Australian uh sheep herder or whatever. So, my wife's going to kill me for not knowing the name, Shelty. Thank you, Steph. Anyway, they have a microchip and I would like that microchip to be the method by which it's tagged with a city tag. The other thing is we have to run all the way out to the

[1:59:20] shelter to get the city tag because most I think most vets don't support the program. And why is their own reason, but there's a reason. Actually, I probably more than half do sell them. Um last year, as a matter of fact, um the participating vets sold about 8,400 tags. Okay. So, that was good. That's what I want to get to is questions about how many, but there's still a lot not offering. So somebody that's not offering is it's just an extra burden to go all the way out and and so people don't they hardly get their pets to the vet in the first place to get the rabies shot much less go to the animal shelter every year to get the tags. The microchip is an online, hey, this is my microchip number. I want to pay for my dog uh this year. I want to pay for my dog for its lifetime. They different choices. And then the third the next component here is that if my dog is found that the truck is carrying a reader, they read see the number, send it into you guys. You say, "Yep, that's a registered dog." And it has there's a service attached. The dog gets returned back to my house as a service because I'm paying for that service. Maybe a $25 service per year, but I'm paying for it. If the dog never makes it to the shelter, then that's a dog that's not removed from its little pin and put to sleep. Mr. Alexander, that saves dogs. So, this this is you're doing good stuff except I think you're going to have to do that in the form of future. Well, I've mentioned it and it doesn't seem to be picking up and here we brought a major change to the ordinance without that being discussed. These are It's a pretty good idea. It saves dogs. People like the idea getting their dog returned to them. Let's get this in front of us for discussion and go into these details and talk about how many dogs are city tagged versus how many dogs there are in the city and cats too and and we can make money from this. Okay. And provide a service. We we have a marker so that we can I mean you know at the end of the meeting we'll go through future agenda items. And one question Mr. We just approved on the consent agenda second reading a zone change so that there could be a private crematorium for animals out on North Bryant. Can the

[2:01:24] city partner with this private to use their crematorium? Just just a question since ours doesn't work and I I you you could the issue you would get into is one you would have to pay them which it's not going to be cheap. Secondly, you're gonna have to transport all of those animals over there. And so, while no one likes the the concept of that we that we're not using it, a bulk of cities do it this way, and most of them are doing it that way because it is it is so much cheaper and it is a method to bury the animal versus incinerating. May I ask Julie, when this crematorium is in operation, would you check with them to see if there might be some type of a partnership we could form? Some people have a problem with we're still taking an animal to the dove, but okay. I mean, we're all these are all kind of related, but they're not what we're talking about. So, uh, again, that's a that's but the crematorium was on the agenda, but it's a fine idea. Fine idea at least can be pursued. Let's just ask them to do it when we when we're supposed to. Uh, I've got a motion and a second on the floor. Any further comments related to this? Okay. Any public comment on this item? We'll call for the vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Super. Let's move on to item number 12. This is public comments for and against annexation and a presentation uh by our planning manager AJ Fver. I'll keep it very brief. This is just to remind the public of the piece of property that we're speaking of today and taking public comment um in regards to a petition for annexation which you as a council accepted at the last regular council meeting. Um I'm starting with an aerial photograph here in the far southwest. May I interrupt her just a second? Nathan, if you're listening, my

[2:03:27] computer will not open the uh different things. So, if you're listening, Nathan, I need some computer assistance and I'm sorry, AJ. That's okay. It happens. Uh this area is in far southwest St. Angelo, as you may recall. Um we've done some additional maps u from your comments from the last presentation to help better uh display this area to you. You can see a red cross-hatched tract of property here and that is the 20 acre tract of property that is currently vacant. Um, as you recall, we talked about the adjacent piece of property. It's a triangular shaped property that is currently undergoing construction for an apartment complex. This is coincidentally owned by the same owner. Again, here is the map that we saw last time that they submitted to us. It better illustrates that adjacent property. And this is the survey um illustrating that property to be exactly 20 acres in size. You might also remember at your last meeting, you also approved a proposed calendar for the sequence of events that's required by the Texas Local Government Code in this annexation. I have that displayed on the slide here. Today counts as the first public hearing of two that are required. So you'll see this again at your January meeting and then we'll begin with the introduction of an annexation ordinance. So today we're asking for no action from the council. We're simply um doing our due diligence in allowing the public the opportunity to comment on the annexation of this property if they so desire. Okay. Uh as as it asks, is there a public comment on this annexation proposal for or against this proposal? Okay. Uh then the access has been made available uh Miss Fver. And so I'll ask that we uh close that item and move on to item number 13. This is discussion, consideration of and possible action on a petition uh petition filed by area land owners uh seeking annexation and presentation by our planning manager AJ Fiverr. Thank you. This uh mirrors very closely the last discussion that we had and that

[2:05:30] we're following the same process but this is a second piece of property for which the city has been approached with a petition for annexation um into the city of St. Angelo. This property is shown on the slide here um in an aerial format. You'll notice that the piece of property is again shown in a red cross-hatched pattern. You'll also notice that it's actually very near the last property that we talked about in this general area. Does it envelop space that wouldn't be annexed? I always those red lines confuse me sometimes. Okay, I'm sorry. So, walk me through. Let's go through this next piece. This helps. I think you see how that little Yes. I need help on what that is and what it means. Okay. Gotcha. So, back to the aerial just for a moment. Um, it does leave a particular piece of property here that I'm illustrating with my cursor that would still be outside the city limits that is owned by a separate property owner. Now, when we look at annexations for the city, one of the requirements is that it be contiguous to the existing city limit. There's no prohibition on creating these uh donut holes essentially. Okay. Um it is a possibility, but again in the notification process of this annexation, the property owner of this property neighboring it may decide that they would also like to petition the city for annexation. They have the choice to do that or to not do that. It's not relevant. We have not approached them directly for that. That is something that you can give us permission to do, but we will not do without council authority. Okay. The owners are Community Hills Christian Church on Nickerbucker Road next to Burger King. They join churches with another uh church, Lake View Christian, and that was Lake View's uh property and they're in the process of selling that land. I don't know why we wouldn't go. It's right across from Bonum. I mean, it's literally you go from I mean, so it's going to be city property. It's going to be developed out fairly soon. Why not go through the process now? And if we say yes, then I need that is that is something um you can ask for under future agenda items. You as the council can also initiate annexation

[2:07:33] proceedings, but we do have to have your director separate agenda separately. It's it's not part of this this agenda item. Well, I I can't I think I have to exit the discussion, don't I? Uh if my church owns the property and I'm a member of the church that can vote, do I exit? But again, the piece of property that we're here to discuss today is not owned by the church. Right. It is not. But we're making a donnut hole and we're obviously leaving out a piece of property that's going to be developed very soon. You're not doing anything today. All you're doing today is deciding if you want to accept the petition. It doesn't compel you in any way to actually annex the property. It simply gives you the opportunity for staff to research the area and to take public comment on it. So, you're not actually doing anything today. I can't I can't see I can't see how you're conflicted myself. And they're saying I'm not. So I would recommend that you approach the property owner and ask if they want to be a part of it. I I would recommend that. Okay. Well, again, you'll be a separate item. It has to be separate. Can't Okay. Correct. Correct. Well, simultaneous. Well, no. Let me answer it this way. You'd have to turn down this petition and say, "I'm going to turn this down because I'd rather wait and see if they're going to work together or something like that." I mean, that's the only way. Your second option is that you as a city council tell staff, "We would like you to initiate the annexation of this piece." Okay? In addition to the process you're already about to start today. So it it's actually two completely different pieces. This piece the owner has approached us. Okay? Or a third option is just to go ahead and create the donut all I mean accept the petition move forward and then let that move forward on its own pace. Correct. and that property owner has the choice to come forward or you but your item number two has to be on a separate agenda item. Correct. At future agenda it's not covered by what we're here to discuss today. Got it. And then if you believe there are some facts which would um implicate a conflict on your part, could you go ahead and provide those to me in I'm a voting member of Community Hills Christian Churches which I think is in the process of of selling the

[2:09:35] property. Right. It would be extremely helpful and I I'm hearing what if you could just perhaps just write email me or shoot me. Okay. Some details so I could crystallize them and look at them. Thanks. Okay. Okay. Motion to approve the petition filed by the land owners to annex the property as well as I hate to as well as but we also have a schedule that we will also need you to adopt as well as the proposed schedule. Thank you. Okay. I think you got beat Miss Farmer by Mr. Mr. Silvis, I have a motion for Mr. Hzfeld, a second by Mr. Silvis to accept this petition and the proposed schedule. Uh, is there any public input on this item? Is there further question from councel? Call for the vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Okay. Move us to item number 14. This is the discussion of the city website costs. Making sure I didn't miss anything. Yes. The discussion of the city website costs and consideration of authorizing staff to negotiate a subscription services agreement. Have presentation by our public information officer, Anthony Wilson. Good day, lady and gentlemen. My purpose here today is twofold. One is first of all I want to update the city council on the cost of the redesign of the website which you previously authorized and to reassure you that that cost is actually well below the $40,000 that you you previously authorized for that particular project. And then second of all, I'm going to be seeking some authorization from you to negotiate a contract for hosting the website and possibly some other uh subscription services. And in doing so, we're going to outline the different options for those services and and how we would uh propose paying for those, which would be outside the general fund. So, first just

[2:11:40] a little bit of history. Uh you may recall on May the 1st you authorized a contract not to exceed $40,000 for a vendor named Vision Internet to redesign our website. Now, I began as your public information officer on September the 1st and at that point uh immediately began working with Vision with our IT manager and with our U legal department on uh drafting and executing a contract and we negotiated a price of $30,860 which you can see is well below the $40,000 that you authorized for the project. Now, Vision additionally offers three optional services in in addition to the redesign. And I spoke with five of Vision's prior clients, including three from Texas. Those were the cities of Round Rock, Denton, and Grand Prairie, which by the way, all of their websites after they were redesigned by Vision One Statewide Awards. But I asked them about these uh optional services to just get some feeling on which would be beneficial for us potentially uh to to take advantage of. They offer an on-site consulting. We're going to do this remotely. We think we can talk with them via phone or teleconferencing or whatever to to determine what exactly we want in and from our website. They offer a service for content migration. We're going to do that inhouse because we feel like it's a good way to train our site administrators within the city who use our website. Train them on the new website by moving the content from our current website to the new website. Now, the one service that unanimously all of the other uh cities that I talked to said was valuable and they thought it was critical was the on-site training where they actually send someone here for a day. they work with us and with the other uh managers within the city

[2:13:44] who are going to be uh updating and and posting information to our website so that we can learn how to do that. Uh like I said, that was the consensus. Everyone said, "Yeah, this is a this is a a musto." So, when you add together the uh cost of the on-site training, which is nearly $3,300, plus the cost of the redesign, which is nearly uh $31,000, you end up with a total of $34,150. And as a reminder, you authorize $40,000 for the redesign of the website. So, as you can see, this falls, you know, uh well above 10% of a cost savings from what you authorized. Now that brings us to the second portion of uh my presentation and that is once we have the site redesigned, we got to figure out the best way to host the site. Uh currently here's what we're doing. We pay a vendor named ABNET 24 uh $2,450 a year and that gives us one gig of disk space. The problem is that we're using 7 gig of disk space. And when we uh talked with the vendor recently, they told us that they were planning on soon, they didn't give us a definite timetable that but soon they are going to begin charging $1,000 per year for every 4 gig of space that you're over what the original agreement called for. So if they were to begin doing that, that would raise our cost for hosting the site from 24.50 to 4450. And again, if you added the the cost of the redesign that I just outlined, uh that would yield you a total first year cost of nearly $39,000. Now, the IT manager, John Eid, and I also explored the possibility that the city could host the site itself. What we found is that would require an initial capital investment of more than $10,000 in servers and software. And we would also have to purchase an

[2:15:47] increased bandwidth in order to accommodate the traffic that the website would generate at a cost of $400 per month. So you're looking at $4,800 a year uh after that capital investment. And you can see what the total first year cost of that would be. It would be, you know, uh pushing $50,000. The other option for hosting the site is Vision, which is going to do our redesign of the website. offers uh a hosting service at a cost of $200 per month for 100 gig of space. So, we would never have to worry about space. That would always accommodate all the space needs that we would have. Uh and their contract calls for a 3% annual rate increase. Uh initially it was 5%, we've got it down to 3% and frankly I'm hoping to to knock it down a little bit further uh than that if you authorize us to negotiate the contract. Uh but you can see what the total first year cost of that $2,400 a year for the hosting uh plus the redesign would be. That would be $36,550. Now, all of those three uh options I just outlined you would provide us the current level of service that we currently have as far as hosting goes. Uh Vision also offers a package, two different packages of subscription services in addition to the hosting. And here's what here's what they offer. Uh, in addition to the hosting, they offer a package that includes 247 tech support. They monitor your website round the clock and if it's ever offline for more than 10 minutes, they jump in and help you out. Uh, plus any upgrades uh that uh occur. And of course, anyone who has an an iPhone knows how often upgrades uh happen. You know, once every couple of months or so. Uh, and that would be at a cost of $400 per month uh or $4,800 per year. And you can see what the total first year cost of just the website would be with the redesign if we went uh with that option. Okay. What's an upgrade? Uh, and I just want to know

[2:17:49] because are we talking that this is the site always evolving and they're making changes to their modules and saying, "Hey, if St. Angela wants this module, it's an update and it's part of that fee." If you if you're not you don't have this fee, then you got to pay for it. I'm getting there. Okay, I'm getting there. So, the upgrades are mainly software upgrades, but this next package does what you're what you're suggesting in that in addition to the hosting, the 247 tech support, and the software upgrades, any new features that they offer, you have access to those, and they they add those new features to your sites. And then after four years, they do a graphic redesign of your site, which is simply just a freshening of the look uh of the site. It's it's not it's not a massive redesign like we're like we're contracting to do. So, we're paying four years, that's uh $24,000 and we get that redesign included with all the techn technical support and upgrades, everything that that's $6,000 a year and they include the graphic upgrade, right? Not forgetting the 3% annual increase is the only slight play on what you said, but anyway, so don't forget that 24. So that 3% annual would be for as long as we we use them. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And again, I'm I'm hoping to we've talked it down from 5 to three. I'm hoping to get it down a little further than that. Uh and uh you know, frankly, one of the the tactics that uh we're going to propose is that we'll sign maybe a longer term agreement if uh if you will eliminate the uh the annual rate increase. So, there may be some cost savings there. Anyway, those are the uh the two different packages of uh subscription services uh that they offer. Um, I do want to note that uh when I spoke to the public information officer in Denton, uh, he noted that the first three years of their, uh, contract with Vision, they went simply with the hosting and they recently purchased this high-end package, if you will, because their users and their site administrators

[2:19:53] within the organization became frustrated because they were always chasing the technology. I mean, everyone knows how fast technology changes and uh they always felt like they were behind the eightball that they couldn't offer the the latest in technology with their website and it was a particular frustration uh with their users. Now, that raises the question, how would we pay for these hosting and uh subscription services? Currently, that $2,400 uh 2400 $2,450 that we're currently paying for hosting comes out of the general fund. Uh here's what we're proposing. Uh if you'll hearken back to fiscal year 2011, there was a bond fund 505 that had one remaining active project in it, and that was a new city website. Uh the city manager closed that fund during the summer of 2011 and used the $90,000 that was remaining in that fund to pay for voice over internet protocol phone expenses, thereby freeing up the same amount of money, $90,000 in the communications fund to address the new city website. So, that's where we're paying the $34,000 for the redesign of the website. It's out of that fund balance of the communication fund. Um, that leaves uh nearly $56,000 that was previously earmarked for the website to address some of these other expenses. So, uh, what, uh, we would propose doing is paying for the hosting cost, uh, plus any subscription services that you may decide here today to opt for from those earmarked website funds that are in the communication fund fund balance. And in doing so, again, that's going to be a cost savings to the general fund of uh a minimum of $2,400 per year because that's the lowest cost package for the

[2:21:57] hosting. The funding in that uh general fund fund balance is sufficient to uh sustain services until the next uh redesign. And something, this is just sort of looking ahead, something that we may want to consider during the fiscal year 13 budget process is potentially charging our webs uh website users or departments a small fee in order to help replenish that funding so that we'll have earmarked funds for the next big redesign of the website and to continually pay for these hosting andor subscription services. So essentially what we would propose doing is each year we would move money from the fund balance into the public information accounts in order to pay for these uh hosting and subscription costs. Obviously the uh you know what package that we go with is a council uh decision. We could spend no more than what we currently are uh for hosting without any uh tech support or upgrades. What we're recommending is that we subscribe with uh Vision Internet for the hosting uh 247 tech support, the upgrades, the new features, and the graphic redesign at that cost of $6,000 a year with a 3% annual rate increase. uh if the council is not comfortable with that and the alternative we would recommend uh subscribing for the hosting the 247 tech support which does lighten some of the burden on our IT staff uh and the upgrades at a cost of uh $4,800 uh per year. And so with that, I will uh try to answer any questions that you may have. Okay, Mr. Herszfeld. Um I I guess this is kind of diving down into the content of what the website will be generating. One of my um I know there's the pretty, the fancy, I mean all that kind of stuff and there's the social media and all that. my facet what I'm really more interested in is the uh and I mentioned this before is the back

[2:23:59] office is how this is going to tie in with uh water utility billing with uh permits and inspection with code enforcement with you know all that kind of stuff where uh that's my intrigue what I'm really key on that to me is where this will make you know make money for the city if if there's such such a word. I mean, I'm not necessarily gener making money, but it it will be a customer service feature that will actually enhance beyond just pretty graphics and such. So, have this website at the ready just for you, Mr. Hersshfeld. This is the uh Grand Prairie website, and you can all see it down here on this on the screen below you, but Whoops. Let me go back up. And they did this. This is their This is a vision customer right here because you mentioned Round Rock. I didn't like Round Rocks at all. Unless I'm looking uh I I I think Round Rocks is definitely better than ours. I don't think I don't think it's as good as as this one. But here's here's some of the the features that I like about this website. I love this button up here at the top that says I want to I want to adopt a pet. I want to apply for and you can see the different sort of permits services that you can apply for. Let's see. That one says, "I want to file a code violation complaint." I think that would be helpful. So, this will the and and that's exactly what I was hoping to see. Mhm. So, but but tell me that that right there and I that will do an interface with uh and that or that will tie back or that will power or that will do something to to improve that customer service aspect and actually be able to look at a water bill maybe. Absolutely. You know, one of the things that is a strength of vision is that they have uh an uh interactive program that seamlessly melds those

[2:26:04] third-party vendors like our water billing website with the host website. Um I mean in my opinion uh you know and I pay my water bill online. I don't know that it's as seamless as I would like it to be. I think a better example of how we do that well right now and that vision will help us with those third-party vendors is our tickets.com website because when you go online uh on uh our civic events link uh on the city's website to buy a ticket, you know, you click on that and it looks like it's the city's website. It is not. It is a third-party vendor website. And so the the way that Vision connects with those thirdparty vendor websites is really seamless and I think it's going to improve um not only what we can do but how we do it and this is included in the price of what you're talking about? Yes, sir. This is included in the $34,150. I'm happy that Yeah. It opens a ticket. When you file a complaint, it opens a ticket. You can track the ticket. It has a mobile phone mobile interface. Right. That's correct. You know, mobile phones are half of all internet now. And so, you know, it's going to be a lot of mobile um interactions here. I guess you go to their site. I didn't use my phone to do it. I guess you put an M in front of it. I'll try that. And it automatic pops up that way. Well, and and as you mentioned, uh Mr. Alexander, about the new features, you know, uh at some point we'd like to have a mobile app, an iPad app, uh as part of this. And those are the sort of features that we would be able to get under the package that we're recommending for the subscription services. And that's included included or add that's part of the $600 per month uh subscription services package. If they offer those new features in the future, we've got them. $500 per month. 6,000. $600 per month. Oh, 600. Okay. It's 5,000 a 6,000 a year. Right. You're confused. I'm confused. Okay. Correct. as always.

[2:28:07] It's all right. 500. I'm confused. Not that you're 56,000. That's where you're getting your six. Okay. U folks, let me ask you to please be careful. You're walking on each other by not not letting me help uh direct traffic here. Okay. Mr. Silvis is next. Anthony, I'm got a couple questions. How many pages do we currently have in our on our site? Oh, good lord. I I have no idea, Mr. Silvis. I mean uh and I mean frankly part of our frustration with the website is that in my opinion there aren't enough parameters for the site administrators and that's one of the things that I want to work on with vision. You know when you scroll through our website the look alone is just wildly different from page to page. And it's one of the things that we're going to gain control of with Vision's help is every page is going to look the same. It's going to be a consistent look throughout. It's going to be a consistent structure throughout so that every department, every division is just not off doing their own thing uh with the website. So, do you think we have more than 50 pages or very very easily more than 50? More than 200. I would say that we would have more than 200 because you look at um uh for instance the public information page. We have a half dozen or more different sort of sublinks, if you will, off of the public information page. And that's not unusual. Uh particularly for a department that maybe is as complex as community development. You know, they've got a lot of different divisions underneath there. Each of those divisions may offer different services, all of which have their own page. So, uh you're talking into the uh the hundreds uh as far as the number of pages on our website. So, as far as our our ability to migrate to the new if we go with it, is there going to be is it going to slow things down? Are we going to run into problems on the migration part of it or Well, I think what how fast does it happen? I think what we're going to do though is we're going to insist that all of those site

[2:30:13] administrators work on migrating their content. So it's not going to be just up to the public information officer or the multimedia coordinator. Each site administrator within each department and division is going to be responsible for that with our oversight and our assistance. But again, you know, when I talked to those other cities, they thought that that represented a good training exercise for those site administrators because it got them it gave them a chance to practice, if you will, manipulating the website before it went live. Was the 30,000 the lowest bid we got? I mean, from anybody out there or Well, and of course, you'll have to excuse me because I was not the public information officer back in in May and during the RFP process for this, but my understanding is is that there were vendors that were much higher. I mean, you're talking about $70,000 or more. And uh we didn't go with the least expensive vendor. We didn't go with the most expensive vendor. Uh, and you know, I'm I feel we are fortunate in order to be able to do the project, contract for the project at a price that in my opinion is much less than what this council authorized us to do. And the last thing and I'll be browsing while somebody else asked question, but you mentioned Round Rock and Grand Prairie and who else? Uh, Denton, didn't just those three? Those are those are three cities in Texas. I I checked with two others that were uh out of state. Uh, but those were the three in Texas that I that I checked with. Okay. Mr. Morrison, I have several questions. Anthony. Yes, sir. You say that we closed the communication fund out in uh June of 211. No, sir. That was bond fund 505. That money by doing so, we freed up money in the communication fund for the new city website, which was the last project that was remaining in bun bond fund 505. So, we did not clean the fund out. There is money in the fund to to support this in the communication fund. Yes, sir. There are there are $90,000 earmarked in the communication fund fund

[2:32:15] balance for the new city website. So, we're not going to have to pull out of the general fund and put it into the communication fund. There is money there. Vice versa, we're going to be pulling from the communication fund into the general fund in order to pay for this project and for the hosting and subscription services. Next question. We authorized $40,000 in May and you say you have spent 36 and change. We haven't spent anything yet. We have a an expenditure offered to us of 36 and change. So there's a little bit of a savings. 30,860 plus the the on-site training which is 34,150 all total. Okay. Is this 38950 option one and 4150 option 2 in addition to that? No sir. That includes that cost that is included in that $40,000 that we authorized in May. Yes, sir. So, if we go with option two, the number one, you're going to have to get approval for $150. No, sir. Um, you have authorized up to $40,000 for the redesign. Thank you, sir. And what I was trying to do was just present the first year cost of the total project. So, what we would what we would seek to do is spend that $34,150 for the redesign of the website and then if there are whatever subscription package or hosting services that we contract for, we'd move that money over. Let me try to help a little bit here. It's the it's the language of the actual uh item on our agenda that I think crosses the bridge. So, it's the discussion of the city website costs, uh, which is the 34,000 and something, which comes out of the 40 that was previously approved. But what you'd also be doing, Mr. Morrison, is approving something along the lines of $6,000, which is how you get to $40,150. So, you'd be approving that $6,000 via authorizing staff to negotiate a subscription services agreement. So, what you're doing is two things. one you're kind of finishing up

[2:34:18] old business and the other one you're adding new business for $6,000 and that's where you get to the $40,150 if you approve it. Okay, next question. Thank you. We've got a man here in town, Joe Hyde, that is developing a website for San Diego, California. Did we talk to Joe Hyde about developing a local man in San Angelo, Texas to give him the opportunity to bid on developing our website? Well, as you know, I was not the uh public information. You can go back in records. Surely, there were some records that were left. Well, we went through a uh legal RFP process in which anyone and everyone was uh able to bid on the project. Uh and I do know Mr. Hyde, and I do know that he's typically uh got his finger on the pulse of what's going on uh in our community and with the city. In fact, he had a article on his website about you a couple weeks ago. So, I know that he follows uh city governance and uh to my knowledge, he did not uh submit a proposal uh to redesign our website. I like to stay local. It just it to me it makes more sense to stay with the local business. And Vision, I think, is out of California, isn't it? Uh Vision is out of California. Um, so California company is designing our website and yet a St. Angelo company is designing a website for San Diego that something doesn't really fit there. Also, another question to go along with that. Have we have we talked to ASU and have we talked to Texas Tech? Have we given them an opportunity to weigh in on this? We've got we've got two of the finest universities in the world right here in St. Angelo and Leach and they're all tied together. Have we talked to them about this design instead of going to California? Well, I'll go back to my previous answer that, you know, we went through a legal RFP process and and as part of that that process, my understanding is is that we were looking for someone with experience in developing a municipal website. And uh and I'm I agree with you. I think there

[2:36:23] are some very bright minds uh on the ASU campus and at Texas Tech, but uh whether or not they have the experience doing what we were wanting to do with our website uh I don't know. But but I do know that they did not uh submit a proposal as a result of the RFP process. We haven't talked to them though. We haven't asked them for their input. We've not asked them for guidance. We've not asked for them to to consult with us. That's my question. And we we've got a tremendous resource right here in St. Angelo that we are totally and completely bypassing because we don't even get on the phone or or talk to them and ask them. Well, Mr. Morrison, this council has already approved a contract with Vision Internet. Okay. Okay. Is there any further question or comment before I I've got one last one. And I don't I wouldn't even come close to assuming that even our IT department could do this. I mean, I guess it would take a lot of manh hours or uh John Es is here if he'd like to speak to this, but I think he is particularly interested in us having uh a package that includes the 247 tech support uh because it will lighten the already heavy burden on our IT division. Uh and uh it's one of the reasons why I mean along with the finances from a financial standpoint, it doesn't make sense for us to host the website ourselves. But also that would just be another burden on on our IT uh division and and as you know you know the number of people that there are working there and the scope of our organizations. Abnet who was it abnet? Yes sir. There are hosts now. That's correct. Okay. Okay. Paul I'm wanting I'm looking for I'm looking for a motion. Mr. Hzfield's ready to make a motion. I'm wanting you to pay particular attention because I think this is a little bit in your Bailey wick as to which level to make could you go back to your recommendations? I I have one question I have to have answered this. What's our current expenditure per year to maintain this website? 2450. 2450. That's right.

[2:38:27] And that Okay. So, we're increasing our expenditures by consideration of authorizing. Well, I just an overview is you can spend as much money as you want. You can spend very little money and generally you get what you pay for. Nothing's clear-cut because everybody has a different angle. Uh you invite Angela State into this. You don't you it's hard to contract with the university to get a certain product because they're they're in a learning phase. You can get assistance usually, but not not an end product this complicated and then to maintain it over years when the students are all switching out. Your experience, it doesn't work. It's not that that easy. Um, your recommendation recommendation your recommendation recommend and I don't want to do the work. Whatever gets us 100 gigs on one guy at a time, please. The 100 gigs. Yeah, take the 100 gigs. That's that's you you did that. Is that part of the recommendation? Take the 100 gigs. Well, our recommendation is that we subscribe with Vision Internet for the the top level u um subscription package that they offer. The hosting includes 100 gigs of disk space. Uh but the key the key difference is the new features and graphic redesign in four years. You want a graphic redesign in four years. You want that. That's the key feature. If you want that, you need then you need to do the space alone. You want the space. Okay. Yeah. I mean really all you're asking for in the redesign is $4,800 plus whatever annual rate increase. That's $4,800 is what it would generate over four years. Well, to do a redesign. No. Um 6,000. I believe it's the 6,000 get to the redesign 4,800. You're spending $1,200 more to get the redesign in four years and the new features. You're you're exactly right. And you'll knock it down to 2%. Sorry. I'll do my I'll do my very best. Well, on the on the storage, don't let them increase 3% on storage. Storage gets cheaper. I mean, every 18 months

[2:40:30] gets half the price or something like that. It's it's the wrong direction on that one. And tell them the council just thought that was backwards and and so you got maybe rate lower the whole thing by another percent. Maybe storage, but you guys were beating it to death. Mr. Herszfield, your motion, please. I will make a motion to approve uh staff's recommendation as presented. Second. Okay. Okay. I have a motion and a second to approve the staff recommendation as presented. Um and so that's the $6,000 version. Okay. Um at this point, I'm looking for any further final comments or questions. I need to go to public input. I know Mr. Turner has a very different view on how this stuff could work. It's a it's a dynamic uh You want to come up and talk about it? It's a dynamic populated website. City of Los Angeles uses it, I believe. You want to talk about it, Mr. Turner? Okay, it's public comment. It's It's his turn. I'm telling you, he has a full I bet he takes five minutes. All his five minutes to show us because it's a lot. It's a different idea. And Mon'nique, if you want to add something up here, listen, I'm calling him up here because you got to hear his point of view. I'm trying to know what's in my brain. I just got there telling you I was going to. Can we get his public point of view? Y'all are killing me today. Here we go. Mr. Turner. [Music] Yes, for the record, I'm still Jim Turner. Uh, and looking at this package, and I've talked to a number of people, some of which have been at places like ASU, other developers around and so on. First off, the amount of money here looks expensive, but at the same time, to a large degree, you do get what you pay for. uh and this price is not out of line with what other developers I've talked to both mostly over the internet would charge for a similar service. So you're that's not out of line. I do have some concerns how this whole process has been

[2:42:35] developed. Mainly what was presented in May was not a complete picture of what it was going to cost for the web including the hosting services and so on and it was confusing in the agenda packet what you were actually authorizing money to go for. Now for right now we probably have a good start for a website and paying for four years at the $6,000 rate is probably not a bad idea. But this is also when the city of St. Angelo needs to take and get involved with ASU and other local people to come up with a long-term web strategy that's just not going out chasing one new proprietary redesign after another. This should be the last time we have to do this type of project. If you take a look at other government entities, whether you're talking the White House, Department of Defense, FEMA, you name it, they're taking a very different approach and using professional developers and professional people to do it, but they're also using nonproprietary. They're using open- source, open standards, sharable designs to where if Grand Prairie site had been done on the basis like I'm talking, we would be able to actually port Grand Prairie site to our hosting service, whoever we did it with, with a a less cost involved, less turbulence involved. And the other thing about it be able to keep up better. This is long-term strategic thing. This is not saying that what we have for vision internet is necessarily a bad project. We don't want to even think about doing self-hosting. The what you need for a website design and hosting is much different than what you need for the

[2:44:40] city's information processing needs. Second thing, if we go with a good hosting service, we also have a built-in redundancy and emergency backup system. For example, if we went with even somebody like Rackspace, completely independent, another one, they have hosting services, San Antonio, California, East Coast, West Coast, something goes down, something hits the local area, we're still got internet service and we can still use that as a primary communications, emergency communications channel even if we can't host the website ourselves here. And if you look at the natural disasters that have happened recently, whether you're talking hurricanes, whatever, having that internet connection was critical for the emergency response. So, don't even think about trying to host your own website. You'll get yourself in trouble. That part the staff has done good on. There's a number of things they've done good on. As far as getting to the local vendors, local people that can do the job, I think the city as a whole has a problem to do that. All kinds of contract that needs to be looked at. In addition to this, we don't do very well at getting our local vendors involved in a lot of this stuff. Uh, a lot of local vendors don't even want to deal with the city. It's such a painful process anymore. But that's something for a different meeting, different agenda. needs to be dealt with by a new city manager who's going to take and look at problems like this, I'm sure. But for right now, this is probably as good as you're going to get. I don't think you're going to come in at a better price. And right now, we don't have a good long-term web strategy. A lot of what they put in there is peacemealing. The package they're recommending is going to keep you up to some degree with local technology, but it's not a good

[2:46:44] long-term internet web strategy. That's where the city needs to get involved with ASU, not to develop the website, but to develop an entire web and internet connection strategy that they can help us with immensely. M until that time this is a interim solution if you will. It's not the one I'd prefer but it's a workable solution and the price is in the ballpark of where it should be. It's not outrageous and we're uh I would like to see unlimited hosting but 100 gig is still a pretty good amount of information there. We'll fill that up in four years though I'm sure just looking at the way we're doing things right now. We have to be careful when we start putting size limitations on some of this, especially when you've got services out there that offer unlimited. There's a lot of different ways we can do things. There's a lot of but that's why we need to get experts in just technology, not in website design, but in the technology itself, not and ASU and Texas Tech can do that. We don't have time to do it for this website redesign, but in four years or six years or whenever we're get ready, we need to be ready to go with something that is a permanent solution, not a four-year solution. Thank you. Thank you. Other public input. Okay. Call for the vote. All those in favor. Uh the motion is to accept uh what the staff recommends. The all those in favor please say I. I. Any opposed? Okay. I'll at this point uh ask that we move into executive session and uh when we come back we will we will start with item number 15. It's uh 12:16 and we will

[2:48:48] uh end our public session and enter executive or close session under provision of government code uh title 5 open government ethics subtitle A open government chapter 551 open meetings subchapter D exceptions to the requirement that meetings be open section 551.087 087 uh to conduct economic development negotiations. Call the meeting back to order. It's 107. Um and we go with item number 15. This is consideration of approving the correction of a previous change order. Holy smoke, I don't even want to finish reading this. to the contract with Stoddard Construction Management for the construction of the city hall plaza central plant and for additional work related to the auditorium to increase the contract amount by $72,000 roughly and authorizing the city manager or his designate to execute any related documents. Assistant city manager Rick Weiss making the presentation. I have a housekeeping item for you today and this is one I catch by default as uh we're now cleaning uh working on the project. Is that a way of saying don't kill the messenger? I'm saying I'm going to present this and I'm going to go sit down. Okay. But no, we are here to answer any questions you have. This item I've looked at um I wasn't involved in this project originally, but I've looked over this and this uh is indeed just a mathematical error that was made um when it was presented. There is no change uh from a financial standpoint. At the end of the day, uh the funding is there, but when this item was brought forward to you before, uh it appears that the uh contract for Stoddard was reduced when it should not have been reduced. What happened was uh there was a $71,000 expenditure that was uh pertained to the structure under the auditorium. If you

[2:50:50] remember, the columns were falling apart. Um that funding uh was to come out of the auditorium project, not out of the city hall project. So, while they moved the funding to pay for it from the city hall project out of city hall to fund it through the auditorium, they inadvertedly uh reduced the amount on the Stoddard contract, which they should not have done. Stoddard still did the work regardless of whether it was paid for out of the auditorium or paid for out of city hall. So, this is simply to correct that number on the Stoddard contract to put it back where it should be. Um, it should not have been deducted in the first place. and the funding is there and always has been there to pay for it. So, it's a it was an error that staff uh had at that time and this is just to correct it. Okay, questions motion I'll make a potion a motion um a motion to approve the this change order and get it back to where it should have been. Second. Okay, motion. Further questions or comments? Public input. Call for the vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Item number 16. This is the first public hearing and introduction of an ordinance amending the 2012 2013 budget for grants, new projects, and incomplete projects. The presentation is by our budget manager, Morgan Trainer. Good afternoon. Uh the caption, I apologize, uh should have been corrected that this is simply for a new project. uh one project uh in particular, the website, which of course was discussed uh right before executive session. What you have before you is the $34,150 for the redesign, a 10% contingency for unforeseen costs. If something were to come up, it would be budgeted, and then the $6,000 um that was staff's recommendation and and and y'all's approval to move forward with. So, the

[2:52:51] $43,565 includes those three items. Okay. Motion to approve. Second. Okay. Questions, public input? Call for the vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. I. Any opposed? Okay. Morgan, it just I'm sorry, mayor. It just doesn't show the 10% contingency on your what you've got in front of you is the the lump sum of the 43,565 and it's in the memo. uh further back in your background the the breakdown of yeah I'm just saying in the eyes it didn't show it would have been nice number 17 item 17 consideration and possible action regarding a recommendation by the city of St. Angelo Development Corporation board of directors to ratify change orders 1 through 4 to contract number Kosa DC-01-11, the business resource center funded by the KOSA DC to cover additional costs incurred as a result of required structural modifications to the second floor. These change orders uh amount to $150,486. have a presentation on this matter from community and economic development director Sean Lewis. Sir, good afternoon, Mayor, council. Um, this project, as you know, um has just been completed. And so the change orders that we're asking you to ratify um three of the four change orders that we're asking you to ratify um have already taken place. Again, that's a result of COSDC funding an additional 85,000 back in July um that funded um what we perceived to be then a shortfall as a result of some problems on the second floor of the building. So, COSDC made that uh budget change. Um the city manager approved that budget amendment um as he is authorized to do since it was moving money within the COSDC budget. And um we proceeded um with those change orders with the uh budget being amended properly. Um and what now I've learned at the end of the project is that um

[2:54:55] according to purchasing and legal that it would be best if council your fingerprints were on that um to rat ratify those change orders. Um again in your original motion you did authorize the COCDC president and the city manager or designate um to execute and negotiate that contract which we believe gives us the ability to do that. But again, um, on the advice of council, we are asking for your approval of those changes. Motion to approve, uh, the recommendations of staff to ratify the change orders one through four. Second. Okay. Questions of Mr. Lewis? Sean, it's is the same monies, right? Nothing different, nothing that we don't see here. Correct. Right. It's 85,000 is all that's been added to the project. Um and again that was back in the summer when we uh saw that problem coming. Okay, public input call for this vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Item number 18, the discussion and consideration of possible water conservation efforts, programs or incentives and any action in connection there too. We have a presentation by our assistant city manager, Michael Dayne, and our customer service manager, Tony Fox. Thank you, mayor. Good afternoon, Mayor Council. This items we initially interpreted much more broadly. We talked we internally talked about code enforcement type activities and we talked about construction code type activities. But we focused based on advice from Mr. Mr. Hersshfeld who wanted to begin this discussion this public discussion that we talk about incentives what do other cities do what are leading type activities which stimulate conservation efforts among water users and of course our leading expert on that is uh Tony Fox from water and so we'll ask Tony to come up and go through it with us. Good afternoon everybody. Good. Hello.

[2:57:08] It's not my presentation. That's it. Thank you. Yes. Okay. In your handouts, it's just a I just did a quick overview of what I've been doing for the last eight years and what basically was done last year and things we're looking at again for this FYI that I'm working with with uh Mclofflin who has our advertising contract with the water department. So, we do the pre-rolls. Those are still going. might see those after the weather or just before the weather. They do that quick and tells everybody where we are in the drought level and what we're allowed to do. Um it gives us our website to make sure that you know if they have any questions they can always go to the website. I have commercials that's been made through other media advantage that go on both the KST, KST and the Ky do channel appearances, channel 17, our city website, public information with uh Anthony and Brian, they've done a great job getting more information out there for us and assisting with us. We do commercials on some of the cable channels. We've done bit digital billboards out there year round. Um, on our monthly bill, there's always some kind of water conser conservation information on there. Usually, what level we live we're in and what we're allowed to water. So, that is on every bill each month for that. Um, I do the Colts baseball out there in the big field. That one's out there all year round. And then when they do the games in the program, um, one program the manager signs and whoever has that, they get a goodie bag, which is usually a lowflow shower head from me. um rain gauges, little things like that that help folks remind them that they need to be conserving water. Uh I'm working with again Mclofflin Advertising to get to look at this next year some of the stuff we're

[2:59:12] still going to continue on. We like to move things around. So Stephen is looking at some other ways to get the message out there a little different to you know not be so used to one way of the advertising and bring in some different ways to get different markets or different people. I work a lot with the tea the Texas&M agriculture and the master gardeners last month we just uh just sponsored helped sponsor a u rain harvesting workshop that had almost 200 people at that and they do an excellent job. I work with them as often as I can. And the master gardeners are a big help. They help get the word out there. They help people when they're setting up sprinklers or trying to get plants working with the public on getting good quality plants that um will be drought tolerant. And then you know the TV shows I'm on the noon and the 5:00 p.m. And then John Begno, we just made a partnership with John Begno. He's done three videos for us that should be out there on the website. And we're looking at to do more of these short two to three minute videos that will help folks, you know, look at what they're doing and see if they can change their way. So trees, they did some on the trees and the watering during the winter time. So we want to make sure that we're not overwatering, but we don't want to not water enough either. So John Begno is working with us on those videos and we're hoping by springtime to have five, six, seven more of those up and out on the website for everybody. So, some of the things in the future that I've looked at, I went out and did some research on the websites and went to some of our benchmark cities, kind of Abalene, Midland, things like that, and I didn't see anything where those particular cities were doing any kind of replacement or rebate um programs. Um, so when you look at, you know, I give out rain gauges and some of these promotional items, they're a great idea to let people see those. you know, my hats have it on the back. So, if you know, I can always tell when I'm behind someone I've given a hat to because it's got my water conservation stuff on the back. It's always a good way to remind

[3:01:15] people, but there's no way to quantify if it's really adding savings water, if the people are really taking that information and working on saving water. As I said, I do give out the lowflow showerheads. I've probably given out over 5,000 of those over the past five, six years. Those are big savers. They're a 1.75 lowflow shower head and uh they're good showerheads. I've only had, you know, I 99.9% of the time the people love them and if something goes wrong with them, they're back asking for more of those. I give those away at any event I go to. Um they're free and they're a good way to have people put those in their showers and use them constantly. So, when I looked at those other websites, I thought, well, since the benchmark cities didn't have anything, let me go to the bigger cities. And I looked at Dallas and San Antonio. San Antonio by far is the leader in the state for any kind of rebate programs, replacement programs, whatever you need. I go to Karen all the time. She's the director of water conservation there. So, right now, you know, they're they've been doing a toilet replacement program for 12 15 years. You know, they've got 400,000 accounts out there and a lot of toilets. So, they're doing that. So, we just kind of looked at what if we did that here, what would it save? So, being on the internet, I'm looking at what the average flush is and what the average gallons per toilet is. And so, the average is about five gallons if you don't have one of those lowflow toilets. Um, the toilets are 1.6 gallons. So, that's like a 3.4 gallon savings going from the old type to the new type. The average flushes out there are five, give or take. You know, some people use more, some people use less. So, when you multiply that five gallons times the 3.4 savings per flush, you get about 17 gallons per day per person. So, you multiply that by the 365 days of the year and you receive 6,25 gallons per year each person could save with a lowflow toilet. Um, if you average you

[3:03:18] have three people per household, again, it's just, you know, some will be more, some will be less, it's an 18,615 gallons of water per year savings. Now, in costing these toilets out, you know, San Antonio, their cost is over $100 for each. Dallas was a little lower. I did some checking here. We could probably get them around 85 if we do a bulk purchase. And I'm not sure what that bulk is. if it's a 100, 500, a,000, but we're kind of guessing around $85. So if you and then we looked at about how many homes were built before 1992,994 time frame because that's the time when the federal government changed the requirement that toilets had to be 1.6 gallons instead of the bigger, higher flush ones. So when I took that times the 1865 14,000 homes times 18,615 gallons of water it came out to 260 million gallons of water you could save over that time span at least of the initial initial installation. Now, if you take 14,000 homes and let's say you each have 2,000 toilets, 2,000 two toilets, and you times that by the 14,000 homes and the $85 per cost, you're talking a $2.3 million cost to put those toilets just to purchase those toilets. That doesn't account for the manpower to track the program, to run the program. Um, it doesn't account for any inspection if you want to be inspecting to make sure these toilets are getting put in instead of sitting in folks's garage and any other incidental cost that may be included in some kind of rebate replacement program. There are some other things out there. Landscape irrigation system checks up landscapes. I know San Antonio is the only one I could find doing that and they were giving up to a $400 repay, but they had a lot of, you know, you had to have 50% of this, certain trees, certain grass, and again, it's all in

[3:05:22] what the city wants to do, how they want to do it, what requirements they want to do. Um, and again, the irrigation system checkup, those are pretty simple except for you must be a licensed irrigator to be out there doing that. So that includes having hired, you know, full-time or contracting out to licensed irrigators to go do some kind of work like that. And the hot water on demand or some other things that could possibly help the city and help recoup save water. I I I guess in my my thought process, you're you're touching on a lot of things that were interesting and and that I, you know, kind of had in my mind. I really did not have in my mind of us giving away toilets. Okay. I had in my mind of giving $10 coupons that they take to Home Depot or Lowe's or whatever. And I'm sorry I offended some plumbing house at Angela Plumbing. I got to I guess I have to say them all now. Yes. So, uh, but anyway, that they could, you know, use to buy a new toilet. That's kind of the the thought process that I saw. Something like that. I don't know if and how that would work, but you know, trying to keep it to a minimum and um you know, not creating a financial horrible burden because you got to you got to be careful. There's there's two sides of the coin, right? We sell water, right? And it's a revenue source. And while we we all need to do our part to conserve as much as we can, we have to be, you know, cognizant of how you pay for that because if you reduce your revenue and then take money out of that fund to do the same thing, you're basically killing yourself on the long run. Um, you know, that was that was just a thought. You know, the other one might that might be worth thinking about is rainwater collection too, right? And because I've I'm doing that at my house now and it's it's a it's probably a payout of about I don't know 60 70 years is what it will pay out for me with the water savings that I'm I have and again and I'm I'm

[3:07:27] not joking. I'm serious. It is it's not a real good return on investment as far as cost goes. But it's you did that with the right side of your brain. I did that with the right side of the brain. You'll still be on council. So I know Dwayne will, but uh but you know, so that's you know, I don't I don't know what the answer is. It's just always kind of thinking and looking and seeing if there as opportunities or or avenues come up where if if and when we could do something if and when it's something here or something we do there for a limited time and do that kind of stuff. I I don't know. and all those are possibilities and giving out coupons and and giving part rebates or things like that. I mean it it's going to depend on what we want to do, how much we want to spend and all the items you mentioned and it there isn't an easy answer. There's I mean one thing I do want to point out though is that all these like thoughts and ideas can be thrown out there and this is what we're doing at this point. But what I'll what we'll be doing with the departments here in the very near future is addressing stuff like this and actually developing some planning and steps actually that that would address this. Something that we can bring back to the city council and discuss with you and kind of share our thoughts on it. But really to develop some some action steps and see what we can come up with. But a lot of the challenge will be on on this staff also, you know. So a lot of these different things that are a priority for the city, we'll be addressing also here in the very near future. And and I I commend you. I think the uh the program that y'all the the the program you did the joint session for the uh rainwater collection was fabulous and continuing that doing what you're doing with John Begno and you know it's public education I think is probably the as big as anything that trying to change people's habits and it's not always easy but you just keep at it. Yes, Miss Farmer. I applaud you also, Tony, the in the efforts that you have made, huge strides

[3:09:29] that you have made uh with education and trying to change people's habits. That's that's difficult. Well, I guess what I was thinking and looking at with reference to possible um credits that come on a person's bill, if we had a line on the bill, you know, that said something about total rebates or, you know, total conservation, meaning if I brought in the city, now the these improvements stay with the home, not the individual who goes and leases another house or buys another house, but stays with that property. If I bring in a receipt that I have replaced three toilets, low uh flow toilets, that possibly I could look forward to getting a a $2 credit on my bill each month for a certain length of time. If I bring in a receipt that I have put in an expensive uh rainwater uh you know system, yeah, it may take 60 years to realize it back. But if I can get a credit on my bill for doing something that takes 60 years that uh that I could get a credit of about a buck and a half, you know, per month, then I'm doing another step. If I bring something in that shows that I've got the newest washing machines that use the lowflow, if I bring something in to you and prove that I'm using that, then I can get a credit. Then my total credits might add up to 6, 7, 8, $102 a month, and that means something, right? That's a I think that's a pretty interesting approach myself. That is kind of self-unding itself. Yes. Not having to write a check for $2.3 million. I wasn't sure if I was following I mean exactly what you said was required in like new construction and things like that but uh that's a way that you could tackle this when you when you're doing this with your staff and your departments is there could be maybe some savings for a developer or a builder based on what

[3:11:32] they put in a home that you give them against their permitting costs or something that exactly. If you if you do these things, then your permit is this much less or or whatever. So, giving you some ideas. Mr. Silva, Tony, remind me what that credit is on our bill. Now, the conservation credit now is if you use 3,000 gallons or less per month, you get the uh 10% off of the usage and the pumping fee of what I can't remember exactly what it is, but that's just if you use 3,000 gallons or less per month. Okay. Other questions for her? Michael, did you want me to say anything about the winter quarter average on the leak adjustment? Question. Oh, okay. It Well, let me This may not be the right place. The Michael the question that I told you that I wanted an answer to. Is this a good place for it? Uh if this is where you want to ask that question I want to ask, you know, we're figuring people's bills and and their sewer rate, right? Uh I recently have discovered and had a water leak end of October, November, just got it fixed. That's great and wonderful. The city has a form that you can fill out that you can get a relief, you know, from that, but you can only use that once every 3 years. Now I don't know the purpose behind the three years. So maybe you can tell me and the public can hear now. What is the purpose be before you know one time only every three years and I have another part to the question. I I honestly don't know that answer that's been there for some time as far as I know. Well and the reason I'm curious is our shifting soils that we have here and the drier the drought season that we have it seems like the once every three years is penalty. you know, it just seems like a it's a penalty when we have drought years. So, I I want you to look at that and to consider that. And the other thing is is if a person has a water leak and if you're unfortunate to

[3:13:34] have it during the time that sewer rates are set, it's based on that average. I'm rocking along. Say a person uses 5,000 gallons a month and then all of a sudden they get to that leak and they're 40,000. They get it fixed, but it's during that sewer setting time. What is the city doing to make sure that that individual person doesn't get charged at that one time or two times you know monthto-month October November rate to bring them down what are you doing December January February and it is when the leak adjustment is submitted when billing does the corrections on the leak adjustments does their adjustment they do adjust the sewer rate also. Okay. Um, what do you mean leak adjustments submitted? Who's going to do that? Like when you turn yours in and I and I the gals fill it, you know, you fill it out, you turn it in, we send it up to billing because they do all the adjustments. So I that form that's once every three years, I would have to submit that for any leak. Not necessarily requesting that I be refunded or or given a break, but I'm more interested in my sewer rate adjustment. Right. And if you've had a leak and you're not requesting a leak adjustment, all you have to do is let me know, let the gals know and we can send that information up to the billing department that they've had a leak. They're not requesting the leak adjustment per se, but would like their sewer um amounted adjusted. Yes. Public needs to know that. That's very easy to do. I did too because I I didn't know. Yeah. Okay. You answered my question. Other questions for her? The question that I had was the one that you were mumbling to Michael Dane. It was actually Was that it? Yes. Okay. Michael told me it was coming and I'm not sure what my question is, but the one you were trying to hide. We want that one answered. I just didn't want to leave here with any questions. So, other speak off topic. Right. Well, okay. I think our I think our discussion item has been taken care of. Thank you

[3:15:39] very much. Thank you. Item number 19 is the discussion of late fees associated with the city's utility bill and any action in connection there too and it's assistant city manager Michael Deng. Good afternoon mayor and council. We had an uh Councilman Silvas said he wanted to discuss this what how did these work? How long have they been in effect? And so this presentation is not designed to answer all questions or anticipate all questions, but to introduce the topic and open the public discussion on this. It's come up before and and we're going to discuss it again today. Thank you. Michael, can I add before you start that uh the reason I brought it, I had a couple of folks uh you know, taxpayers, one of them have happened to be on fixed income, thought that the $25 fee was just exorbitant, you know, just kind of high and didn't understand where they that amount came from. And uh I think council Morrison had mentioned that this had been brought up before and uh I was very curious to see what if anything we can do to to help those folks out there that are struggling to even pay. You know, the $25 a lot of times is just half of their the bill they're paying already. So that's that's my interest in seeing is there anything we can do out there to either get rid of this or charge a certain percentage or just something for us to to another avenue for us to look at. So, well, it's a good topic. When it was introduced and originally passed, it was a split vote at that time. It was not a unanimous vote. It's been brought up occasionally from time to time. So, uh today's a good opportunity for us to discuss it again. Um the $25 can be a large a relatively large percentage of what people pay. And uh and that is one of the one of the uh knocks against a a straight level fee amount rather than a percentage. And uh

[3:17:45] it's a question of how do we want to utilize that fee? Do we want it to be there to dissuade people from um paying late? Uh do we want it to be a recovery of lost investment opportunity on our part? what is the purpose of that fee in our minds? And and that's a that's very much a policy decision that can be made at this level. Um Michael, that is I do want to make sure that I point something out and I know that uh Tony is here also. $25 is assessed after if we have a minimum $30 uh fee. Is that correct? On the on the water bill, Tony, it's with a minimum of $30. Is that correct? Uh at that point, the $25 late fee can be assessed. Yes, that is what is on. Okay. So, it's not So, if you have a bill of $15, then it won't go into play at that point. No. So, it's only after $30 that Correct. Okay. I didn't know that. Well, and I do recall in 2005 when I uh we were looking for ways to not raise water rates across the board to help pay for things. And one of my big deals was at that time and still is, you're only attaching a fee to the people that use or abuse. Either way, if I need to use a few extra days until this money comes in, then I'm getting the advantage of that and I should pay a fee. And that's a $25 fee. You know, the $10 fee back in years before 200 before 2005, there was a lot of abuse. people, I have $10, I'll pay my water bill late. And it really was writing the city for money owed. And I noticed in your brief here that just in this year alone through September 30th, a,499,387 in net receipts in the $25 water fee. Yes, ma'am. That's that's a full fiscal year. That's 12 months.

[3:19:48] a lot of money to me and says volumes that if you're going to get the water that is so precious, you know, you've got to pay the bill. And the city can generate a source of income uh for the city through either a user or abuser in that and not make it across the board to everyone out there. And those who do pay their bills on time are not penalized by a higher rate should that be the only other alternative. So, I'm fine with the late fee of $25. It's $25 on just about everything. Most of them, a lot of them gone up to $30, but I'm I'm fine with the $25. What do those two numbers mean? Yeah, good question. They're both net amounts. In other words, uh the the revenue account where we post late fees has $1.5 million worth of uh late fee receipts in it. That is net of amounts that are that were written off. And that net fees collected item is simply a computation of the 1.5 divided by 25. In other words, the 59,000 the 60,000 is uh is simply that revenue amount divided by 25. We didn't actually count the the fees levied because there were there when you write off an account, you write off a partial late fee. I'm just I'm sorry I'm so slow. I got it. You have 60 you have 60,000 occurrences. Okay, that's not a that's not a dollar number. You have 60,000 occurrences times $25 gives you a million dollar period last year complete fiscal year 12 months 33,000 meters and you have 60,000 occurrences that's an average of two late fees per meter about but that's a lot it is and so okay

[3:21:54] you know from a policy standpoint that's what it's that's what it says exactly If we go back to what the uh ordinance says, it says 28 days. If you feel like 25 is too low or too high, that can be adjusted. If 28 days is too high or too low, that we can look into adjusting that. Um, it very much is a valuesdriven policy and uh, our folks spend a lot of time trying to manage delinquent accounts, both the collection and whether or not they should be turned off, when they should be turned off. If you're in business where you collect revenue, you know that that's an can be an ownorous task. And so the question is, what are the values for this organization related to charging late fees? I've got a couple of questions. Okay, Mr. Sus. First of all, will percentages work? Will a percentage instead of the 25 work? Good one. And two, I've had folks uh that are, for example, social security. They have tried and tried to get their bill due date or date or whatever adjusted to when their check comes in, you know, the second, third of the month, whenever it comes in. And they have run into brick walls. So, I think that if we're running it on an average of two late charges per month, per whatever we're coming up with, could we not uh uh make it more user friendly for them to hey readjust their due date and and maybe help them in that way? You know, it again percentages and then that that section both good questions. Percentages we've already checked on and our system will accommodate a percentage-based fee. So if council said we want x percent we would con do the research to confirm that we can change the fee to that level. Um part of changing the fee becomes the budgetary analysis. What is the budgetary impact of changing a fee that can become part of our discussion. The other the other part of that was

[3:23:56] uh due dates that is difficult when you're doing manual reads. You know, when we send Rick out to walk a circuit, walk a cycle and read, that limits your flexibility for for how you set due dates. In the new AMR system, there we're anticipating greater flexibility for set for setting due dates. I would like to pay my bill uh on the 16th or I'd like you to close my monthly cycle out on the 16th of each month. We're anticipating that there will be greater flexibility there and that uh customers will be will have more latitude, more freedom to set those. In fact, we talked about the website earlier. Our ambition, our goal for the website is to be able to do some of that automatically on the website, not have to call, but with that's a topic for another day. So, yes, Mr. Silvas, percentages can work. Um, we'll need to do the analysis and show you the impact. And two, um, if you're on AMR, can we change AMR due dates if you're on AMR? Now, everybody's still in cycles right now. So, right now, uh, there's limited flexibility for changing due dates. We can look into that. We can follow up with that and see what kind of flexibility we can begin building in. You know, I I would think that in this high-tech world we live in, automatic meter, you could adjust. I may be wrong, but also uh another another uh brick wall, so to speak, some of the folks are running into is say that say my bill is due today. If I don't pay it by 3:00, then you know I go there and it's going not going to be applied till the next day. Why do we why I understand I think I was told one time they cut it off at three so they could make the deposit at the bank. That's what I heard. Why do we have to cut it off at three? I mean, you can you can cut it off at three, but if I pay it the same day, uh why not go ahead and give me credit for the same

[3:25:59] day? I mean, it just is a security reason that, you know, we have to deposit the cash, the checks, your exactly right. But if we need to build if this council says we want to build that extra day where you get credit all day long and we'll just eat the extra day, that's something we can look into. That's just one of the other issues that I I've heard. So Tony, what do you have regarding your folks on social security or disability? We can fix dates on those and I we've done it on numerous people. They call say I'm on social security disability. All we ask is that they prove that have some kind of form to show that they are on social security and disability. And you know a lot of them say I get paid the third Wednesday of the month. So I will look at what the range is for the third Wednesday month and let's say it's between the 18th and the 20th. I can fix them out to like the 22nd, 23rd, giving them a few extra days just to make sure they have time to get in. But the problem is with anybody who's on autodraft or any kind of bank like that, the system won't allow us to fix date, fix due date on anybody who's on an auto payment. But if they're sending in a check or coming by, driving by doing that. If they're on social security, disability is all all they have to do is show that they are on that and we can fix them a date depending on when those checks come into them. Can you put uh I know one lady had two meters and she had constantly tried to get those two meters put on one bill and uh was told you could not. Two meters at two different locations. No, it's the same location. So a sprinkler and a water meter. Uh no, it was just I tell you what it was. It was a business. Okay. Okay. With two meters. Ask her to give me a call. And not only was she getting a a lay charge twice, but she had struggled trying to get those two meters. Said you have having to waste like two different checks or two Okay. credit card. I can answer that question. Believe it or not, I asked Mary Cleveland. Thank you. And she said because we we have properties with lots

[3:28:01] of meters and and they're we get tons of bills. We want them on one bill. She says they're working on that. They're they're actually working on it, trying to get that done. So, that's a future item, but they're on it. Back to your budgetary comment. You can't tell me you sat there and thought about that last year we're going to have 60,000 occurrences. I mean, did you foresee that or is that the That's the way I took it. But we did budget for forecast I don't have the documents in front of me. Not 60,000. We budget based on the revenue, the general trend. And so the budget for this, I think, is about 1.3 million. So even prior year to this, it was about the same. I'd have to pull that information and get you some trend type information. It was over a million dollars. I think Oh, I think it has been. I don't think this is a new phenomenon but again the power of the of shaping the policy is in your hands and uh if you have a proposal we'll we'll take research it determine what its impact is and what the implement uh how how possible it is to implement it and report back to you. I'd be very interested on the 5% uh well charge to see what impact it would make. I was going to say that if you want 1.499 million dollars in revenues, you can target that and get it with a certain there's a percentage out there that represents um it's a number. I don't know how you got the I only have two numbers. You have more numbers than me. Well, I know what you're talking about. It may be 7.6%. You may come back with me to me with a number like that. So, I think Okay, wait. I would say that a $100 or less is a $10 fee and a uh maybe $200 or less is $200 fee. I mean two $20 fee. I mean there's a there's a way to do this. Well, a step fee like

[3:30:04] that I think is going to be more difficult. Uh that we we have confirmed that the percentage is no problem. We can do that. Okay. So a percentage for I'm looking for that percentage that gives us those revenues. We don't want to take a hit on that. That that messes up our budget. But you're going to hit the people who owe a lot of money harder and get them to pay faster probably because they're looking at $25 going, "That's nothing. I owe I owe $1,000. $25 is nothing." They ignore it. And we need that bill paid. That's the one we need paid more. So for us, it encourages the ones that owe us more money to pay us quicker. Well, what I'm hearing is that 1.499 million is an effective percentage of what revenue? If we can pull the bills associ that had a late fee with them, determine what the base charges were, we know what the um late fees were, we can calculate an effective percentage. This was a p that's correct. we can solve for the percentage that resulted in and then we can somewhat reliably predict what a different percentage might the only the in general I can see what you're describing Mr. Alexander, the only thing I would want to be sure that uh city staff is thinking through is back to the water leak issue. Um you don't you don't want a one-time occurrence that hits a resident, takes their normal bill from $50 to $480 and then takes 29 days to solve their problem and now they owe you, you know. So just careful that you think through that process a little bit while you're thinking. Okay. But but anyway, you do first. I'm sorry, Mr. I do know that public utility commission governs uh the late fees on utilities and the what is acceptable and not acceptable when it comes to percentages and like you say that can start messing things up and forgetting the percentages. But the the flat fee uh currently is we checked on this in 2005

[3:32:11] and the flat fee of the $25 is an acceptable fee. Okay. With the public utilities commission. I I think what you got to be careful about on the percentage is that you know if you're talking at 10% if that I don't know what what's been thrown around. You have a $50 bill that's five bucks and why pay and why pay? I mean it it's I suppose what I was going to say you need a minimum there needs to be a minimum of $10 or something you can't and so there's you get a little boost in revenue so you're going to have a little complicated more complicated one of those careful that that that is complication is a good point okay Mr. Morrison, when we originally dealt with this, and I can remember dealing with it twice, the problems that we had with it was that $25 is a punitive amount. Uh, setting a $25 fee is a very punitive and a very expensive penalty for a low water user, but it has already been brought out. For a high water user, it is nothing. So if it was a percentage, it's going to be the same. Everything will be relevant. Everything will be fair. It's going to be a high fee on the high water user and it will be a reasonable fee on the low water user, but it will not be punitive. If an individual gets a water bill for $50 and he's a day late and it cost him $75, there are many, many people in our city that this hurts. This is damaging. It It's a budget destroyer. But if the bill is for $500, $25 is a very small amount. It is a it is a penalty on the lowwater users, but it is not a deterrent for the high water users, and it is unfair to them. So, it's it's a punitive amount that needs to be adjusted. A percentage would work. It's a good point. you know and that is very much how what is this council's philosophy on managing uh the punitive side versus the you know the cash flow management side my my sense

[3:34:16] but individual sense of it not I'm not reading council but is that that a percentage makes some sense with a minimum with a minimum base uh fee because again if you at some point you're not you're back to where you were in 2005 in the first place where you your 60,000 incidences are now 75,000 incidences because you're not you're not encouraging people to pay their bill, you know, get your bill paid. And so, but if my bill is $30 and my late fee is $25, that seems a little honorous. Uh, so I I kind of myself like the idea of it being a percentage-based fee with a floor. I mean, it's not going to be less than whatever that number ought to be, but I don't think a $50 bill ought to have a $5 fee on it. I think whatever that number would be, you know, it was 10, now it's 25, you know, whatever. But you get that's my sense of it. Mr. Morrison, I might also add that there is also, we also hold a key to this. If someone is habitually late every month with this fee, pull the meter and I guarantee you it will solve the problem. So this it's punitive. Yeah. I don't know what the legal problems are with turning people's water off. I mean from a hygiene they don't pay. We I mean from a hygiene perspective. I don't know how hard it is for y'all to turn a meter off. But mayor, you're correct. We have to follow our ordinance. And right now we do have a procedure that uh provides for an appeal uh and we need to follow that. If we want to incorporate incorporate other procedures, we'll need to amend the ordinance. And I think Miss Fox uh has been contemplating uh looking at that. Okay. One thing I'm also not sure I'm understanding, but I thought this said if you're 28 days late, this isn't, you know, this isn't this isn't one or two days. This isn't that I

[3:36:18] missed pay I missed paying my bill a day late. It says says that I'm 28 days late. I mean, come on. So anyway, let me throw this out. Exactly. That's amazing. I mean, days there's two water there's two water bills in this world. I mean, right? You got one and you didn't pay it, you've gotten another one. I mean, that's what's going on here. But even 28 is f but that this includes one day if I'm one day late. No, I thought this was the day after the 29th. They made 28 days after the billing date. Oh, that's what our current ordinance provides. And we also follow state law. Yeah. 28 days after. See, I probably do I probably have a little concern with that because is that a little quick? Think Well, no. I just think of 30-day terms on Okay. So many things. It's once a month. We talking about it after the due date. No, billing date. Billing date. this billing. I don't know manyities that I don't know either. I don't know many utilities that offer 30 days net. Let me know and I'll be h I'd like to find out. Exactly. My is that right? My gas bill, my electric bill, they're typically net 10 basically, right? But the TCQ does have administrative regulations that um talk about uh limitations for cut off for non-payment. And so right now our ordinance comports with that. It's 28 days from the time you got your bill. And this is and and I'm not saying I'm doing what the taxpayers out there wanted me to do. Bring it up for discussion, discussion only. And that's what we're doing. But let me throw this out there. Could you can we get both? Uh say for example, we do a $10 base fee, a late fee plus a 10% fee. Could you both? That's one of the questions I have down. I have it. What is the effective percentage for the re total revenue we're generating? Can we do a a percentage with a with a floor, a minimum? And uh so we'll need to bring that answer

[3:38:22] back. And then I the other question I've got here is uh what kind of flexibility do we have with number of days until late? Okay, maybe where we are is good, but we ought to be able to answer the question for what kind of flexibility does this council have for setting that time frame. And that's all I wanted. This just this discussion that happened is what I was asked. Thank you very much. Let's move on then to item number 20. This is also you like public input. Mr. Turner, come on up. I do got to turn this damn thing on. Yes, Jim Turner. And one additional thing that might be useful to look at also is if there couldn't be some sort of a cumulative late fee. If you're 10 days late, it's this much. If you're 20 days late, it goes up to a higher level. Kind of a not interest, but a an additional fee for being overly late if you couldn't have. And that would be something I think worth bringing back also if you could have a fee for 5 days late, 10 days late, or uh 30 days late as opposed to just one late fee where you could actually have it based on how late they work. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Item number 20. This is the discussion of the water utility billing structure and procedure. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. I'm sorry, Mayor. Did you already introduce item number 20? I just introduced it. I didn't introduce you, but here you go. Daniel, how would you like me to start this? Would you like me to or Mr. Morrison, would you like to uh introduce the item? Would you like me to begin? I'll be glad to tell you where I the basis that I'm coming from on this and we can go from there. Well, um, let me pull up the let me pull up the

[3:40:24] presentation. Okay. um as we move through the uh work time between last council meeting and this C council meeting uh Mr. Valenuel said that he'd had a brief conversation Mr. Morrison about uh some information Mr. Morrison would like uh how does the water revenue, what you see on your bill, how does that move into accounts into operating and capital dedicated capital type activity? And so today we wanted to bring again brief information about how that moves, what you see on your bill and and what ends up in the financials uh in in the way of introducing or beginning a conversation about water revenues or the water fund. So, we have an example bill here. We're going to uh focus in on the right side the account activity. You'll see in there uh what we want to focus on is water. When you pay that water amount, how does it break down to operations and capital monies? We're going to look at the items in that red section. In this example, we have a 5/8 meter with 8,000 gallons usage. uh water base fee at this for this meter size of $19.12. The those usage lines add up to $2723 and the water pumping fee. There's an an IV pumping charge is what we used to call that associated with variability in electric rates and uh uh pumping that the electricity necessary to pump that water, that kind of thing. So the water portion of this bill $47.71. So what we want to do on this

[3:42:29] slide, we're going to break that 4771. If you look at the middle of the slide, that first column totals 4771. That's the same number we saw on this slide. If you look over on the right side, we're going to break that down uh between uh operating and capital monies. So we've got a base fee. That first row across there, that charge, as we showed on the previous page, $1912. $15.80 goes into the operating fund. $3.32 goes into that capital fund where the money is dedicated for capital projects. For the usage charges, those were, I think, three or four lines on that previous slide. Three lines totaling $27.23. 23 $1963 of that gets split out to operations and $7.60 to capital and then that last that pumping fee the charge $136 all of that goes to operations that's where that electric uh bill is paid and nothing to capital there. So you can see in this example the total water portion of the bill $47.71 3679 went to operations and $10.92 went to capital in cap in capital that's not necessarily like you know saving up money for something. I mean it's paying debt service and things of that nature for projects or is that correct? Good point that it's all the above. Um to the extent that uh we have debt service, we need to provide for uh making those payments, we have some pay as you go projects and if the money comes in faster than the project payments go out then it does accumulate and becomes available for executing future projects. So it is both debt service and saving up for um if you look at that this was looking at it on the individual bill level. If

[3:44:31] you look at it, oops. If you look at that from uh from in the aggregate, what you get are basin uh starting over on the left, the fiscal year actuals, fisc fiscal year 2012 actuals, the basin usage fees that went into operations, 19.6 million with approximately 4.7 million that went into capital. If you look at those pumping fees, approximately 683,000 all went to operations. And so you have those totals there for that fiscal year 12. Uh for the fiscal year 13 budgeted lines budgeted amounts same thing basin usage approximately 196 budgeted with 4.8 budgeted for capital and pumping fees are anticipated to be 790,000 in operations and zero in capital because we don't we don't move those over there. So that is one way to look at it from the in the aggregate. This is a little bit different view, but it's the same information. Water sales basin usage. Note that we've just changed columns and rows that on the top are operating fiscal year 12 actuals compared to fiscal year 13 budgeted uh side by side pumping fees side by side and then below that capital fund. Same numbers again uh except the capital money here is broken down into base and usage. Note on that previous page we had that the total revenue but here we've broken it down between base and usage so you can see what the relative impact of those is. In addition to that on the bottom left of this screen we'll we'll zoom in here in a minute. There's a disclosure about how much of your of this bill is going to capital projects. And uh you'll note that uh in the red oval uh where that disclosure is that is on that previous page in the bottom left. And on this example bill uh the

[3:46:37] $10.92. But there's also a portion of the sewer base fee which is dedicated for capital. That's $4.64 in this example for a total of$,56 on this bill that went toward capital issues. the the first individual breakout, not not the conglomerate. Uh, bingo. Whoops. Is that the same bill? Same bill. Okay. But your your capital contribution is 1556 and over here it's question that includes sewer. There is a dedicated portion of sewer fees. See the bill, the disclosure covers all of the what you're paying here. But in our example, we were focusing on water. Okay? So the water portion is the 1092, but the 1556 represents all all of this bill which went toward capital issues. Okay? Again, the mindset being we need to be addressing infrastructure type issues. How much of my bill is going to prevent the kind of problems we've had in the past? So this disclosure, I think the philosophy behind that council asked for that was tell us what you're setting aside for infrastructure issues and in this bill a total of 88.24 $15.56. Okay. We used to break this out and put it in the bill and I have pictures of it the way the bill used to look look like but uh Miss Farmer and I and even Johnny could not read it. We couldn't us as council people could not read the bill. is too complicated. And it really was. I I still would have to use a code to figure it out. Uh so it was simplified and and you get what you see. You what you're paying for is what you see and then it breaks it out to the side, but you don't see the fine-tune breakout. You don't see the details. You just get one number at the side. It says this is how much went in capital. And it's a good point. For some this isn't enough information, and for some it's too much. You know, when you're dealing with a wide range of customers, that is one of the dilemmas you face. how much

[3:48:40] information to give. Okay, Mr. Morrison, I appreciate all of this. I mean, it's it's a good presentation, but this isn't at all what I asked for. And to quote what I've asked for for the last two meetings is an audit of the water department. And I even used the phrase top to bottom and side to side. That is the phrase. This is great. I want an audit of the entire water department including water utility billing. Now I don't know whether I can talk about that since you have said water utility billing structure and procedure but this is this is nothing what I asked for. I asked for an audit and discussion on an audit and I still haven't got it. I I believe that you're correct that the two things what you're describing and what was described aren't quite the same thing. It's pretty I mean I appreciate it but it's absolutely nothing what I asked for. Okay. Okay. Well, we're about to ask again. You're nearly there. I would like for it to be put on the next agenda. It's too late. And here's why. And I'll tell I'll tell you I mean Lisia, we've been communicating via email. The next point in which we can ask for an audit, a more defined audit of the water department is January 2nd. Isn't that right? When the the people that come to audit us meet with us on January 2nd and say, "Look, this is what we we're going to audit your city, but is there anything you want to audit more, pay more attention to?" And they ask questions, and we say, "Yes." And we can say, "Yes, the water department, we want to add more auditing." We have a contract and we have an audit procedure in place, but it is an audit that is is general and it's not directed specifically. It's what the auditors um find. They they review their findings and are you saying that you I thought interest could um request the city manager to examine uh what you might

[3:50:46] want to be included in the audit, but we do have a procedure. So I would just suggest that you make that known to him so he could direct staff to direct the auditor. Okay. Okay. Let's uh let's close this discussion. Let's let's close this discussion if she Okay. Question on this. I don't have a question but uh the we just received the single audit report that uh our accounting the accounting of the water bills the water department was audited along with all the other departments uh we received the report and the reports in PI form as to the percentages of what went to operations cost employees salaries of all the monies that were collected Now, that's one of the two things I'm I want to talk about. Okay. Okay. May I conclude what I was saying? Of course. Go ahead. Now, come on. At the last meeting, I had received 50 emails, people requesting an audit of the water department. As of yesterday, that amount is 440 people. 440 citizens of our city have requested an audit of our water utilities billing. And there has been a variety of problems. 440 people tell me that we have a serious problem in water utilities because of the recent developments in our water department and the departures of our two lead men in the water department. I feel that we have a problem in our water department. Okay, Dwayne, I'm trying to get you there, please. I I want to close. May I finish what I'm saying? I've been cut off every time. I think you're off topic and that's why I keep interrupting you. Okay. I'm trying to get you off of 20 and get it closed so I can get you to the point where you can I will make another request at the end of this meeting for an audience. Thank you. That's all I'm trying to do is get us off of 20 because that's not Now again, Mr. Silvis, I don't mind, but this is water utility billing. This what you

[3:52:50] just saw. Please ask one simple question to Tony or Michael. I've been asked before the uh this water billing uh is does the software allow it to to be uh printed in Spanish. Can we get this in a Spanish translation? Does that software do that? Because there's some folks out there that would request for it that way if it was available that way. So that was I don't know that answer. We can look at that. That's my question. Okay. Thank you. I'm going to close our discussion on item number 20. Move us to followup and administrative issues. There is not anything uh from the executive session. Let's knock out item number 22 and then and then uh talk with Mr. Morrison on item number 23. Item number 22 is the confirming of a park commission's nomination. Uh Julia Lane. Um you you all remember that under the setup of the new system the parks commission makes one of the nomine maybe more than one of the nominations but but anyway to approve I'll second that. Uh so I have a motion and a second to approve as presented. All those in favor please say I. I. Any opposed? Okay. Mr. Morrison number 23. I would like to have on the very next agenda an item for discussion. I am calling for a total complete absolute audit of the water department including what water utility billing. I would like an audit and discussion on the audit. I can't make it any clear. Okay. There seem to me to be two things that we could you could get. Well, then let's make two two two agenda items. I want an audit of water utility. I want an audit of the entire water department. Okay. And what I'm I think during that discussion the two things you want to talk about are that one is what do you want Mr. Valenuela and staff to create in that audit. Okay. Of the the because I think that's what they're saying is

[3:54:55] that you're about to have your accountants do your audit. You're about to tell them what you want done. So that and the second thing is what you want the audit committee to do in that process. Okay. I would like to have a discussion about the possibility of an audit. I've got several cars. I could take one to a mechanic and say, "Fix this car, everything that's on it that'll get me the luckin back safely, and it's going to cost me a tank of gas and a wash." I've got another one that if I went and said the exact same thing, fix this car so I can get the luck back safely. When I go to pick it up, I'm going to have a motor overhaul, a transmission overhaul, and a front end overhaul. There are different levels of audits. I want a complete audit of water department and water utilities billing and I would like to have a discussion about it and this is the third time I've asked for it set up as a discussion then I mean from there we can move forward after that discussion on the next city council meeting as far as how to I think that that I think that that can work and I think the question is going to the discussion can get us there in what I'm wanting to do is give them instruction which is what your discussion can do and that's fine. I think the difficulty uh is that we the city is complying with the law and we do the audit according to our charter and our ordinances. So we've just completed one and there's a timetable. There's no provision in state law for an an audit outside of that to be petitioned or required. So we are performing the audit. So what the mayor's articulated that the city manager will do uh will be to define some of the um limitations and boundaries of the upcoming audit. But I don't know if we have a provision in in addition to what we the city is already doing as it's legally required to do which is the audit and we have a firm and we proceed um with our do you agree that there are different levels of

[3:56:56] audit? Well, having worked with the audit division of the state controller, I thoroughly understand that. But in this, so in a general sense, there can be different parameters for audits to be what I want. However, that would be something that the city manager would have to exam, but I can't even get it on the agenda for discussion. Can can I give a suggestion and I think this to me this might solve it? We have an audit committee, correct? And I think it would be great for you to go to that audit committee and tell them exactly what they want because they're the one audit committee kind of directs our auditors on what to do, how to do it, when to do it. Am I correct? You're correct. They manage the relationship. That's the Isn't that the place to start where I mean and then you it could happen. May I throw this in, Miss Bowling? When when Miss Farmer held up the audit that they just did last time, that was an audit of the whole organization. Correct. And I believe Mr. Morrison is asking for the water department because we all are getting these emails asking for Oh, I thoroughly understand income and expense of what's happening within the water billing department. And I think that's all he's asking for is just that target that one department and see what's going on there. Right. And and I just offer to you because I was I had done a legal opinion previously under our chart charter section 34. We are doing an independent arter audit there is no provision for a selective audit. So it's something that the city manager will have to look at and respond to because right now and let me just read to you section 34 and I think I provided uh this to all but uh audit and examination as soon as practical after the close of each fiscal year an independent audit shall be made of all accounts of city government. Uh we and we have a firm that has no

[3:58:58] personal interest and we perform that and we post the results uh for the public. So what you're asking for again under the any other provision under state law there is no vehicle to create what you're asking for. So, uh, the city manager can, uh, respond to that request by and as the mayor suggested, perhaps giving some parameters to to the audit committee for the audit because does not the does not what's happening now, and we're all experiencing it or have heard of it of these outrageous water bills happening, I mean, that that ought to send out send up a red flag and I think that's where but what I hear I mean I Thank you. I hear a lot of conflicting data. I'm getting I don't know how many, but it's hundreds of we'll say 10 more people have signed and five more people have signed and I signed and on all the different I'm getting all of that as you are. Okay. But I also know that when we met with the group, there were 10 people there. Okay. Not hundreds of people at that meeting. 10. Uh and and then I also know that what I understand from the data is that the number of weird water bills or high water bills is fairly consistent with what it always is. So So I'm wanting us to to get back on track with that. What do we have? Do we have a data? You know, what does the data tell us? Do we have a lot of weird water bills, Johnny, Mr. Silas, or do we have the same number we always do? And what I'm wanting to do also is we're we're about to start the new audit. The new audit committee is going to be involved in that process. And uh Mr. Valenuela and so as a council from a policy perspective when he's negotiating the audit with the local firm, he could he could then say let's let's spend some extra time against the number of water bills that are out of line or that are,

[4:01:01] you know, and focus some extra attention on what's going on in our water department. uh and that's and we're already on that part of the I mean as far as the audit cycle that's here already I mean starting uh a new again here in January and we can request that information any additional information that uh that you would like to see also but again u we're we're there at that point anyway we did have a a budget uh I mean an audit committee meeting also we can address specifically what we'd like to see in there and there as far as our auditors are willing to provide that information uh but we're at that point right right now and we're finally getting some discussion on it which exactly what I have been asking for. Okay. And Mr. Mayor, to answer uh that, it wasn't a question, but I've been here 5 years and I have never heard of 17004,000 water bills. So, this is a first for me. So, that that's where I think the concern is coming from. So, Okay. Well, I mean, it's it's you know, you're taking care of your constituents and trying to get some answers and and that's fine with me, of course. Okay. Uh I I don't know. I I get unfortunately I guess I get one every couple of months somebody that's very concerned about how high their water bill was and and sometimes how it was handled, how you know they feel like they were going in and saying my water bill's out of whack and not and and so I I feel like it's it from my perspective feels fairly normal but I get that fairly often and I'm about to have a meeting with a constituent and with Mary Cleveland because uh the constituent showed me a water bill that for the past 3 or 4 months, maybe even longer, has been somewhere around $420, but the usage is zero. It's it's 0000. So little things like that that kind of send up a red flag to say, what is going on out there? $400 $20 with zero usage. Somebody's got to be able to explain it for sure. This is outside norm because we're really past everything. But come on up and they continue on. It sounds like

[4:03:05] again one of the things I'm hearing is there's actually two things that are needed and uh Miss Bowl Mulling is completely correct that an audit has a certain specific function. What I think we're getting into here is actually council's investigatory powers. What we need here in addition to the audit is an investigation of the water department that includes things like how is it factbinding on how these high bills are coming apart. An audit won't show you some of what you need and audit's not the right tool. This needs to be an investigation also. So that needs to be happening at the same time you're discussing auditing it. We need to be investigating the problems you're having. And city council by charter has the authority to investigate anything within the city that they deem needs investigating. That's really what you need is an investigation in addition to the audit which is focused for a very specific purpose that this goes beyond. Thank you. Good point, Turner. Add that to what I'm asking for that I want a city council investigation of water department policies and water utility billing. I use the word audit. Possibly I used the wrong word. I want to know why this is happening. Now, one thing to keep in mind, too, is that we have a new city manager. We have a new water utilities director. And there there's there's a complete shakeup up there. And frankly, I have a lot of faith in these two gentlemen that to see what's going on and to make some improvements and changes in the coming time. So, you know, I if things were were not if things were the same as they were 9 months ago, 6 months ago, same staff and everything

[4:05:07] like that, I'd be right on board with you. But I'm saying we've got two people here that I'd like to see. Give them the the crux of saying, you let's see where we're going to go with this thing. And I could agree with you to a point. But if I were these two gentlemen that were taking over departments that we know there's problems in Dixon and and Daniel, I would be screaming for an investigation to see just exactly what I'm inheriting and what I'm working with. I wouldn't want to know the positives and the negatives. And this will tell us that. and we are working on issues right now. Uh Dwayne, as far as looking at the water department and some of the issues that have come up in that department, uh we've been addressing as we as we move along. Of course, uh I'm still doing a lot of the the running around and meet and greets and everything else, but even in talking to Ricky, we do realize that there's been some issues working with with Tony and Mary and uh everyone else. We're trying to make sure of course and just like uh was mentioned is is that especially moving forward that we're taking care of business at this point but we are looking back also to see if there's any issues that perhaps we need to correct. Uh you know es especially we had a citizen that was treated unjustly unfairly as far as fees and so forth. You know those are things that again we're taking quite seriously and we are looking into. You need to go ahead and talk about your exceptions reporting because that's part of what you've done or what you're doing. Yes sir. Along along with that also is of course on a on a weekly basis is receiving a report just to let me know you know a number of complaints that have come in you know in that department. Uh what are we doing uh as far as a form uh that will show exactly what the complaint was who complained uh how it was resolved. Uh there's I mean the exceptions reporting also will will kind of give us a good indication as far as the service that we're providing at this point. You know the thing is is that we're not sitting still on this. This is something that again we are taking very seriously. We want to fix what's broken at this point and uh we're going to move forward with that. Also uh again I want to make sure that the citizens understand rest assure that this is not something we're taking lightly. I want to make sure that they are treated fairly. uh plus being able to look at uh you

[4:07:10] know bills that are zero or a credit and make sure why that has happened and bills that are more than a certain percentage higher than normal and and trying in other words on a proactive basis having it pop up and it's just it's exceptions reporting. It's just saying this bill is 150% of normal. Why? Uh, and that way you don't have to wait on the citizen to to come tell you, you know, my bill is ridiculous this time. You you have something popping up telling you my bills are ridiculous. One of the one of the concerns, of course, I'll say this very briefly, is that we some of the petitioners that are signing the petition at this point. There's no way of getting a hold of these individuals. We'd love to be able to talk to them, uh, get a hold of them, find out what the issue is. I know I've talked to Ricky about this who's met with Tony. I mean, we're we're trying to get a hold of all these individuals to resolve these concerns. some individuals we just have absolutely no way of getting a hold of them, you know. So again, we'll do everything on our part and we definitely ask our citizens to help us out. Also, if a concern comes up, immediately contact us. We'll do everything on our part to to resolve that concern. I'll make a motion to adjurnn. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're ready. I was being patient because you asked agenda. You want some future agenda? Okay, I'll start where we are and that is in October Neptune who makes the AMR meters came in and audited our procedures on how we install them, how we how we set them up, read them, et but there's no PR release. You've got to tell the public that we're working on this and that we've audited our our our procedures on this and that and we need to talk about this Daniel or lunch on Friday. Uh we should uh audit our procedures in billing. There's about nine different components to this whole thing. We need to make sure everything's right because when we get it right, we don't mess up and then a bad bill doesn't go out. The second thing is I would like an update, Alicia, on the AMR system where we're at. And that's a simple, very simple thing, but the second part is harder. Ricky Ricky Dixon's in the audience. And this is good because I we can't wait two years for them. The is it Neptune who

[4:09:14] does the programming? We need alerts. We need real-time alerts to where a citizen can sign up online that I want to know when my water bill is out of range immediately. I don't want to wait till the end of the month and then the bill gets printed, gets sent to me in the mail, and then it's too late. They need to know right away that they're using more water than they specify is allowed. And it's simple. It's a simple flag or alert system that emails them or text alerts them and says, "Check your water usage." So then they call the water department to find out what's what's going on. they look at their toilet and oh, I have a toilet in the upper room running. Thank goodness they told me and and we save water uh on the city level. They don't get humongous bills. That'll cut down on some complaints right there real fast because now you're saying to the citizen, you can specify what your tolerable tolerable range is and if it's outside that range, we'll tell you and you're responsible for figuring it out. But at least we're telling you immediately and not waiting. That's going to take I I mean that would resolve half your issues right there. Okay. Okay. So, that's I need a report on that when you can give it to me. How long this is going to take, what it would take, money, everything. One more item. Okay. Listen to me. What we're doing now is actually handling the problem instead of getting it onto a future agenda. Oh, no. That's that's an agenda item. He understands what I want. Okay. Okay. The next one. I've I've had two runins with golf carts. We are not legal in the city of St. Angelo. I don't think if we don't have an ordinance that allows on streets, they run around Bentwood, but we're within two miles of a golf course, so apparently they're legal in Bentwood, but they're not in other neighborhoods. They're not unsafe necessarily if they have bright decals. That's incorrect. Let's talk about it. It's incorrect. Well, in Santaita, it may be unsafe. There's from what I've understood is that if you get it inspected, you have a horn, you have lights. The law says it It has to be registered and the state of Texas doesn't register golf carts. So therefore, you can't get it registered and so it's not legal. You have to we

[4:11:17] could we could go ahead. I know earlier and we've been emailing um with an opportunity to look at the requirements under state law that they they are when they can and under what circumstances be street legal and where they can drive and operate. Perhaps given that opportunity, I could look up the specific statute because right now I think we're we have bits and pieces of very good things, but we just need the whole statuto framework. Correct. Under the question what I'm looking for, but I'm looking for uh entities like a apartment complexes or shopping centers to be able to drive from property to property on on low speed limit roads. Uh and I know the city can give that permission. I don't think we they don't conflict with state law. So if I had an opportunity, I I could go ahead and show we state law may preempt us in that area. Future agenda item is a discussion of proper use of golf carts and similar view. What I've read on state law is that we are granted the authority to allow golf carts. They're not allowed because they can't be registered within a golf course range of 2 miles. Yes, they can, but otherwise they're not allowed. We have to allow it. And so I want to allow it under whatever circumstances we come up with. [Music] Okay. Right. O. So, and she's going to research it where she's going to come prepared and we're going to have it. Right. Others. Anything else? M. No. Can you believe it? Do you have anything? Say it again. Second. Mr. Sus made a motion. Second. Sounded like a second. Okay. All those in favor, please say I. I. I. Any opposed?

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=u3St3hx7ioQ