City Council - Regular Meeting

He was ambassador of the year twice, I think. I don't know if anybody's ever done that. Citizen of the year, received a special community partner award in recognition of his leadership of our festival on Nolan Creek for the 4th of July for 15 or more years. His passion was for making Belton a great place for families and children. So his His involvement with making events good for kids was especially true. I had a conversation, my last conversation a couple weeks ago, where he was again identifying people who he could bring into our festival. He had a particular interest in equipping, it's perfect for tonight, next agenda item, He had a particular interest in getting our young people, our kids, involved. And so he would invite, whether it was Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, softball team, whatever it was, he wanted to get them involved serving through the festival. And he did that really in a neat way, equipping them for service so they could grow up to be what we want them to be, good citizens. Obviously, he had a passion in our parks. He's got a tree already in his name down at the park. We're going to do something else. Stay tuned for that. True friend. We'll honor him a little bit more Thursday at Karate Funeral Home, but take an opportunity. So thank you for that opportunity to come and honor our friend, Belton. Thank you, Randy.

Well, thank you. I'll add to that. And if Randy didn't come, I wanted to take the opportunity to do it. There's a lot of people that can get involved in a community sometimes because something's happening that's negative. And so it inspires them to action. Sometimes there's tension around that kind of community involvement. There are other people that get involved in the chamber because of their business. You know, they had hand and it's good for their business and it's a networking event. Keith was neither one of those. He was there for the community. It was great to see him always positive. Even when his health started failing, he was still active, felt bad he couldn't do more than he did. And so we really feel for him. his family, and it's sad to lose such a community like that, because he really helped define the community in which he lived. And being prayers for his family, because he was not, he was a young guy. So any other public comments? All right. There being no other public comments, we will close the public comments. The next item We will take the chair request us to table item three until later in the meeting. If someone can make that move. All right. So we were we have a motion a second to table item three until later point in the meeting. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Those opposed. All right. Item four is recognize senior accountant Christina Sparks for receiving her certified government financial officer designation. Mr. Lissy, Mr. Rogers.

Aye. Thank you. Mayor Lee and council members, it's a great honor to present an award to Christina Sparks. I have the write-up in your handout tonight. Christina has earned the government finance officer certification as a finance officer. A really significant accomplishment, as you see in the narrative before you. To obtain the certification, the applicant must meet a 375-point requirement program through academic credentials, professional experience, and exam scores, tested on a broad range of government requirements and experience, debt administration, and public finance. Kind of an interesting note, of the 400 people with this certification in the state of Texas, three of them are employed by the city of Belton, Megan Odeon, Amanda Cox, and Christina. And so we are very, very fortunate to have Christina here. a hard worker, dedicated public servant, and just really present this certificate of achievement as a certified government finance officer. Thank you.

Well, I won't take much time. First, let me tell you how much I appreciate Council's commitment to training and certification. As we are in a very tight budget year, cities often look at travel and training and things like that as one of those prime areas to cut. But your commitment to do this makes this happen. I want to say I'm extremely proud of the young lady here, Christina. She does great work for you. The certification... particularly is one that she will use every single day in her job, and it makes her a better accountant. She provides better services for you because of that certification. But thank you very much, Council. Congrats, Christine.

Here, let me go around. Okay.

all right that's item four item five is consider appointing the youth advisory commission uh and administer oath of office to newly appointed members uh and to appoint a chair mr grant

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Appreciate it. I'm excited to introduce our recommendations for the YAC board for the Youth Advisory Commission for 2027. It's an interesting board this year. There are actually four different schools represented in this group of young men and women here. So we've got Belton High School, Lake Belton High School, New Tech, and we have a homeschool on our board recommendation. But I'd like to introduce Shreya Muni. Sorry, I didn't want to mispronounce that. As our recommendation for chair. Thank you.