City Council - Regular Meeting

They have the authority of the jail. We do not. The next one I have is the, also Marshall, is Texas Transportation Code 551 and 552. So, Marshall, name and address for the record, and then three minutes to address those numbers.

So, 7402 Pleasant Oak Road, Temple, Texas, and Marshall Cabrera is my name. Thank you. Texas Transportation Code 551.001, unless specifically provided otherwise, a provision of this chapter that applies to a person operating a bicycle applies only to a person operating a bicycle on a highway or a path set aside for the exclusive operation of bicycles. This was last amended in 2019. Texas Transportation Code 551.14, safety equipment. A person may not operate a bicycle unless the bicycle is equipped with a brake capable of making a brake wheel skid on dry level clean pavement. B, a person may not operate a bicycle at nighttime unless the bicycle is equipped with a lamp on the front of the bicycle that emits a white light visible from a distance of at least 500 feet in front of the bicycle and on the rear of the bicycle a red reflector that is of a type approved by the department and visible when directly in front of lawful upper beams of motor vehicles. of motor vehicle headlamps from all distances from 50 to 300 feet to the rear of the bicycle or a lamp that emits a red light visible from a distance of 500 feet to the rear of the bicycle. That was last amended in 2001. A highway is just that, a highway. It does not carry the definition that is given from the term phrase highway or street. Is there a reason why Belton Police Department insists on abusing these codes after being told about them? Is it because it's a public safety concern? Or does they need to ask the state why they didn't consider public safety when they amended this code? It was last amended in 2019. That means the state looked at it, reconsidered everything, including public safety, and kept it the same. The abuse of Texas Transportation Code 551.001 led to more abuse that I experienced in 2023. of 552.006, putting directional walking restrictions on private property. Again, the word highway does not include a street. And with all those violations, because I'm not the only one, comes with violations of Texas Code of Criminal Procedure 1.06. This is incorrectable by a complaint of a citizen. I've tried and spoke to Captain Spurgeon, And he stands firm in this abuse. He said he went to law school, so he knows everything there is to know about the law, and there is no correcting him. This is the second time I've said something about this. Laws are written to mean what they say, and vocabulary terms and phrases cannot be broken down and keep the same intention. That leads to the total abuse of the law and has and has and keeping this quiet as abuse of authority by keeping this from formerly being investigated. I received a charge from solely being in violation of 551.104 and that case is 23 CCR 03701. That charge was later dismissed because. It was being enforced where it doesn't apply. In 2023, I've also received a ticket for the same reason and was taken to jail the same night and later pled guilty to that ticket. That was an unlawful debt collection and a completely different incident from the one I received a charge from. That's your time.

All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. Marshall, this is your second time. So we appreciate that. There's a concern that you have what I would say is the city has taken note and they will be sending you either correspondence to talk to us. I would also say from as far as transportation codes, we can't modify those. So that's not under our purview as far as interpretation of those codes. That's typically done either in civil or in. Criminal courts, and so that's that's really that's more lawyers than it is counsel. We, there's nothing that we can do on any of those. So, just just FYI, we'll be sending you a letter. Appreciate it.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, does anyone else wish to address the council on any subject? That relates to what we can do. All right, there being no other comments, we will now move to the consent agenda item 3 items 3 and 4 may be enacted by a single motion. I will read them into the record. Council may remove 1 or both of these items to discuss and. Vote on separately item 3 is adopting the minutes of the July 14th, 2026 council meeting. Item 4 is adopting Resolution replacing the City of Belton's representative on the Central Texas Water Supply Corporation Board of Directors. And we are approving the appointment of Cameron Curie to that board. Chair would entertain a motion.

Move we approve consent items 3 and 4.

Second. We have a motion and a second to adopt items 3 and 4. All in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Passes unanimously. Five, consider a zoning change from agricultural to planned development commercial, one, on approximately 7.7 acres located at 3021 Shanklin Road. Ms. Tina.

And thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, council, audience. You remember this case. This is at 3021 Shanklin Road. The proposal is to relocate the sustained boat repair shop that's off of Interstate 35 to this location. Again, they do boat repairs and services. The applicant plans to build a new workshop and also retain the existing home that's currently on the site. This area is zoned. The future land use map designates this as a mixed-use one. It allows for commercial zoning on water and sewers provided by the city. Property owner notices were sent out a while ago for this rezoning application. The reason why this is back to council today is the applicant requested outdoor storage. when we had our initial public hearing. The map shows the location of where the proposed building is. The outdoor storage will be located behind the proposed building in that designated area. For screening, it will be screened by the building in a six foot tall wooden fence. The surface area for where the folks will be stored will have to meet fire code requirements for being able to support the 75,000 pound truck at that location. With that, staff is recommending approval of the zoning change. Planning and zoning heard this back in their meeting in May and recommended approval without the storage, but this is a minor amendment. This requires approval must comply with all requirements for the commercial one zoning district. It must meet all of our design standards. A final plat and construction plans, meaning city requirements are required. outdoor storage limit to the designated area is allowed. And again, it must be screened, but the building and also the six foot tall fence and the outdoor area must meet the fire code requirements. I will be happy to answer any questions you have. An applicant is here. She didn't have any questions for them as well.

All right. This does not include a public comment. So council have any comments or questions for this item?

I think that did exactly what we sent it back for. So appreciate the work there. So I'll make a motion to approve the agenda item as presented. Second.

We have a motion and second to approve the zoning change from plan development commercial one as presented. Any other comments before we vote? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Thank you, Tina. Item 6. Receive a presentation and consider adoption of the Lena Armstrong Public Library Strategic Plan for fiscal year 2027 through fiscal year 2031.

Hi, good evening. It's good to be back up here for my second time. And we're talking about our strategic plan tonight. Very necessary to have. As we know, we have a rich tradition of that in the city of Belton. And the library is no different. A strategic plan is integral to our accreditation, grant opportunities, and our state library resources. So just to quickly talk about the library. We've been around since 1899 serving our community, and we have a really rich tradition of community support and engagement. We had a great strategic plan that was wrapped up in 2025. Some of the highlights from that were the exterior improvements with the paint and the playground, and then the reimagined library interior last year. And I just want to point out that we are serving a really growing population, so there are some growing pains with that. And to celebrate, I wanted to talk about the year that I've been here. I've only been here since September 2nd. So we're coming up on my one-year anniversary as director. And just a year over Harrison to the previous year, we have seen a 31.5% increase in traffic. um last june we had a little over 6 000 visitors this year we had eight in june so we're seeing a huge increase in traffic um the average length in the library is 40 cents per patron and so that's with some of our apps we have we can kind of ping cell phone data and we can see how long The phone is in the library. So people are hanging out with us. We had over 7,000 attendees of the library programs in the last year since I've been here. That includes our story times every week, our special programs, our things like the mini parade. That's kind of our total number for the year, over 7,000 attendees. And we've really focused this last year also on strengthening our community partnerships. I've worked closely with our Friends of the Library, our other city departments, BISD, which I came from BISD, so of course I always want to show them some love, UMHB, Temple College, and Texas A&M Central Texas. And we've kind of focused our library model on being a community hub. Being a place where people want to come, they can not just check out a book, but they can also get experiences and enrich their lives that way. So just to show our summer reading wrap up. Last summer, we had just under 300 participants. This year, 763. So we were really excited about the growth. They read 81,000, almost 82,000 minutes for the summer. We had 3,400 people attend a library program during the summer, and we issued 500 new library cards. So all of that to set the stage for the planning for our future growth. This has been about a year long process. So that came right after I onboarded on the city. You know, we have a strategic plan that is now over. We've met those goals and now we need to plan for the next five years. So we kind of looked at that previous strategic plan and what we could grow on there. We involved all of our stakeholders. So library board, friends of the library, city management and our staff was super involved in the process. So using our City of Belton strategic plan, obviously we want to complement the city's goals and where we fit into the fabric of the city. So we use that for inspiration. And we really focused on the challenges we need to face. So our facility size, of course, is limited. A huge community that is growing every day. And then how do we expand access throughout Belton? So with that, we have your roadmap. And for large goals we'll be looking at. Number one is to invest in our staff and develop our staff as we grow. And then just to think about how the department grows over time. Two, we wanna talk about our electronic resources and how we meet the needs of people outside of the building. How do we expand outside since we're limited inside? And then the other digital services that we offer. We wanna strengthen our marketing. and our community awareness of what the library has to offer and what we bring. Our big goal is exploring a future satellite library. So just to kind of very quickly break down those different goals, it's very important to invest in our staff. And we did a lot of that this year with training. But one of the things we noticed we really need to work on is standardizing our staff onboarding and training. So as we bring new staff in, how do we make sure that they're ready to step into the demands of the library? We want to work on our organizational structure, kind of planning for... growth, succession, those sort of things. And then we'll continue to monitor our hours, just make sure we're meeting the community's needs the best we can. So if we see that maybe we need to adjust hours for demand, that's something we should be always looking at. And then the big goal kind of under goal one would be looking at adding another librarian to the mix. I'm the only certified staff librarian. It's really nice to always have more expertise and knowledge in the field. So the expected result is just a stronger team that's prepared for the future growth. All right, goal two, we have to step outside the library, because again, we are limited in how can we extend our services beyond what we have inside the building. We have over 3,000 historic photographs of Bell County and Belton. And it's very important to me that we make that information accessible to the community and to researchers. So one goal we have is to work with UMHB to get those photographs available for researchers. So we'll be exploring grant opportunities in order to kind of get those online in a nice, searchable database that we can share out to some of our institutions in the area. We also want to look at just our website in general and how our website can better serve our patrons. Right now, there's a lot of clicks to get to certain resources, and I would like it to be a little bit more user-friendly, so we'll be looking at that. And then of course, I also wanna look at what we already offer in evaluating some of our electronic resources. Is it being used? Is it serving the purpose? Some of our resources are expensive and if it's not being used, maybe there's something better out there that we can transition to. So we'll be looking at evaluating and growing those services. So really, we want to take the library outside of the building so you can access 24-7. One thing to plug, of course, is Cloud Library. We have access to over 300,000 e-books and e-audiobooks, and I highly recommend using your library card to use Cloud Library. Okay, so our marketing plan is goal number three. It's been a huge focus this year, working on our social media, having that work for us. How do we market better? How do we get people to know what we offer? And so we've seen a lot of growth on social media just by paying attention to that, paying attention to trends, making sure we're getting information out in a timely fashion. We would like to kick that up a notch to kind of develop a library brand that's consistent. We want to increase awareness of our programs and services and, of course, expand community engagement even into the online space. So how are we engaging with our patrons outside on social media? And our big goal is looking at expanding library services to a second location. A satellite library isn't a full-service library. It would be like limited days and hours that would be best for the neighborhood that it services. So we think the opportunity is at the Belton Safety Center. We feel like there is a neighborhood there that could benefit from increased library services. And so really with this goal, it's a feasibility. Like, can it happen? What's the timeline like on that? And then just that long-term staffing and cost analysis. And that would go into developing a second location for us. We've been serving the community in this current building since 1975. And so I think everybody kind of knows like there's a capacity issue there. Like we can only have so many people in that building. And so how do we have a second location that can serve Belton better? And I think over on that end of town, having worked, In that community at Hubbard Branch, I know that that is a community that could benefit a lot from things like free Wi-Fi, databases for research, help with applications, help with benefits. So we can provide that with a satellite library on that side of town. All right, so even though I'm a book slinger, I'm working words, but data is important and numbers tell your story. So when we measure success of this plan, it's gonna be data-driven. So we're looking at statistics, we're looking at attendance, website traffic, resource usage, and of course the development milestones of our staff as they train and receive more knowledge. So we'll measure it in a way that, You know, make sure that we're in line with what our strategic plan is hoping to do and that those numbers are helping to support that success and making sure we're going in the right direction. And then just kind of looking ahead, just to kind of bring us back, you know, to the overall picture. To look ahead, we want to invest in our staff. We want to expand our access to what we offer. And we want to strengthen that community engagement. The library is there to be used. Right. We want people to come in. And so part of that is making sure that we're always out in the community and we're engaging and we're educating and letting them know what we. And then, of course, we want to plan responsibly for that future growth. Our city is growing. And so we want to be ready to respond to that when and if that's, you know, when that comes. So tonight with me, I have Anne Laughlin and I have Chad Green. They're part of our library board, our president and our vice president. So if you would like to say anything tonight, just come on, you can do it.

Good evening, everybody. Great presentation. You guys have probably been impressed already, as we on the board have, with just having Amanda for the short time that we've already had her. She's just been able to do so much work. So it's been really exciting. seeing all the updated data, the visits, just seeing how much more engagement there seems to be in the library. And so we're just really excited for the direction that we're headed. We've been discussing these things for the last several board meetings. We're all very well aware of the plan and in favor of the plan. And so, yeah, I just want to say thank you for all your work and thank you guys for all that you do. Thank you.

Thank you so much. So with that, we recommend the approval of our strategic plan as presented. But of course, I'm here for questions or anything before that.

Any questions from council? I'm fired off here. I think it's always challenging. There's pretty strong public opinions about libraries and where they're headed and things like that. And when you couple that with reality and what you're seeing, and for us being in a position, you know, you being brand new in a year, and you always ask the question, who are you going to find? What's she going to get? And I would just like to lay it out that I think we found the most incredible person for this job. As somebody whose organization does a lot with the library, it's fantastic the kids love it they come back every time like it was so fun so great how can we get more kids there we have a lot of kids small library i get it but um and those are those are the challenges but I think you're doing an incredible job. Being in the little mini parade and having our preschool kids go read once a week and things like that are just incredible for the community. When you talk about satellites, the last proposal we had was an addition, and I think satellites are great getting into set of pocket parks, pocket libraries, you know, and things like that. And I can think of some timelines that around the 2031 mark, that'd be great for a satellite library in the Miller Springs area. And so, and then at the end, yeah. And so, you know, and who knows with public school libraries and Maybe there's a potential there for satellites and, you know, there's books there that we don't want to go away and things like that. And I don't know, there's lots of options. And I feel like you're the perfect person to make all that happen. Appreciate it.

I'll echo that. And I'll also add that just this weekend, I had a conversation about our public schools and libraries and the cuts that they're being forced to make because of cuts to public schools. So I'm so excited that we are looking in ways that we can expand and continue to bring that library experience to our kids and families and our community. So I echo that you are a great match for us to help us continue to grow that. And I think that our Kids in our community, as they maybe experience less in our public schools exposure, I'm just thankful we have something for them.

Once upon a time, Mayor, before the library transformation, we were talking about the need of libraries and access and fiber and all technology changing so quickly. And boy, am I proud of our little bitty library and what it's doing. And is it fun for our community? One question I had, man, do you promote what all, I just don't know, but I've learned. Somebody said, oh yeah, with my library card, I'm able to go anywhere and check out anything or eat books or eat whatever. The access that that library card gives you. Yeah. via the internet is actually incredible. I don't think a lot of people know about. So that's one thing I would encourage More folks to have a library card.

I will say one thing we do, and this is part of the accreditation. So again, this is another reason why you need that strategic plan. But we are part of TSLAC and we're part of the TexShare network. So with a library card and a TexShare card from Belton, you can go throughout the state to any participating member of that. So if you want to go to Temple, go to Temple, you know, anybody in the whole state. So that is a powerful thing. And we issue...

six seven of those a week so people are looking for more services and there's a demonstrated need for more library services i think i uh excuse me i will make a confession when i was in elementary school uh there was a program available you would read for 600 minutes you could get a free pizza And I was admittedly not real big on reading, but I was real big on pizza. And so I learned how to forge my dad's signature so that I could say that I'd read 600 minutes of pizza. He's not here to hear that, but I'm sure he knows now. To say all that to say, I feel like it's pretty easy for a city to overlook a library. Not easy to overlook a police department, a fire department, a water department. If the water quits flowing, we've got an emergency crisis. And the library could a lot more easily be overlooked. But when you look at successful cities for thousands of years, the library is a hub. It's essential to the success of a city. And I know we don't have a huge library, but we have a great library, like John said. Looking at the strategic plan, I read the staff report on it. talking about the school readiness, talking about the family place libraries model. I mean, it's just a lot of great visionary stuff. You and your staff have done a great job. The board, appreciate all the work that y'all do and the hours that you put in and volunteering for that to really keep the library as great as it can be and as a forefront offering that the city has for the community. And I think the numbers... support the success that, you know, the increase in visits, the increase in library cards and all that. So just, I mean, just bang up job. Good job to you and your staff. Thank y'all for everything. Very excited. I do read more now.

Do you still eat pizza? No.

Not today, anyway. Yeah.

Well, with that, I just say I agree with everything they said, and you've done an amazing job. And I'd like to make a motion to approve the Lynn Armstrong Public Library Strategic Plan.

Second.

We have a motion and a second to approve the adoption of the Lynn Armstrong Library's Strategic Plan for fiscal years 27 through 31. Any other comments or questions? Part of my maturity is just because everybody else, if I wanted to say something and somebody else was going to say it, I don't need to say it again, so I'm not going to say it again. But the one thing I will say is, as was mentioned about relevance of a library, we even had that from staff, is the community just doesn't engage in the library like they used to. In order to be relevant, you cannot do it passively. And so I think being focused on who the community is and what the community needs are, you guys have been very active in engaging the community where it is to bring it where you want it to be. And that is the definition of relevant. And so you guys have done a great job. I think the strategic plan is another step in that direction. I'm a big fan of the library. I'm a slow reader. So sometimes I have to go recheck out the book multiple times in order to finish it. But anyway, great job, Amanda. Great job for you and your staff and for the city. All in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed. Passes unanimously. How many books are you reading at a time? About four or five.

That's another part of the problem.

I just started Theo of Golden. I just started that. And can you get Theo of Golden on e-book? Yes. Okay. Do you have a library card?

uh yeah yes he does you all have you all have library cards yes my granddaughter goes all the time so i purchased my own book yeah all right i don't receive a presentation in this solid waste collection services mr bates uh i just pushed a button that chris is going to be mad at me for so let's reboot for a second mayor council i appreciate it I want to revisit one thing real quick. When we were interviewing applicants for the library director, we were talking about kind of what we wanted, what we envisioned in that. And Dr. Patischel, who was on our interview committee, and she's a member of the Friends of the Library, said, when you walk into a public library, you want to spark. you want to spark and that's our spark. Yeah. Pretty incredible. Okay. So, um, but he had a, we had a meet, we had a meeting with y'all, uh, in April. Sorry. If you guys are aware, it's a trashy presentation. It's a trashy presentation. Don't get real trashy here. So, so, um, we, we came to you guys in April at land of April and kind of talked about that. Our trash contract is coming up to, uh, It's closed in 2026. And I got a couple of options on the table. One was to utilize a Texas provision code that we could re-up directly with waste management, engage in negotiations, or we could go out and RFP. And I think we wanted to reserve the sense that we got as we talked was waste management is doing a really good job. a really good job in our community. We, if you remember that citizen survey trash is, if you go anywhere, that's the easiest thing. If you, if you get your trash missed once a year, you're going to slam like the trash service is terrible. Remember that one time in June, they missed my service. Yeah. We were rated at 78% satisfaction, good to excellent. So not just average, just good to excellent. 78% of the respondents said that. Professors in college would have said that was good to excellent. Agreed, agreed, agreed. So we know we have a good thing going. I think that council want to be, and staff as well, we agreed that. We wanna be guarded, we wanna be able to make sure that we always get the best deal. What is the best thing for Belton is the question we always ask internally. And so we felt like the best thing right now was to pursue getting a proposal from waste management and bringing that back, engaging, Purchase of today is not a vote. It's not a record. Today is really a temperature check on if we're heading kind of a direction that you guys feel comfortable with. And at that point, we'll kind of met. But at this point, we've met with waste management, Paul and his team. We've met with them at least two times in person, a few times over the phone. just refining some of the elements, a lot of it operational was really helpful to involve Mike and his team kind of really just some of the things that they're the ones that get the call. Right. So one of the areas that are kind of happening. And so, and then obviously on the major contract elements, just being able to refine where we're at. So yeah, To know where you're going, you first need to know where you are. And so this is where we are. Just high elements of the plan. We receive once a week pickup for our trash, biweekly pickup for our recycling. We have a once monthly bulk pickup. So anything that's four cubic yards, they'll pick up. That includes mattresses. Again, operational things. We had a lot of questions about what is the size of the mattress they'll take. We were told through the grapevine, a twin mattress, a queen mattress, it's a king mattress. They'll take up to a king. So just for the record there. We also have the six bulk drop-off events, which are, again, we're seeing over 80 people a weekend go through there. Again, small tools just for you all to be aware on the back end of those bulk events. Our code enforcement team with chief over there do a phenomenal job of notifying residents that they're coming into contact with about the upcoming event and really give them an opportunity to go utilize that service. And so we're seeing, yeah, again, 80 to 100 vehicles coming through utilizing that service once every other month, essentially, is how that works. Plus, shout out to Paul, but they give us four staff. Four waste management staff work those events for us. So that's a cost that we're not having to occur with our own staff being out there. We have brush. I put that on there just because it's total look. We have a separate fee for that. And obviously the city does that. But there are, we'll talk about brush here in a little bit. And of course we have the hazardous waste, the at your door service. So if you've got paint, batteries, laptops, TVs, whatever it is, you can contact them ahead, bag it up, put it on your front doorstep and they'll come, they'll come grab it. All that service, again, is $21.47 per month for a resident in our community. And so we're working off that. I think that we found that we liked our service level, but obviously we want the best deal possible going forward and moving forward. So that's the baseline that we were working off. So the proposal highlights that we've really have added, everything stays the same. So all of this that you saw before, that still stays the same in their proposal. And then these are the things that they're kind of adding. We'll talk about the no new increase here in a second, but you saw the note there at the top, the 2147 per month. The scholarships, taking them from $4,000 to $6,000, we enjoy that every year, giving that money back to members of our community who utilize that. I think waste management does too, and so it's a great opportunity to up that up a little bit. We've been seeing in the last few years where we have – those of you being scoring committees, there's two, three, four, five kids that are all deserving and just trying to pick that. Hopefully that'll mean it goes a little further. Things that we asked for was a staff deal, but we obviously have a lot of great events that we bring to our community and our downtown. And every time we do that, we have to get a dumpster, right? We have to pay for that either through waste management or a competitor. And so we said, Hey, how about you don't have a competitor in town? You just have your dumpster out there and we can work that for, would that be something that we're interested in providing? It's essentially a, a certain have been part in other ways in our contract. We just more expressly defined it for our B4s, our pokers, our Christmas on children's trails, that kind of stuff, having those roll-offs available. And then one that I'll give a kudos to Mike over there. But we have a lot of folks that all have, And many of you guys have either had family members or had folks that work with, but a lot of folks who call up and say, hey, you know, I don't, what's, how can someone, I can't put my bin out by the curb. I'm either disabled, I'm elderly, I live by myself, whatever, whatever it be. And, you know, those can get heart wrenching. And obviously the cost for that is almost double. That 2147 you're seeing. And so we had asked Paul whether he'd be interested whether Waste Management would be on board with giving us a certain amount of services that we could use because the calls go through to Mike and his staff, they pull on your heartstrings and obviously many, we've got many needy people. I think we'll have to come back and figure out exactly how we do that in a hardship something. But again, you get the point. There's people in our community who that service that really can't afford that service. And hopefully we've got 50 services that we can give out and give it out to the people who really need them. So that was a neat little addition. A couple of things we did, obviously, when we met, there was a few things that were brought up about, hey, listen, let's go. Can we get a little more information on that, a little more information on this? And that was primarily the twice-weekly trash. So coming by twice-weekly or doing a weekly. And the other one, which we've heard of, is it might be nice if recycling was every week, right, especially during the holidays. Oh, I should note, by the way, That's a good point. I said holidays. That was one of the big ones, right? So especially over Christmas, you've got all those Amazon boxes in your house and what to do with them. They'd give us five roll-offs for the holidays. So they would be at the public workshop. I'm already kind of thinking of it with Scott, but essentially that week after Christmas would be a great opportunity for us to have a boat. Yeah, there we go. You got that. we'll roll off so yeah five roll and then so here's the costs um seeing this if you remember that 21 47 you'd be going to 29 47 a month for twice weekly or if you went to the weekly recycling 20 um Well, I'll let Paul kind of touch on this, but we're not necessarily recommending that in the proposal because we think that there's other alternatives available for folks who might need that service. And he's got some good numbers there. So with that, I'll turn it over to Paul. Let him share a few words. And then he's counsel. We are hoping that. Yeah, go ahead.

You said it goes up to.

But that's an additional twenty nine forty seven. No, that is that. That would be. So it's not crazy. It's not like it's double the price. I think that this is good information for us to know. But it's still an increase. And current is 21.72. 21.47. And I do want to add real quick. Sorry, Paul. Last one. There is something I want to kind of at least be upfront and acknowledge here. What Paul sent through in the proposal is essentially, hey, let's keep everything the way it's going. It's going good. It's working for us, working for you all. And we'll give you a few extra things that you've asked for. There's no rate increase that he's proposing, except there's the CPI that we do every year that comes in there. So theoretically, we adopt the contract and the price will go up in the proposal that he's given. I think Paul's prepared to talk about that today. But just again, be aware, those have ranged from 50 cents, 80 cents, typically in a year. And right now, I wouldn't look at that number because fuel is so high. It's better for a news tax. Yeah, that's right. If we can get that down maybe towards the end of the year, we might get a better cost. But go ahead, Paul.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor and Council. Paul D'Azaro. I am the Waste Management Public Sector Representative. I also feel like this may sound cheesy, but I represent... Belton to waste management as well. I really feel that way. So when Matt called me and said that I had a chance to get you guys a proposal, I went to bat and I think we did a good job on getting a win-win for everybody. here involved. We've kept the rate the same besides the inflation CPI adjustment that we do every year. And we've added some stuff. So we feel good about it. You guys have, you know, just about every service that we offer and you've got a good rate on it as well. So we increased the scholarship. I think that's a big deal every year to do that. We added We've added 11 roll-offs, and we added the recycle roll-offs. I think that was a big deal for people to get rid of their cardboard after Christmas. What else did we do? The assistance for the elderly or people that are injured – we're happy to do that. And that will be up to the city to figure out a way to, but just all businesses give us the address and we will go and pick their containers up for them, their cards for them. So we think we added a lot. The bi-monthly cleanups, is a big deal. And we do send out our own employees to work that for you guys. So it helps y'all with your staffing. That's four hours every other month on a Saturday. So we think we found a win-win. And I absolutely appreciate working with staff. They've done a great job. I appreciate. I've been your rep for almost 15 years now. You guys saw me when I had all my hair. Some of y'all that were still here.

Uh, that remember that. Yeah.

But I really appreciate it. I appreciate the opportunity. And I hope that we can stay around. And like I said, I think we have found a win-win. Matt mentioned the CPI adjustments. We've done that every year. The inflation usually runs between 3%, 2% to 4%. This year, it's probably going to be a little bit higher. But that doesn't take place. And we will run those numbers in October. So we run them off of the September numbers. That's the way it is in the contract. That won't change. We're thinking it's gonna be around, for somewhere around that percentage. Last couple of years, it's been three low threes, one low three in 25, I mean, 24, and then a higher three in 25, I mean, yeah, 26 for this year. So, of course, everything's up right now, and especially fuel and CPI. So, It'll be a little bit more than usual, but that's it. And the good thing about that is, is as long as we keep up with inflation, we don't have to come back in five years and go, hey, you know, we got to raise the rate on you. We have to go up $5 a home because that's not good for us. And it's not good for you guys. I just want to keep moving along as we have. And I think everything's working out. So just appreciate the opportunity and any questions that you have, I'll be happy to answer.

I had just a couple. Do you mind going to the slide about when you do the additions, the two? How would that figure out if you did, took away recycling and just did the twice weekly trash?

If we took away the recycling altogether and just did twice a week, well, I'd have to go back and get numbers on that. I don't have those numbers for you right now. I'd have to run a proforma on it. We could get those numbers for you. I think people enjoy the recycling program here. Let me, I'll talk a little bit about twice a week because I was asked for two numbers here. I was asked for twice a week trash and I was asked for every week recycling. Right now we're doing once a week trash and every other week recycling. In Belton, we offer extra carts. So if you are a family, a large family that needs extra trash or needs extra recycling, we offer extra carts under $8 a home. So right now, only about 11% of the city is using extra carts. So that other 89% does not have to pay the extra if they don't need it. As far as recycling carts, 1.4% are utilizing the extra recycling carts. So I don't know that we need extra recycling either. But for the people that need it, they can get an extra cart. And everybody in the city doesn't have to have that price increase.

All right. So what is the price? Is it $8 a month?

Yeah, if you want an extra cart, recycle or trash. Right now it's $7.64. With the price increase, it'll go up a couple pennies. But it'll still be under $8 if you want an extra.

I'm looking at this from when we went from the change from having... twice a week pickup to once a week. And at that time I was, uh, we had two kids and, uh, all the amount, and they were two young kids. And, you know, if you missed, when you went to the once a week, one time you had two weeks worth of diapers all loaded up. Yeah. And, and it was a big change. Um, so I, I am a big fan of the, the twice a week. But I'm also not a big friend of increasing prices.

Sure. And not only to go to twice a week trash, would it be more expensive for everyone? It's more expensive in the city because we're running those trucks down every one of your streets another time a week, another 4.33 times a month. We're running those trucks that you'll have to, and they're heavy. So I think it's, it's also a win-win for everyone where if you need that extra trash cart, we'll give it to you for a very reasonable price. We're not running on your street. So that's, that's the theory behind it.

Okay. Thank you.

So the, the CPI would, if, even if we chose a higher contract rate, To start, the CPI would still be added on to that?

Yeah, the CPI was going to be added on. It's just a normal, every year in October, I send you a letter and say, here's a CPI adjustment, and it happens January the 1st. Your contract just happens to start at January 1st, so it's pretty nice.

You know, and that CPI impacts everything. that a family or individual is going to be paying cost on. So I'm so proud of the service that you all provide and certainly am supportive of keeping our rate the same just because of the impact that it would have on families and households. But the fact that there's these additional items that are being offered, just thank you for being an amazing partner with our city. providing tremendous service for, for a great.

Well, I appreciate you. I appreciate you saying.

It also helps that all the drivers know every street now. That's a big one.

So with the discussion, are you guys wanting some direction on should we go with the current proposal on no new increases or leaning towards more recycling?

Yeah, Mayor, I think I'm just looking forward. Do you feel comfortable with the way that this is heading or are there concerns that the council may have? And so that's kind of maybe the feedback and then we'll go back, we'll refine everything and obviously bring you back to the proposal at which point you would vote and take action. But I think we just want to make sure we're heading down the right street with y'all and y'all generally okay with the way it currently is? I think it's working out.

We're working it, yeah. Actually. Opportunity to have bins down there for when we do a festival or something like that is huge. And if there's any way you could put a bin It's easy accessible during a holiday time. I think where people could. Just dump some cardboard would be really, really nice. I don't know where that is. That's easy. Uh, but. Neighborhood or whatnot to be very, very strict cardboard and roll.

Slits is the whole roll off covered.

No, it's not. And it wouldn't be a situation where there's a thing about leaving a roll-off out on the street. I've seen it a million times. We'll put one out there. They pile up. It gets full. And since it's there, all the stuff on the side, that's a place to put all your stuff, too, and it piles up like a mountain. So when you do have a... A roll off out there and kind of you got to keep it supervised a little bit. So, you know, we can work through the details on that. But my thoughts are we'll do it a drop off event at public works.

I think in doing it for a chart that will allow us as well. You can imagine almost like that picture. Everyone dumps their car was going to fill up pretty quick. but Scott with his fancy excavator over there, we're going to have his staff pound and get every square inch of that, uh, that 30 yard roll off that we can get in there.

And it'll, it'll be recycled as well.

It'll be recycled. Uh,

I had a citizen that saw the agenda posted and said, hey, you aren't thinking about switching from waste management, are you? They do a great job. People know. 79%.

I think, again, for our staff and for yours as well, I think you guys are doing a great job of giving the best rate for the whole city and then manage the exceptions. Right. Instead of just saying everybody gets this and everybody gets that is we're managing this. So I think that's a very efficient way to do it. I think for those that don't need all the extra, we're not adding to it. So, again, I appreciate that. And we just came from a meeting earlier with TxDOT and I'll say this with waste management. You guys are a great partner. I mean, your comment about you representing Belton to waste management is the right way, at least from Belton's perspective for you. I think, and to your point, even our citizens feel that waste management is a partner. It reflected on the survey. So again, thank you for all your years of service, both to your community, but also to all the other communities. I appreciate your attitude and your leadership there. So no action needed. No, sir.

Mayor, I think I got it.

is that what i need what what what my feeling is we'll go back with this we'll put together we're going to put together a contract that looks very similar to the one we have and i would assume we'd bring that back yeah yeah but maybe just one suggestion on those 50 that need assistance maybe the six month time frame so we don't have the same 50 people on it for a couple of years just to

short-term, temporary, we could help.

We certainly appreciate that that doesn't come without its challenges of having a hand. It's a great benefit, but as Paul delicately and very professionally said, we'll let Belton figure out those. That was great. That was a great speech there. Passing the buck, but no. Your subcommittee, the council. One more meeting.

What does that normally cost?

$46 something. There's a whole other rate for people that just don't want to bring their trash cans out. Here's the luxury service that we can offer. Watch the cans afterwards. No, don't do that. But this is for people that need it and somebody that's been injured or elderly or just needs some extra help. We're happy to do it.

Thank you, Council, very much.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. All right. That brings us to item eight, which is the last on my agenda. No pressure on the person giving the presentation. To receive a presentation on Belton's strategic plan for fiscal year 27 through 31 and invite public input at the city council meeting on August 25th to 26th.

Thank you, Mr. Council. Appreciate it. I'll keep it very brief. We've been here before and just excited to have Amanda come and present her strategic plan. And then within the last month or so, you had James Grant come and present the parks plan. And so the strategic plan itself is foundational to everything that we do. And the individual departments have brought those forward and certainly coordinate with the overall plan. So we're excited to continue this and do the updated plan following our retreat that we had recently. And I will add to your comment that you made that Stan Swiatek mentioned It's amazing to be recognized as a community of partners. You know, they saw it at the state level, at the district office, to see that reflected in the work that's been done. So really exciting time and just continue that process. So we've done a five-year update of the plan following the workshop we had this summer. The six pillars in the plan remain unchanged. It did lead to some revisions that we made in the plan itself. Again, the pillars remain the same. You can see those there. They maintain the structure and the components of the individual elements that we emphasize throughout the year. Just very briefly touch on the initiatives that have been identified. The ones that I'll mention here, refer to, are the ones for 2027. And then, of course, we have the outline here, last four years of the plans. A theme throughout the process you'll see the I-35 project is an important thing throughout and touch on so many of these different components in terms of projects, connectivity, economic interests, trying to retain businesses here in town and so forth. And so you'll see those throughout. TechStock projects, obviously the loop, expanding the loop project with an emphasis on phase three, which is from six around to possible connection with Spring Street. The major maintenance project that Stan mentioned next year, FM 93 coming, they had the public hearing here just in the last couple of weeks. Local projects, spring and canal, and then other projects at the end of that list. The wheat road analysis was a change in the plan that we discussed at the strategic plan session. where we're going to take a step back basically and prepare some analysis of the need for that project and really come up with some analysis of what that could be and whether it's needed at all before we go forward and spend really any significant dollars. economic development strategic plan and discussions with the board and with Cynthia about that. And that's something that's likely to come this next year. We have the Imagine Belton structure in place. I think now it's going to be a matter of assessing those tools and seeing how they're working. Utilities to the properties, both on I-14 and down south I-35. Cynthia's engaged KPA to begin looking at At that a little bit more detail effort building code amendments going to affect October one so we'll be watching how those things work. The downtown landscaping murals and all been really successful and we'll continue those. The public private facility opportunities are under exploration and will hopefully be doing something on that in the next year. And then again, the last item all the impacts to businesses and industry and employees. retention in relation to the I-35 project. Quality of life management plan. I've touched on the master plans already, and those are extremely important to have that vision for what comes next with the great leadership in all the departments that we have. Emphasizing our partnerships, really, really important. And we're doing some analysis on donors, but more broadly looking at major users of infrastructure, water, sewer, electricity, those kinds of things, and coming up with some land use standards that will guide the council's decisions on those items. Water and sewer master plan, couple years old now, 2024. And so we're looking at some, as you approved recently, the grant application for the water line along Wheat Road through the state, looking at how to implement those master plans and what adjustments might be needed in them. The utility system, the sewer plan on FM 93, of course, under construction, still another year and a half or so for that work. The alliance was authorized by the last session of the legislature. David Blackburn's indicated that there's some tweaks that they might like to implement as a part of this next legislative session to, again, give that group the authority that it needs to look out for water needs for the entire region. Another important item that came out of the work session with the council this summer was looking at a street maintenance fee. And so we're doing a lot of work in-house on that and looking forward to y'all soon. And then another one that certainly is raising some questions We have extremely large water and sewer CCN boundaries. We've had a little discussion about that. And that kind of grew out of the presence of our ETJs that existed previously and our ability to annex properties, which has been substantially constrained now. And so we really need to take a look at our CCN because that conveys an obligation to serve those areas. And If we don't have the same authority we had previously to annex, that is called into question. So we may need to contract those boundaries to a degree going forward. Engagement, national citizen recommendations, our board's efforts to educate the board, make sure they're understanding their roles and I'm prepared for action to deal with some of the challenges that they face continue to have our service. We're certainly finishing up the marketing plan and the logo that Matt's been working on so closely with with those groups. And again, a very important tourism focus to come immediately after that as those items get adopted. So we're looking forward to implementing that. We're very close to coming back probably at the next council meeting with an amendment to our ETJ MOU with Bell County to address plaque review in the ETJ. And so county adopted that at their meeting on Monday. And we've been working closely on a MOU that reflects who will have responsibility for plaque jurisdiction in the areas outside the ETJ, outside the city limits and in our ETJs. Public safety, always extremely important. Safety center, kind of a phased opportunity. We're continuing that effort and working to... make that more effective. This past Saturday, Megan and the chief had testing for new police officers at the center at Miller Heights and worked very, very well. Chris got it all set up technology-wise and the testing went flawlessly. We had 50, 55, 54 people testing for police officers. So it was a great effort, again, getting use out of the center. And we're continuing to work on efforts to achieve that. We have the the plan from Pillar to kind of aggregate the spaces in the center, and we'll be bringing those items forward to the council in the near future. Mental health needs awareness, cybersecurity always important, and AI training, then preparing for missions in those different entities. So those are elements that are emphasis and will be emphasized in our first year, the 2027 year. balance of the years, 28 through 31, identify things that build on those, kind of anticipate resolution of some of those, and then look forward to what might become important or as what we know right now, the best sense of what we have in terms of priorities for those last four years. We look to the council, any input y'all might have that you might give us by next Monday on the draft that you have before you, the complete plan is drafted in your packets. After about a week or so of that time, we plan to put the plan on the city's website, and then it would be there for about three weeks for public input, and we'll invite public comment at the August 25th meeting. Then the plan would be a component of the adoption of all the elements as we adopt the 27 budget, because the plan, of course, is the, again, the framework for everything that we do in the budgets. That's kind of an overview of the strategic plan. That we're proposing for the next 5 years. I'll be glad to answer any questions you might have.

All right, thank you Sam. Um, any comments or questions from. Council, this has been a process. It's not an event on 1 evening. It's been a longer process. So. I think we've probably all seen it at least once.

It's a hard stuff. That's a good stuff. Yeah, exactly.

All right. So public comments will be open August 25th. We will post it on the website on August 4th. So next week. And so the public will have roughly three weeks to review that and then can come back for comments. Any other comments or questions before we go? All right, so before we go, Chief Fontenot, thank you for your... This is Chief Fontenot's last week, I believe, and he's retiring. Thank you for your professionalism, for your integrity, your servant's heart. It's very evident. We've had some good times, and I would say... One of the interesting things about departments is we do customer service, and so we go to different areas to do customer service. The fire department is one of the ones where we visit quite a bit, and that doesn't happen on accident. And so, again, your focus on others is very important. And it's really helped us as a city. We appreciate your service. And so thank you again for that and for the dedication that you've had throughout your service. And I'm sure that dedication to serving others will not end here in the city of Belton. So thank you. And then, Lee Cooper? Yeah. We'd like to welcome Ray Cooper, who's joining our team, a hidden gem, a former chief of fire, fire chief in the city of Lubbock. So come to the big city of Belton. He's been here for a while. He's been a good friend of mine and some of ours. And so again, welcome to the team. Looking forward to you carrying on. What she fought no has and looking at next day. So, again welcome to. All right, there being nothing else on the agenda. Thank you.