City Council - Regular Meeting

I'm the executive director of the Borger Chamber of Commerce. I'm so excited to be part of this community. I've been here about seven years and I love seeing the growth.

you're a current business owner downtown dreamer or somebody with a great idea you deserve a seat at the meeting my job is to help with any zoning questions or building safety questions that may or may not require a permit i'm here to help you with any of your water service needs

such as turning on and off service, any billing questions you may have.

We're there to help you navigate all of those systems to help you get involved in your business or promote it.

So we offer complimentary services for branding, for marketing, for social media, for their website design.

Our goal with this event is to make you feel like you have a whole team of professionals right behind you wanting to make your dreams happen.

We bring all those people into one room, so you can make one stop and get the answers you need. So remember, pull up a chair, bring your questions, and leave with answers.

I'm so excited to be part of this community. I've been here about seven years and I love seeing the growth

Whether you're a current business owner, downtown dreamer, or somebody with a great idea, you deserve a seat at the table.

My job is to help with any zoning questions or building safety questions that may or may not require a permit.

I'm here to help you with any of your water service needs, such as turning on and off service, any billing questions you may have.

We're there to help you navigate all of those systems to help you get involved in your business or promote it.

So we offer complimentary services for branding, for marketing, for social media, for their website design.

Our goal with this event is to make you feel like you have a whole team of professionals right behind you wanting to make your dreams happen.

I'm here to help you with any zoning or building safety type of questions. So I try to help keep your neighborhood safe and I try to make a difference daily. I use my knowledge as a coach to keep people safe. I look forward to seeing you at City

With Seat at the Table, we bring all those people into one room so you can make one stop and get the answers you need. So remember, pull up a chair, bring your questions, and leave with answers.

Good afternoon. Welcome to the July 21st, 1.30 p.m. City Council meeting. At this time, we will stand and have pledge and prayer.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Dear Heavenly Father, God, we just come to you, Father, just thanking you for all you do for us, Father. Thank you for the blessings that you've bestowed on our city, Father. And Father, just be with us, Father, as we make decisions, Father, that are to grow this city, Father, and to protect this city. And Father, just be with all of the city employees, Father, and all the citizens of Borger, Father, and just give them a mighty blessing, Father. And I just pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen.

And at this time, we'll have any questions or comments from any citizen that would like to speak. Absolutely, if you want to come.

So, I talked to Mr. Loftus today, too, and I've talked to the guy that works from the street department. Florida Street, the sidewalks there, are in bad shape. And the reason it concerns me is I've seen some kids playing out there the other day. It was almost dark and they were jumping them sidewalks. The sidewalks are like this. They're not flat. Okay. And there are several of them out there. Somebody's going to get killed, run over. So I think it's safety. We need to fix them somehow. And here is the transportation.

It's TxDOT.

Yeah. So how can we, what do we need to do?

So Jason Anderson behind you is our director of public works. I've talked to him. We'll make contact with our contact with TxDOT and see if we can't get something done. Because I know where you're, I mean, at least they need to at least go and remove

Because, you know, they're probably in three different parts to where they buckled at the joint and they're... Yeah, and some of them are just cracked in half, too, you know, and sticking up. And I talked to them because they asked me to, you know, and they said, well, that belongs to the city. We've got to...

I think they've misread their own municipal maintenance agreement. But Spur 146 or two, it is a state spur. The only... We're responsible for sidewalks on 10th Street. And that's the only state highway that we have the maintenance responsibility on. They have the maintenance responsibility on the rest of them. So, you know, and I don't want to.

Well, and that's what I hear, too, you know. So that's why I'm here to ask questions and see what can we do.

Yeah, and we'll get it taken to TxDOT. They have, you know, their budget process is a little different, and, you know, all of their funds have to be approved by the Texas Transportation Commission on a statewide level, so I don't know, but we'll reach out on the city's behalf to TxDOT and see if we can't get something done.

Thank you, sir. You're welcome. And if there's no other, then we will move on to Item 5, the City Manager's Monthly Report.

So just a little bit on finances. We're still trending pretty well. Sales tax for July came in pretty much flat after our 12% increase last year. So for the fiscal year, we're at about think we're about 0.2% below where we were last year. So we did budget flat. So self-tax is going to be pretty close on the budget there. You'll notice the general fund right now, we did bill out our industrial district contract. So you can see that our revenue is now back above our expenditures. So I normally point that out, because generally most of the year we go where expenditures are over revenue, because we get revenue in pretty much two big chunks. You get the big property payment in November for all the October payments. You get another pretty good chunk of property tax in February after people pay the, you know, January 31st is the last day to pay without a penalty. So if you're like my grandma was, they took it out to the very last day because she was not going to let the government make any interest on her money. She also wasn't gonna pay a fee, so she made sure that those checks were dated January 31st. And then, of course, industrial districts come in in June. So we did get those, so we're trending pretty well on that. Our expenses are tracking close to our budget. Revenues are a little bit below budget. We're a little below on solid waste collection. That's just less residential accounts and less tonnage. Ours starting to make up a little bit of that on the scale house as the summer weather gets here and people start cleaning out. And I'm sure with the roofs, And after the hail storm, we're going to see probably an influx of that. You will notice that the transfer station is closed this week. We're doing some more concrete repair inside. If you remember, we did a big project for the front half of the floor. So this is a smaller project. It doesn't take as much beating, so we don't have to go quite as deep, but we're going to start repairing the back half of that. So we're using some funds with that. So that's why it's, I know that you probably saw the Facebook post on that, but that's why the transfer station is closed because we're starting to repair that apron on the back half inside the transfer station. Other than that, expenditures are, I mean, we're tracking, you know, below budget, we're going to try to a little tight going in so we can you know close as uh tight as possible depending on how we're at i'm looking at probably between a hundred thousand dollar shortfall and a hundred thousand dollar surplus by the end of the fiscal year out of a 21 million dollar budget that's you know overall that's not bad i mean that's less than one one percent off but we're we're still keeping an eye on that in the water sewer fund uh Revenues are still above expenditures they have been. We're a little bit below our average on revenue. We talked about that. Remember Phillips and Nutrien were both down for the first two months of the year doing a turnaround, so we didn't get that sales. We're starting to make it up in the second half with the heat. starting to pick up we'll see how that goes it's it's there they're making up a pretty good chunk from where I thought so I don't last time we talked about that I thought we're gonna be a little shorter than we are but we're looking at making that up you will notice that revenues training pretty good but next month or the debt payments out of the water sewer so you can see that expenditure shoot back up and then revenue will catch up through the end of the year so that's pretty standard there with that Hotel occupancy tax is still training pretty well. We've already pretty much made our budgeted revenue through June. So that means the last three months will be a little extra. So we're training well there. That'll give us a little more flexibility when we talk about funding Boomtober events and things with Boomtoberfest. And we'll have a little more leftover even after we use the budgeted for that mobile stage. So the mobile stage I do believe is slated still to be here for August. They did send the paperwork to how we wanted it titled, so that's generally a good sign that it's coming forward. So that's where we are with finances. On other projects, the Third Street Stormwater Project is out to bid right now. We expect that to be on the first meeting in September for Council Award. So, you know, the... Right now, at the rate we're going, I only need to, you know, since we do have that planned debt issuance next year, in next fiscal year, if we award the bid in September, it's likely going to be October before they start. So we might not have to do that. It's taken us enough time to get through there. If we have to pay anything this fiscal year is when we'll have to do the payback. So if it starts after October 1, I'll just go ahead and pay for it out of the correct fund. If that fund goes negative for a couple of months, you know, since we do pooled cash, it doesn't matter if the fund goes negative because we're still just using the pooled cash and we'll refund the pooled cash when the debt issues and it washes out with us having to do the transfer.

Will we have to shut down that road?

Yes.

Before that. How close is it to being impassable?

Yeah, I was about to say, it's getting really close, and it kind of depends on the rain. I know that Jason goes out there pretty much after each rainstorm to see. We are prepped for that. We have gotten permission from the Church of Christ to use their parking lot to access that back road. The street crews already started improving that oil-filled road just a little bit so that we've got a path for... you know to the sewer planted it will impact you know public animal services access the most but it yet you know it's.

I've not been out there lately but I've heard about it you know so it's like.

I want to safety thing is as best we can yeah there's still a there's a little extra room I mean it's not it's not good but you know we probably got another. 4 inches.

I drive a drunk.

Which isn't much, but you know, that's coming. Right, so we do, we are still working on the grant application for the Senate bill. We talked with TCQ, we have the temporary, we're waiting for their approval on well 24. to show that it's shoveled ready. We get 10 extra points for being shoveled ready, so I think a lot of people aren't going to be quite there, so that could give us a good boost there. Well 13 is up and working now. We talked a little bit about that, so that's doing well. The cloverleaf project is out to bid too, so you'll probably see that in the next couple of weeks. That's to replace that sewer line under the cloverleaf from the manhole at Bulldog Boulevard to the manhole over behind the Dollar General. So that's likely will hit into the next budget year as well.

Will that close roads too? No.

That'll be a, we're trying to bore it so that we don't have to, because that one, if we, that's a state highway, so if we start closing all of that, we have to meet tech stop traffic control requirements, which is going to be fairly expensive. We'll have to, you know, because we don't have the stuff to meet their requirements, so we'd have to probably rent it from like Barricades Unlimited. and you're going to get, which is what we had to do on 10th Street, but that was part of the 10th Street project. But if we bore it, which is what we're planning, we won't have to worry about that. The 6th and Main Street intersection that we're doing to mark the centennial, that should start the first week of August. The contractor expects that to take one month. So that intersection will be closed for about a month for the month of August. So then it should be open for everything. That will get it back open for the homecoming parade and then all of our centennial events. So we did complete the seal coat project for this year. About 136,000 square yards of streets were seal coated. That's double, almost double what we did last year. I know that there's always questions on how we kind of pick that. We do have that street assessment that we try to use to hit traffic counts and things like that. We've done most of the high traffic counts and the most in need, so now we are trying to still hit some of those, but then when we do residential areas, do them in areas conjunction. It's cheaper to do streets close together than it is to do random streets all over town. So this year, the bigger street projects, we did Airport Boulevard. If you've been to the airport on that road, you know that it needed it. We also came down house just a little bit right there by We did Bulldog Boulevard and St. John's, so that's all the way down to the stadium, and then back around the back of the stadium, and then up around St. John's out to West Wilson. We then did Opal there, and then we did all of Fillview, Fairlanes too, and the last little bit in Buena Vista backside we didn't do. Next year, we're looking at Carbon Road, Hemlock, probably Clayton Street,

Somebody just approached me about Coble. We'll talk about it later.

Yeah, well, we'll look on that. You know, if we go back in some of the areas that we're kind of, you know, we've done some of Gateway in the past. We've done some of like Nelson and Harrington, and that area has been done within the last 10 years. So we are trying to catch some of those bigger ones. I know that it's You know, there's a lot of needs, and with the way that we've talked about budgeting, we're budgeting another bit. We've still got the funds to do another big project next year, so we're going to do just as much, maybe a little bit more next year, so we'll be able to catch up with a lot.

Those neighborhoods that don't have curbs, does that make the streets not last as long?

It makes them erode from the edge, and so it doesn't necessarily impact the driving surface, depending on how wide the road is, but what happens is the erosion gets gets the edge of it.

How's the city? Are they happy with this guy? It was the new person this time. So happy, unhappy? Don't ask.

I don't think we're completely unhappy. There were definitely some coordination challenges compared to the previous contractor. The group seal coat, it's all low bid. They didn't have a mechanism for dealing with past performance. I'm not for sure that that would have changed the outcome this year. I have provided a little bit of feedback to Park Hill to look at that next year. They had a lot more people. The Missouri Petroleum and a lot more equipment, so I figured it'd go fast, but the oil distribution bar on the back of their oil truck the lowest setting was still pretty high. And so that's why they stopped on a lot of partial days because the wind was blowing, the oil, and you know, they didn't want to get the, you know, because if they get oil on somebody's car or on their property, you know, they're the ones responsible for that, so they didn't want to take up those claims, so that's why we got a lot of half days. And then they wanted to keep up with the contract, so on a couple of those half days, they, like, one day they left us when it got too windy and they decided to go to Memphis, which I don't exactly know why they thought Memphis would be less windy than Borger, but... They did, so they hopped around a little bit, which is why it ended up taking a week. And so, you know, I think the job they did is pretty good. I mean, they used a little more rock than Missouri Petroleum, so there's a little extra loose rock than we've had the last two years. But, I mean, I think the work was okay, but it was definitely a coordination challenge. You know, we try very hard to get a contractor to get in and do that all at once in the shortest amount of time so that we, A, you know, City staff wants to take all the complaints at once in one day. We don't like that dragging out and getting all the complaints over a long period of time. We don't like making people come from work to move their cars and then the contractor not actually seal coat the street. We don't like telling people it's going to be this and then it not being that. So it was a little bit of some coordination challenges. And I'm not really like, I mean, even that first day when I got up, I got behind them coming out of My house stuck on Broadmoor for a little bit, so when I came home at lunch, I was going to go down there and see what they did. When I got down there, they hadn't done anything. So I didn't even know why they drove the equipment down there. They drove the equipment to the end of Broadmoor, turned around, and went over to Fairlanes, too. But when Missouri Petroleum did it, their spray bar is lower, so they didn't run into the wind issues. They hit it. So we've given Park Hill some feedback. for that hopefully next year's we'll see how that goes next year and like I said the bid we've actually with that group Silco even this year's their price was actually less than the price the year before which was less than the quota price the year before so we've actually gone from the first year we did it I think it was $3.40 a square yard this year's was $3.16 a cubic yard so they've actually reduced some of the costs I'm trying not to be know too picky but we do want to be mindful of the impacts to the citizens and and that too so uh we are still waiting to schedule the micro surfacing project so that is still coming so this year we're micro surfacing sixth street so sixth street will go from florida to where it dead ends on uh hedge coke we are micro surfacing main street from third to tenth We are microsurfacing college there from Wilson to Roosevelt. So that'll tie in from where we microsurfaced Roosevelt last year. And then we are microsurfacing Lakeview. We've talked about that. I don't plan on microsurfacing a lot of residential streets, but that's the main water flow because all the stormwater goes down Lakeview into the pond there before it goes into the creek. So that microsurfacing will bond and give a smooth surface. So we are hoping that the rock will stay in place under there without the microsurfacing that... high-speed rain water, storm water can take some of the rock and the road surface with it. So we're going to try to put that smoother surface on that. I will just remind, I know we have a lot of this, but for the public watching or any of that, you know, it is, we know that everybody would love their street, you know, milled and overlaid. Milling and overlaying is about $25 a square yard right now compared to the $3.16 a square yard that we're doing for chip sealing. So with all the streets we did this year, I mean, like I said, we did 100 and, over 100,000 square yards, that same amount of, we would have been able to do like 20,000 square yards of mill and overlay. And so a lot of our streets, as bad as people think they are, we don't have a lot of base failure and stuff like that to where we necessarily need that. We just need to make sure that we're keeping up with it. The microsurface is doing pretty good. There is a new product that they're calling a pressure pave, which is like microsurfacing but with pressure. And supposedly with that, you don't have to do the chip seal first for a degraded road you can and it gives you a finish that's similar the finish ends up looking just like micro surfacing so micro surfacing is about five dollars a square yard compared to the three dollars for chip ceiling the pressure paves just a little bit more at about six dollars but you don't have to chip seal it first has anybody had that done in our area not in our area that's why it's it's a little bit new in the metroplex i'm starting to kind of weather Do some, and if we try that, we might try, kind of like we did, we're doing a lot more of the microsurfacing this year because we did that test project last year. And really, everywhere we've done the microsurfacing, it's great. It's held up. It has improved it a little bit. And like I said, if we get a road that's been recently chip sealed or is in good enough condition, we don't have to chip seal it first. If it's bad enough, we've got to chip seal it to fill in the cracks. And when you do that, it takes two coats of microsurfacing. They've got an undercoat and a top coat. But like Roosevelt last year, we could, which is why we did it because Roosevelt was one of our newer roads. And so we want to keep it that way. So we applied a new surface coat on it to make sure it doesn't deteriorate any farther so that it remains a good road. And so we're going to continue to do some of that. But there are some areas if we can either come in with the chip seal or after the chip seal, we might not have to do it. Pressure paint might be a way to save that money because with the chip seal and the microsurfacing, you're at about $9 a square yard. So, you know, that's still, you know, you can coat three times as many square yards, just seal coating as you can, seal coating and microsurfacing. So we're trying to be mindful of that. As we know, we're trying to play catch up. But we got a lot of streets caught up this year. We've got a project as big or bigger planned next year. So we're going to definitely see a lot more progress in catching up on the residential streets in the coming years. So... That's pretty much all the projects we've got coming up as we go through departments. Of course, HR has been pretty busy. We did have our insurance meeting with our insurance provider. Our claim ratio is a .97 right now, halfway through the year. So what that means is for every dollar we've paid in, we've had 97 cents in claims. So I'm a little concerned about what our rate increase is going to look like. You know, so they're going to want to make money on us, and right now they're not making money on us. They're not losing money, but they're also not making money.

You're making three cents, come on.

Well, considering UHC had a record 8 billion profit last quarter, you know, I don't disagree, but we'll see how that is. We're going to have a meeting with our broker later this week, I think tomorrow, Thursday, to talk about our plans. We're going to look at some things to maybe mitigate some of that with the directors. Yesterday we talked about possibly right now employees are eligible for benefits on day one that they're hired. We have to pay for a full month for that, whether they start on the first of the month or whether they start on the last of the month. So we can save a little bit of revenue by changing to what I'm thinking is we'll start with a small wait period to where your insurance starts on the first day of the month after you get hired. And so based on the number of turnover and new hires that we apply that we have every year, that would save somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000, which would... take some of that. We've budgeted for a 10% increase, so I've got to find a way to cut some of that. We also still have a pretty good abuse of ER visits for non-emergency type. A lot of people, if they're not used to having a primary care physician, if somebody gets sick, they go to the ER, and so that drives up a lot of our costs. We might look at increasing the ER copay to encourage more primary care or urgent care or virtual visits. I don't want to change benefits that much. So we're looking for little ways without impacting core benefits. So we're working through that. So just fair warning as we finalize the budget, there might be some of that coming up. We were also recognized by the Texas Workforce Commission as a We Hire Vets employer. So over 10% of our employees are vets. A little about 11% now are vets. In the last year, we actually had 38 vets apply for jobs. We interviewed 10 of those vets. We offered jobs to six of them, and three accepted the jobs. So just something to be thinking a little bit Good to be proud for. So, you know, they serve our country in the past and then come and continue serving their community when they come work for the city. So we're excited about that. In Plain Development, Bradley Massengill passed his code enforcement exam. So he is now a certified code enforcement officer. Of course, they're still working through trying to keep up with weeds and sidewalks.

I thought they were doing the sidewalks. The state sidewalks on Cedar?

Yeah. So we're trying to keep up with that. They've sprayed them a little bit, and we're trying to keep up with the weeds. Of course, you know, I warned you all last year, you know, when the state put those in, that we knew the state was probably not going to maintain them. So we are trying to use some of our employees, at least in the areas where they're highly visible, to do that. They did the one, you know, and keep in mind that we mow the, you know, we mow the cloverleaf, and we mow 136 right-of-ways in addition to what the state does, because the state's mowing contract is for twice a year. the beginning once at the beginning of the season and once at the end of the season so if we weren't doing that but you know I get it they've got you know a lot of highways statewide to do that so that's a lot of money but and they are also working with plan developments working with the EDC and our Main Street program working for a collaboration mean we're trying to get like the Realtors and some of our contractors and stuff together to see, you know, what we need or how we can support trades and flipping homes. You know, how can we encourage or incentivize, you know, people to renovate and flip some homes to help address some of our housing needs. So we're working on getting that meeting set up. In Police Division Animal Services, they have all completed their new screw worm training to be prepared for screw worm if it comes into that. We also got the second part of their cat cages So they've now got all those new cat cages, stainless steel cat cages. You know, it makes it easier for our employees to handle them. And, you know, it's a lot better for the cats and how that works. So there's some pictures on Facebook today if you haven't seen that. And then they actually also went out and participated with Phillips 66 at their employee picnic, giving out some resources and microchipping and vaccine information during their community picnic. So police department, of course, been busy with all the 4th of July events. They've helped with all the parades and of course responded to all the fireworks calls and helped out at Lake Meredith with the fireworks show. Also had two of their employees go through PIO training that was held in Amarillo. We actually had, I think, six total city employees go through that training as we're working through those and making sure we've got somebody that are able to answer press questions or know what to do in front of the press. So in fire department, Aaron Gibbs has completed his Fire Instructor I and Lieutenant Rawson has completed his Fire Officer III training. They also hosted a PALS and ACLS training, so that's Pediatric Advanced Life Support and Advanced Cardiac Life Support. With that, they've also had their, we've also been approved for our EMS state license training site, so now we can train onsite here and get credit for all their continuing education. So the training that we do for all EMS personnel and regional EMS personnel can count towards continuing education. So we're still dealing with that. The county is working on an interlocal agreement that will be tied to that EMS funding. So that'll probably be on the next council meeting. Once we have that, we'll go ahead. And we've been holding off on some EMS equipment that will come on the new truck, knowing that that money was coming. You can't spend the money before you have it, so we can't order anything, but the equipment is already on order, which is why we can't use it for the ambulance that's coming in, because it had previously been on order before the grant. Next year we will get to offset that for the ambulance. Next year, I did double check, it is two, they did fund it for two fiscal years in the state biennium, so we've got the 350 this year and the 350 next year, so the little negative fund balance we were talking about at the last work session, isn't going to be there. So that's already taken.

Can it go against the next ambulance?

But either way, there's, you know, we've got three ambulances on order. The ambulances are $350,000, $360,000 a piece, and then each ambulance has got about $120,000 worth of equipment on it. Between the cardiac monitors, about $60,000, the COTS, $25,000, and the autoloaders, $30,000. And so... But we bought the two newer cardiac monitors in this current budget year. With this money, we'll buy the third one to equip the third ambulance with the same.

And will we keep that many ambulances? Are they going to go through auction?

Right now, we're still going to. So we staffed three ambulances. And then we need a spare, right? So that if something big happens, the fire department can staff it. Or if we need to take a weird transfer or something like that, We can do it since we've got, you know, because the fire department is double staff, so they've got four paramedics on the fire department staff plus all EMTs, so they can use it in that. Now, the clincher is, is as we go forward, we're trying to move towards remounts, which is where you put the new chassis, you keep the box, they lift the box off and swap out the chassis and then refurbish everything. But that can take about six months. So if we're going to have three ambulances on staff at all times and a maintenance spare, then we need that fifth one to be able to be sent off to get remounted. A remount right now is about $150,000 compared to a brand new one of 380. So we have three ambulances on order. We need to order one more, which will then have all of our ambulances the same. And then we will start remounting. And so at that point, I think what we'll end up doing is probably remount, remount, new, remount, remount, new. know with each one of those being a year so one year remount next year remount third year buy a new one fourth year remount fifth year remount sixth year buy a new one the chassis are all the same that's they they will be which is why we picked that the texas edition that we've got on order all those wheeled coaches we've been ordering are all exactly the same and so that'll make the remount process a little easier so that's where we're going we're just It's going to take a little bit of time. Remember this ambulance that we did do final delivery. Mike and Jamie went to do the final inspection on it in Florida last week. So they've seen it. They've touched it. So, you know, it is coming. We expect it. It'll take it. They've still got to, once they get it back, they've got to install the cot and the cot autoloader and we've got to do the graphics and stuff like that. So we're hoping to have it maybe in service in the next 30 to 45 days. So that's coming. The next two are still pretty close behind. They're scheduled for production later this year, early next year. So, you know, we're slowly getting caught up on that. Joshua Hollis and the fire mitigation team, he's completed his chainsaw operator task book. That sounds a whole lot. I'm also supposed to reinforce the fact that the fire department won the beach bash tug of war. So I'm sure the police have something to say about that. They've got just about all the hydrants tested for the year. So just a reminder, if they are testing hydrants in your area, your water might discolor for a little bit. That's just loose sediment.

I was at that beach question. I think one of them, I don't think there was enough there for them to do that anymore. I think the police forfeited.

Well, the way the fire department put it, they won.

Y'all forfeited, didn't you, Chief?

Are we doing any mitigation anywhere right now? I mean, prep?

Right now, everybody's, we've got a couple of people up in Colorado. Okay. And then we've got a team down in San Antonio, Uvalde, down with the flooding. We also, Whistler and Stroop and Chief Davis and Lieutenant Guzman are also down there with the Incident Support Task Force. Okay. Archie and I were gonna do a webinar with TML on fire mitigation. We got that date figured out for December 3rd, so they'll be part of their next quarterly webinar. Archie's actually going down to testify in front of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources on their fire mitigation program. Senator Sparks had asked us to provide testimony on that. If you recall, you may or may not, but when he came up after the Smokehouse Creek fire and the Windy Deuce fire, I made sure to kind of point out the seven mile burn and he was pretty impressed with that. You know, gave me his number. You know, we were talking about what we're trying to do with TxDOT and work through controlled burns and stuff like that. So he's been pretty supportive of that. I think that's important because the interim committee that they put together, you know, I think there was a little bit of some political influence on that. And, you know, if you read the report, they really downplayed mitigation, especially prescribed fire. Some of that was, I think, some ranchers experience with runaway prescribed fires, but I think they're confusing a mitigation prescribed fire and a land management prescribed fire. And a lot of ranches do prescribe fire for land management. And that's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about burning thousands and thousands of acres. We're talking about mitigating defensible spaces in specific locations that are based on information. So I think we're trying to get over that and look at ways that maybe the state can help offset or fund some of those mitigation activities. We've been pretty lucky about being able to have some money to fund some of that and then using our state responses to help offset that cost. Our budget for fire mitigation is about $625,000, and our revenue this year is right now at $658,000, based on state responses and some of the third parties. So, I mean, we're doing a pretty good job of that, but there aren't many cities that are doing that, and a lot of cities without some sort revenue offset, I think are going to have a hard time dealing with that. So I'm at least excited that, you know, they're still asking, you know, calling us for feedback on what that is and they're looking at maybe ways of trying to do that.

Was that webinar through the small cities or small town thing or anything?

It's based on your recommendation. I don't know how they

I didn't know if it was just, I mean, but it's not just for the small.

No, it's they, the TML does quarterly webinar training on a whole bunch of different topics. And so that's the one that they took from that. And, you know, of course, we will be, they've asked us to speak on downtown vacant building strategies to mitigate downtown vacant buildings at the annual conference in November. So we'll be dealing with that. That's a little bit outside of the fire department, but.

Sorry.

No, that's, I went there too. So in public works, of course, our streets and parks teams have been, you know, just want to throw a little shout out to those employees for helping set up for all the downtown events, the Freedom on Main and Second Saturdays. It takes a little bit of work and takes them from their normal routine doing that. We did get our new side loader in at the transfer station, so it's been on the streets. Right now, it's really easy to tell because it doesn't have all the dirt down the side of it, but that'll help our reliability there. We talked a little bit already about the concrete work going on at the transfer station and our seal coating project. The street department has already started trying to prep some of the streets for next year's seal coating project. We tried to do the crack seal and all that early so that it doesn't have a problem with the seal coat in the next year. Of course, park and rec has been busy. We're still in the middle of the summer park rec program. A swimming pool has been pretty busy. Just, you know, reminding everybody it's $3 to get in. That's still really cheap. I mean, I know we went up a dollar last year, but from $2 to $3 after seven years, that's still really cheap. So if you're looking for something to do, especially now that we're in this high-pressure system that looks like it's going to be hot for a while, that's still a pretty affordable, easy way to go cool off there at the pool. So we're excited about that. We did complete our first Purple Wave auction this year for used equipment. We generated $64,000 in revenue off of that. We did get our ADA enhancements completed in Huber Park that were called out from the playground grant inspection. So that's been done. You'll notice if you're out there, there's some new rails around some of the sidewalk because they were at such an angle based on ADA standards. They're not a sidewalk, it's a ramp. And so if it's a ramp, you have to have the handrails on either side. So that's kind of over there by the parking lot. You'll see we added a new little strip in front of the bathrooms because they weren't quite wide enough, so we had to add four inches. And then we had to add some new handicapped signage. But that's all closed out, and so that's all . Of course, in finance, we're in the middle of supporting budget and getting some of that all caught up. We finally got our new processes and stuff in place to be pretty good with bank rec and credit cards on a recurring basis. We've been working on that since transitioning to ENCODE 10 about eight months ago, so we're finally getting through some of that. Their summer intern has been working on scanning in all the fixed assets records as we work through that, so we're getting on that, so that's pretty good. In Main Street, they've got the Facade Fix-It Day scheduled for August 1st. So if anybody's looking for volunteer hours or wanting to do something, that's August 1st. We did get a grant through the Amarillo Area Foundation for $17,000. $17,000, that's in the tiers fund right now, but that funded some lighting for some of the participating buildings and some paint, and they're gonna try to fix up a few of the facades downtown with that money, so that's coming up on August 1st. Nicole's also working with the THC, the Texas Historical Commission. We're working to get the Borger Hotel and the old Borger Post Office added to the downtown, Main Street area. So, you know, when we talk about that, we've got two areas. We've got the downtown area and then we've got the Main Street project area. So the Main Street project area is what we need, you know, to get all the resources for the historical commission. So we're working on getting those two added. We kind of left them out just because we were doing so much and probably didn't think that far. But now there's some stuff going with that that we definitely need to include them. So we're working on that. Also, Nicole's been working at the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum and the Borger Library. I actually found a whole lot of information on the Borger Hotel. Actually, Nicole wanted to call out Ruth at the library and how helpful she's been and had all sorts of information ready for that. So we're appreciative of that help. Also been doing a lot of research through the museum. You know, if you watch the Friday videos, the Behind the Doors on Friday. I knew it was branded or something. I just couldn't remember what. Well, we branded that. I know that by the time all of this is done between all of our Main Street projects and by the time we've done all the behind the doors, I think Nicole is probably going to be the best historian in the community. Deidre not far behind after putting the book together. We do have two. tiers momentum grant awards so the tiers board will be many next week and concerning those I think we're going to have a third application probably before that meeting so we'll be probably considering those three depending on the values we are trying to put those on the August council meeting for final approval so that we can get right now they are all for roofing so one of them is the Borger old post office Thomas Greenhouse and you know that we definitely want to Save that building. So we got those coming. Of course, we did complete the Freedom on Main, and we've gone through two second Saturdays of summer. Just one more left. Nicole also spoke at the Rotary Club last month. And they've also been working with Eden Aesthetics, which she got the lease through the BDC yesterday. So that was all kind of started through some outreach with the downtown program. And they're also working on coordinating with the EDC and the THC, some walkthroughs of the buildings that the council authorized them to purchase last week. So we're going to get through there and get the THC and get everybody involved on the same page on those. So we're excited about that. In public engagement, we have started hitting the ground a little better with Boomtoberfest sponsorships. They've made three visits and gotten three sponsorships already, so that'll be here before we know it. Today, they had a meeting with D.E. Rice and local businesses in the school district about border works programs. So we're trying to find a crafts pass. So we've got kind of two things going on right now. With that group, we're working on crafts, which I call welding and industrial crafts, and then trades, like plumbers and electricians. We're trying to work on a path with D.E. Rice and Peyton to get the high school kids in early age to get some craft training so they can go into the instrumentation or the crafts a little early and have that path through internships for all the local jobs. We're also working on the trades, which is using our tax properties and trying to get the construction program at the high school involved with the homes we get back on back taxes, then they can use those to train electrical plumbing, carpenters, things like that. So we're working through some of those and having some pretty good talks right now. I think we'll see some of those develop as it comes together.

Will that, like if they do renovate them, they would be sold and used for that same property?

Right, so we would do probably an agreement with the school district which transfers it to them as long as they make the improvements and then when it sells or, you know, we've talked, there might be a third party involved because the school district has some restrictions on how they dispose of property just like we do. So it might be transferring those to the EDC who then you know, because EDCs are designed to do some of that stuff, they've got less restrictive rules on how they sell property, and then they can just give the money. But the idea is for the money to go back into the program to buy the supplies and the tools necessary to complete it.

Are these properties insured during the time of the reconstruction? So if they put the money in and they would burn up or whatever, would they recoup the money?

Those are the details that still have to be worked out of what that program looks like. That depends on who's the property owner in the transition. So if it's the city, in either way, we would have to probably get a temporary construction policy, you know, you've got a works under construction. We do that with like our big construction projects as part of the construction process. We add that to our insurance from the very beginning and they get, there's a separate policy for, you know, buildings under construction.

I was just curious, if the city or anybody else lose money, because you've invested not only your time, but your money.

Well, at least with that, the offside is even if the unfortunate does happen, hopefully the kids would still gotten the benefit of the work that they did on it. So it's not a complete loss, even if it was a complete loss, but no, that all gets worked out in the final agreements. We have ways of doing that, like I say, because we already do that. It's just a matter of, does it stay in our name? It might end up going to the tiers. The tiers has less restrictive rules than the regular city does too. So there's a lot of different ways of doing that. We're working on that, so we think that's a good way to get some trade education to the local kids through the high school's trade program that they're already doing, just expanding some of that, but then it also helps with our housing needs and our neighborhood improvement.

It helps with the neighborhood cleanup.

Right, and so we are working through that and kind of excited about that. They've also been working with the Friends of the Museum. We're working on trying to set up some centennial pop-up displays at our events and things like that, you know, to where they can go up and do all that. We're trying to find the 1976 time capsule so we can dig it up. We know it's over there somewhere. We don't know exactly yet.

Anybody knows where the 1976 time capsule is? How are y'all doing that? With a metal detector?

Right now with our eyes, you know, but... It is marked, but I think it's probably been, I think some grass or some vines over there are grown over it. So we're going to have to cut in some stuff back. But we want to open it a little bit before, keep in mind, we're going to have all that on display for our October 26th downtown Centennial event. You know, when we actually commemorate the... incorporation of the city. So we'll, we would like to dig it up a little early so we can curate it. I mean, not that I think there's anything bad in there, but, you know, some things that maybe were acceptable in 1976 or maybe not acceptable in 2026. So, you know, I'm not for sure that we want to be...

I think that would be vice versa, but okay.

They want to loot the loot. I'm just, I'm trying to, you know, think of any and every possibility. So I don't want to be surprised when we've got a bunch of public people gathered and... But then we will also, you know, we're working on a new time capsule to go down, so we're going to be involving the public with that coming up.

You mean like asking the public what to put in it or something?

we're gonna i think what we what we've talked about doing is you know hey we've talked about maybe maybe at the school and getting some of the school kids to write letters to you know the citizens of borger in 100 years uh you know maybe something like that you know i don't necessarily want things but yeah that makes sense you know and we'll have some some guidelines for it is we don't have a really big time castle but like i'll probably put like we'll put this the 2027 budget in there you know because there's a lot of information about the city in the budget book and what we go on and just you know some some things like that. You know, in the last one we've already seen the letter that the Mayor Pro Tem at the time wrote because we had it in file. And so it was funny, you know, that'll come out. But in 1976, you know, he said by the time you open this in 2026, we're pretty sure that there'll probably be solar panels on everything because, you know, he knew that the Washiteria was already putting solar panels on there to Help reduce his insurance costs. Of course, we're not quite there, but we're not necessarily far from it. He also said, I'm sure by 2026, you know, with the rate we're depleting the groundwater, that we'll be solely 100% reliant on Lake Meredith. And, you know, that kind of went the exact opposite. So it is kind of interesting to see how things. Of course, it was also funny that he said, you know, that with all the political discord in 1976, he goes, I hope it's gotten better by 2026. Of course, you know, if you look at the history of the U.S., I mean, there have been political divide since the very, very beginning. So I think sometimes we forget that there's definitely been periods of that. But we'll be interested to see that. We do have the next seat at the table coming up. You know, that's where all the city departments and EDC and city staff are there if you've got an idea or want feedback on code or zoning. So if you've got any ideas on that, be looking for the details on that. That's a really good opportunity to go. Everybody's in the same room and you can get a lot of answers. A lot of questions answered. Our next Moonlight Madness or Moonlight Meditation, is it sold out?

I have to check this morning, but we were pretty close last week.

There might be a few left on that. You know, that's where you go out to the pool and they've got the little floaty relaxation things. And this year they've actually got a lady with the water bowls, the actual... Sound.

Yeah, real sound pools, not over-the-speaker sound pools.

So that had pretty good feedback. We've gotten this year's submissions for the dumpster orient, so we've selected three of those to move forward. So we'll be planning three more dumpsters probably in August. Also working on a WTE grant through the WTE Enterprise Center to help some of our educational opportunities that we're working through with that. We're also, now that Scott's moving on to his next project, we're working on some code enforcement educational material and videos on how that works. He did, if you haven't noticed, if you go to YouTube and go to our YouTube page now, all the Citizens Academy sessions are now available on YouTube. We're working on a website page to embed them where you can get access to them from our website, but those are now accessible 24-7 for anybody that wants to go. Or if you were in the Citizens Academy and missed a session, you can go back and watch the session you missed, but now that those are done, we're gonna work on some of the code enforcement outreach and education. Because we did complete the Citizens Academy, we're also working on reorganizing the Youth Council again. All those kids graduated, so we're working with Manny. Gonna probably move that into the Recreation Department just a little bit. They're gonna be opening that up later in August after the school gets back in session. The intern working with Deidre actually had an idea of maybe trying to set it up with like also like a big brother's big sister so that the older kids can get paired up with a younger kid as part of the youth advisory council and get, you know, two different generational views on that. So I think that's a pretty good idea. So other than that, that's all I have. I almost forgot whistlers. He's on deployment, so he emailed it to me, so it's not with everything else. But we do have a school safety meeting with the school getting ready for the next year. That's also a new legislative requirement. We're also in the early stage of planning an exercise with the ISD. We're also working on updating our emergency operation plan So we'll probably, you'll see a resolution for that in late August or early September just for that required. We did have an advanced ICS class here. had about, I think, 15 or 20 of our staff go through it and some of the regional staff. And then we also hosted an ISTAT damage assessment training here. So we had 20 city of Borger employees go through that. That's the little app that the state uses to log damage after a disaster. That's the program that they use to make sure if we meet federal or state thresholds for certain reimbursements and assistance. So it's important that we do all of that. So we got a lot of city employees trained and ready for that. We do have a dam exercise. A dam is in the Sanford Dam exercise scheduled for August 14th with the Department of Interior. Dustin's been down at the ESRI conference. That's the GIS conference in San Diego as we continue to focus on our GIS graphic information systems through our mapping. Keith, our IT coordinator, gave a Instructed a session with the Business Boot Camp on technology and cybersecurity for business. I actually did workforce development this last week, so we've had lots of good positive feedback from the Business Boot Camp. I think that's going to continue to go forward and be a really good benefit for our business and our community. They're also working, as part of our contract with Fridge, working through the Fridge phone upgrade, so they're going to a system similar to what we have that'll be easier for them to use and, you know, is good. They're, you know, their contract started at $30,000 a year, so that helps offset some of our IT costs and share those same resources, which are good. So, we have a peer support training at Frank Phillips College for first responders on the 27th and 28th, and then all the deployment. Whistler's actually managing volunteer reception center down at the flood reception center. Some of us have been involved in that from the fire, so I do know that the state actually did call up and request some of our personnel. We're actually trying to get requested by name. So I think that speaks highly for the training and the skill set that we have here. So it's, you know, I think important for our citizens to know that we get the benefit of all that skill and training, you know, 365 days out of the year, then it's at a level that the state wants that involvement on the worst days for some of the other communities. So now that's officially all that I have for the last month. If you have any other questions, I'll...

If there's no questions, we'll move on to the consent agenda six, seven, eight, and nine. And if there's any questions on those or any comments. And if not then I'll entertain a motion.

I'll make a motion we approve consent. Item 6 through 9. Second.

And all in favor? And they pass. And item 10, consider and take appropriate action to adjourn.

I'll make a motion we adjourn. Second.

All in favor? And we are adjourned.