San Angelo City Council 2-20-24

[0:00:00] come forward and honor us good morning let us pray father once again you have gathered the city and Community leaders and citizens whom you have given responsibility and authority to watch over our city and make decisions that affect all of us I pray that you would lead them in a way that they would make fruitful contributions and help them to deal with every agenda item that is on the docket today and even in their executive close session may they think and strategize in ways that will bring great results your word says that we should pray for our leaders because they watch over us for they too must give an account for their decisions and consideration so I ask that you would work mly in them today so come into this room and cause them to have a productive meeting and that there be a sense of agreement and cooperation that they can come to Peaceful Solutions and benefit our community so I lift up the mayor her staff and assistants the city council the city manager and every person and Department that is instrumental in leading and directing our city I pray for the police chief and the entire police force the sheriff's department that they will continue to protect and serve the residents of our city I pray for the fire chief the fire department and all First Responders who serve our city and lastly I pray for continued economic prosperity and safety for our city may you continue to draw in and attract to our city industry businesses and corporations that will produce jobs and revenue and help us to progress and grow in Jesus name I pray amen amen let's do the pledge pledge Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands

[0:02:03] one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all flag i al toex St God and indiv thank you we have one Proclamation this morning and it is for National leadership day I think we have folks in the audience to receive this Proclamation so if you would please come forward welcome leadership is an everpresent aspect of our environment and it is beneficial to take a moment to appreciate the abundance of leadership within our community here in St Angelo the Maxwell leadership Enterprise founded National leadership day in 2021 to recognize what it means to be a good leader everyone can lead regardless of their title or position once you realize the impact of your influence you will see that you can make a difference right where you are that is the power of leadership The Vasquez Development Group right here in s Angelo places great importance on the development of leaders within our community including those at a young age their Rising leaders program offers students in the community a valuable opportunity to acquire essential leadership life and career skills by participating in this program students can contribute to the betterment of our community and become Exemplar leaders when you think about it in every relationship one person

[0:04:08] influences another whether a parent or child spouse or friend student or teacher employer or employee in our everyday interactions with one another someone is leading or influencing the other to do something or become something this means that anyone can be a leader whether you have a title or not the observance aims to empower people to help others and be change agents and difference makers in someone's life the opportunity we have on National leadership day to show people what it means to be a good leader and Inspire them to be a positive force of change in another person's life therefore I Brenda Gunter mayor of the city of s Angelo Texas on behalf of the city council do hereby proclaim the day the today of February 20th 2024 as National leadership day in s Angelo Texas and recommend this observation to all citizens would you like to come forward and receive those and would you offer some words please yeah for sure appreciate it good morning everybody uh my name is Cody Vasquez with the Vasquez Development Group and we're super excited um when I heard that National leadership day was something that was observed uh starting a couple of years ago I wanted to make sure that it was brought to S Angelo uh we host the ring leaders program that is for uh young Professionals in our area but honestly we do help any sort of person who needs help in leadership life skills or career skills through our leadership program we also do um leader uh we speak about leadership to different organizations uh throughout the S Angelo Community and we do have a couple of our assistant directors who help with that program and we're in we're in it pretty much right now staying pretty busy with our next cohort of students so uh thank you to the city of St Angelo for recognizing this day and hopefully every year I mean every day you're celebrating leadership but especially now on February 20th we celebrate National leadership day so thank you thank you let's have a

[0:06:28] picture agenda issues or concerns not on the regular agenda may be raised by the public at this time citizens should speak from the podium address all comments to the DS Begin by stating their name and address or single member district number and limit their remarks to less than three minutes any public comment please come forward not less than three minutes math leadership I'm glad it's leadership week and I'm going to read a few things I'm a licensed professional engineer in the state of Texas we have leadership obligations and roles it is also National Engineers week and in these roles these are legal roles that we carry and obligations and I've done this proudly for the State of Texas for 45 years graduated from the University of Texas so the first thing I want to read is a quote from Samuel Adams pardon me I didn't flip this but I'm sure y'all got me timed um if you love wealth better than Liberty the Tranquility of servitude better than the animated contest of Freedom go home from us in peace we ask not your counsel or arms Crouch down and

[0:08:31] lick the hands which feed you may your change sit lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you are our country people last month I resigned from the estate of my dearly beloved husband of 27 years Dennis Alfred Robinson due to the illegalities illegalities that have occurred in this town through illegal powers of attorneys illegal medical powers of of attorneys not acknowledging my marriage license my powers of attorneys people trying to break the deed on my property in this town so I have resigned from that and now I'm on permited permanent protected Le from that action which went on for three years and four months and it has rattled me and I'm a very unhappy old lady next let's talk about the engineers Creed because I hope to encourage other people to go into engineering particularly women and this is a very honored profession and the national licensing of Engineers began in 1934 and as a professional engineer I dedicate my Professional Knowledge to the advancement and betterment of public health safety and Welfare pledged to give the utmost of performance to participate in none but honest Enterprise to live and work according to the highest standards of professional conduct to place service before profit the honor and standing of my profession before personal advantage and the public welfare above all other considerations as a professional engineer I dedicate my profession to the knowledge and skill and advancement and betterment of human welfare I plan to give the upmost utmost in that performance and that is what I have done and will continue to do and there are things Happ in this town and in this County they go against that now the next

[0:10:36] thing final thing I want to talk about and we'll get into those further later I'm timed okay thank you very much more public comment and I'll be back later we'll talk more about sewer gas by sure I been there's been several inquiries as to our efforts and um as far as what we're doing in infrastructure I wanted to do a really quick summary because we're going to go in- depth into this uh during our budget workshops but I want to talk a little bit about the efforts that have been expended by the city uh on our infrastructure and for the past nine years as far as application you've been hearing about the seal code program we've actually completed the whole seal code program we're going back around again this is a pay as you go program which we allocate about three to$ three and A5 million dollars per year and that's to seal code maintain the city streets all the city streets and we want to do this every eight years we've actually expended about $34 m267 th000 on that mayor uh and one thing I do want to note again I said this is a pay as you go we have not in anything that I'm about to report we have not increased our poerty tax rate uh as a matter of fact it's actually been decreased over the years that we've been working on this the completed rehab project which includes water sewer drainage and Street uh improvements we've uh had eight projects completed since 2016 at the amount of $42 million 20 $ 42.2 million the rehab projects currently in progress uh we are at five projects we're working on and total investment is $ 68.4 million as far as future projects uh we have five projects five projects that are planned here in the next 2 to 3 years the total expenditure for those projects will be at around 46.8 $8 million now I'm moving down to Water and Sewer that's the standard alone rehab projects that are that are being worked on the Hickory wallfield expansion Water

[0:12:38] Treatment Plant improvements that's $ 61.5 million Central High School we've done a lot of uh pipe replacement or in in in place pipe replacement for $888,000 A&M is $4.8 million uh nasworthy sewer trunk main is $25.9 million uh there's the breakdown is there but you have the the total amount that has been spent on these is about $109 million future Water and Sewer projects uh the total cost of future projects is $166 million that would include the uh North Concho Wastewater improvements a Concho indirect reuse project uh the randoff to MLK an 18in water line that will be replaced at $5.9 billion the drainage projects of course we all know we had worked for a while there on Avenue P Harry I know that you're pretty happy that that got completed that was a $3.3 million project Foster Road outfall drainage about 91,000 South Concho Park Drive drainage 171,000 Foster Road low water crossing 75,000 so we've expended about $3.6 million in that Arena La uh Lake NZ wory improvements the pier was just completed if you haven't been out there yet please go out there and take a look at it it's a wonderful Pier of I see people out there fishing right now now they're really enjoying it uh that was at a cost of $842,000 the vegetative control around Lake nzw worthy we spent about $5,000 the boat ramp improvements about $7.2 million uh that's for about five boat ramps and three non-motorized access points some of these monies of course we've leveraged through Texas Parks and Wildlife Grant spare and we'll continue doing that as well but we've been very active these past several years and all these projects INF infrastructure projects will continue very active again one thing that I do want to note and point out is that that we've done all of this without increasing the property tax rate uh as a matter of fact the property tax rate has been reduced and we'll continue working

[0:14:40] on these projects but again this is just a quick summary we'll go more in depth into these projects at our budget workshops when will the boat ramps you talked about $7 million on boat ramps are those in the process being done this is a public comment period so you really shouldn't have dialogue regarding your comments at this time for I just said it okay we'll go into more detail on that in the in in the budget workshop May but thank you further public comment seeing none we will now close the public comment section of the agenda for today and we will move into the consent agenda Larry do you want to pull any item from consent no ma'am Karen no ma'am Lucy no ma'am I'm going to pull Item B Harry no ma'am Tom in the pool Tommy no with that may I have a motion for approval of item a c and d motion to approve second accepting it thank you any public comment concerning items a C or D at this point see no public comment on items a C or D we will take a vote those in favor of approving the consent agenda of a c and d please say I I motion passed passes 70 Item B consider approving change order number two to RFB e-03 d23 Jackson Street Improvement theres Albert Incorporated in the amount of 363,462 right that will do to help when we originally set up the limits for this project we stopped it at the railroad R rideway line so the railroad rideway is is 100 ft wide from the center of the tracks 50 ft on each side but we stopped

[0:16:43] it at that line because that's technically a tex. roadway right there but when we're work or RightWay when we were working through the project and watching that traffic go over that uh that Crossing it became clear that it's extremely rough it's not a very good transition and so as part of the project we wanted to come in there and and fix that transition similar to what we did on on uh Southwest Drive so that that's a smooth transition for those vehicles to come across as part of that we're going to extend that 12-in water line that goes underneath there we're going to case it so that if in the future we have to come in and do anything there um we can just slide another piece of pipe in there and we don't have to disrupt that concrete that we're pouring on there but it's going to be a full concrete approach on that so it's nice nice and smooth and gives any future staff or Administration or work a nice clean Edge to work up to so this dollar amount is within the amount that was originally approved but it's the contingency amount so it's not over and above the total amount of the contract is cor that is correct yes ma'am other questions for Patrick on this project thanks for the explanation actually uh I just misspoke it it is not part of contingency 62,000 is contingency the rest is coming out of is is increasing the project amount I'm sorry for for that Miss okay so 62,000 is contingency and the balance is coming out of money you have another fund it's coming out of the the bond funds for that street project yes ma'am okay with that may I have a motion for approval I move to approve Lucy moose makes a motion to approve Item B may I have a second second by Tommy public comment on this item seeing none we will take take a vote all of those in favor of approving Item B say I I None opposed motion passes 70 we will now move into the regular agenda comments regarding items on the regular agenda may be made by the public

[0:18:46] when each item is discussed as outlined above applicants proponents and appellants are exempt from the time limit above and instead must limit their remarks to less than five minutes item a is discussion and review on Animal Services partnership with cono Valley PA and the presentation will be made by the neighborhood and Family Services assistant director Morgan shagwood and conell Valley PA's executive director Jenny Wilson you are on good morning good morning I'll be brief uh this is in uh response uh as requested at the January 16th council meeting to come back and have some discussion about our partnership with St Angelo animal services in Contra Valley pause um so I will yield the of my time today to Contra Valley PA since we had a good discussion last month um and just as a reminder uh we do have an annual contract with contro Valley pause uh since 2017 and that goes through an RFP open uh purchasing process um and it covers items such as adoption Foster uh rescue transfer uh emergency and Advanced Medical for animals and um to date over 14,000 animals have been saved through this contract um either through adoption or or rescue transfer so with that I'll turn it over to Jenny Wilson good morning thank you so much for allowing me the opportunity to um share clo Valley pause with you this morning um con Valley pause has been um in existence actually since 1961 but in the beginning um we or we operated under the Humane Society of Tom Green County and I think that's kind of important to to point out because people often wonder where the Humane Society of Tom Green County plays into this so it's actually the same entity um but because so many Humane Societies exist throughout the nation um and they all have different functions some of them even operate Animal Control we thought it was very important to identify ourselves better

[0:20:49] to our community and so in 2011 we filed a DBA to operate as Contra valy pause because pets are worth saving that's our acronym and so we hope that that helps the community understand that um the Humane Society of Tong Green county is not responsible for animal control uh ticketing licensing things of that nature but rather we do rescue and so that's how we became kcho Valley Paws I've been with the organization for 15 years and I've seen it um grow substantially and I'm really proud of the work that we do in our community um but I would be remiss if I said that um we could do this on our own because we can't we rely heavily on our community um we're supported by donor dollars um and Foundation grants we absolutely could not do what we do in our community without our donors and the support this is our mission to reduce the population of homeless pets in the clono valley and in the killing of adoptable pets by offering lowcost spay and neuter programs successful adoption programs transfer programs and support services for pet owners and Education and Training so Contra value pause is known to provide adoption services but we do so much more um this slide just kind of gives you a a quick glimpse into the many programs that we offer I will dive into some of those um here in just a minute um I don't want to bore you or take up a ton of time but I want to give you a concise yet comprehensive idea of what we provide for our city shelter but also for our community so kto Valley pause is a 501c3 and what we like to really emphasize to the community is we are a separate entity from Animal Control but we work very closely together so it's it's easy for those lines to get blurred because we do step in in a supportive way as often as needed uh or as wanted by our shelter um we have chosen to work not as adversaries but in an alliance with our animal control because we feel that we

[0:22:52] can focus on a common goal and that is to save lives I think that's uh it's clear that no one in the position of animal control and Animal Services wants to see thousands of animals euthanized every year and neither do we so that's what we focus our our work on together so how did we get here I think it's important for us just to take a real brief moment to look at where we started and how where we're at now and where we need to go so prior to 2016 things were very different uh as a matter of fact Animal Services was even operate under a different department within your city but at that time 80% of the animals served by the shelter were euthanized Texas was one of the high or St Angelo was one of the highest kill shelters in the state of Texas so it was a pretty bleak situation for our shelter pets this is taken from the uh 2014 2015 operating budget um the report that is uh published by the city of St Angelo uh the number of euthanasia performed in fiscal year 2013 before we started doing all this work was 6,838 only 14% % of the animals served by the shelter was adopted 76% of them were euthanized and 8% of them were returned to owners and it's important to note that that adoption category also contains public adoption as well as rescue pools at the time back at during this time rescues had to not only go through the same process as an individual adopting but we had to wait for the community to have first right right of refusal and sometimes that led to rescues being at the front counter trying to pull animals at the time they're being euthanized so it was a very convoluted difficult process to save animals so that being said I think the community and the city management wanted better uh for our animals better for our community and so they were looking for a vendor who could help provide adoptions and get those numbers up get more animals out of the shelter in hopes of reducing those uh euthanasia numbers so

[0:24:54] in October of 2016 the city of St Angelo issued a request for proposal that's what we refer to when we say RFP for a vendor to provide those Services pause was the only submission and we re awarded the contract and we began our services in 2017 again this is from the city's um uh operating budget uh report you can see what we accomplished during the first year fiscal year 17 we saw the number of Youth in Asia drop to 2,44 that's 49% so it was a significant drop during our first year of working together you saw the number of animals adopted up to 34% and that is a true adoption number because at this time uh we're reporting only public adoptions in that category um and 76 to 49% reduction in euthanasia and here's where we ended in fiscal year 2022 um 4,034 animals were sheltered of that uh 24% was returned to owner due to the shelter uh Progressive programs of returning to owner um that also does include 296 cats that participated in our spay neuter in return program so we're going to be tweaking these reports as we move forward too to give you a better idea of how everything is breaking out um but the percent of animals euthanized or died in custody was down to 15% so what we're doing is working but we're obviously not where we want to be yet I think think it's important for us to talk about what a complex problem it is that we face um in a postco world um there is actually studies being done right now by the University of Florida that are focusing on the effects of covid and animal welfare and unfortunately it looks like covid has set us back about 10 years in Animal Welfare with the work that was done with Spain neuter prior to the country shutting down so we are in a several hundred, def deficit of span neuter

[0:26:58] surgeries which has led the entire country to face a population explosion that unfortunately St Angelo is not immune from but saying all of that I think it requires a multifaceted approach and we've talked about that before it's not just adoption it's got to be spay neuter it also has to be educating our public and cultivating responsible pet owners so these are some of the programs that I want to pull out and just spend again concise comprehensive as much as possible so that you have an understanding of what we do and the importance of these programs we'll start with our snip programs probably what I consider our most important program our it's our Spain uter Initiative Program we provide lowc cost band neuter Services utilizing a veterinarian uh employed by Contra vals but also Contracting out with local vet clinics so this is a cost sharing program so a uh for example a senior citizen can purchase a account that cat voucher for $25 but that surgery actually cost us $100 so K Valley Paws with its grant money um and donations will pay that deficit of $75 to the vet that keeps the cost low for the pet owner um and makes that spay neuter surgery accessible to them if they are restricted on funds we offer approximately 100 vouchers every month that does vary because it depends on the availability of space at the clinics that we partner with and it also varies on funding in addition to that monthly voucher that we offer we also seek funding for and offer programs to Target uh problem populations I hate to to put it in that term but we have a very high population of pit pools in our shelter and so we know that is a breed we need to Target so recently we had just a voucher that was offered to female pits in an effort to get more of those animals fixed so we will do things like this from time to time as funding

[0:29:02] allows since we've started this process with this as partners with the city we have seen over 10,000 shelter pets saved but even more importantly than saving them they're fixed we put them in loving homes but we also fix them more than 15,000 owned pets have been spayer neutered and more than 3,000 Community cats have been spayed or neutered emergency assistance is available to people who need it through our compassion fund uh this program is very important because we see a lot of pet owners um that have to consider having their pet euthanized for treatable illness or injury and it's generally injuries are unexpected we have helped with animals that have been hit by a car that got out of a yard accidentally we've helped with animals that have been injured by an intruder uh We've helped with animals that have been a victim of domestic violence so this fund is available to support and help our pet owners but not only that this fund helps our shelter because of this fund we're able to treat injured uh and Ill animals that arrive at the shelter prior to our partnership with the city of St Angelo these animals would have been euthanized to ins suffering even though their injuries were treatable and that's because the city has never had a budget for a Veterinary Care in its Animal Services Division so we step in and we provide that we fix broken bones we um help with cruelty cases like you can see there's a couple of Cruelty cases here we get them healthy and we get them into loving homes I think it's important to point out though that cont Val Paws expended over $25,000 on Veterinary Care through this program and that does not include our spay neuter services this here is a program that is offered completely free to the city of St Angelo animal shelter our Second Chance program is what I consider a fantastic alternative to a pet owner leaving a pet at the shelter

[0:31:07] this allows the owner to participate responsibly in the rehoming of their pet so the pet stays in their home they register their pet with us as a pet that is available for adoption we ensure that the pet is spayed neutered and vaccinated uh and microchipped and then we promote that pet for adoption the same as we do pets in our facility and pets at the shelter it's a very successful program but it does require that the pet owner participate in it the nice thing about this program is it keeps pets out of the shelter and that's what we're all about and I think it's really important to note that a pet in a home is easier to Market and easier to transition into adoption versus a pet that has to go through the trauma of being surrendered at a shelter especially one that faces crowd ing um is just a much better environment for them to stay in their home and that makes that adoption transition so much easier Second Chance saves lives and keeps pets out of the shelter and that's what it's all about um we have had great success with this program again the only issue we have with it is the pet owner has to be willing to participate when we began working in the shelter we noticed a very interesting problem we would see people come in with moms and liter of puppies to surrender them because they couldn't care for them it was an accidental pregnancy at that time we would watch those people go back into the kennels to look and see about adopting another pet that led us to kind of really have conversations and look into some data that says people that surrender dogs at shelters will get another dog and so what we've decided to do with this program is come alongside those pet owners and offer them that education and awareness that they're lacking if they have a relationship with this pet and they love this pet and they're bonded with this pet it makes sense for us to get that pet fixed and help them responsibly rehome those puppies instead of them going and finding another pet

[0:33:09] because if they don't qualify to adopt from a rescue or a shelter they will go get another unaltered pet off of Facebook so we're just all about trying to break those cycles and this program helps us to do that not only are we getting the mom fixed and putting her back with her owners she's vaccinated and micro but we're making sure that all of the puppies that she had are spayed and neutered before they're put into homes so it's much better than a free to good home ad on Facebook where they're getting no vetting at all so this is this program is helping us break some Cycles again the mommy and me is very beneficial on the adoption in because we're offering cute healthy puppies that have had an opportunity to stay with their mom because the agreement the pet owner has to make is we will provide the service for you but you have to keep mom and puppy together until they're naturally weaned but we will provide all the vet care the food and whatever support you need to get us to that point help me get home is one that I think most people in s Angelo have heard about it's a fantastic program again the idea is to keep pets from going into the shelter it's a free online Lost and Found program it encourages neighbors to help neighbors you see a pet out in your neighborhood look on help me it home see if it's listed as lost if you have the ability and it is safe we ask that maybe you try to house that pet in your home overnight hoping that the the neighbor will be looking for it in time um it also helps us with education as it promotes microchipping it promotes callers and tags um and it's also a tool for animal control so if one of Morgan's guys has picked up an animal they can also access help make it home and see if it's listed as lost get that pet home and try to avoid the whole shelter intake process pause Express this is something that we hear a lot about we get a lot of questions especially when we see a euthanasia list come up why don't y'all transport animals out the quick answer is we do every month um kto Valley paw

[0:35:14] just recently sent 26 dogs to Canada and we are so happy to do that the way this program works is um we work with communities who have actively I don't want to say solved their problems but have definitely gotten on top of the issue of population in their own Community because they have create because they have done that they have created a demand for an adoptable Shelter Pet and so we are happy to provide them animals for adoption the nice thing about our Applause Express is when we see those dogs loaded up on the transport van or plane or however we get them out of here we know that they're getting off of that transport and going directly into a home which is very very heartwarming in some cases they will go into an adoption center we do not send animals to areas that have their own population crisis we do not um but it's important to note that covid changed our our world with the new without those surgeries that I spoke about earlier we're seeing population increases throughout the nation so we used to send thousands a year on transport now we're down to we're lucky to get one transport a month because all of our partners are are full and so it's something that we're ly looking for new partners to work with but we want to be responsible uh in selecting those Partners making sure that we're not creating a problem in any other community some of the other things that we do for our community is we provide pop-up clinics and we enjoy partnering with the city of St Angelo for that um we provide for the microchips um sometimes often the city will provide microchips but we also pay for the veterinarians to be there to um uh inject the vaccines and we provide the vaccines through a grant we get through Petco love um we currently offer these twice a year but we would love to grow that program and offer them quarterly I think the more pets we have microchipped the quicker we can get them out of the shelter in addition to all the programs that we offer inhouse we often refer out

[0:37:18] and we often pay for services to keep pets and people together we utilize professional trainers here in town um again we out Source Veterinary Care to uh clinics anything we can try to do to keep families together so it's how are these services offered anyone in St Angelo can can participate in our services all that we offer is available on our website um they're also welcome to come and see us at our facility but we also get referrals from animal control and I think that's important this is an important process to explain if a citizen arrives at the city shelter with the pet that they want to rehome the first thing they're told is to go through a counseling process with cono Valley paw because we do offer a plethora of programs perhaps there's a program we can offer that will assist that pet owner and keep that pet out of the shelter and so we it's called a managed intake uh it is not closed intake we don't want to confuse the two managed intake applies to Owned pets so we want to sit down with that pet owner and let the pet owner tell us what the situation is is it that the dog chewed up a favorite pair of shoes is it the dog is snapping at another pet um is it because they can't potty train what is is it financial and then we look at our programs and see what we have to offer them to support them and hopefully keeping that pet because again remember that data that we looked at that says people who have pets will have pets again so it's better for us to preserve that relationship than to allow them to continue that cycle of getting pets in their care that perhaps are not properly vetted stay to neuter Etc we're are committed to helping our community I think this is very important for us to say we have aligned oursel with the City animal shelter because it is our goal to see that our city gets 100% of the donor dollars that is invested in our organization so we want

[0:39:20] to make sure that every animal we save is a local pet we have such a tremendous challenge in our community with this issue that we do not and we have pledged not to bring pets from outside of our area of course we want to save all animals but we also feel that we can't help if we're not in a position to help and we are in no position to help at this point it is our Dream someday that we are the facility accepting transports for communities like we are right now but we are not there yet we take every opportunity to encourage adoptions and we offer lowcost and free events very often these are some photos of events that we have offsite so we're not just at the shelter or just at our facility we often go into Petco Tractor Supply lots of businesses host us and we're happy to have that um relationship with our community these are just a few of the programs that you might have seen that we offer we do not let an opportunity pass that we can jump on to promote it option um whether it's home for the holidays or celebrating National Pet Week uh we even offer $5 Fridays um we have free events name your own price anything that you can imagine we'll take advantage of it to help raise awareness and get pets out of the shelter but the shelter does have a capacity limit and when we hit that capacity limit we rally and we are so grateful proud and blessed that to this day every euthanasia list that has been issued by the city due to capacity has been cleared with every animal saved placed in a foster home or an adoptive home and we do that by special events by waving fees and when those fees are waved keep in mind that pet still has to be fully vaccinated for adoptions Spade neutered microchip so pause absorbs those costs that's where our donors and our grants come in we do mass emails press release social media blast

[0:41:24] whatever it takes to make sure everybody in s angel knows that there are animals at risk and it has worked and our community has come together and I'm very proud of the fact that they have come together and we have so far saved them all when there is a disease outbreak at the shelter we are there uh we are ready to work whatever that entails we are all hands on deck um whether it's an exposure to a toxin like we had a couple of years ago uh during that time we treated the entire shelter at our expense every animal in the shelter was treated and only three pets um died and so that was an amazing success during that time the food had to be pulled because we were unsure of the uh origin of the Toxin and at that time we provided food for the entire shelter for a month um if there is a parvo outbreak we're there we have our own parvo set up um at our facility where we transport transfer puppies with parvo into our facility for care um so basically we're there to assist and support however we can because we do not want to see these animals euthanized because they don't have access to treatment and so we're there in a supportive role to the city and again this is at no cost to the city um so I wanted to take an opportunity because I know yall hear from constituents all the time and there's a lot of misinformation out there there's a lot of confused people talking and so I wanted to take the opportunity to just kind of focus on a few of those and give you the facts Contra valy Paws allows pets to leave the shelter unaltered that is a myth we do not every animal that leaves our facility is spayed or neutered with the exception of animals that are too fragile or young for the procedure um spay and neuter is key we believe in that wholeheartedly and so we abide by that it's also state law that requires that the animals leaving a shelter must be spayed or neutered cont Valley paw puts Pets At Risk by offering free adoptions that is absolutely a myth and it's one I'm happy

[0:43:28] to talk about when I started with our organization 15 years ago we did home visits it's taken a lot for us to get to where we are removing barriers for adoption because we also believe that maybe the more we charge maybe the more work we do behind the scenes the better guarantee we'll have on that home it doesn't work that way we've done this a long time we've looked at a lot of studies and there is absolutely excuse me no correlation between clean how much someone pays for an adoption and how valued that pet is you we will find pets in our shelter $1,800 puppies that have grown up but surrendered to a shelter and so but you on the flip side of that you'll see someone who got a dog from a free adoption and it is a beloved family member so there is there's a ton of data about this there is um there's a risk to every adoption the reason there's a excuse me the reason there's a risk to every adoption is because we're dealing with people and so but uh we really try to make sure that we do our due diligence we check IDs we do check a criminal background and we do uh check the shelter records so if it's anyone who's had um an interaction with animal control that is not positive or if they have a violent criminal record or if they don't want to give us a dri's license they don't get to adopt from us this is something that I've heard a lot cont Val paw does not allow other rescues to save shelter pets this is absolutely false as a matter of fact we have a one-page contract that we utilize with other rescues and that contract simply says that that rescue understands that they're pulling an animal free of charge from the city of St Angelo and that Contra Valley works with the city of St Angelo we will assist them assist them however possible but the animal must be spayed or neutered within 30 days and that is the just of the contract we're very um very excited that everyone has signed those contracts and

[0:45:33] we actually participate with several local rescues we even assist some of the smaller local rescues in getting those pets spayed and neutered through our clinic so everyone is welcome we would never deny an agency access to saveable life donor dollars pay staff salaries first of all I think it's important to recognize that for an organization that does as much as we do it's imperative that we have staff to ensure continuity efficiency and Effectiveness but we're very blessed that we can say that no local donor dollars goes to our staff salaries we have been very blessed would you like some water yes I am so pleas um our staff is paid by a private fund specifically for that purpose so we are fortunate that we do have a paid staff we can offer that continuity but the donor dollars the money you see us raise on Facebook at our fundraisers when we're out looking for uh assistance with medical care for a pet all of that 100% goes to reckley to directly um to Animal Care pause programs has led to the shelter closing intake again that's really important for us to point out we are completely a separate entity from the shelter we support them and what they do to to save lives but the shelter sets their own policy on when and how that works thank you so much however we do provide the managed intake and we're happy to do that but it's important for people to understand that managed intake and closed intake are two different things managed intake targets owned pets and we're just asking the owners to look at all options before they surrender a pet take a drink thank you so now we're able tell you the weather's changing allergies are bad right now now we're able to even help in a bigger way we're very very grateful to

[0:47:35] Judith and David hfield they gifted us with um an amazing adoption center uh some of you have been out and seen it if you haven't I invite you encourage you to come and see it it within those walls we have a spay neuter clinic and Recovery space we have our hospital that I mentioned for our parvo care and moderate illness it houses our Administration office our adoption offices it has pet visitation space and a large training space for us to work with um people and their pets and trainers the Steven dog dorms are now open and I'm happy to give you kind of a a little video walk through so you can see our facility this building is located directly behind the hfield adoption Center uh we have State of-the-art Kennels we have state of-the-art draining we have um a fantastic air flow and recovery system so that we have absolutely awesome air circulation through there to help control smell and bacteria all the dogs have access to indoor and outdoor space and we fill this space with shelter pets so when a pet is adopted from our facility we just go to the shelter and grab another but we find that this is allowing us to save even more pets because we are able to give the adopter a smaller environment to experience so it's not as loud we have 48 kennels and at any point we have 50 to 70 dogs in those kennels because we do Co kennel as appropriate but it allows our adopters a better adoption experience they're not having to combat all of the pressures and the noise and the sounds of animal control they're just adopting and so it's and we've seen the adoption numbers um increase dramatically over the last three months since we opened so we're very very blessed to have that and we're grateful uh to the Steve Stevens families for being one of our largest donors to make that happen coming soon

[0:49:39] we're not cannot forget about the cats I think we haven't talked about cats a lot because we have done such um I think incredible work in our community with spay neuter not just Paws but other rescues doing lowcost Bay Neuer for cat colonies uh the work the shelter has done to ident AI colonies that need help um and we're seeing that cat problem start to diminish and now we're we're focused on the dogs but we still have cats that need homes and if you've ever tried to adopt a cat out that has been in a kennel it can be a challenge because they're really not interested in the people wanting to visit with them as much as they're interested in getting down and exploring so this facility will allow adopter to walk into a Cess cat community and sit among the cats and give them a better adoption experience I think that will generate more cat adoptions as well so you asked Morgan uh when she made her presentation back in January what you felt what she felt the biggest concern was and we agree with much of what she said but I think one of the things that we have failed to really be honest and hit on from our perspective is that our biggest problem and concern is people uneducated and irresponsible pet owners we have backyard breeders pet owners who want instant results I mean that is that's the flaw of our society today and then pet owners who refuse to get their pets spayed or neutered but if you're going to identify them as our biggest concern I think it's fair to also identify them as our biggest opportunity we need more education we need more awareness and we are committed to that we want to cultivate more volunteers more donors more Advocates more adopter but more people who understand that pets are worth saving it is our goal and Judith herfeld said it to me uh before her death that we want s Angelo to be a better place for pets and the people who love them and I think that's perfectly said so what do we feel the solutions are from where we sit in animal rescue

[0:51:43] we really would like to encourage you to consider when your budget comes around or a budget amendment to hire an animal control officer that is specifically to enforce our spay neuter laws I think that is probably the most beneficial thing you could do in your positions is to approve that I think it's important to recognize that even though those tickets are being issued we're still not achieving compliance so for example a ticket is issued it goes through the court system that fine is paid but once the fine is paid is the pet fixed often you're going to find out that it did not get spay or neutered in the process and so they'll be repeat offenders and they'll end up at the shelter again unaltered it is I I can only imagine the nightmare it would be for that to be something that Morgan puts on her current staff that's why we feel it is imperative that there be someone in that position that does strictly that and we believe it is important to consider that as a new position um and again these are just our recommendations from the outside looking in but I we all see that as of I think the rescue Community sees that as a big benefit and might get us moving in the right direction another thing we'd like for you to consider is possibly looking at that breeders permit and revising it I don't think that it's really necessary for us to approve breeding for dogs that make up 10% of our shelter population or more but I'll tell you right now if you go into the shelter you're primarily going to see German Shepherds shepherd mixes and pites and that's why we end up with these euthanasia list because in our community we are home to college students military senior citizens and apartment dwellers renters and that makes that pool of adopters very small for these large breed dogs so we have more large breed dogs in our community than we can house so I think it's very

[0:53:46] important for us to take a look at that and perhaps put some stricter uh ordinances in place on breeding uh to prevent the breeding of those breeds and then we also would like for you to consider joining our efforts for for spay neuter if there's ever an opportunity to throw money at something I think Spain neuter is the direction you need to put it in we are doing all we can we will continue to write grants we will continue to seek donations um but if if the city wants to come alongside with us and beef that up I think that that would be a huge step in the right direction so having said all that I just want to thank you I know I've taken up a lot of your time but it was important for me and our organization that you get a better understanding of what we're doing and how we're working with our city I hope that maybe that will Empower you as you speak to your constituents and I want to let you know that we welcome and encourage an open dialogue between you and Contra value paw directly um we welcome any of your questions and even more than that I would love to see you come into our our new facilities and get a feel for what we're doing and how we're trying to work with our community and make sense Angelo a better place for pets and their people thank you I'm going to open up the floor for comments or questions from Council I'm going to start with Larry do you have comments or questions you would like to ask do you have any figures on the feral cat release effect on the colonies out there well I I know that we did over we did close to 300 span neuter and returns last year just in our clinic and that does not include our community cap vouchers that we provide um so as far as getting a number on how many feral cats we have there is a there is a Formula that they will tell you to use from that that some of the professionals tell you to use it's really hard to get a good figure so what we have started to do at Contra paw is if you have a colony if you can fill out it's called a community cat survey and that gets us a number of cats that

[0:55:48] you're taking care of on your on your colony and how many of those cats are already fixed and how many of them need to be fixed and then the other other question is do you know and not everyone does if they're male or female because what we're trying to do at this point is Target those females with the funding that we have first so to give you a hard data on the number of ferals in our community I mean it's kind of they they could they say anywhere from 125,000 to 200,000 I mean it's just different depending on how you apply that metrics we're just taking them as they come come in but it will tell you I don't know about you and your constituents but the number of calls that we get on cats has drastically decreased over the last three years I'd also like to thank you for the work you did Christmas holidays you saved 25 dogs as I recall yes sir and we had another list in January that we were there was 25 and I think there were 16 in January that made it on Ethan Asia list but we were able to clear that list as well so thank you for saying that um but it's our community you know it makes me feel good to know that our community will rally and step up Karen thank you for your presentation jeie um really thorough I'm curious if you would share with us how you select shelter animals for adoption through pause okay so like I said we have the we have 48 kennels um and what we do when a kennel becomes open we go and look and see who we think is um there's a couple of things we look at of course we look at adoptability but we also look at a dog that may or may not be declining we may give them um an opportunity to move over to a less stressed environment um because I I don't know how familiar you may be but when you have a dog kenneled over a period of time some of them will have serious psychological reaction to that others will not and so we do look at that as well um we also look at breed

[0:57:53] because we only have so many many large kennels in our facility so we will try to get some of those medium siiz dogs in there as well we also try to get a good selection of breeds to represented we don't want to fill up our entire adoption center with pits because we find that people will come into the shelter and look and see that it's predominantly pits and they will leave we want them to come in and see a couple of different kinds of faces so that they will if they don't find one they want to adopt in that they will come back there's a little bit of marketing psychology that goes behind our our process to choose as well but we do give priority to ones that we think might be showing some decline because we don't want them to get we don't want them to move from adoptable to not adoptable uh speaking of marketing philosophy and strategy I think we're all familiar with the Charming photos this is this is spot spot's good with children also good with cats um spot would like to be the family's only dog and so forth and so on a little story a Charming photograph or video do you feel that that strategy works I know that you use it from time to time and that you have a talented photographer and videographer I think you know I think it's like anything in our community you're going to um get people's attention in different ways cuz we're all different I think that sometimes the sad urgent cries for help works and gets people in but I also think that if you do too much of that people become desensitized to it um but also I think it's really important for us to promote the dogs for who they are um there is already that misconception in the community that shelter pets are broken and these dogs are not um they're so resilient they may not love being in a shelter but they are resilient you get them out of the shelter and they become

[0:59:54] incredible companion animals so I think it's finding the right balance we have to tell the sad story sometimes because one it's the truth um but to it also touches people differently some people can hear that and it it calls them to help and get involved some people will hear that kind of thing and and turn away from it because it's a lot to to take in and digest so I think we have to kind of go ated it a variety of ways so it's your belief that the the creating the story for the pet is sad no I think we tell their story because it shows their strength we just don't want um and we don't know all their stories right um we're fortunate to know some talk about how it it can it can be engaging for example instead of seeing a photograph because you can look at all of the shelter animals yes they're all in there they may just have a number uh and a brief description and they're like little mug shots and the difference between that and what Macy does for you for example is hugely different that they're charming and they the the animals are indeed engaging in a different way you can imagine yourself you think oh spot might be perfect for my family exactly um showcase their potential I'm I'm I think I'm struggling to understand if that's a strategy that you think can be overused I think you've implied that it I think it can be again I just think you can reach people at different places I think the the more in-depth story of how the struggles and the them overcoming adversity in the canine World um is very motivating for some adopters and I think other people will look at that and be afraid that that dog might be reactive because what that dog may have been through um and so we like to we like to tell their stories but we also like to show their potential any more Lucy yes Jenny thank you for the presentation

[1:01:57] as well um you showed us all these programs and they sound great and you would think this takes care of our problem but it doesn't somehow this problem is still ongoing and you gave me the answer to the main reason pet owners so it's like we've got all these great programs available but the people are not taking advantage of it so I see that I don't know how you're going to be able to bring these people together to actually have these animals spayed and neutered um my other question is when you adopt these pets or when you uh get them adopted do you have a high percentage of people that return these pets no we actually have about a 3% return rate on average and that's lower than a lot of other communities because we we have also kind of um found our own balance with adoptions um you can look at what some other communities do and it's literally you like this dog sign here we don't want to do too much background work but we don't want to not do any background work and so I think we have found a good balance for our community that we do a little bit of an interview a conversation how you going to take care of this pet what are you looking for that's really what we do more than anything is help them identify what they want in a pet um especially when we're dealing with someone who's had a pet of 14 years and they're coming to adult for the first time it's important to really have that discussion and say you know you're taking home a a different pet and this is going to be a different experience and so it's those kinds of conversations um that we that we have so we're seeing an average about 3% return um that the returns make sometimes they don't make any sense just like the reason they ended up the shelter doesn't make any sense it comes down to the commitment of the person and the pet owner um I know you're not supposed to compare children and animals but I have adopted both and it's a lot of the same thing you have to

[1:04:01] be committed going into doing this um if we turned our children away the minute they did something wrong like we do our animals we would be in really bad really bad shape so it goes down to what the pet owner is willing to do you also mentioned that you um felt that hiring an animal control officer would help us um but you also said that no pet leaves the shelter without being spayed and neutered okay so I was a little confused when you said that these officers give them tickets yes I I can see where you confused um so no a pet that is adopted per state law does not leave the shelter unaltered um I don't want to speak I'm not I'm not animal control so I don't want to speak to that other than to tell you that I don't know that that's the case for owners for pets that are redeemed as far as state law now we have a city ordinance that says your pet must be fixed so at that time I believe Morgan issues the ticket when the pet is redeemed so it's adopted animals they do not leave the shelter unaltered if a pet is redeemed that's another that's another story okay so Morgan can you answer this question for me um do we whenever they leave the animal shelter are they not sper neutered you don't right so so we um we we didn't have this discussion publicly but we had a a memo out last year that defined that yes state law mandates all adoptions have to be spay neutered um city ordinance and that is the municipal government's responsibility to do so and we contract that out to pause um city ordinance says owners have to spay neuter their pet and so if an owner arrives at the shelter to claim their pet from Lost and Found um we are pets are property as defined by Texas state law were prohibited from withholding their pet from them uh for any reason except the most extreme where a court order would be issued um and so people leave with their unaltered pets

[1:06:05] and a citation for unaltered um if they provide an exemption or proof of compliance then we um move forward it's the animals that leave with a ticket and um never provide an exemption or approve of compliance or those animals were interacting within the field we're also citing you know dogs and cats that have never been to the shelter but we were at your house for another unrelated issue you're still getting a ticket for failure to spay neuter but the continued followup of you know if you get for example a speeding ticket and then you go to the Municipal Court you make your plea you pay your fine whatever however you choose to proceed with that ticket um that doesn't mean you're never going to speed again it just means you dealt with that offense from that date um so if you get a ticket for failure to spay neuter but you never resolve the pets still being intact still not being spay neutered then there's a continued violation that this officer as proposed would continue to follow up with so like the court and I don't know if you would know this or not but the court doesn't say okay you have this fine but once you alter your pth then we're okay they don't ask for proof of the dog being or the pet being altered no I I believe it's it's Animal Services role to to prove compliance it's the Court's role to process the complaint as filed with them for that day for that offense they don't have to proove that day when they pay the F that their pet is now altered they could but there's and and they could potentially have the ticket forgiven or or something like that but in the event that someone either fails to appear it doesn't never appear for that ticket or um that person gladly P pays the fine I plead guilty my dog's unaltered I'll pay the fine um or ask for a jury trial um anything like that all of those are options of how to proceed with the ticket none of them get

[1:08:07] the pet altered okay thank you Harry yes um just real quick I want to say thank you to Jenny because I think this will keep some of the phone calls down that we get on on dogs uh cats other pets whatever the case may be uh one question I have is how many dogs do you average a month uh adopting out of your facility it's anywhere from 100 to 125 um before covid it was better um Co has changed has changed our world but I will say that we have seen adoptions start to to uptick um the economy is is the issue I mean we've saw a huge increase in the amount of dog food uh cat food um that care has gone up so I think responding to that inflation I think a lot of people are like we're not getting a pet right now but we're starting to see I'm hoping that Trend change thank you Tom don't want to pass an opportunity up but a lot of time I read and hear people complaining about and this is um pets that are outside people that got bit one thing I will say as a council member whose wife has been bitten twice on my own Street the reply and response has been absolutely outstanding now the fact that they had to listen to my wife that's on them it is what it is but I will say they showed up they handled the pet they quarantined the pets they did that I mean there are things that go on it's hard and you have to realize there's only a certain number number of people that can respond to these events and happen but but it's everything that I've researched and done and personally experienced you know they they don't know who I am they didn't know who my wife was there was just a citizen called in and they got bit they were out jogging here's what happened it was all handled perfectly fine and I get these raving emails and accusations and

[1:10:10] complaints and I get that but there's only so many people that can handle so many calls and I just want to say the group has done an outstanding job there's going to be times when we can't do it as good as we want to but we get that I mean we've all got enough common sense to understand it's not going to be perfect 100% of the time you show today a plethora of things out there that people aren't aware or available and they need to use those they need to do their research and I thank y'all for doing what you do well Tom I would say your wife must be very attractive because she's gotten two dogs after her already I sometimes say those dogs have a good judge of character you never know all right Tommy well maybe we need to go ahead and tell Mr Thompson goodbye because we may never see him again after today um I too want to thank you Jenny for your presentation and for what you do question I have is some of the emails and calls I have received have focused on the chip I'm going to call it process is there something we could do in conjunction and partnership with you all to make the chip process a more um robust process with more information um I really don't know how to ask the question other than make it a better process um for tracking Etc is is there something that that we should look at that we're not doing well I I know Morgan's got some things that she has shared with me that she has planned and I'll let her speak to that but I will tell you some things that we've seen work in other communities but first every animal that is adopted that tip is registered to the information they they gave us where we run into problems is when that information changes and that person hasn't updated the chip um that seems to be the crooks of it and how do you fix that I mean I I don't know but we do have like Westlake Hardware um several of my volunteers have microchip readers I think all of Animal Control

[1:12:12] Officers have microchip readers so that those those pets that are chipped and they have that information and they can get back home directly um but as far as maintaining that and keeping it accurate I back on that responsible pet owner and how do we make that happen I I wish I had an answer is there an perhaps an on budsman um that exists already that could be the let's just call it the final stop if everything that the pet owner has provided yields nothing in terms of information is there an ombudsman situation where that could go to I don't know a central Clearing House or something like that so that they would then call pause City shelter as opposed to everybody just throwing up their hands and saying we don't have any more information they didn't give us much is there something that exists like that yes so with our chips when we do an adoption um and I'll let Morgan speak to when she chips in her clinics but when we do an adoption we are listed as the secondary we're listed as the implant facility and a secondary contct and so if they're not able to get good numbers then they can call us and then hopefully we might have something thing we try to get additional contacts in our database when we do the adoption so hopefully maybe we'll have a way to get in touch with that pet owner it's when that pet owner has given the pet away that we really you know we're kind of stuck um but I'll let Morgan speak to how she handles that there so um cono Valley Paws in the city of San Angelo use the same brand of microchip um and we're real big fans of the brand of microchips that the both of us use um meaning that there's no annual fee and we're your local office that has implanted it and registered it that that's a lot of the frustration we see is someone um bought a microchip they had it implanted in their pet and the owner was handed here's how you register your microchip and if you're someone that is very computer savvy and sits at a computer and has lots of access then that's probably pretty easy but a lot of

[1:14:14] the customers that that we're supporting and working with have maybe a smartphone in their pocket but not much more than than that so we we do register that microchip on behalf of the owner uh pause does as well with all of their adoptions um and we um and we're your local implant facility we actually had a pet come into the um shelter on Tuesday um and she was microchipped by our facility and um all efforts to reach out to the owner were uh a dead end um so we do have an ombudsman if I could borrow the term uh with a group called lost dogs of Texas where they do microchip dead-end followup and they have access to databases to really continue to reach out to folks and say look your pet's at the shelter um we we we've got to get that animal back to you and so we had done that Outreach and we have a lot of success with that when it reaches to that level um but for this one it just it was moving so quickly that by Friday actually I got um a message from the owner um she had moved from s Angelo in early 2022 uh the week she was moving her dog was stolen out of her backyard and she had moved to the Panhandle in Texas and she said I never had any anticipation I'd see this dog again but lucky me the the microchip still registered to me it's uh it's just the phone number was a dead end and I said you know we she said I contacted my vet clinic about getting it updated I said we're your we're your people um you you bought it from us you registered it with us and so we love that for S Angel ens because we're an easily accessible um office by you know phone email walk-in traffic but also if you've moved to the Panhandle we're still we're still the the person for this dog and so we got updated microchip information um for this pet I was actually traveling to Big Spring and I said do you know what I'll meet you I'll meet you halfway and and we met and we we got the dog transported over to her um and the dog was um spayed current with all other items um she hadn't seen the dog in two years and the dog was so excited to see her and her kids I mean a totally different animal than what we had in in the shelter so we believe that microchips work we believe our microchips specifically work because

[1:16:18] there's no annual fee that if it lapses they don't release your information um and we do Reach Out that when all efforts are exhausted we reach out to that lost dogs of Texas group and see um a lot of of their efforts bear fruit in somebody that has blocked us somebody who has cursed us out somebody who is not coming in the door lost dogs of Texas can get that person they walk in and say I'm here to get my dog and we you know professionally handle the transaction um but all our efforts had not yielded that response to date good thank you all right so my questions um are the following so um as it relates to the court system we they pay a fine they go home but they don't have to prove anything at the court so I'm going to pay my fine my citation I'm going to take my animal and I'm not going to have it spayed or neutered and that's the ordinance that allows that or the law that allows that they get cited again when my office was working with people who um have not spayed or neutered their pets when of the comments we got often was well I already paid my fine and it was like yeah that was for that day so they get cited again and then they'll continue to get cited until they do show proof of spay and neuter so how do we do that followup because obviously it requires a lot of followup it's one thing to say it it's another to do it and that is follow up and make sure that that has happened um Morgan can speak more currently but last year Daniel authorized a part-time position in my office that was dedicated solely to following up on the backlog of those citations um and she reached out and she managed to close a number of cases I think Morgan has since taken over that same process we developed in my office with her own staff and do we need to re uh rethink the dollar amount for this citation because money talks and I just wonder if the fine attached to not having it spade and neutered is appropriate relative to the problem we

[1:18:20] are limited in the the amount of fine we can put on top of a citation by the Texas local government code but we can see where it is and see if it's um can be raised at all um there's also you know to the discretion of the court to raise or lower fines as well as the prosecutor so um just because the fine is set at $500 does not mean that every citation is going to be $500 mayor yes sir we're having regular meetings with Karen on uh some of these issues and we came to that same conclusion last week we are going to follow up with the court and see what latitude exists for Solutions uh part of the solution may be dollar values but there may be some process solutions that the court is capable of we just don't know and so we're going to ask if they have uh suggestions for for what a a solution would look like part of the solution the optimal solution would be a minimum number of contacts in other words we don't have to follow follow up three times and hire staff so that we can follow up three times is there a way through the first Contact and the process at the court to uh be assured that a solution is achieved the ultimate solution being the alteration of the animal um it's we're not really pursuing Revenue at the court we're we're pursuing the solution for for this animal and so we're going to open that conversation with the court see what kind of latitude we have and and their ability to help us with those Solutions and uh we'll go from there so I have U my sister and brother-in-law took in one of my cats when I changed locations of where I lived and unfortunately that cat got out and this is in Midland Texas C the cat got out it was picked up by animal services and they would not release that cat back to my brother-in-law until he had completed

[1:20:27] training just wonder what we do because they required it he could not have that cat back in his possession until he attended these night classes or whatever so it's just an idea thought because obviously as you mentioned early on the problem is people and what we need to do is find a way to communicate more loudly and aggressively about the responsibility of a pet number one do you know how much it will cost you annually to have a pet in your home are we clear about that dollar amount dollars always speak and what we hear a lot is people give them up because of the cost what's the cost of annual veterinarian what's the cost of food what's the cost of all those things we need to make sure we're communicating loudly and clearly the cost of owning a pet I also want to know if there is a way to limit the number of permits as you brought up earlier by breed because if pit balls pitbulls are a big issue for us can we limit the number of new permits issued every year um first to speak to your your suggestion about a class I believe Contra Val P has offered that in the in the past so similar to the example where if you get a speeding ticket you could also ple no contest and take a defensive driving um class um KRA Valley pause has offered to stand up like a responsible pet ownership class and we just couldn't get it tied to that in the court system but it's something we can you know review again for the um I'm sorry remind me of your second question well I'm just saying the the second question was limiting the number of permits by braa of our number one problem is pit bulls yeah I think can we limit the number permits issued I can request a a a legal review

[1:22:32] there had been previous um Statewide legislation that no breed specific legislation can be passed but I think if it's a so I would want to know the Nuance of of what that covers of of what can be um considered for that process because the state and other states have had a major issue with over abundance of animals I would think that the courts would be looking at some means to control this issue perhaps it's changed perhap it isn't but perhaps we need someone to take to the legislators a a bill a concept of enough is enough very much encourag communication did you know as I brought that up a minute ago did you know your pet will cost you this amount of money on an annual basis did you know that a dog's performance and character and the way it reacts to people and children is a owner's responsibility pets aren't born with meanness in their bodies people to uh teach them to be aggressive and mean and that is a conversation we have when people are considering rehoming their pets if they disclose that it does does have aggression in the home or a bite history we do calmly communicate that it sounds like maybe the last step of your responsible pet ownership for this animal is um having that pet euthanized and if there is a concern for safety in the home or transporting it we do offer Transport Services where we confirm your appointment we meet you at your home we transport that pet to the vet that when when you own an aggressive animal and it's gotten out of hand the answer is not the shelter the tough answer is this is my pet I have to do the final you know right thing for my household in this community by euthanizing it and we do not take into our shelter animals or people who live in the county correct correct and how do we make sure

[1:24:35] of that uh we require proof of residency for intake and that can be um a current valid driver's license a piece of mail proof of insurance just something showing residency in St Angelo City Limits I'm assuming that many of the pets that are dropped off into our community are from the county people come in bring them in from the county and think no one's going to know how do we better communicate outward that if you live in the county and you dump your animals into our city there will be a fine I don't know by what mechanism there would be a fine if there's an untagged un animal that we pick up dogs and could get a driver I mean a what do you call it a license plate that we could figure that out it's it's already in the penal code it's already in the penal code and um I'm sure Teresa knows more than about this than I do but that it's unlawful to um abandon unreasonably abandon an animal so I don't know that I mean we when we see it happen in the county we we call the sheriff because it's unlawful um when it's done at our facility we call the police department because it it's unlawful to to abandon an animal how many of those a year do we make those calls I can I don't we two three dozen a year for us um the outcome is never what I would like it to be but I'm kind of a stickler for that um but you we we do report it when we see it and we have it posted on our facility that it is unlawful to abandon an animal um and when people come in and they trying to bring an animal to us that we don't have space for because the shelter's full and we're full and all the other rescues are full and they say well we're just going to dump it and we're like well if you do that then we will report it to the police department because as you can see right there it's in the Texas Penal Code that it is unlawful but I think it's a I think it's

[1:26:37] a misdemeanor um I would like for them to put more teeth into that as well but that's that's the state level the misdemeanor at the state level I I believe so in that case I can look it up but our court does handle Class C misdemeanor um so we do probably have some of those I can look that up though but I think they're right that I mean there is legislation already in place some statutes already in place that allow us to do what you're asking that's not the hard part of it the hard part is identifying the person providing PD enough information and then PD finding them um and to be able to prosecute those tickets so again I think it's an issue of communication how are we communicating outwardly that if you do these things this is the price you pay did you know we have it's you know for the people that are well acquainted with the your organization Etc the great results but obviously there's still so many people who are ignorant to the fact of what happens in this community with unwanted pets and far too many of them it's a major issue and we it's great we're getting our hands around it and and programs around it and improving the statistics as it relates to this but the job is not done no and the communication has to get more aggressive and out there for people to better understand what's going on I I think I'll just tell you from from our perspective looking at this and um we are primed and ready and it is in our our yearly plan to do a lot more educ ation and a lot more awareness um but at the end of the day I think it's going to take people seeing someone have to go through this process I mean it's like they need to know that there is a consequence to these actions and it needs I think they need to know that in

[1:28:39] a way that's greater than us just telling them I would love to have an opportunity where we saw one go through the court system and there was um there was a penalty that or someone was penalized in some way and we could use that as a as an example but we're not seeing that enforcement and I'm not just that's just kind of through the Sheriff's Department the police department it's kind of like the animal issues kind of the lowest I know they have so this is not a criticism they have so much that they deal with um but that's kind of where we are is that enforcement's kind of on the Bottom Rung it feels like when we're looking at these issues because like I said we've called and reported um and I know that some have made it to the DA's desk but the or I should say County attorney says but I've never seen anything get past that point on these abandonment issues you know the city has many responsibilities um and we put a lot of money towards our responsibilities towards the citizens we can't keep throwing more dollars and more people after the problem the budgets just don't allow it and it's great to say more people's going to solve it but you know we keep doing this and the problem isn't Sol solved so throwing people in dollars after the problem isn't going to solve it communication might solve it consistent communication consistency in that we've got to get it out there because the city doesn't just have more money to keep throwing at the problem we're spending a tremendous amount of money to improve the facility of the animal shelter um close close to $2 million this year and a half for next year right so more and more and more is not going to happen we've got to have a program about communication and enforcement those are the two big challenges communication and enforcement and I believe strongly that your presentation today was very

[1:30:42] thorough it was terrific I think it should educate a lot of people about as you say the myths and those the false myths and the reality we need to keep this up many people watch Council on Channel 17 but we need to use our public information offices more aggressively I suggest you all need to be more aggressive about communicating we have to make sure everyone's aware of the responsibility of pet ownership because it's not on the city we can't keep throwing money in dollars mayor I do want to point out that um I think the majority of our citizens are responsible pet owners it's always that select group you know that doesn't they're not responsible but it causes the issues so it's not right for the majority of the taxpayers to be paying for additional monies for the shelter because a group is not doing what they're supposed to be doing so I I agree with that I think that we have budgeted we have put money money toward it and it goes back to it does go back to education it goes back to making people understand that this is your responsibility and again uh I don't want the people that are listening because there's a lot of great uh individuals that are responsible are doing their thing it's just that that few that causes and exacerbates the problem so hopefully with a good educational program we can get that out there with a good system in place to find and make sure those individuals we hold their feet to the far that's is going to have to be the way that that we go with that so I just want to finish my comments and that is thank you for the work that you are both of you are doing this is an emotional issue it's a complicated issue and it's an issue that doesn't get solved overnight but I believe strongly that both of you women are doing a terrific job of leading the programs and the responsibilities

[1:32:45] attached to what you're doing and I want to thank you for that thank you for saying that I'm I'm proud of the work that's being done but it's not over and it will never be over so we got to continue to look at the next challenges attached to this and I believe strongly is communication and enforcement those two things mayor I have yes uh I just wanted to ask I have this um I had this memo that stated that uh y'all were going to have the um animal uh service openhouse how did that go on February the 7th we're hosting it weekly you're continuing did you have people that showed up yes so the February 7th um open house was uh I believe well attended a good contingency from Contra Valley Paws key council members attended and we appreciate um that support we had about two dozen U members of the public um um come through and so we'll continue that Weekly we'll also start hosting special events um with them and so we'll have like a check the chip type event where I believe my pet's microchipped but I don't know if their information is current or I don't know what the microchip number is um we'll also have a microchip Clinic um type event where you can bring your pets in and and have that uh microchip implanted right there so uh we wanted to hit it hard um with uh weekly open houses we anticipate scaling back um at some point we just we a wanted to have a a really clear U venue for communication for folks that had concerns um and questions and ideas so that when folks approach you you can say look Morgan has an open house uh let's can we try to address it at that level I I would definitely get involved I hear you I want to make sure that this is handled um but there are resources to try to get this um handled in a way that is tough to have dialogue like in a public Comon and an open meeting like Council so we wanted to open up this venue um and we will host that um through the summer weekly um and then we'll reassess you know does it need to be scaled back or or what what kind of um changes might

[1:34:48] happen but um yeah we're we're continuing that and we'll have another another one uh tomorrow at 5:00 P p.m. at Animal Services I think that's a great idea and I'd like to let the constituents know that are watching this is the perfect place for them to go with their concerns with their complaints and their Solutions mainly if you've got Solutions let y'all know but I think this is a great program thank you and we we're going to be getting youall monthly updates so we launched that first week in February first week of March I'll get you an update of about this many people attended about this many um uh the were these the major topics of concern um because we want to be um uh responsive to y'all that we're you know um trying to address things um at our level thank you one last moment for anybody else to make a comment and if there are no other questions or comments thanks again for the thorough presentation for the professionalism behind the presentation and Morgan for the work that you're doing it's greatly appreciated thank you thank you very much Jackie has a a question or comment how long do I get three minutes all right Jackie Chestnut live in the county of Tom Green not in the official city of San Angelo I have lots of comments about this topic I didn't know y'all were so unhappy with us Tom Green County people um first of all I wish I had had enough attention paid to the fact that my husband was abducted into this town with $4 million of my assets police didn't care Sheriff didn't care County attorney City attorney didn't care district attorney didn't care so good luck with your dogs okay I've been a dog person my entire life supported the Humane Society I'm a 70s girl big on the Humane Society I've adopted animals I've raised animals I did wildlife rescue of bonds for many many many years that's one of the things I do on my Ranch so

[1:36:50] this is near and dear to my heart the past three dogs I have adopted have come from the San Angelo City shelter and it's a vile place a nasty place my last most recent dog Einstein that I have now I adopted two years ago from that nasty Little Shelter poor baby was in abuse he'd been kept in a cage after he'd been hit by a car and his whole back end is off and I got him all straightened out with Dr wac Who was kind enough to do that but I adopted him there so um I've adopted like I said my last four animals actually from the shelter two of the dogs I have wandered up out in the county I have four cats that wandered up out in the county and I've had all those fixed because I'm a responsible pet owner and you can't change people are irresponsible when it comes to animals and you can't fix it and you can't change it and you can talk all you want but it's the way they treat their animals and the way they treat their people and the way they treat their all the other things it's a human problem animals are not possess and they should be treated with respect and dignity like humans because they are animals and we take them on to raise and care for okay maybe we should offer a dog abuse list like we do a sex offender list if we want to keep people from reop animals that they've abused or disposed of before as nothing which we do with women all the time we throw them aside let me back up to my first comment the appropriate that comment that was made about your wife and her looks and being bit by dogs and her reaction to that and comment that was so inappropriate after 30 minute 40 minute discussion on dogs and her response to that and how you what did you say um had to listen to your wife please sir that was so inappropriate and that her being bit had something to do with her looks so all that was very inappropriate and excuse me if particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies we are determined to form a rebellion and will not hold

[1:38:53] ourselves Bound By any laws in which you have no voice or representation so please don't make comments like that especially when we're talking about dogs can my name is Cy and I'm on the board for Contra Valley pause and I want there's a couple of things I want to reinforce that spay neuter is the answer and enforcement of spay neuter I also believe like you that communication is a big factor but I want to encourage that I know you said no more money being thrown out but I think the position hiring a position to specifically enforce the Breeders permit and the spay neuter um would help pay for itself in the end because you're going to be housing fewer animals once that's enforced um secondly I want to invite you all again to come out to the facility and see to date I think Karen hessie Smith is the only one that's been out there to see the facility I've been out there okay and um I think it just for the two of you all the rest of you all I want to encourage that you come and see it's one thing to see it on video it's one thing to see pictures it's another see thing to see it in force another thing that I would like to consider is for you all to review the dog food that is being fed at the shelter the ingredients has a heavy uh Dairy ingredient it's Dair is very heavy on the ingredients and um that's going to be a good reason for dogs to have diarrhea and bloat and all of that which will contribute to the difficulty of keeping uh kennels clean um Dairy is not good on either dogs or cats um system and the ingredients it's very heavy in the list on U the food that's being fed that's all thank you thank you for those comments further public

[1:40:59] comment all right seeing none we will conclude this presentation and discussion on the um Regular agenda I'm going to suggest that we take a break and I'm also going to suggest that item B which is um going to be up next there is a display of this art out in the lobby right and if you have a chance please walk through it and see it and they'll answer some questions for you out there so if you could do that while you're taking a break it would be great we calling this meeting back to order at 10:27 and we are going to move into Item B which is consider resolution supporting the private fundraising efforts to create and place art themed quote black TI Cowboy along the chadburn streets escape from the north cono River to the intersection of board Avenue and Carl white you're here but I know that Julie's in the audience to add comment and um answer questions but I think everyone had a an opportunity to look at the artwork out in the lobby area and um so let's get going Arts capital of Texas and art in uncommon places aims to keep it that way um and in my opinion St Angela is the visual art capital of Texas in big part due to Art in uncommon places this morning we're asking Council to adopt a resolution that will authorize art and uncommon places to create and place at their cost and effort a series of Works entitled black TI Cowboy along the the new chav streetscape from basically the cono River uh North to the borgard intersection before I point out the key elements uh of this resolution I want to emphasize that the concept for this proposal has been well vetted it it was initially proposed to the public art commission followed by two meetings of a

[1:43:01] subcommittee of the public art commission composed of a few members of the commission uh art and uncommon places staff City staff and Downtown St Angelo uh Incorporated staff it was then reviewed a second time by Art and on common places who recommended the proposal move forward it has most recently been reviewed by the design and historic review commission as well as City staff some more um and now to the resolution the key points of the resolution are art and uncommon places will bear all cost of creating and placing the art in the public RightWay art and uncommon places will transfer ownership of the art to the city upon completion all plans for the project shall meet uh All City requirements and be approved by the director of planning and development services and the city engineer prior to placement of any piece of art within the public ride of way the city manager uh is authorized to negotiate and execute an agreement with art and uncommon places to ensure proper authorizations of the project and to accept the project upon completion the key points of such an agreement would be uh the city shall provide input and Direction into placement of the art from designated City personnel to ensure that the art doesn't impede travel along the sidewalks and complies with all Ada and traffic control and sight distance requirements as well as any other applicable uh regulations upon final completion of the art and transfer of all ownership of the art to the city from art and uncommon places the city shall be solely responsible for all ongoing maintenance related to the project and have the sole discretion to remove or relocate all or part of the art as the city deems necessary all authority related to the Future maintenance of the AR shall be solely with the city and for the uh proposed agreement art and uncommon places shall and uh

[1:45:04] ensure the project is completed in substantially the same form as approved by city council which you'll see here in a moment ensure any substantive changes to the approved design are approved by City staff in a manner determined by the city manager be responsible for all cost liability and activities associated with the design creation and placement of the art until accepted by the city uh carry adequate insurance coverage for this purpose and again work with the city engineer and director of Planning and Development um services to ensure the art is placed to agreed specifications comply with all City permitting and approval processes as required for all elements on private property upon completion of imp implementation of the art and acceptance by the city formally in writing transfer all ownership and responsibility to the city and now for the the more fun part I introduce Julie Raymond and Dr GG pz Langley to present the concept for black TI Cowboy afterwards we're here to answer any of your questions the power yours hi good morning I'm so glad to see everybody here today uh we're excited about this um this has been a concept of items that I'm glad glad to come see collectively in a group some of these have been produced in our studio uh for a long time they were produced by the W3 uh work camps prisoners a lot of this work a lot of work was uh created with community help so and we love that in public spaces because anytime you have your community uh participate graffiti is uh lessened by a great deal just besides everybody having ownership of what we've created so we're excited about that but let us show you what we're going to do okay blackt cor downtown okay we're going to start right

[1:47:07] over here which is across the street from Twisted Root uh we have two sculptures they're going to go in this location this is a girl walking the dog this is a sculptures that you see around Town these are going to be great way finders because they start at one end of this chadman project and end up another piece at the end of it so that's a good way for you to follow through this uh cement piece which is about a 12 foot 12 inch footprint it's made with cement and stained glass uh it was sculpted by uh somebody near and dear my heart that worked for us for about 30 years so I'm really happy to see the placement of this piece because it's really quite gorgeous and you can see them in their location this piece really goes behind the fence it's not in front of the fence uh there's a great little Landing there where it' be protected but the light reflectively will be awesome and show your path down that beautiful staircase to the river and you can see uh the girl walking with the dog you have a view of Twisted Root right there and uh I think everybody will want to walk their dog along here okay as we move down the street on the right hand side well up from Twisted Road there's this board that's in existence already that's there and so what we're suggesting is that we're going to have a photo up in front which means downtown strong you'll be able to stand there and get your photo taken and we know that's promote a lot of the spots that we already have internationally and nationally from having those Instagram opportunities okay these are pianos U that we've had in the studio and we think this is going to be a great addition in that hotel down there there's a lot of open windows that just with nothing in them we can't go into those spaces so we're going to wheel these pianos in there and they'll be locked in that space and then when uh downtown has the event they can unlock them put them on the street and people can play them there're a lot of piano projects in different cities and they're

[1:49:08] quite successful and bring a lot of life to an area okay you can see now how they would fit uh the pianos look like they're on the street but they really would be inside locked up until they were needed then you would move on right down the street and you would see uh this beautiful mural that would be painted and produced for people to get their photo ma'am okay thank you and now we're going across the street and this is a ward there to that's just what a great spot to work and these were helped the locations were helped spotted with a subcommittee from the art commission and so we walk the street with downtown the Planning Commission the city um uh officials and so we've had a lot of forethought on this K this is a beautiful finish shot of uh cowgirls because we have a lot of cowg girls in this town besides just cowboys and these uh will be hand painted and we will also add some history we tried to lead into everything that was historical of downtown to give everybody a real good idea okay next this is 307 which I think anyway these are the two we are not going to work on that middle door uh we on on the left and the right there are wood panels so we will take and we will produce in our studio on panel these will be partly painted and partly Mosaic and the cowboy is going to have uh the Silver Spur from Holland the little horny toe that's historical all of y'all know these pieces so that will be added in uh it's also a salute to uh the true western town that that's a title we have and to the right is the girl and that's to salute that uh music friendly T Capital that we receive that award for we want to hang on to those okay these windows are going to be with black and white vinyl mesh uh the windows in the hotel um on that corner across from Angry Cactus they're just empty there's nothing and so we are trying to make

[1:51:11] vertical presence you made you did a great job of putting a beautiful 2 million on the street but we want a pretty backdrop and these will cover them with people be able to see out the window but not able to look in and they're easy removed and transferred if that building happened to sell but we the history of this is of the two billies and I'll let Gigi tell you that part hi good morning so the first one sorry podiums aren't my friend um the first one is of Billy McBride and Billy McBride started the girls Rodeo Association here in a Downtown St Angelo Hotel um we're not sure which one but this one seems like a nice one to represent her and so um she started the girls with Rodeo Association which is now the women's professional Rodeo Association so we want to highlight that history of cowg girls here the other Billy bill is uh William B Bill Ward and he is the current picture of the professional Rodeo Association um His Image is what that was created out of and that was come from a picture that was taken here at San Angelo in our open air uh Arena so we want to really highlight that history I thought that was both real cool okay then as you can see what that changes that footprint those uh you know this shows you the before and after and I think that's going to make a beautiful impact and I and this vinyl mesh is an incredible product it doesn't put any pressure on the window it the longevity is great the UV rate is high um anyway I just think it's perfect for this spot and the the owner of this building is excited for us to do this project okay here's the fun things these are probably some of the things you've seen everything else is already produced um we worked real hard to get the continuity of this to all go under the Black Tie Cowboy but you needed some

[1:53:14] really signature pieces uh these are going to be produced out of architectural styrofoam anytime you see a new building right now and it looks like it's historic that's how it's produced is with this Arch um architectural styrofoam it's much denser then they have fiberglass that's wrapped on that and then it's sprayed with cement they also have metal armatures in this inside uh we are working with the master in both Fields a master that has done architectural styrofoam am amazing it's so fun to watch him he created some tools to do this I'd love for y'all to come see this at the studio and then the welder that we've got that created the Black Tie it's so artistically done it's amazing and he's done several sculptures uh in town such as in front of the Fine Arts Museum and over by Jim Bean but the height of these is 12 foot 11 foot and 10 foot 9 foot and we are working with everybody to make sure the placement and materials are perfect for this location and they will be placed on the corners of chador and tug and they're going to look across from each other in these spots their footprint is very small uh there's uh only like one core drilling that will have to happen we also have been working with people to make sure that all that is meets regulations Every Which Way but I think they're quite striking and I think they're going to make a big statement okay and then we did you have this black fence here and you have the Elmer kelin mural so we wanted to add a little pop and some interest along this where um the DG or the gravel is right there and we're doing these beautiful Cactus stools uh they are 18 in high and 18 Ines in circumference so they're just perfect to sit on and they're quite durable and they they really blend in beautifully with the Elmer kta mural okay and you got to have a little fun this is uh used to be at Texas eyeglass uh place so what we did is we're going to create a mural of this

[1:55:17] dog that's wearing glasses some body mentioned it'd be really cool if we had a little water ballls so they could actually get a drink there when they're walking their dog but uh anyway we that owner wants it placed in that window so that's that's what we're going to do okay this building uh we tried to make sure that every owner was content with what we were doing so we are going to uh use the settins in here because it has like a porch that would cover things and also we will be painting uh you'll see what we're going to paint but we had had a gentleman come to us about a year ago maybe even two years ago wrote a letter that he'd love a place to play chess with his chess um club that he has so we're going to take these cement tables and chairs and we're going to do a chess um game on top but we're going to uh visit with him about the regulations to make it tournament worthy and there's all these rules so we we've been visiting with experts on each one of these things that we're contributing uh these beautiful little stools also which were Crea by all women in town and then we have this sculpture and let's show you the placement of this so right here we're going to use that awning it could be turned into piano keys or painted black and white uh the tables will go right under there and then this brick building right there a little brick wall uh we thought it needed a little something so we have these stools and this sculpture that would be placed there this piece is a beautiful black and white Mosaic that's been housed in our studio studio uh it was created by couples and a couple thing that we did it's very intricate uh and so we're going to place it in the window and just taking and changing the bottom of this building is very impacting even though this piece is not large that's a game changer okay and that awning is really shredded but we went and looked at it if we roll it out a little bit the fabric is good so we're going to roll it out

[1:57:20] and have that it won't it'll be all together okay this is the kissing couple and this is the end of the project just as we began with the wire people we created this with West Texas guidance for suicide prevention a lot of these sculptures have hearts that we put in there for Shine the Light uh and so I think these are great wayfinders and uh excited if we get to do this and y'all accept this the day of the opening we will have flowers in his hands for her so anyway I think uh we're quite excited about this project and uh if we get approved we can almost start tomorrow Julie I could not be more excited about the work the vision um the creativity behind this project um it just puts a smile on your face there's it will have a dynamic impact on people coming downtown um wanting to take photographs it will be quote The Talk of the Town and maybe the talk of Texas I think it's great the the fact that you all have spent the time the energy and the investment in creating this is for me very exciting and I can't imagine um I know there's a dollar amount that quite honestly I think it's something like a million dollars worth of Art and talent that you're donating to the city yes and and but it's worth millions more I know in terms of the ultimate impact um on the city so thank you oh you're thank you it's our our privilege and our honor to get to do that uh I never dreamed what we ever get to do would have the impact that it has the pop art and paintbrush Alley we're the recognition that we're getting nationally now is just unbelievable uh we have some things in the work if this goes that we will really be able to promote even more for this City and uh I'm anyway thank you it is our honor and

[1:59:24] my only question is this when's it going to be done well like I said uh most of this has already been produced uh it this has been a longterm thought and to coordinate this whole effort where it would look like it was connected in continuity you know we've been working on that and we're fortunate to have these pieces at our disposal that we are willing to donate uh so we only have a few things to do and we are already producing the tall sculptures um if you don't take them there's another city I don't that wants so I I I had to do that so my board wouldn't be mad at me and say okay we're g to produce something before it's done okay so and so we have a mosaic to do we have a couple murals but we're going to we we're going to commission the best of the best for the murals other questions yes Tom I'm Harry Julie I appreciate all the work that's gone into this uh and I know it's been we talked about this three or four years ago uh as we started the project downtown uh and I appreciate the fact is you've checked all the boxes you went to the public art commission you walked the street you've looked at where all that stuff goes so those questions that I may have had 6 months ago you've already taken care of so from my perspective we're going to get this go on as soon as we can thank you yes Lucy Julie I want I'm just like the mayor I am so excited I love pretty things and you were just putting the icing on the cake downtown it is going to with our streets and with this art it is going to look so nice I am so grateful that you had this vision and now we get to enjoy it so thank you so much oh thank you yes Karen yes I have a few questions about first a comment so you are an exemplary both of you are exemplary ambassadors for this city in

[2:01:28] in what you do and I hope that your efforts to beautify our community and uh be involved as Civic activists inspires others other artists to do the same I think that would be fantastic that's what we and that this is just the beginning um I'm curious and I see Bob blueart in the crowd so I'm wondering if the F the historic photographs you're using can be attributed to MC Ragsdale our own historic fam rather famous historic photographer we will be checking those we use these as references uh so but yes and we have West Texas collection that we work hand in hand with and they if they have it then we have access to it and then uh I'm pretty sure somebody else we've consulted with has access but thank you for giving me a heads up on that uh I think the I think the archive is split between Fort Concho National Historic Landmark and ASU if I'm not mistaken and what a great resource and they're personal to us personal to San Angelo so it doesn't get any better than that AB absolutely said there's bound to be lots and lots of cowboys and cowg girls and um other things to choose from so I when this appeared on the agenda I got really curious and this next part that I'm about to say doesn't really have anything to do with you you did everything EX exactly as prescribed by the city in so far as we have guidelines in place but I have a couple of questions for Council and for legal and we can continue this later but I could not find any evidence of San Angelo having a public art ordinance as far as I can discern that does not exist we have a public art commission we have the public art commission so that made me even more curious because as the the visual arts capital of Texas I feel that we want to be a ahead of everything that we want to to sort of be leading the charge um on public art as well as

[2:03:33] as well as anything that would further our reputation and help us maintain that position so I looked at some neighbor cities some other Texas cities just for the heck of it I looked at Leck I looked at Austin I looked at Fort Worth and I found that there's a very def inite set of guidelines for public art there's there are ordinances in place it protects the artist it protects the government it protects sort of everybody it makes the pathway very clear and I hope that that's something that we can perhaps put in place after the fact because uh it might help us do better be better uh most of the time when that's established then the city is willing to give 1% of the art uh money for every new building built to the Arts I noticed that I noticed that that there is a financial tie in and I also noticed that it's more typically uh they will call there will be a call for artists the city the city is frequently driving that rather than what you're doing which is the inverse of it but recently we had a funny situation appear before Council it involved a sheep that Peta wanted to place um in in public uh and the issue became the lack of guidelines and we had a conversation about that so at the very least I hope that we can publish some sort of guidelines that and it's been so recent that we don't have them yet I I understand that and so forgive me for derailing the all the Joy about your beautiful art just for a minute but it's timely and it was it was the right time to ask we actually do have public art guidelines um that were looked at in accordance with this particular art and the public art commission is um reviewing those now for changes that will come to council for approval okay um so the public art commission makes recommendations to council for any art that is in the public RightWay the historic Commission in the downtown area makes recommendations for any placement

[2:05:36] of art on structure such as the murals um they don't look at the content but just at the placement and making sure that's all appropriate so we do have some guidelines it's not in the form of an ordinance the ordinance just creates the board and the board develops the guidelines you led me to my last question you talked about the fact that they don't govern content um if I I was able to access not the minutes from the the art public art commission's Meeting those were not available to me anywhere that I could find but I did find the video of the design and historic Review Board in which it is stated by a member of the audience uh Sherry talked about the department of the interior uh I believe has a short list a lot of them are just practical and common sense but they pretty much say that you that it's a what you see is what you get sort of deal that once we approve it it's it's what we're getting um Sherry can clarify that if I've misunderstood that but I see her nodding um and yet you has you have stated that you're going to go back into the orc archive and you're going to perhaps choose some different photographs so I I don't know how power if that affects what we're doing here today maybe maybe it doesn't at all um that's that's that's not hard to do that that would probably go through the historical commission which we've already been through and they were quite content with he did because in that statement I said we would not do anything that was not looked at and done by that so that's already really been done and then um also uh I was on the beginning of the art commission if that's what you were and that was why it was created is just what you were questioning and that has been in place for how long Carl 2006 2006 it's not seven I'm not sure if it's six or seven but it was done anyway so that was why that was just to answer the questions that you were concerned about that that would be a clearing house and so that we have placed that in place Karen if we

[2:07:39] need to if the I think the pictures I think are meant to represent the intent of what is going to be put there if that changes drastically from what is existing then we could also bring those back to your for once it goes through the process we could but if then if the picture is basically the same picture just a you know from a Ragsdale versus a something else with same picture then we could move forward if it changes drastically then we could bring it goes back through that process we could bring it through that process again I know I'm being perceived as the wet blanket but I'm just seeking to understand how the process works because it was interesting to me as I tried to navigate I did find online forms for temporary public art but not for permanent public art and so it just got more and more of a head scratcher for me thanks for listening and in terms of guidelines um the public art commission has called meetings so we haven't they haven't reviewed the minutes from the last meeting but we we're working to schedule the next meeting in March and guidelines was asked to be discussed at this coming meeting so it's already going to be on the agenda so your your direction input will help in that discussion are we allowed to attend those meetings actually are we allowed to attend those meetings are okay yeah they're public meetings we appoint people so yes well I think part of the confusion when it comes to Art is that um this art is being given to the city so it's the city's art and it's the city's voice and y'all get a lot of say on what it looks like and where it's placed versus a private individual's voice in art which we'd have very little say on what that says so it it's convoluted because it's a very convoluted issue other questions or comments ma couple of questions um to piggyback on something Karen brought up is it going to be permanent or will will will y'all change things from time to time what we put in place will be there until the bus the building sales or you know something else abstract because everything we

[2:09:42] produce what we try to do is get the longevity of it we try to make it the biggest product that we can I'm forever researching what's the best materials to use in outside this styrofoam thing is a a game changer with some other things that we're using okay good good thank you um and I have completely forgotten my second question so age has overcome me other questions comments Larry yes ma'am uh what I really like about this is the participation of Art in art uh when I saw that strong strongman image I thought about the hundreds of thousands of people who have held up the Tower of Pisa oh wow I love it's the same thing you know what I mean I mean you stand in front of that and do the strong man thing a couple in front of that sculptor that are smooching or whatever I think it it really uh lends a a different aspect to the art and I really love that um are you those pictures that you have from the 20s of the young ladies with the hats on is that going to be in the same general color a sepia kind of yes we we uh tried to stay with what was going with what was predesigned by the designer of the street and the light posts are black the signage is black and it just makes a beautiful backdrop for the art um on some of these are on unused buildings they're vacant for the time being now when someone takes it over and they have the opportunity to return the art uh they do you at that point will own the art so you can move it you know where you where you would like to or and our our experience is most of the time it markets their building and they're quite happy just to keep it well we have several more blocks going north that there are windows that they could be moved from point A to point B should

[2:11:45] that happen but legitimately the buildings that you have selected are buildings that need enhanced in many cases and if um these enhancements makes you uh appreciate the art and maybe you stop looking at the deterioration in the B building perhaps so it refocuses the eye and um again I think this tells a strong tale about the city of St Angelo um the visual arts capital uh we we initiated these conversations about the streetscape and art on the streetscape we said we wanted things that people wanted to be sitting on and having their photograph taken things that people wanted to be photographed next to them on but very as you say the Strongarm pictures that people send everywhere and we think it will in fact bring a lot of attention more attention to the city of St Angelo and and it's just so well thought out it's so well done you guys have done your research you've worked hard on it um this is such unbelievable great gift to the city of St Angelo and downtown thank you I have one more item yes uh we always tend to forget a favorite son of this town who is uh well known to our generation and I guess I'm going to conduct a oneman campaign to do something for Fest Park oh well I'll let you pay for the wine for the opening we also have many more blocks this project isn't over it's just beginning because there's I don't know four or five more blocks that will ultimately require some public art enhancement and uh we'll let this be the test for um how public art enhances the community I will keep that in mind

[2:13:48] please I'll help Larry one little final piece of housekeeping um has the use of all items been approved by original artists and any form of release obtained for COA Leal original artist I'm thinking particularly about the the I I forget how you referred to them it was a man and a woman it's a mosaic and paint that's uh we are doing that so we are we are creating you are artist we are the artist it just looks so much like Dolan Gman from Denver's work I mean I it just looks exactly like his work so that you know we will it's going to take him be ours it will you know I have to anyway concept has to be presented but we will make that St Angelo okay great just trying to keep us clean these are conceptual these aren't the final product right correct other questions comments I move to approve I have a motion to approve the resolution as presented may I have a second second mayor several seconds on there so with that we'll open this up for public comment and I see Steve is already standing so he can come forward thank you Steve Steve Hampton is the mic on loud am I speaking can I be heard okay uh I Steve Hampton district 6 um I came forward just to say that I uh I I I'm amazed that U St Angel likes art so much uh we have a park already and now we want to do more and I I'm I'm commending it is what I'm doing I I'm grateful for that and I got to thinking about how this is a cowboy town and we don't really do anything thing for uh the

[2:15:50] blacksmith uh and that kind of art and and I would like to see more of that kind of think but I'll repeat we have many more blocks right many more blocks also uh sis um um councilman Smith um uh brought up a legal point and I think that's I think that was excellent I I really like that uh that we uh she had her eye on the on the ball and I appreciate that uh those comments about keeping uh um St Angelo out of trouble and uh she mentioned the sheep and uh you know when I got here I was told those were called Welcome use oh welcome use and I always thought that was welcome you I always thought that was you know what what it was about so um um and I wanted to bring out Larry good comments too thank you there's further public comment seeing none we will take a vote all those in favor of PR pre of passing the resolution as presented say I I sounds like it's 70 get to work get it out there thank you thank you and we'll send you an invite for the opening perfect item C consider authorizing the city manager to reject all bids received for RFB fc-1 d24 HVAC unit Replacements at Chase State Office Building you are on Bob good morning mayor mayor and councel this is a bit of a rerun from the last meeting I regret I was not here to address it I was driving a 15 10 truck from Arizona with donated furniture and books for the Fort but

[2:17:51] then again two of you weren't here either so we can all enjoy this again this project was phase two of a five-year plan to replace eventually all of the air conditioning units on the roof at the State Building and the workforce building we successfully completed phase one uh earlier staff put together a proposal it was bid out bids received in retrospect um we did not bid out a very clean project uh a memo uh in your packet outlines some of the major issues certainly the completion time was a major mistake on our part we missed a few specifics and we also through a very bad coric and email system managed to send out you got the the job to all five biders which wasn't true it is the staff's recommendation to take a step back reject the bids and start over quickly we think we can get this back on the street fairly quickly I deeply regret all of the errors uh it's my fund a building I'm in charge of and I missed several key factors I regret that I know also we have made several people unhappy I understand I get it I understand it but I think ultimately what I am trying to do is the steward of the building and there your agent for the building is to get the best possible project and deal that the building deserves and the only way to do that is to start over and I'm here to answer any questions you may have and I open up the floor for questions um Larry do you have

[2:19:55] a question for Bob I guess one of the problems that I see with it is all the cards are on the table among those contractors who bid this correct they know the low point the lowest bid that was offered so that kind of is the cat out of the bag for for several of them that that bid lower that all of a sudden these some other people could try to outbid them the bid process is structured in such a way that in theory none of the vendors should be talking to one another and the project is going to be rebid with better specifications but overall it will still be um 10 units and I have seen in times p past when a project has been rebid that we still receive quality bids does that answer the question no sorry Karen questions for Bob Lucy no Harry no I I don't have any thank you Tom Tommy all right with that I would ask that there be a motion made to reject all bids received previously may I have that motion some move some move by Harry second second by Lucy with that we'll open up the floor for public comment hello councilman Mike Stewart University Heat and the cooling I was the low bid winner or not the winner I was the low bid uh um due to the paper that Bob sent out said there were some confusing Communications there was no confusing Communications with all those contractors we were all on the roof we

[2:21:59] all asked the questions we got clarification from two different people one of them was that uh I actually brought to them attention that they need hell guards now the last phase whoever put these units on the roof there's no hell guards at all that tells me they didn't get permits or inspections um I'm not sure if you guys have Engineers that follow up with this procedure but I guess they thought we don't get hail storms here in s Angelo uh another one that I had I met every bid every expectation that they asked for on this bid this was a great bid the packet from the purchase Department was awesome because on this bid they put pictures of every single unit that we're replacing that I sent to my engineer in San Antonio and bid the exact thing that they're asking for but I did add the hell guards up there to all the contractors and I told all the contractors on the roof you need to get with our inspector Gary Whitaker if you have any questions because our our city codes are different from your codes in Dallas and Houston um also I would like to present this paper that Bob and everybody else had missed on my bid by our city code can I give this to somebody give it to Teresa okay you have to have you have to have fresh air dampers anybody know what fresh air dampers are I don't got to have those on commercial building when you have occupied people in a building that's part of our code as well so I like to know I covered every aspect that every contractor should know by their codes if they're doing business here in Angelo you should know our laws and our codes I've been doing this 25 years I worked out at the Bas it's not my first rodeo I know what I'm doing and I was up on that roof to help everybody as well as

[2:24:01] myself so I believe I I was a low bid I should be doing a job right now I should be on the roof on this beautiful day working but we're going to prolong this this is going to go probably another 30 to 90 days easy and I put in my bid that I can do this in 6 months and the reason why I did 6 months was because I had one unit that the factory can't get out for probably about two or three months so that's where I was at so I'm kind of upset that this all happened the way it did yeah was the email situation sending out wasn't my fault why should I be penalized so that's all I have to say thank [Music] you I'd like clarification on was this email system I want verify that the email was sent to all five people so five people received an email that said they got the job five people simultaneously received an email which should have gone only to the apparent low bidder that is correct I don't know how that happened um we worked with it to make sure whatever program was there would make sure it does not happen again I think so the other four biders what happened to them we subsequently sent out another email correcting it also to clarify and legal may want to chime in but these are the initial contacts those bids are not officially awarded until we come to this board so we initially try to notify people telling them where we are in the process how we've come along um and so forth so I agree that's they nobody in staff has the ability to award those bids it was just saying that this was going to be coming to council is what it should have said it was very convoluted as Daniel noticed when he read a version of it um which is just points to the fact that it needs to be

[2:26:03] redone we no matter who we award it to it's going to be open to challenge if we don't fix some of those things not to mention as Bob said there were things that we left out of the specs that we want to add back in So to kind of address the cost problem is going to be substantially the same but there are going to be some differences that could affect pricing that gives a little bit of you know everybody doesn't know exactly what people are going to bid so the fresh air dampers are now added to a part of this bid as well as the hell guards that is correct and we're going to do a very pinpoint review with City staff of this bid to make sure every every single detail is included and why were those missed initially because we goofed I goofed I didn't ask the right people okay yes Larry so what you're saying is if Mr Stewart hadn't told you about them probably would have been no hail guards or that other equipment is that correct that's one way of looking at it although I think the city inspectors would have got to it eventually but then what would have happened then depending on the legal issues it would have been a change order perhaps or we would have just had to separately put them on with another vendor or contract questions other questions other comments from from Council so I just as a to be sure comment are we sure moving forward that we of course today is just rejecting but of course the next question is are we sure we put this back out again that we have dotted all the eyes and crossed all the te's to ensure this doesn't come back up here

[2:28:06] again with additional specifications or changes relative to what we expect in the bids I think we share that goal all right further public comment seeing none we will now take a vote all those in favor of rejecting this initial oh yes I didn't I'm sorry okay all right so we will now take a vote all those in favor of rejecting the bids please say I I so the bid is rejected by a 60 vote we will move on to item D first reading and public hearing of ordinances for the following cases for property being 11 acres located at the northwest corner of Gregory Drive in Smith Boulevard and Rick would you like to make an announcement if I can get my mic turn on there it goes um just to let everyone know and to not really welcome because he's he's been here a good while but uh Aaron anoi will be taking the role as our new planning director for the city of St Angelo and so we want to welcome him officially into that capacity he's kind of been serving in that role as you've seen him up here a lot over the last few months he's done an outstanding job in keeping all those balls in the air and flowing and um so we haven't added any additional staff yet so we still have the same number but I wanted to officially announce that to the community and welcome him so congratulations thank you thank you I'm very honored and and humbled to serve in that capacity and and step into that role it's going to be challenging for me a new uh challenge which I always enjoy and we do have a great core of staff and we hope to continue to do our best for the citizens of St Angelo thank you you're on on multiple levels you're on all

[2:30:10] right did we get through that first caption I think I read none of it okay so to be clear okay item D first reading of public hearing of ordinances for the following cases for property being 11 acres located at the northwest corner of Gregory Drive and Smith Boulevard one CP 23-6 A requests for an amendment to the comprehensive plan changing the future land use from commercial to neighborhood and to z23 d18 a request to reone from the office commercial Zone Zing District to single family residential zoning District all right thank you mayor again uh Aon Venoy director of planning and development services this is a comprehensive plan and resoning for this 11 acres here at Smith Boulevard you can see here on the image where Smith Boulevard does go back into the paulan neighborhood and the corner of Gregory there just off the Houston heart uh freeway so we are looking to rezone this from Office commercial to single family residential and I believe the comprehensive plan was commercial and we are res uh changing that back to Neighborhood this is District 4 uh Miss Lucy Gonzalez in the pauland neighborhood so here you can see the zoning of the area you can see that just to the north of this property is RS3 and so that allows uh zero lot line Twin Homes those type of residential structures I know that this developer has been working with that developer to the North which is a a great uh idea because it is very flat but as you get closer to the freeway there is some drainage items that they will solve at the uh subdivision part here we're just trying to create some more zoning uh for some more residential um properties so we did send out 13 notices uh we did not receive any in support or in opposition um Paul Anne is a primarily residential neighborhood uh

[2:32:15] with Howard College on kind of the Northeast that anchors it across the road is our industrial park and then uh as you go back to the west to Bell Street there's a little bit more retail commercial along Houston Hart is commercial and I might go back one just one slide you can see some commercial areas there we're going to uh potentially continue to keep that commercial buffer there R off of Houston Hart the biggest challenge is uh just transportation and over time as we make decisions uh at the council level about that entire neighborhood we'll have to think think about those Transportation things of how do we get people to go down Rick's drive back to Bell Street or do you come back around uh to connect back to Houston Hart uh this residential uh and comprehensive plan from commercial to neighborhood and from Office commercial to single family residential did go before Planning Commission in January they voted 60 in favor and it is the staff's recommend uh recommendation to approve both the comprehensive plan change and the zone change with that I'll take any questions Lucy you're on thank you mayor um how many houses are y'all planning or do you know that there might be planning on building there we haven't really had those discussions yet they're still working on their uh preliminary plant and final plant as those come forward we'll have a more of an idea of the lot layout I do know that the developer is here in the audience today and he may have a better idea of exactly how many houses he's looking at well the way we all know is that the city's always always looking for homes being built and um I think this is a great idea I live over there that's my neighborhood so I am not opposed to them going on and building that uh vacant lot that I've seen for 30 years but um yes I'm very much in favor of this so my re or my um you would like to make a motion there you go thank you I'm so glad you can read no you can read my mind I would like to make a motion to approve as presented second there's a motion and a

[2:34:20] second I'll open it up for public comment seeing none we'll take a vote all those in favor of approving please say I I motion passes 70 we'll move to item e first reading and public hearing of ordinances for the following cases one CP 23-05 a request for an amendment to the comprehensive plan changing from commercial to Neighborhood Center being 3.72 Acres located at 1621 and 1705 North chern Street and 22 21 18 17 and 15 West 17th Street and 22 18 16 10 and six West 16th Street and to Z 23-19 a request to rezone from The General commercial heavy commercial zoning District to the lowrise multif family residential zoning District being 482 Acres located at 1621 North chadburn Street Aon thank you mayor again Aaron Venoy U director of planning and development services um again apologize for the lengthy U captions that we have but we just want to Encompass all of our property that we are looking to uh do the comprehensive plan and the rezoning so this came to us from a person that has purchased the property at 1621 North chadburn Street they wanted to do some Remodel and Renovations on a historically overlaid property that many many years ago had been converted to some apartments um we do find that that was uh historically overlaid back in the 80s and so those apartments probably were changed back in the 70s um we just don't exactly know when those those apartments took place but for him to move forward we wanted to get the proper zoning so that he could offer apartment living there uh again on one of our

[2:36:22] major corridors uh that it fits in appropriately with with the zoning around so the the the comprehensive plan takes in a little bit more land area and I'll show you on a slide in just a moment and then the rezoning takes place only there at that 1621 that you see highlighted in red right now that property is about uh is 482 Acres uh it is in District 4 Lucy Gonzalez and the neighborhood is Reagan and we are changing from General uh commercial heavy commercial to an rm1 to allow a lowrise multif family and to change from the comprehensive plan of commercial to Neighborhood Center so these two slide or this slide with these two images will make a little more sense you see chadburn bisects that bright red area and you see kind of the pink to the north and south on the left image talking about the neighborhood in the future land on the left side that North or the southern block of 17th the North and South block of that those are properties as well as the southern or the northern block of 16th Street those areas right there are what we're doing with the comprehensive plan um that is changing that to match those areas that are to the north and to the South to that neighborhood center we did not see that that was appropriate for that to be heavy commercial especially since our residential in that area kind of encroaches quite a bit we did talk with the neighborhoods uh quite a bit to talk about those things and they wanted to to stay kind of a neighborhood feel even that close to uh chadburn so if you look to the right now you can see the cgc um that kind of just doesn't Encompass that full breath there but just a little bit there we did find it appropriate to change that for this residential structure so that it can go back to a lowrise residential structure so with that we did send out 43 notices uh we had five in support you can see that they're kind of sprinkled around the one in opposition they actually have lived across from that house for many many decades they've

[2:38:24] actually seen that house as they grew up um and they gave us a little bit of the history of the house that they're uh that we're actually still researching that there potentially was a former mayor that lived in that house uh we're still researching that to to get some more information which I think is another reason why it was historically overlaid um but so far most of the neighborhood is in support of changing the comprehensive plan and the resoning so here's what the staff does recommend as well as the Planning Commission to change that um for the comprehensive plan from the commercial down to a neighborhood commercial which which will still allow some Light commercial but it does also allow the residential uh for all of those addresses there along 17th uh and 16th as well as the one on North chadburn and then the approval of the r 1 lowrise multif family at the 1621 North chadburn with that I'll be happy to answer any questions again Lucy you are on thank you mayor Erin uh the one person that opposed what was what was their problem what were they challenging they really didn't want significant changes to the property they didn't want a new property owner to come in and change it significantly um fortunately the property is historically overlaid and so the exterior of the property that's under the design and histor commission's authority of how that's going to look uh and we have expressed that to the new property owner and they understand that process so that was their main concern so we think their main concern has been solved um but they they still showed up as an opposition well like our paperwork said uh this is going to bring new life to that property it's going to enhance that side of town and again not only homes but our community is in need of Apartments yes so for that I make a motion to approve as presented thank you second by Harry public comment seeing none we'll take a vote

[2:40:27] those in favor say I I I are there any opposed seeing none motion passes 70 we'll move to item F first reading and public hearing of an ordinance for z 23-2 a request to reone from the light manufacturing zoning District to The General commercial zoning District being 7.39 Acres located at 926 humble Road thank you mayor again Aaron Venoy uh director of Planning Development Services we're at 926 Hubble Road that's at the North part of our town off of Highway 87 and you see Hubble Road uh dissects there and goes back um to I believe Lake Drive or maybe chadburn Street uh this is a property where most of the area uh to the north of here uh starts becoming light manufacturing this also was light manufacturing but a financial institution came and said hey we would really like to to look at that property and we said well let's rezone it down to General commercial that's going to allow you to come in and do and and serve your customers the way you want to uh this also gives us an opportunity uh where this property can be now uh General commercial it allows um us to kind of have a lower intensity uh at the ENT of one of our major entrances of our town this is in District 2 Mr Tom Thompson in the Riverside Neighborhood the total property is about 7.39 acres and we are uh asking for a rezoning from the light manufacturing to The General commercial so you can see here off to the east um there is the ranch in Estates that are very very large properties you can see they're very some of them are maybe from this image look skinny but and long but remember that subject property is 7 Acres and so those are actually pretty good size properties to the South uh is of some properties that we just rezoned in the uh previous months to The General commercial um as well as to I believe we did a little bit of heavy commercial in there for some equipment sales and so this area of our town is growing as we grow out on 87

[2:42:30] going north um and so we our vision plan is commercial in this area and so to move things from like manufacturing to commercial along this major cdor makes a lot of sense the staff's recommendation is to approve this to move from The General commercial to light manufacturing it was presented Planning Commission they voted 60 in favor and with that I will answer any questions Tom no both parties involved the the house just to the east is the one that's actually selling the property they want this to go through there's no objections I move to approve as presented is there second second by Karen public comment you know the only question I have is the following and that is um really a statement more than anything so as we talk about the i27 corridor and the impact and I look at Bryant Boulevard which is obviously going to be i27 ultimately down the road have we do we have enough width left and right to accommodate expansion for future Interstate we do talk with Tex do on that a lot especially since ' 87 is a Tex dot they believe believe they do it at this time anytime we have a property like this that fronts we might send them just a memo during the the rezoning process but especially this property being an abstract they will have to go through a subdivision and so then we get their full comments of what needs to be done and if anymore land needs to be dedicated so we will be going through that process as the next step okay thank you did I ask for public comment okay so then I'll ask for a vote all those in favor say I I motion passes 70 we will move into item G first reading and public hearing of an ordinance for z23 D21 a request to expand the open structure overlay map to include the following area evangelo Heights neighborhood the 1,000 3,000 and

[2:44:35] 4,000 blocks of Catalina Drive 2,000 and 3,000 blocks of new ASA Drive Neisha Drive 1,000 block of Louise Drive 1,000 block of Cordell Drive 2700 block of Unice drive and the 2700 block of erling drive again you're on Aaron thank you Mayon um again Aaron Venoy director of Planning Development Services this came to us through a process that we had a couple of projects go before our Zoning Board of adjustment uh they had a uh some carports that did not conform we did determine that they were not in the open structure overlay and it didn't allow them to have those uh structures therefore the Zoning Board of adjustment asked this to go to the Planning Commission at least for a discussion to see if the Planning Commission was in favor of moving this uh open structure overlay to the north to the specific neighborhood and that's what's brought uh for you uh today and so as I kind of zoom in I have this screen right here that pink right now that is our open structure overlay map that we have for our community uh as you can see it it sees quite a bit of our older um neighborhoods but not all of our neighborhoods obviously there are some neighborhoods uh that don't have this in so as we go to the next screen it kind of dials into where we're at with Glenna Edmund and really the the 29th kind of corridor right through there uh OC Fisher just to the north and Kirby Community Park uh in that area so you see this neighborhood was just kind of excluded at the time the open structure overlay map was created in 2003 I believe um and it just didn't include this area this area started developing in the early 60s particularly Catalina Drive that went in and had some Riverfront uh area and also had some areas that were protected by uh government lands and so those houses developed first and then the kind of the

[2:46:37] uh infill happened after that so we've seen houses in there all the way from the early 60s all the way to the early 2000s right now those Red Pins represent some open structures uh that would meet our open structure uh map um but you see several of them are outside of the map U that were created without the the proper steps to go through to create those so we did send out a lot of notices this is a lot of neighborhood uh to send out uh 231 notices were mailed out we found uh 21 in support that were sent back one in opposition right up here by the river their their opposition was they were um in fear that the open structure map extension and allowing these car ports may have some impact on their uh property values um we haven't necessarily seen that through our other open structures as most of those property values over time have increased uh for various reasons uh and it does take individual owner responsibility of how they they maintain that um at this point I'll just remind you we are doing just the map extension into this area the zoning text that allows that the what the structure looks like is staying intact it would still apply to these structures so we may still have to do a few more things to help these folks come into compliance but we're not asking to change the text of the ordinance at this time so with that staff has the recommend recommendation of approval of extension of the open structure overlay map into this Angelo Heights neighborhood Hood uh the Planning Commission did see this in January and they did vote uh 6 to zero in favor with that I'll be happy to answer any questions whose district is this in okay then you're on one more time uh Rick gave me a heads up on this uh well over a month ago I've talked to two or three people this is a great first step errand in cleaning a lot of these things up and moving forward I think this what we do here will probably move to other parts

[2:48:39] of St Angelo but it's it's the good first step the best first step to kind of get all this clean so I move to approve is presented second second by Tommy public comment walk slowly how are y'all this morning well we're good um I live at 1719 Catalina I'm in in favor for the overlay I'm not clear uh I went to the planning meeting when this happened or or when it came about and they were saying about not grandfathering any of the structures and uh I've lived there for 48 years bought the house brand new a lot of those uh awnings were there before I got there and um the overlay or the ordinance and the way it reads of what you have to do to uh me meet compliance of the new way to build a structure attached to the house is going to be um I they didn't show a picture of what these awnings look like but the awnings that were built back in those days were of aluminum structure with corrugated steel and you could build those and were accepted at the time for relatively cheap not cheap but you know what they're saying to do with the overlay now for people going forward and if you can't keep the structure that you've got and try to make it match what your uh ordinance says you have to do you're talking about anywhere from 10 to 25,000 to build one of these things whereas um a structure uh that's already there might have CA

[2:50:45] cost 2 to 3,000 and I'm just wanting a clarification or if there is a clarification on grandfathering or how they're going to approach that if you do meet the criteria of what the overlay says that you have to meet and that you're an open structure um I don't know if he can answer any questions on that or not or I think they're appropriate questions and I think we certainly need some answers on those good points so Aon if you'd like to come forward and answer those um because what does grandfather mean obviously if it's already built we're not going to make them rebuild it to meet different qualifications now right and we're also basically trying to determine the age of that structure was it built before the open structure overlay even came into effect then that's probably what the traditional term of grandfathered really means if that structure is there it's been there we're not going to make any modifications to it the ones that came forward they were structures that have been built in the last couple of years and we're going to have to work with them maybe through an administrative process maybe through our Zoning Board of adjustment if there's some things um that need to be corrected one of them they came all the way to the property line it's supposed to be 3T back but we can work through that to to help that property owner specifically understand the biggest challenge that most of them have is they didn't go through the building permit process they didn't actually use a contractor that chose to get a permit from the city to legalize those structures so we just want to make sure that we helped clean it up correctly again we are going to be looking at that age of that structure we're going to probably uh work with our Zoning Board of adjustment as well as City staff of all right what does our ordinance say we do talk about some slope and some roofing material but maybe there's some color changes that could happen that could meet the intent and so we're not having to rebuild structures or take structures down there may be some minor modifications on some but we don't anticipate that on all 12 that we've been that we've identified will the administ

[2:52:49] administrative time and effort on doing what you just said is going to be cumbersome is it not well we've identified around 12 right now there may be 12 to 14 that are out there so we don't have a significant number uh that of structures that are built that appear to be in some kind of outof compliance element uh so we don't believe that's going to be significant we are going to uh send letters to them ask them to come in and sit down and visit with us so that we can work with them oneon-one on what their specific needs are for their property and see if we can resolve some of those issues but just to clarify at the end of the day they still have to meet the intent of what the policy says and so no matter when it was built you know if it was built without a permit and it didn't meet the intent so you know the way it's written is you have to kind of retain the character of the house so if you just add it on a flat carport that's tacked on there that doesn't meet the intent of what the ordinance allows you to do and so while it does start allowing these people the right to have one which they didn't have before it gives them that right but they still have to meet the criteria that the ordinance says if it does not then the only way they can keep that is to get a variance through the process to make it all legal this just gives them the right to go ahead and do that when was the ordinance created I believe the open structure ordinance was created in 2003 if I'm it's either 2003 2006 but I think it was 2003 so the majority of these houses were built when I would say the majority of them were built um probably the I think I had a mean average of What date but I would say it was in the 60s and 70s yeah 60s and 7 I think the reason this area may have been left out before is there is a strip of a little bit newer houses in there as as well and so at that time they're like you know we don't want carports you know attacked on build a garage and so there

[2:54:51] was still some newer housing not today new but at the time newer so that's why it was probably left out in the in the first place so those homes that were built and uh carports added on prior to 2003 or 2006 whichever year we decided is the date there's no challenge or issue to those homes and those structures no there could be if if they're built illegally if they're not built with a permit and it's tacked on it still would you know just because the overlay came in not in this area it came in these other areas so this area has never had it so this is new to this area is just trying to incorporate this small piece that just makes sense to to be tacked on to the rest of that area where we will consider them so grandfather means what in this case there is no grandfathering corre happen yeah I think that we don't want to leave the impression that this is going to be an easy fix for all of these homeowners I think that there are options for them but for example the board of adjustment is very limited in the scope of how they can what they're supposed to be granting it shouldn't just be I feel bad for this guy because he did something he wasn't supposed to do there needs to be something significant that they're altering and he can't possibly meet the requirements so um I think what Rick was saying was right on that a lot of these buildings um they're going to still have to make some changes a lot of them will the real thing it does is the it it all the cases don't have to now go to the process it allows this to happen as long as they meet these criteria before it just didn't allow it to happen so you had to you had to go regardless for a variance in this case now if they can meet the intent of the ordinance they don't have to process through to the Planning Commission or the zba Zoning Board of adjustment yes so there may be some some variances needed on some of these structures okay so other questions or comments from Council okay so um we already had the motion in the second we had one public

[2:56:55] comment are there further public comments at this point Steve Steve Hampton uh district 6 um I think this is a governmental overstep I think this is uh trying to saddle uh a bron uh without any training I mean there's just no there's no requirement here there's no problems apparently and uh you know you're trying to force them to do things that they don't they don't really need to do I don't appreciate uh you know that I can understand a rule from now on but everybody ought to be able to uh grandfather just as it is and uh unless there is a individual between two neighbors problem uh and then you side with the the current regulation otherwise you know you're I don't I don't appreciate this at all this is my kind of this is up this is bad government to me uh these people uh you know they might have done something wrong um and if it falls down they can't rebuild it maybe but uh otherwise uh it ought to be left alone thank you so to be clear let's talk through this one more time so to be clear we are saying the following that we are expanding the boundaries of this over this open structure overlay there is a current open structure overlay map already correct yes and that map was created somewhere between 2003 or six which you guys will verify that year because that's pretty key to yes and so any area outside of that established map wouldn't allow an open structure at all so the other thing

[2:58:58] would be some people went ahead and put an open structure up so cor so the next step would be if we didn't extend it then the city has to choose do we go and enforce them and tell them to remove it and instead what we're asking to do is to extend the overlay and then work with these 12 people yes ma'am to make sure they're in compliance with the ordinance correct or the building codes correct okay any further explanation or clarification no but Brenda in research this is the best first step to give each one of these people individual representation to come back all right we can't blanket it from you know the back forward we got to do it from from the front out and go in but I I strongly agree that there's a bunch of these and if you drive through it several of them look like there won't be a problem there's a couple of them that there are going to be some things that don't have to be addressed but they have a process to come back and appeal for a variance that we will all get to make that decision just to make clear what talking about just get rid of the gray matter could I add a comment please come forward ask about I found a article I found a article in the standard times state your name again I'm sorry Carl word at uh 1719 Catalina Drive uh I found an article where um 95 they grandfathered all the houses through the 95 storm and on it this the article stated that they were grandfathered townwide and that they reduced the process on repairing homes and Roofing and stuff like that and what I want to reiterate is these awnings were built as what people were doing all over town I mean we we they haven't done anything exceptional in that area uh now you're asking to go to

[3:01:04] another criteria that it's got to be attached to the house has got to have the roof line the same as the house or in generality so what they're saying is a flat roof or a slightly sloped roof can't be used it's got to be attached to the house which at the time awnings weren't supposed to be attached to the house they could be standing separate and and now you're wanting them tied to the house and it's got to be with the roofing of what's on the house a lot of houses you're not going to be able to match that I guess that's a step but uh to build a structure like that is going to cost a person 20 I'm going to say 10 to 20,000 and uh whereas the earnings like uh U the guy that was speaking for us uh said that there's nothing wrong with these structures I mean they may need to be looked at that they are secure and that they are strong and that's what was said in '95 that people could keep their earnings as long as they met a super met a structural value that would last and there was no issue of them falling down or you know like they were already starting to be them minuted but there's a lot of metal roof out there all the ones that are out there are pretty secure and um to make those people try to get to the area of matching it to the house is going to be uh quite expensive I mean but that's I mean that's y'all's choice to put that on us or the people that's got awnings and um then we'll have to deal with that but I think really that it ought to be grandfathered and that's what I came up here to say I appreciate there be an article in a newspaper in 95 that would have given Direction I can whatever happened in 1995 in 2005 which is the

[3:03:09] date that Heather and I found Council instituted these rules regulating carports and what they're supposed to look like the staff really doesn't have any ability to deviate from what council has directed so if you want to not care about what carports look like then we would need to come and remove these Provisions from the code of ordinances so what they're getting today is actually a win as has been explained they have put these up illegally before you guys approve this if it gets approved our action would have been to force them to take it down now they're going to be allowed to keep it as long as they meet the requirements that have been in place since 2005 for carports so the 2005 is when the carport ordinance went in was approved that's what it appears yes but these these carports the way they're built you're and if they're on a slope and you've got a straight line house that's got a pitch the structure isn't going to allow you to pitch it to the house unless you tear down the whole structure and rebuil because if you've got a a slope like this and you need to tie that roof with a pitch to a house then you're going to have to raise the whole structure up which I guess can be done it it's it's just going to cost thank you a lot I just wanted to state that and and maybe y'all will see way through it thank you yes Larry Larry go ahead so if uh if these people have flat roofed awnings or carports and they're going to have to go to a pitched roof to comply with the design of the house as well as the roofing material it's it's possible the way the ordinance reads it says that it should be similar to the pitch of the house and it should be of a similar material and we would have to look at each individual

[3:05:11] one to see what's going on there has been in the past that there has been through the Zoning Board of adjustment that the material has been able to stay metal that they were just they added a texture to the paint and painted it the same color not saying that's going to be the way it is that's up to the Zoning Board of adjustment uh to make a decision on that if they need that type of variance some of these may have been built in the 90s is that correct I think it's possible I'm I've moved there in B the house and S sorry I'm sorry I I can speak pretty loud I know it's got be uh I moved there in I bought the house in 76 and there was probably five structures already there in' 76 I've lived there 48 years and there is I counted 16 in the neighborhood um he's and there may be 16 and he's saying there's 12 that that look like they're in compl iance but let me ask the question so usually the carport would would be the elevation should meet the front of the house not the pitch of the house so if the front of the house is like this and then goes up like this doesn't the carport go with this not with this well if you've got a the way I'm understanding it and he may can explain if you've got a pitched roof and you're going to build an awning out in front you got to keep that pitch coming all the way out is that not correct the ordinance really just basically gets out you need to keep with the character of the house which means keep the same you could drop down you could go up but keeping with the overall character of the RO so when it comes down to it each case is individual so if it's if it's not keeping with the character of the house then their option would be go get a variance um if it is clearly keeping with the character of

[3:07:13] the house then it doesn't require a variance so it really is going to be it depends you you're right if it's sloping off drastically 80% of them out there you've got to look at them individually are are not they're flat roofed now they may have a small pitch on them so they'll drain water but they're not a pitched roof coming out of the house and that means restructuring the whole structure and um there's a lot of I'm I don't mean to pry on that there's a lot of older people there there's young people coming in but there are a lot of um I'm going to say retired people there uh and it's going to be a cost factor to them thank you very much I've been told I have allowed far too much noise and so my my apologies for bringing you back up here and breaking the rules again Tommy did you have a just just comment we're having a lot of back and forth about structure and all that that is the reason we have a zoning Board of adjustment that is the things they will look at and that is their job to grant that um if in their opinion it's appropriate so that's the reason the process exists with the zba so this is to Rick's point it's it's it is going to be on a case-by Case basis and they do have a venue in which they will be able to make their case that is correct each each of those that if they desire to seek a variance they would have that opportunity to go to the Zoning Board of adjustment and it's similar to what uh Teresa also said is that if it's an ordinance item then maybe that's something on our wish list of all right do we need to change that for our community in the future yes Larry uh back to my my first point you have a structure that's built on 1990 and then all of a sudden you have an ordinances from

[3:09:16] 2003 um I hope you're relatively liberal with variances on this because you know as far as I can see those people didn't do anything wrong Larry if the structure was legal back then it will still be legal today correct if it was not legal back then then it unless they've gotten it cleared up between now and then then it will not be legal today but if they were legal then they're still legal okay correct for the questions or comments so I think we've had a lot of public comment at this point so it must be time for a vote all right with that those in favor of approving item G say I I any opposed passes 70 we will now move into item H first reading and public hearing of an ordinance for PD 23-8 a request to reone from the ranchin estate zoning District to the plan development zoning district with an underlining General commercial zoning allowing kennels parking exercise area staff area and the housing of dogs cats and small animals awaiting adoption being 5.43 6 Acres located at 1521 South Concho Park Drive and Aon once again you are on thank you mayor again Aaron Venoy uh director Planning Development Services uh many of us know this as the old fire training station that's there on Avenue L uh just across the Concho River the address is 1521 South koncho Park Drive which is actually addressed on the Concho Park Drive that goes through the park area through there uh it's 5.43 6 Acres uh it's currently zoned Ranch in estate uh and we are going to move it to a plan development uh so that the current shelter that's on 67 has a place to temporarily shelter their animals while they go undergo Renovations in our zoning ordinance it's

[3:11:18] very difficult to to find places to shelter animals um this actually is a a very good location from our perspective From staff's perspective because a it is city-owned uh it is away from a lot of residential although you do see to the kind of the Northeast there is single family residential but there's a lot of infrastructure through there and it prohibits some of the building of that property and then of course of course you have Christoval road that goes to the South there that has some residential this is in District 3 Harry Thomas in the Glenmore neighborhood so we did do an analysis of this because animal Sheltering uh can be very significant impact to our citizens and our neighborhoods and so we did go through that again this is a request just for temporary Sheltering this is not a long-term request uh and it's while the shelter under go Renovations so again it allows those things that the mayor mentioned about kennels for Animals exercise areas for Animals offices for staff and parking for staff and citizens the commercial District um the commercial underlying zoning District would allow these activities and and potential for weekend adoption events if as needed uh particularly when they start having uh crowding concerns and if they needed that as an area to do some shelter uh some adoptions they would have that ability um we also think this location is very Central to our community uh it is uh still distance from some residential areas areas Avenue L is a major thoroughfare and so access to it is is very easy for our citizens and visitors and again just to to mention to our citizens that are watching that this is a temporary situation uh once the the conditions placed on the plan development allows the property to convert back if any portion of the property is sold in the future it could be the entire property or just a portion it would revert back uh to its current status today um and City staff would assist in the U if that sale of that property goes through then may we would help them get to whatever need zoning that they would need at that time this did go to our Planning Commission they did recommend uh uh in

[3:13:22] favor 6 to zero back in January we did put uh four conditions on it um talking about signage uh lighting the site development plan would be just reviewed as normal uh in case they do have to add some outdoor kennel space or some exercise area and again that condition about the sale that it would revert back to the general en commercial District um if there's a sale of the property with that I'll be happy to answer any questions the time frame of temporary right now we have it uh on the the sale there was discussion at Planning Commission but it was not placed in the um recommendation going forward was a five-year time limit um talking with Bob Solace um he does not think it's going to take that significant of a time but he's looking he's like well we need something maybe 12 months maybe 18 months but we're not completely sure um but again we feel very safe that it is an owned city property the city gets to um dictate what actually can go in there the reason we chose um to do the commercial in case one of our other departments needed to do some storage there or things like that at that property they wouldn't have to come back and get a rezoning for that even if the sale of the property didn't happen Harry I think it's a great place uh and certainly an opportunity to to house those animals while we're working on the uh shelter out on 67 so from my perspective I'll make a motion to approve as presented second second by Lucy I have a question uh yes please uh someone uh spoke to me about this and they had concerns over the plumbing sewer water at that area hasn't been used in quite some time so it somewhat possible I wondered if you had checked that out is something that they were going to work with a contractor when they do some light renovation to this area they're going to check all those systems because they know they're going to need those systems when they start Sheltering animals so they have a plan

[3:15:24] for that I don't know that it's actually been checked yet but I know they plan on doing that have you have you also considered noise abatement we did discuss that with them while we were developing this PD and so they're aware that that could become an issue and so they are going to look at some mitigating efforts fortunately it is all closed but again again we know that kennels don't always keep noise inside uh so they're going to be keeping monitoring of that and see if they need to do something to mitigate it thank you other questions or comments from Council public comment seeing none we'll take a vote all those in favor please say I I with none opposed item H is passed 7 that concludes our regular agenda which means we will be moving into the closed session executive session on the provision of government code Title 5 open government ethics subtitle a open government chapter 551 open meetings sub chapter D exceptions to requirement that meetings be open under the following sections a section 55107 2 deliberations about real property regarding the commercial lease with sports next level B section 551.071 deliberations about real property at 7409 nicera Road item c section 551 072 deliberations about real property at 505 South chadburn item d section 551.071 consultation with attorney regarding risk management claims item e section 551.071 consultation with attorney regarding short-term rentals at this point which is 12:02 we will move into executive session it looks like it's going to be a long one is being called back to order at 1:35 p.m. on this February the 20th of 2024 there are no announcements to be

[3:17:29] made from our closed session so we will immediately go into item um a 81 consider request for an appeal of the planning commission's denial of conditional use 23-53 for a short-term rental located at 2301 Palms Court and Aaron you are on thank you mayor again Aaron Venoy director of planning and development services we have this uh appeal of a denied conditional use for 2301 Palms Court the conditional use was going to be for short-term rental the uh zoning is rs1 zoning district one Mr Thomas Hebert in the nasworthy neighborhood you can see the subject property there uh and you can see the garage and the parking you can just see off to the right side so out in our nasworthy neighborhood uh we currently have uh seven approved short-term rentals you can see the applicant is way up here at the top um we've had one that's expired has not come forward and then there were two that were denied previously here's the notification map uh if you notice a you just kind of highlight that green circle there were 11 properties that that green circle touched uh we sent out 11 notices there were zero in favor within that I did go back and re- research that this this morning again because we were struggling on whether that is but that should be one in favor there was one outside of the area that was in favor of this being and so it is one in favor so I want to make that very clear for everybody uh on city council and out to the public there were five within the um the circle that were um opposed and then there were four within the 500 foot uh subject uh property let me get that off real quick so currently the staff's position is to recommend approval of the

[3:19:33] conditional use based on Section 406 of our ordinance uh for a use of short-term rental at 2301 Palms Court at the Planning Commission it was voted - to deny the conditional use and thus the appeal here uh and with that I'll be happy to answer any questions Tommy I'm gonna let you open up thanks mayor um Aon is my understanding that this was operating as a short-term rental without having gone through the process yes I believe they have advertised and have been operating for a period of time I was very unclear as I went through the research on how long that's been but they are here to maybe speak to that but I believe it's been less than a year but they could probably help clear that up for me okay well then maybe I'll I'll save uh my other question or another question for the for the applicant uh another question I how many are allowed in this particular property based on size beds or parking or whatever how many are allowed in that particular property well based on their application where they listed four bedrooms we would allow two adults per bedroom so that would be a maximum of eight staying overnight and that's what their application requests and how much parking off street parking is required for eight well we require the the two the two parking spots and then for every room after that they would need one parking space and so that would be a five they actually have six parking spaces currently that are outside of the r way so that's all on their private part uh private property okay all right um and then I do again I guess I have the the question for the applicant whenever that's appropriate mayor you want to just do it now applicant will come forward okay um my question is um have the have the are the taxes paid current since it's been operating apparently as a short-term rental do we have a the applicant here come

[3:21:40] up uh hi my name is Joel Amos Gordon I an attorney that was hired to represent the homeowners uh this is Mr sour sards I'm sorry with a d like Howard just with an S and Miss grubs um and I I think that um part of the part of the issue as far as the denial previously there was a misunderstanding uh my clients never received notice of the hearing so they didn't attend and based on my viewing of the hearing uh because they didn't attend the Planning Commission basically said well we're just going to deny it um and so that is a different position that is taken now and I'm I'm glad to see that uh they're now uh um recommending approval um and I'll just go briefly to answer your question if if you will sir um the property was purchased in September of last year by my clients they operated it uh as an Str Str uh very briefly just a couple weeks before they were notified that and and and part of that was a misunderstanding on their part they thought under the IRS Augusta rule they could uh lease it out for up to 14 nights uh they were told that that was incorrect they realized that was incorrect and as soon as they were informed of that they did stop and so it has been uh vacant during this whole process from uh October um so just a couple weeks after they uh they purchased the property until today uh and and of course we are uh requesting the approval um I believe that Mr sour can probably answer your question about the taxes yeah so like come come to the microphone please sure so Justin sards 2301 Palms Court um so yeah we were under the impression on the Agusta rule that we'd be allowed at least a short term to just kind of test the market to see if there's a market there we originally brought the property for our own Homestead but we also are business owners and we work and have children in Midland so we're having to go back and

[3:23:43] forth quite a bit and so we just thought to uh maximize the property is a million dollar property uh there's quite a price tag on that to help offset some of that and some of that travel that we would do a little Str Str maybe just mostly to friends and family but to help offset some of the cost of what we're doing we had no evil intentions in mind and of course we have a million-dollar property here so we're not trying to rent it out to the Spring Breakers uh you know folks like us that you know the reason we your town is and we become a member of your your city is because we get to come here and relax uh we get to come here and enjoy the the lake and uh everything that has to offer and so we want to rent to those kind of folks and so just like any business owner or somebody that was attempting to open a business we wanted to test the waters a little bit and so we thought we'd uh while we and at at this point we had already uh spent the money and applied for our certificate and we were thought out we were under uh our privil to rent it out a little bit and see if it was going to take and if it was what we might be able to expect for it we're not uh business or real estate developers or anything like that we just uh you know kind of knew at it we thought we followed the rules we matter of fact we contacted the city on a few occasions and uh you know try to get some direction as far as should we be a a BNB you know how much we can stay in it how much we don't need to stay in it what rules we follow under and so it's been pretty much a big Labor uh trying to get here and so yes we rented it four times four times to very Discerning people uh who had nothing but great things to say about our city and the house itself and so um but once we understood that the city was mad at us we stopped immediately we got our letter and we were actually expecting the letter that came to say that we were approved and you know welcomed to doing business in St Angelo and it was you're denied and we really didn't in the letter itself it said we we met met all the check boxes but we didn't show up but unfortunately we were never informed

[3:25:46] that we should have showed up as a matter of fact we were kind of left on the impression as long as we did check all the boxes there wouldn't be a need for us to plead our case and so uh you know regrettably we didn't make the December uh meeting but we are here now and we wanted to make sure that we had all the representation we needed yeah Joel Joel Gordon again um the the Planning Commission did send them a notice of the hearing they just didn't receive it it was a return to the to the planning Division and so my clients didn't noce show up that it wasn't that they weren't notified they just never got the notice that was sent sorry no no problem no problem so anyway definitely uh definitely was not any kind of uh you know evil or anything planned on our part we weren't trying to step out of line as a matter of fact to be quite Frank uh we really didn't have a whole lot of attention we try to use the place as often as we can so we don't want to do a long-term rental because we like to come about once a month and stay the weekend if we can we do more like I said we're we're both business owners as well as uh you know we work and have kids in Midland so it requires quite a bit of our time to be in Midland as well so so do you have a local operator that will be a contact for so that would be us we can be here in a matter of an hour and a half we also have folks that live locally that if something bad was to happen or she and I or I could drop what was going on if something should happen to the house and be here just about as quickly as anybody that lives in town so you're prepared to do that 2 or 3:00 in the morning Absolut absolutely somebody I'm I'm from the oil field 2 or 3:00 in the morning it's 2 or 3:00 in the afternoon to me so yes sir absolutely okay that that's all the questions I have right now mayor are there questions uh from Council I spoke to a gentleman uh in the break and he seems to be the owner of an unoccupied lot that's next door I couldn't tell from the pictures if there's another

[3:27:48] residence on the other side there are no residents immediately surrounding on both sides of us there's no residents uh on the I guess would be the um the south side of us the the right hand side of us there's two empty lots there's an empty lot outside of the propane tank that resides right beside our house uh and then there's a residence just other side of that pict see if I get you an image oh oh perfect thank you it's not the greatest as good as it's going to get yeah Larry there's there's nothing there there's there's no residence on either side of them on one of the sides there's no residence for two two uh properties and they the gentleman that you're referring to we talked to him a little bit he's actually the third property I think he might be this red yeah star down this red star right there I think he's that property's not on the lake side are there any indications that somebody's going to develop either those lots on both sides of us probably us to be honest with you we're trying to look at the property right next to us this one here uh it's possibly build a house so at least for a reasonable time in the future those are unoccupied Lots yes sir and they have been for quite a while to be honest with you there hasn't been much movement in that neighborhood in a little bit since about 2019 when it was developed I believe I don't think there's been any new built since looks like there's a new one going in down into the CAC down there other questions or comments all right then um Tommy would you like to make a motion mayor I'd uh I'd make a motion to overturn the denial of the Planning Commission I'll excuse me um if I could chime in the code does require that the operator resides in Tom Green County Texas just so you're aware so we will require you to have somebody local who sure can be reached as operator sorry go ahead all right so there's a motion in a second any further public

[3:29:57] comment you've had a lot of patience today dear yes I was gonna say good morning but it's afternoon now so good afternoon uh my name is m quter I'm a member of the PS Community I did prepare a draft so I'm just going to go ahead and read from that just to make sure we don't miss anything so I stand here before y'all today um to express my firm opposition to the approval of the appeal my concerns are deeply rooted in a clear and undeniable contradictions of the city of St Angelo ordinance specifically chapter 12 exhibit a article 4 section 406 and that's what they were referencing so the ordinance mandates that the property owners of a short-term ridal must appoint an operator who resides in the county this is a crucial requirement designed to ensure that any property issues can be addressed prop promptly maintaining the peace and integrity of our inter um sorry our community however the application for this uh filed by Crystal grabs and Justin sards as operators appear to disregard this essential requirement public records in conversations notably with Austin Reed affirm that the operator must not only be designated but actively reside in the county the publicly accessible tax and property records reveal that neither um property owner possess a residence within the county other than the property in question first further compounding these concerns are the finding from the Midland um sorry the Midland Central Appraisal District which indicate that both Property Owners independently own properties in mland Texas where they both claim homestead exemptions this fact coupled with their employment in Midland and their roles with sards company LLC also based out of Midland Texas strong strongly suggests their permanent residence is not in our County but in Midland County the significance of these findings cannot be overstated sorry okay this has been a long experience for us um the ordinance in question is designed not only to ensure operational accountability but also to preserve the residential character of our neighborhoods the return in the original meeting notice by or to Miss Bailey as undeliverable which is the um notice they we're referring to further underscores the lack of a

[3:32:00] genuine permanent connection to the Tom Green County by the property owners in the denial letter from the planning committee they did State they attempted to notify the property owners of the December 18th meeting put return to Cinder it is for these reasons that I urge city council to deny deny this appeal approval of this appeal would not only contravene the explicit stipulations for our local ordinance but it also said a concerning precedence that undermines the Integrity of our community's regulations and ordinances the fact that these property owners have acknowledged these regulations by initialing the application back in October 2023 yet appear to be or yet appear to continue to claim homestead exemptions in another County further highlights a distri card for the legal and ethical standards expected for short-term operators in our community in conclusion I respectfully request that the council uphold the Integrity of our ordinances and deny the appeal based on clear violations presented thank you for your time and consideration in this matter thank you thank you further public comment I just wanted to let you know your name my name is Lucy Rees I own the property to the left of 2301 so there is an owner there we own both Lots at 2317 and 2309 I just wanted to state that there is an owner there's no house on it but you own the Lots pardon there's no house on yes my house sits on both of these Lots 2309 and 23177 okay thank you that's all further public comment question for Teresa yes um or maybe Aon and Teresa um before they proceed would it be before they proceed or would it be before a COO certific

[3:34:03] certificate of occupancy is issued that they will supply a resident of Tom Green County as the local operator would that either be before they're able to proceed or before the certificate of occupancy is issued when when when would we have them Supply that name that could be the a condition of the conditional use that uh they would Supply that on their application they did list Miss grubs as living in the home uh and we did look up at Tom Green County appraisal and they do have home ownership there which is what we normally do but I would put it as a conditional of of the conditional use and we would not move we would move forward with them starting the the co process but we would not issue a certificate of occupancy until we uh solved all those other issues okay then I mayor mayor I would like to amend my motion to include that in there before uh wherever it's most appropriate Aaron you working with the legal department or whomever that uh we have the name address cell phone number of a local Tom Green County preferably city of St Angelo resident before before anything is finalized uh so I I would amend my motion to include that okay yes Larry there any requirement that the uh person operating the Str Str uh maintains a home with a homestead exemption in the county that the Str strr is located not a requirement for the homestead exemption uh the only requirement is the owner or operator to reside within Tom Green County further questions further comments I would I would say I I would assume we would need an amended second I'm not up we'll do that there's a motion an amended motion

[3:36:08] correct an amended second yep public comment on the amended no comment on the amended so with that we will take a vote those in favor of the denial based off the amended motion please say I hang on hang on hang on we're not denying we're seeking to overturn overturn the denial of the planning commiss we seeking to overturn the denial correct and we'll take so we're denying the overturning but yeah it's kind of the same but whatever we get that language corrected yeah overturned or denied we're going with the staff recommendation with our amendments yes yes so let's make sure we take that vote all in favor of that say I I motion passes 70 we will now move into 8B which is consider approving various Board number ations Economic Development Corporation Rick Mantooth for mayor Clifton Jones smd1 and Joe Spano smd2 all to a second term ending February 2026 construction Board of adjustments and appeals Michael Spencer smd1 to a second term ending February 2026 and public art commission Katherine bunker SMD Fortune unexpired term ending April 2025 may I have a motion for approval of of the board nominations as read okay Larry made the motion Harry seconded any public comment on these board nominations seeing none we'll take a vote all those in favor say I I motion passes 70 we will now move to item C which is announcements and consideration of future agenda items and the one item we need to discuss is dates and scheduling

[3:38:10] for the strategic planning workshop May this is the mayor this is the followup to the meeting we had previously um the dates that I have on here are March 28th April 9th or April 23rd and I wanted to get the city council's recommendation what you all what what would be most appropriate or the best timing for yall April 23rd April 23rd what's that did you did you throw I did March 28th April 9th and April 23rd April 23rd April 23rd anybody have a problem with April 23rd I can't do March 28th well let me rephrase that April 2 April April oh April I'm sorry April 203rd 23rd oh it's it's either April 20 M March 28th or April 23rd well I just said let's take a vote on April 23rd so I'm good if there's no one can do that we'll move to another date but the first discussion is April 23rd 23rd looks good anybody have a problem with April 23rd no then that's our date okay what time 8:30 8:30 in the morning we'll meet here here okay with that I may I have a motion for adjournment second fourth let's take a vote all in favor say I I motion approved it is officially adjourned at 1:57 p.m. we officially made the 2:00 deadline

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